32 1/2

I couldn't come up with an interesting post title, so I just decided to post my current age since yesterday was my half birthday, LOL! Totally silly, but it also means that Heather will be 18 months old in a few short days and that it is time to wish blogless Erin a Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday, Erin!

I'm not really sure what to tell you beyond the usual "what's going on" kind of update. I'm a little better rested than I was after my deadline 2 weeks ago, but I could still use a little extra sleep. The house is currently driving me crazy. There are still things from camping that aren't unpacked, there are areas in need of real cleaning and it's just in one of those states where there are lots of little things to do. I think the biggest tasks are tackled (mail, laundry, dishes) for the most part, but I really thought that 2 weekends at home would have us in a better position. Although I've been tired and unmotivated to do housework in the evenings, so I suppose I can only expect so much from a few hours each day on the weekend. :-)

At this point I just want to get the house back to a non-stressful place before our anniversary trip so I won't need to spend any of our at home vacation days doing mundane cleaning tasks. (But I might do more enjoyable things like cleaning out my room or doing a little painting.)

My knitting for the past few weeks has been purely selfish. (This is going to hurt me soon since I have several things to make as gifts for October and December). The basic black cardigan is going well. I had to rip back a few times to deal with some pooling issues, but those were easy to take care and I'm halfway up the last major piece. I think by the weekend I will be blocking, sewing and maybe knitting the button band.

I also started a top-down raglan for myself out of a cotton blend when the wool-hemp of the cardigan was becoming a bit hard to deal with in the summer humidity. I also was feeling like I really wanted a new summer top. I think this will be good travel and evening knitting for our trip, for the times that the gift knitting is too fiddly. It may or may not be done for summer, but it will be a good fall layer.

Heather continues to be lots of fun and she is adding 2-word phrases to her vocabulary. They are mostly "Hi ____", "Uh-oh ____", "Bye bye ___" and "Night night ___". She is also sometimes sounds like she says "thank you" and she is doing a lot of repeating. When we say the names of her classmates, she smiles and repeats them back. And many times she'll repeat a new word for an animal or object or color. Totally adorable. She is pretty good at answering yes and no questions reliably, but we have noticed that if she doesn't understand the question, her default answer seems to be "yeah".

She still seems to act initially shy around others. Some of it seems like a little act, but it is adorable and it doesn't take her long to move past the shyness.

Oh, and the poor thing got my hair. Fine, straight and not a lot of it. As you saw in the camping pictures, there is enough of it to put up in pigtails now, but just barely. I still have my fingers crossed that some of the paternal hair genes will kick in before too long, but I'm not counting on it!