A Recommendation for Salsa

This week, Brad, the grocery shopper in our house, bought a new salsa. We finally broke it out today, and it was amazing. I would highly recommend Paul Newman's Pineapple Salsa. We have the medium variety, but I would guess that any would be good.

Ella story for the day: Ella's favorite new game is pulling from her diaper bag things that are needed for changing a diaper. She pulls out the pad, opens it an puts it on the ground. She then takes out a dipaer and the wipe case, and proceeds to lie on the pad. She doesn't necessarily need to have her diaper changed, she just likes to pretend :)

I Love Parenting

I am truly amazed each day at how much I love being a parent, and especially how much I love my Ella. She is amazing. What I also find amazing is how much I love her. I never knew that I could feel so much love and devotion to a single person.

Some odd things about parenting: Parenting a toddler is exhausting. She is always on the move, always into everything, always doing something new. When I put her to bed, I am super excited to have some time to myself. But, not long after she goes down, I miss her. I want to go in and look at her sleeping. When I get into bed, I want to bring her into our bed to cuddle. How can you want to have a break from someone, and want to be with them all of the time?

I also am amazed about how utterly dependent children are on their parents. Ella depends on us for her every need. Not only that, but she trusts us implicitly. If I hand her something to eat, she puts it in her mouth without thinking that I might be giving her something bad, whether it would just taste bad, or be harmful to her. It makes me think of how easily people can (and unfortunately, sometimes do) take advantage of that and harm their children. Scary. It is a reminder to me of what a monumental task parenting is.

Let me end my post, dear reader, with a cute Ella story:
We often have Ella in the kitchen with us while we are cooking. One night last week, she was apparently very hungry (she continually made the baby sign for eat), so we turned the oven light on and showed her our casserole that was cooking in the oven. She promptly went across the room to the drawer where we keep the oven mits, got them out, put them on her hands and walked over to the oven to get the food out. What a genius!

Gerald Ford

I must admit to you, dear reader, that I am a heartless person. When I walked into the living room on Tuesday morning, and Brad broke the news to me that former president, Gerald Ford, had died, my mind immediately went to the Saturday Night Live skit done a decade ago about Gerald Ford's death. It may not be all that appropriate, but I wanted to share it with you, in case you, too, needed to see some humor in a sad situation. Enjoy!

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/12/gerald_ford_dea.html

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Those of you who know me well know that I am HUGE fan of Harry Potter. So, it much excites me to know that the final book has a name. It is, however, disappointing that no publishing date has been set. I will continue to wait with baited breath. The good news, though, is that the 5th movie is coming in July. But, as a book purist, the movies always disappoint me.



I look forward to the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with much anticipation, but it saddens me at the same time because I know that Harry is coming to an end. I wonder what will happen: Where will Harry and Voldemort finally meet? Will we see Sirius again? Dumbledore? And, of course, the girl in me wonders if Harry and Ginny will rekindle their romance, or if Ron & Hermione will ultimately be together. I suppose that I will just have to keep guessing.


You can check out the latest story about Harry and J.K. Rowling at http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/12/21/books.pottertitle.ap/index.html

Some Christmas Cheer

If you would like to have a good Christmas belly laugh, check this out:

http://www.goingjesus.com/cavalcade1.shtml

Thanks to Becca, it is hilarious.

Good and Bad

This week was a momentous one for the Daugherty Family. Brad and I were able to go away for the first time. My mom came down to stay with Ella, and Brad and I went to a Pastor & Spouse Retreat at the Opryland here in Nashville. The picture to the right is basically the view from the balcony of our room. We worked hard to be able to go away, or at least Ella and I worked hard. In order for me to go away, she had to be weaned. So, we worked from her birthday, and she was finally weaned a week ago, just in time for us to go. We had a great time, and the Opryland is an amazing place.

I thought that having us gone for the few days, and especially me, would be hard for Ella. But, my mom says that she hardly even noticed that we were gone. She and my mom had a wonderful time, and she did great without us.

It was good that we got to go away, after 13 months, we definitely needed it. It was good that Ella and my mom got along so well. But, don't you think that it's just a little bad that Ella is so independent? I would like to think that she would have missed us, a lot. I guess it's true what they say, they sure do grow up fast!

A Funny Little Story

Tonight, I thought that I would share a little story that shows the difference between when I was growing up (perhaps you, too) and today's generation.

Over Thanksgiving, we visited my dad and his family in Savannah, Georgia. Because we had Ella with us, we often had to take our car so that we didn't have to keep moving around the car seat. Well, my sister, Anna (who is turning 10 next week), climbed into the backseat with Ella. She was in the car for a few minutes and then asked, "Heather, what is this bar below the car handle?"

I wasn't sure what she was talking about, so I asked for more information, and she answered, "You know, this lever, maybe it moves something."

And that's when I realized that Anna was talking about the lever to roll the window up and down (we don't have electric windows). When I told her this, she said that she had not seen that in her whole life. The rest of the time that we were there, Anna would ride in our car and exclaim over the lever. She even told us that when she got a car, she was going to "pay extra" to be able to roll the window up and down herself. We didn't have the heart to tell her that people paid extra not to roll up their own windows.

Amazing how much life changes as time goes on, isn't it?