All laughs

Alyssa within the last week or so has just become the little chatter box and starting to actually laugh and grab her toys and trying to roll over. She somehow does this in her sleep but is unable to do this while awake. It's very amusing to watch. She is also sleeping great! Her bedtime is between 7pm - 8pm and depending on how tired she is usually falls asleep within a half-hour and sleeps thru the night until 6am-7am. We have been sooooooo very blessed with her sleeping patterns. Hopefully that stays the same and is not just a phase. Alyssa loves her new gym we bought her. It has a blow up ball at the end of it that she kicks like crazy!

This last weekend we were pretty busy working on stuff around the house. We have been busy on the yard since getting it replanted and making a retaining wall for the flower bed in front. With the nice weather you have to take advantage of it when you can!

Harley has started to act out and has been more obnoxious than ever. He loves to take her burp clothes and tear them up. As well as anything else of Alyssa's that may be laying around. It will be interesting to see

who wins this game especially once she really starts playing with toys and eating solid food, especially the goldfish crackers those are Harley's favorites!

Great Grammy watched Alyssa while Harley and I went and walked Greenlake this last week. I think everyone had a good time on that outing. Grammy with Alyssa and Harley alone with me. We have been trying to spend some more "qt" with Harley since he has been feeling neglected. It's so silly how we practically treat Harley like a human!

Funny memory

The other day I was coming home and was stuck behind a school bus. Having to stop several times on the juant back home I noticed that when the kids got off of the bus most of them would run to wherever they were going. I thought this was kind of funny. What were they running from or too? I put myself back at the age and remembered what my friends and I ran home too. That was "Days" or for those of you who don't know "Days of Our Lives." Yes a soap opera.

Now since I am a stay at home mom I have vowed not to get caught back up into a day time soap. I am not knocking them or anyone who watches them because god knows I have watched my share and sometimes life it self feels like a soap opera! I was just remembering my group of friends all watched the same soap and would discuss it at school and couldn't wait for the big friday cliff hanger where we were usually together watching at someones house.

The other day I happened to have the television on waiting for the Martha Stewart show to start. Days was on and I caught the last five or so minutes. I promise that's as long as it was. I saw "Patch" or Steven whatever he is going by these days and Kayla, it made me laugh to think these characters were brought back too the show. They were one of the reasons I liked the show and stopped watching when they left.

That brought me back to the store a few weeks ago when I saw a magazine at the check-out counter and it said something about Vanessa Marcil coming back to "GH" that's General Hospital. I got really excited because I watched that soap in college and loved her character and her relationship with Sonny. I almost bought the magazine to see if it was true and thought "hmmm....maybe I will start watching again." Well I didn't and I am not going to start watching the daytime soaps again, but I thought it was interesting how kids running off of a bus could trigger such memories.

I wonder if Alyssa will run home too. Maybe she too will run home to watch her favorite soap or maybe she will run home just to see her mom and dad!

Things to ponder

Wow Alyssa will be 3 months old on Tuesday! I can't believe how time goes by so fast. It's been so much fun watching her change and looking forward to the changes ahead. I was just thinking back to Feb 19 when Cory and I got home from the doctors appointment and realized that tomorrow we were going to be parents ready or not. Although we new it was coming there just isn't anything that can really prepare you for the reality of it all. The unconditional love you have for this little human that depends on YOU for EVERYTHING is just amazing. I sit there and watch her and wonder what she will be like when shes an adult, a teenager, a small child and a toddler. What will her interests be? Will she like to bake/cook with her mom as I did? Will she want to fish and go ride atvs with her dad? Will she enjoy being a girlie girl but still like sports? Will she attend college and which one? Obviously WSU, if she decides to attend UW it will be funded solely by her or her Great Uncle Dick which he is not aware of yet. What will she look like? Will she be over 6'0 like her parents?

All these things I wonder about and look forward to each and every moment. She's an amazing girl and I can't wait to see her grow! Her favorite things to do is drool, play with her tongue and mimic you when you play with yours, the "car" game, get kisses from Harley, and obviously eat, pooh, and sleep!

We were pretty excited the other day. Alyssa received some new clothing items and toys from our friend Katie. She gave us some toys that her son Ian had outgrew. The one pictured above is a dog that barks and squeaks and she loves it! Katie's sister Jane, who had a little girl approx. a year ago, sent some VERY cute shoes, hats, and other items for Alyssa. It was so very kind of her. One of the hats is a khaki fishing hat with bananas on it which is very good since it keeps the sun off of her face. I know, sun in Washington, yes we have been having a very warm week!

We have been working on things around the house and doing lots of yard work. We got our patio enlarged and patio furniture out there. Harley did manage to leave his mark on the patio, his footprints! It was kind of a funny story. Cory came home after working off duty and Harley needed to go pottie. I had been taking him out all day on his leash to go. The guy who did the work said not to let him on it until the next day but we could walk on it. Which didn't make a whole lot of since but anyways. So Cory gets home and decides to let him go out because he wont walk on it. Yeah right. So what does Harley do, he does what any dog would do and runs across it. He had a ton of energy from being cooped up all day inside on a beautiful day. So he got some paw prints into the cement! Cory was upset after spending the money on it and than that happening but I was on Harleys side on this, Cory should have used the leash. Lesson two learned by the Simmons: Don't assume your pet is as smart as you!

What a busy week......

What a busy week we had. It started out last Sunday on May 4th the day after Opening Day for boaters. It was beautiful out. So Cory and I decided to gather the family up and head out, our destination was The Locks in Seattle. We LOVE going there and watching people bring their boats on thru. Especially on a busy day it can get pretty intense and the love people have for one another def. comes out. After awhile we decided to leave and head up to the "apartment" to feed Alyssa. We got back to the car and realized that the set of keys we had brought were the wrong ones and we could not get the club off of the car. So we thought "OK, no biggie, we call Grammy she comes down picks us up and Cory would take her car back up to Marysville and get the keys and presto all solved!" Nope that's not what happened at all. Grammy wasn't home and didn't answer her cell. We tried calling several people which no one answered. Finally Nicole came to save the day! THANKS NICOLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So what started off to be a beautiful day in the sun ended up being a day running up and down I-5. Now I don't use my club all that often and the one time we do this happens but I do have to give some props to the criminals out there who can get those off! Now it probably doesn't sound all that bad but I did leave out some details and just imagine being out on a nice day with a cranky 9wk old who is hungry and a dog who loves people with no water and in the warm sun. Lesson one learned by the Simmons' family. I'm sure many to come......

Monday was a big day, family portraits! Now Alyssa is smiling like crazy so obviously I was thrilled to be getting pictures done because I thought "these will turn out great!" She only smiled for one! They turned out great and Babies R Us did a wonderful job and it was nice we had the pictures back that day, which was great since they were mother's day gifts.

Alyssa and I than had a shopping and lunch date that was a lot of fun! We went to this store in the mall that's called The Pumpkin Patch. They have the cutest clothes and of course once again I bought Alyssa the cutest outfit for Mother's Day. I think that I am going to have to go back to work some time soon because I can't stand not buying Alyssa stuff and they have the cutest little girl stuff out there!!!!!!!!!!

For Mother's Day we made the journey down to Longview to see the family. We had a great time although chaotic it was great to see everyone and have the family together. We actually were able to get all of Alyssa's Grandparents together and her Great Grammy. Here are a few pics from the weekend.

Grandpa Simmons with Alyssa
All the grandparents and Great Grammy Aunt Amanda and Alyssa
Auntie RobinCousin NolanHarley and his Heineken bottle.

OWIE!!!!!!!!!

Well if finally happened Alyssa received her first owie and it came from Harley our dog. Although not major it still was very traumatic for her! Now let me back up and explain some things for those who do not know Harley. Harley was our first baby. We have had him from the time he was 8wks old, he is now 3. From that time he has been the center of our attention. He sleeps with us, gets to go bye-bye pretty much whenever we go somewhere, gets to eat rib eye steaks, so we pretty much created a monster but a lovable one. So when Alyssa came along we were very interested to see his reaction. When we brought her home he smelled her and was on his way. With all the friends and family coming by I think he thought she too soon would be leaving. Obviously that never happened. So he accepted her as part of the family. He gives her kisses on her feet, hands and face, sleeps next to her crib and even comforts her when she cries by kissing her. So I was pretty nervous with him walking around her at first because I was not sure how he would act, especially considering he believes he is only 5lbs which he is not he is 38lbs. They were laying on the couch together and he must have heard something when all of a sudden he jumped up and off the couch his paw scratching Alyssa's ankle. At first I thought she must have been startled but that's happened before and she never had turned that shade of red. So I got to looking at her and saw she had a few scratches that were red, no blood tho. Her face was so red and she was screaming something terrible. If I remember right I don't think she screamed like that when she got her shots! After a few minutes of me consoling her she fell back to sleep and Harley had returned and curled back next to her.

I had to take some pictures even tho it wasn't major, thank goodness, but it was her first. It's on her right ankle if you can see it. The other pics were a little blurry.