Tiptoeing Tulip

The Halloween activities have already begun and this Saturday Illusia got to visit the 'Night of the Living Zoo.' it was cold and way overcrowded but she still seemed to have fun, for the most part.

More @ Night of the Living Zoo

Then on Sunday we wanted to go to a haunted house but could not find one for the little kiddies in the area (but are looking to try again next week, which is a full schedule for sure!) Instead we went to the park. :)

More @ Tulip Faery

Dandelion Daze

 

So, Illusia is basically 75% toddler now a days, very little baby-ness left despite still looking sweet and angelic. Very feisty and opinionated, but also hilarious, obsessively helpful and sweet. :) Below are pics of her on her last days of an official  1 year old, today she is 1 ½!

WOW. It seems like just yesterday that I was bringing her home from the hospital and now she is walking, talking, running, throwing and most of all screaming her way through my days. I think seeing the photos of her with the dandelion (below) made me think of how as a baby she was soft, peaceful and settled. Just taking things in and now she is girl of action; wild like the seeds blowing in the wind. Still ever as pretty (and don't think she does not know it, she has the coy 'who me?' smile down.) and still the love of my life. Here is to 18 wonderful months of Illusia!

More @ Fall Daze

Only on a Monday

Today is one of those days. A day so crazy that Illusia has to take a back seat for another special girl in my life, one who is furrier and (believe it or not) a lot more trouble...

Why is today an awful, bad, no good day you ask? First it is a Monday...and also we now have no hot water and I watched my dog almost get hit by a car 4 times.

To explain... it all started around noon on a rainy, dreary Monday. That's when our gas, which was never suppose to be shut off was and out came a... gas-turner-on-man (? Stay with me here, my articulateness has left the building) showed up and spent about 5 minutes finding our very old, under the house furnace and declared it was too dirty to light. Which, okaaay sorry to make you do you job dude. (Okay, I am being mean --- I would not want to blow up either, but ehh this it not even our fault and now we are without gas because some guy does not want to get dirty.) Anyway, he said it was out landlords problem to clean it and he would have to light it (I am not sure if that means our gas is turned back off again or on and not lit and if so does that mean I need to be checking for fumes?)  then left, I made cookies (electric oven, yay!) and let the dog out.

12 minutes later I went to let her back in and discovered the guy had left the gate wide open (after we told him we had a dog) and &%^%! went through my mind as I saw my old, cranky, half blind, arthritic 12 year old dog manged to hobble away and disappear. But I did not panic. I cursed, I kicked things, I secretly wished the gas man had a flat tire on the way home but I did not panic, I carefully got a leash, a stroller and a barefoot 17 month old and hightailed it to the street. I called her name (Chaos), whistled, made other annoying sounds and Illusia helped with 'bye-bye doggie' and we scoured the neighborhood, we came home and checked for her and went out again...

2 hours later and no dog and I was ready to give up and put Illusia to bed and wait to see if Chaos came home and then I saw her across the (very busy) street a block from our house. Of course as soon as she heard me she came running into my arms ran the other frickin' direction! It is harder than you think to keep a sweet, peppy voice when you want to strangle someone's furry neck, but I tried and honestly I did not have enough energy left to strangle anyone. I promised her more walks, dog treats, sleep, ear rubs, anything if she would just. stop. running.

Sweet baby Chaos...oh those were the days.

Of course, to spite me she decided to turn around and run past me into the middle of incoming traffic. Did I mention her name was Chaos? It sounded cute when she was an adorable, round puppy (see above)... Anyway picture an old black and white husky mix standing in the middle of traffic as car after car almost hits her and a out of breath (and out of shape) mommy with a stroller is standing on the sidewalk panting, screaming and crying and calling said dog as the dog ignores her and that was pretty much the scene.

The whole time I am standing there, feeling helpless. I can't go out into the middle of traffic with a toddler to get her, I can only watch as she gets almost hit again and again and it was really making me a bit hysterical... Finally, after the 4th car came to a screeching halt and she looked back to me, back to the street, then back at me again with something akin to 'Okay, I guess you are better than death' and walked over. Yay, she really loves me more than getting flattened by a car. Being the big softy I am I threw my arms around her and kissed her and then cried some more.

Modern day Chaos. Can you not just see the evil I'm-gonna-escape-the-yard-then-run-into-traffic-and-give-you-a-heart-attack brewing in her mind?

Of course, being the magnet for crazy people that I am someone that has saw the whole thing came over and asked if she could pet Chaos, like you know I was out there with my dog in traffic for fun, just to get my heart beat up over 125 beats per minute. Who goes up to a hysterical, crying dog-hugging person with a stroller and asks that, who?!? So anyway we made it home and Chaos crashed on the couch, Illusia crashed on her bed and I thought about how now I am hot, sweaty and have no hot water to take a shower and want to crash but am to hyped up.

It was a Monday so it makes sense. In the words of Garfield; 

NOW do you believe in magic

Pumpkins

SSOOOOOO long without updates, I feel terrible about neglecting this blog and not documenting some of the memories of the last two months!! :(. Though I will be sharing some of the pictures later...

Trying to focus on the now though and speaking of NOW we went to Applejack Pumpkin Patch yesterday and it had a lot of fun for a almost 1.5 year old and her mom (yours truly)

There were friendly goats, big ole slides, bails of hay, and pumpkins galore.

 

And of course... plenty of photo opps.

♥ more photos here ♥

Still Alive

Wow, I feel deeply guilty for not updating for over a month and a half :(. Not a lot has been going on that is fun and bloggable and I have been dealing with a lot of depression. Still managed to go a few places and do a few things in between but I felt too bummed out to update and the longer it went the harder it became to get back to it.

Things are looking up a bit lately though and I hope they continue to, expect updates very soon (including pumpkin patch cuteorama!)