Gwennan's Birthday Party

Three weeks after the fact, I am finally posting about Gwennan's 1st Birthday Party. She got a ton of presents - toys and clothes - from her adoring fans.
Enjoy the pics ...

Sister Catri decorated the cake. No, Catri hasn't gone Goth. She's just gone ever so slightly skater punk. Note the Volcom hat and the black nails with pink pinkie.













Gwennan getting dressed in her birthday outfit.



















Gwennan and cousin Brenna.













Yay!



















The cake. It's no professional bakery cake, but it's made with more love.



















So we blew out the candles for her ...













But she got a little scared by the crowd of people standing around her loudly singing "Happy Birthday" ...













A little cake cured her fear pretty quickly, though.

Self Portraits by Gwennan

Gwennan turned a year old this past Friday. One year. It's amazing. She's gone from being a tiny baby to a little person. She's crawling like crazy and standing on her own more and more. It won't be long till she's walking. And she's already talking a little. It's hard to discern, but she says Hi, and what sounds like "How are you?" and Ee-I-Ee-I (from the Old MacDonald song). She sways a little to music, and tries to comb her hair and talk on anything that may vaguely resemble a phone.
I'll post photos from the birthday party we had on Saturday as soon as I get them together.
In the meantime I thought I'd show you some self-portraits. This is done by handing her our old Sony digital camera, pressing the timer while she's playing with it, and seeing what photos turn up. They're pretty darn funny. The first one below is from December. The rest are from about a month ago.



















































I love this next one. She had her finger on the lens, which caused the camera to over-expose to compensate. You can see Gwennan to the right of her finger.

Gratuitous Cute Baby Photos - Feb/March Edition

April edition (including G's birthday) coming soon.

Pine Mountain

Mark and I threw Gwennan in the backpack and hiked up Pine Mountain two Saturdays ago. It was a sunny day, not too cold, but it was a little windy, so we bundled up anyway. Gwennan was a little grumpy as we hiked, and we decided once we got to the top we would take her out and give her a break to crawl around a little. She LOVED it. She was on the GROUND! Not carpet- or linoleum- or Pergo- covered ground, but DIRT ground! She scratched at the dirt and crawled around a little, then found a stick and scratched the ground with that. She was so cute. And every time the cold wind would blow in her face, she would blink her eyes and smile, like someone had just tickled her.
I love having that baby around. She makes everything so much more fun.

Sweet Water

Catri came to visit back in February for a few days. She gets both a winter break and a spring break at her school in Seattle, so that's cool. While she was here we took some photos of her and Gwennan together. It was really hard to get a decent shot. Whenever Catri looked good, Gwennan was making some weird face, and vice versa. So here I present one of the two or three decent shots. We'll probably try again when Catri's here in April.



















Also while Catri was here we went hiking at Sweet Water Creek State Park. It was a lot of fun and such a beautiful day. I took a lot of photos of the trees, the water, etc, but most of them did not come out very well. I'm not much of a landscape photographer. I just don't know how people get those amazing shots. I think it has something to do with getting out there at like 6 AM, when the light is soft and translucent.

Self-portrait



















Mark, on the "Thinking Rock"



















Pretty Catri



















Daughter & Dad



















"You see that land mass over there? That's called a 'stick out' because of the way it sticks out into the water."

Update

As always, I do have new, unbelievably cute photos of Gwennan to share, but I haven't compressed them yet to upload, so they'll have to wait for a little while. Instead, I thought today I would write a little bit. Novel idea, eh?

I've been struggling a lot lately with various health issues. I average 4 to 6 sinus infections a year, each of them lasting anywhere from two weeks to two months, so I finally went to an ENT (Ear Nose Throat doctor) to be evaluated. After a CT scan we've discovered that due to some structural issues in my sinuses I have teensy-tiny drainage passageways, that will swell closed altogether during an infection. This afternoon I'm going back in for allergy testing to see if that's a factor as well. I won't bore you with more details, because I can see you're dropping off to sleep already. Instead, we'll move on to the next health issue that has me going to multiple doctor appointments lately ...

I've been experiencing pain in my knees since we moved into this house. It has stairs, and I haven't lived somewhere with stairs in years. I thought I would just get used to it and the pain would go away, but instead it's become much worse. It's a bizarre kind of pain though - it doesn't hurt to walk or move around at all. Dawn and I just walked up Kennesaw Mountain yesterday, pushing the Gwennan in a stroller even, and I did just fine. The pain comes when I'm still for too long. My knees get sore and stiff, and when I do finally move them, it's really painful. It also hurts to crouch down or get up from the floor - which I'm down there a lot with Gwennan. My doc thinks I may have rheumatoid arthritis, and so I'm off to yet another specialist - a rheumatologist - to see what they think.

Are you still there??
Wake up!!

In other news, I'm taking on a new challenge starting a couple of Tuesdays from now: teaching French. At Lockheed (where Mark works) they offer different classes to their employees - accounting, foreign languages, basket-weaving - and I'm going to be teaching an 8 week conversational French course. I feel a little nervous about it, since I haven't taught or even tutored French in so long. Except maybe when I help Catri with her homework. Anyway, two Tuesdays from now the class starts.

And finally, this coming Monday, I go to the offices of the Cobb County School System for a half-day training course to become a substitute teacher. Yes, I'm well on my way to becoming Peggy Hill. Look out, Cobb County!!

Mark has been working a lot of overtime lately. We're saving up for a trip to Seattle this summer to see his family. Other than his mom and stepdad, none of them have met the Gwennan yet. Look out, Seattle!! ;o)

Speaking of Gwennan, I've got to go take care of a diaper situation ...

Mmm, coffee ...

I snapped this shot at the corner of Concord and South Cobb in Smyrna.
They're pretty honest, I think. I mean, when I drink coffee, that's what usually happens to me ...