Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I couldn't be more thankful for this little lady. Hope you all have a wonderful Turkey Day!

Exciting News!!!

I'm putting my craftiness to good use and opening up shop!!!  As you know, I've been quite absent from blogging lately, as I prepared for a craft sale at Ruby's school.  The sale went as well as it could have, and I have used it as a jumping off point to start selling my handmade goods!

Can I get a drumroll please, for my new shop, Spotted Pony Handmade!!!

For right now, I'll be running my little shop on Instagram only.  I'd like to eventually get it over to Etsy, but this is how I'll be getting my start!  If you'd like to shop, please follow @spottedpony_handmade over on IG.

I'll be hosting a holiday flash sale THIS Sunday (tomorrow!) at 5:00pm PST!!!  I'll have headbands (including the one Ruby is wearing above), bows, and holiday-inspired ready to ship hats.  Like this guy:

So come follow me, shop handmade for your littles this holday season, and help make my first sale a success!

Calendar Girl - Eighteen Months

Well hello, little blog.  I know I've neglected you terribly, but it's all in the name of good things.  Finding time to blog has been crazy hard, but I couldn't let Ruby turn 19 months before I documented her 18th, right???

Eighteen months...  Holy cow.  That's a half birthday!  My baby is one and a half!!!  I know, I know, I'm always shocked by the passage of time, but really?  How'd she get so grown up?????

Because grow up, she did.  This girl seems like such a KID.  For one thing, her vocabulary is through the roof now.  New words this month (well, the ones I remembered to write down) include: school, yarn, yeah, corn, read, please, leaves, water (wa-wa), baby, towel, up, clothes, bow, ride, rhino, yum, keys, bra, gourd, dog, beans (which comes out as "means" - adorable), feed (which she says as "ah-ree" - weird), dance, and noodle.  She is much more into repeating things we say than she ever has been.  Which is cool, but also means our language has had to clean up a bit...

She has many loves right now.  "Read!" is her favorite word, and she will grab a book anytime and insist you read it to her.  Which, of course, I love.  We read a lot of Halloween books, since it was that time of year.  One of my faves, being Goodnight Goon.  In the story, the goon rides a ghost.  Which leads to Ruby's other favorite word - "RIDE!"  She is obsessed with the concept of riding.  Horses must be ridden, stuffed animal cows must be ridden, the dog must be ridden (yes, she really tries to do this every chance she gets).  She even climbed on Grandma one evening, when she was relaxing on the floor, and started yelling, "Ride!  Ride!!!".  It's pretty hilarious.

Look at that wacky hair...

Also topping her loves list?  Leaves!!!  She's not loving riding in the stroller so much (she wants to walk/run), but give her a leaf for each hand?  She'll do whatever you want!  She also gets really excited when she hears the landscapers with leaf blowers.  "Guy?  Leaves?  Guy?  Leaves?" over and over.  She's also been super into coloring, and actually scribbles now, instead of just stippling her crayons on the page.  And while she already loved music and dancing, she got introduced to "What Does the Fox Say" and is obsessed.  If you ask her what a fox says, she replies, "Dance".  Ha.

Caught mid-dance.

As far as toddlers go, she takes the cake.  We're still riding the toddler honeymoon of awesomeness.  As of now, Ruby still does not throw tantrums.  Maybe this is because she has really good communication skills?  It takes a lot to ruffle her feathers, too.  She does have her sassy moments, and she's a thrower when she doesn't like/want something.  She'll just pick up the nearest object and chuck it.  Or if you ask her to give you something, and she doesn't want to, she'll chuck that, too.

Ruby also has this weird habit of kind of freaking out if she thinks she's in trouble.  Like, when she does something she knows she's not supposed to, she often will immediately shut down and cover her face with her hands.  Or she'll go over and turn on Mr. G's Xbox, but if you ask her to turn it off, she gets upset (like, scared, not like mad) and tries to run away or hide behind one of us.  It is bizzare.

At 18 months, Ruby's starting to get more and more into pretend play, and using her toys.  She loves to pretend to cook, both at home and school.  She loves on all of her animals, and likes to put the baby dolls at volunteering to bed (she tucks them in with blankets).  She also loves her Little People bus, and Playmobil 1*2*3 girl and horse; she plays with them every day.  She also loves balls - throwing light up ones, and learning how to kick a beach ball with Dada.

At her 18 month well-baby visit, we found out that our girl has done a huge amount of growing!  Jumping from 25% all around, to 50% for weight at 24lbs 8oz, and 75% for height at 32"!!!  I had a feeling she'd done a lot of growing, but whoa!  Baby girl is wearing mostly 24 month stuff now, but can still fit into 18mo Carter's stuff.  Conversely, I've been buying her 2T as well, and just cuffing everything, lol.  She still wears a size 4 shoe, but she's about to outgrow those as well (finally).  I tried to enter her in the See Kai Run casting call this month, as they needed models her shoe size, but they told me they couldn't take her because her feet don't match her age!  Haha, she is a littlefoot.  =)

Basically, at 18 months Ruby is amazing.  Just like she was last month, and the one before.  And just like she will be the next.  I don't even have time to mourn her growing up, really, because each new month is a different kind of fun.  I am SO excited to see the magic of the holidays through her eyes, and to see what she is into next!

Halloween 2013

There is just something about seeing a holiday through a child's eyes...  As Ruby is getting older, it's getting better and better.  Our Halloween was SO much fun!

We kicked off the week by having Grandma over on Sunday to carve pumpkins.

The pumpkins we got from our trip to the patch were no joke!  It was quite the feat to get those guys gutted and carved out.

Then Monday was school.  The kids were encouraged to wear their costumes, and had lots of pumpkin-related activities (and no painting, so they'd stay clean!).

Exploring a sensory bin (she dumped that basket of sand on her head).

Stamping spider shapes into play doh.

Shakin' her thang with the pumpkin shakers at circle time.

Then we took all the kiddos outside for a group picture.

The candy corn is covering the face of a little guy whose parents don't want him on the internet (they were ok with covering up).

On Tuesday, we had our weekly volunteering gig, of course.  The classes were having their own little costume parties, and the instructors encouraged me to bring Ruby in her costume as well.  Didn't have to tell me twice!  Ruby was an adorable little kitty cat greeter, and she was super interested in checking out the newborns in costume!

It also happened to be National Cat Day (that's a thing?), so it turned out she was dressed appropriately.

Wednesday we laid low (though she did wear her glow in the dark onesie!).  Finally, it was Halloween.  Ruby put on her trick or treating dog shirt and festive striped leggings for one last time, and I plopped her pumpkin hat on her head, so that we could go out and run some errands (no surprise, I needed to buy yarn).

Ruby later requested to wear one of her Halloween bows.  We discovered that because the bow has candy corn all over it, she thinks the word for candy corn is "bow".  Dead.

I realized just in time that I should probably take her outside to get some pics of her in costume before it got dark.  I had just been planning to dress her for trick or treat.  What a mom-fail that would have been!!!

Seriously?  Cutest kitty EVER.

She was kissing her pumpkin...

Messy hair, don't care.

Kissing her rocks...  Weirdo.

She looks like she's about to pounce on those pumpkins!  Me-OW!

After all the photo-taking shenanigans, we went inside for a dinner of pumpkin and bat ravioli.  You know, to be festive.  

When it was dark, we had Ruby grab her pumpkin bag (an old gift card holder from Starbucks many years ago - the perfect trick or treat bag for a one year old!), and we went next door to our neighbor's house for her inaugural trick or treat.

Our neighbor, Tanner, answered the door and was excited to see Ruby.  I was pretty much dying from all the cuteness.  He offered her the candy bowl, and she was like, "heck, no, you are not my mom & dad!".  She was being super shy, so I took a piece out and showed her that it got to go in her bag.

Whoa whoa whoa.  I get to put candy in my bag, Mom???

Yeah, that's when her demeanor totally changed, and she was into the trick or treating!  She got to take another piece from the bowl, and did all on her own, putting it into her bag.  We heard Tanner's wife, Samantha, yell from upstairs, "Don't go!  I want to see Ruby's costume!!!"  So we hung around and chatted a bit.  The whole time, Ruby was saying, "Bag?  Bag?" and pointing to her candy.  It was freaking adorable, and my heart was exploding into a million pieces.

Their baby was dressed as a skeleton, which Ruby thought was pretty great, too.  But baby skeletons need to eat, so we said goodbye.  We decided to take Ruby to one other house - our neighbors across the street (who gave Ruby her red wagon).

It was a good call.  Our neighbor, Sandy, was so excited to see Ruby all dressed up.  And Ruby was pretty excited that people were offering her more candy!

We came home, and in the spirit of the holiday, we let Ruby eat one whole piece of candy, all to herself.  Ok, so it was one of those tiny square candy bars (Baby Ruth), but she basically thought she died and went to heaven.

I told her that kids were coming to our house for trick or treat, and when one finally did, she was SO excited!  I think she might have liked helping hand out the candy even more than trick or treating herself!  Unfortunately, because our front door faces only a sidewalk (no street, see the pics above with the rocks in the background), we get very few trick or treaters.  This year was an all time low - only 4 doorbell rings before we shut it down and put Ruby to bed (late).

My heart was so full from watching my little kitty girl on her first Halloween that she had any idea what was going on.  It's going to be hard to wait until next year to do it all again.  Thank goodness we have Christmas coming up (I've already ordered Ruby some festive leggings)!

Want more Halloween fun?  Check out how we spent it last year.  My baby was so tiny!