Welcome 2010!

Happy New Year! We've been spending the last two weeks in Kansas City with the in-laws. It's been a quick, relaxing, enjoyable holiday and we're as bummed about leaving as we are looking forward to being home and starting our new year.

You're never going to believe this, but I've actually started another blog. No, I'm not abandoning this one or even my other one. This new one is called The Pumpkin Pie Patch, and I plan to make it about all things mommy. My idea for it came because I plan to start potty-training Alaina next week, and I'd like to blog about it a la the movie Julie & Julia. I'd also like to get into product reviewing and blog giveaways, and I needed a not-so-Kimble one in order to do that. The Pumpkin Pie Patch will have a little less personal info on it so I can really send it into the void. I hope you all read it and even publically follow it, so more people will be inclined to. The more people who follow it, the more inclined companies will be to let me review products and giveaway their stuff.

My sister-in-law's husband (my husband's brother-in-law? my brother-in-law? I never know what to call that guy) has also introduced me to book reviewing. I haven't done any yet, but there are several websites to sign up on that will send you books to review. I plan to do said book reviews on the Victoria Kimble blog.

So check them out. Tell your friends. And happy new year.

http://victoriakimble.blogspot.com

http://thepumpkinpiepatch.blogspot.com

With My Own Two Hands

Ever since we got married almost 5 1/2 years ago, I have been looking for Christmas stockings for us. I could not find any that looked right. So many were ugly and gaudy, or they were plain and cheap looking. I was probably trying to find ones that looked like the ones I grew up with, and since those are over 20 years old, then they were no where to be found.

Then last year my mom made one for Alaina and for my sister's husband to hang at her house. And they looked exactly like what I had pictured having for my family. So, after putting off the project for almost a year, I finally made three. I went to the store, bought the fabric and trimmings, followed a pattern and used my mom's sewing machine. It was my first sewing project since 7th grade, and I am dang proud of how they turned out.

You should know that Lee makes fun of how big they are, but I think they are perfect.

My New Hobby

I have a new hobby. It's probably a long shot, but I'm enjoying it. I enter giveaway and sweepstakes on the Internet.

I got the idea from an article on MSN.com about making extra money. It was a whole list of things, like start your own home business (duh) or take online surveys. I've tried the whole survey thing, but I never qualify for them. Apparently I need to spend more money as a consumer, so I can tell people how much I like their products. Or maybe they always have their fill of middle-class, white, stay-at-home-moms, ages 25-34.

Then this article mentioned online sweepstakes as a legitimate form of making extra money. They referred me to this website, sweetiessweeps.com. It is dedicated to posting a bunch of online sweepstakes games and instant win games. Of course the owner of the site has this huge success story of winning a bunch of stuff. I figure it can't hurt to try, especially the things that are free. I even created a gmail account so our regular email won't be flooded with all the junk that inevitably comes along with passing out your email address in contests. (Wendy of SweetiesSweeps recommended this.)

Which leads me to today's blog. I was entering a giveaway on a lovely blog called RaisingMy4Sons. As a stay-at-home-mom, I love reading other mom's blogs about their kids. If you go to her site, you can see the giveaways she has listed. www.raisingmy4sons.blogspot.com. She even has a button called Reviews/Giveaways.

I wonder how I can get in on that action.

Snowed In

It's no secret that we've been getting a little snow for the past couple of days. Now that we're living in a place with no garage for our cars, we've been less courageous about venturing out. Alaina is bored with her toys by mid-afternoon, but we're managing with relatively few tears (hers and mine.) You can see for yourself what our world looks like.

If Alaina were standing in that snow, it would probably be up to her chin.

Sometimes all you can do is look out the window all day.

Latest Stats

Age: 15 1/2 months

Height: 31 inches

Weight: 22 pounds

Teeth: 5 - two upper front, two lower front, one lower right molar

Sleeping patterns: 12 hours at night, an hour and a half nap in the morning, and a 2 to 2 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon

Favorite book: I Love You, Goodnight or any touch and feel book

Favorite toy: baby stroller

Favorite food: bananas

Favorite song: The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Known sign-language signs: please, thank-you, more, all done, eat, drink

My Outgoing Baby

I'm pretty sure Alaina is an extrovert. I have three pieces of evidence that support this theory:

Exhibit A - She is downright CRANKY starting around 5:00 each day. And clingy. While I'm trying to make dinner. Plopping her in front of a cartoon doesn't work. Digging out toys she hasn't seen all day doesn't work. I've come to decide that she is tired of being with just me all day, and definitely doesn't want to be by herself.

Exhibit B - She does VERY well in nursery. On Wednesday she was cranky around dinner time, as usual. On Wednesday nights we have a class we take at church, and Alaina was so cranky that Lee asked if we should even take her that night. I said YES because maybe the other kids would be a great distraction. And they were. She did great...much better than she did with just us.

Exhibit C - Last night we went to Olive Garden. Lee and I were eating, and I was trying to get Alaina to eat. She wasn't really interested, because she was too busy throwing her menu on the floor for the busboys to pick up as they walked by. Then I look over to see her playing her "Point to My Nose" game with a lady a few feet away. Alaina does that at dinner with us...she quizzes us by pointing to her nose, hair, mouth and tummy and will do it until we name the part she is touching. Anyway, I look over to see this lady touching her nose and looking at Alaina, and look down to see that Alaina is doing the same thing. Plus, at the end of the meal there was a rousing game of peekaboo with the servers.

So how did my daughter become an extrovert? I'll never know, but I am gearing up for a lifetime of driving her places just so she can be around other people.

Taking Real Live, Drunken Monkey Steps

She walks! She's getting a little braver every day.