THIEF!!!

It has been brought to my attention from Jake's teachers that he has become quite the thief at school recently. Hot item #1? Binkies. Keep in mind Jake doesn't actually use a binky....however, the curiosity must get the better of him and he wanders over to innocent binky babies & snatches them out of their mouths, then wanders away with it.

Hot item #2....food. He hasn't actually been able to take anyone's food yet, but the teacher informed me that during snack time, he has recently noticed that other babies have different food on their tray than him.....so they see him leaning over his tray to check out what other babies are eating and possibly plotting a hostile takeover of their food stash. I'm pretty sure he gets this from my mom, who has long suffered from Food Envy. (whenever we go out to eat, she will order something, then longingly eye up everyone else's food when it is brought out and has also been known to check out the food at the table next to us, across the room, etc....)

The eyeing up of the food could support my theory that Jake thinks we are going to starve him and make him hibernate with winter approaching. Another new trick of his is that he stores food in his cheeks like a little chipmunk. I sometimes will find said food stash in various places around the house....we'll finish up dinner, pull him from the highchair, then hours later, peas will mysteriously show up in the living room....

A sad, sad day here in the 'burgh

I got to my desk this morning and started my normal morning routine of checking email and signing on to theburghblog, only to find out that as of today, she is no longer blogging :( I relied on that blog for my daily dose of entertainment and I am devastated to see that I have to find another source.

RIP, Pittgirl...you will be greatly missed.

A baby of many trades.

A train conductor:

A reader:

A stair climber:

A law student:

A Puff Master:

A Handyman:

A Sports Enthusiast:

Happy (belated) Birthday, Gracie Lou!!

Can you believe my furbaby is 4 years old?? She's been a member of our family since January 2005 (much to Brian's dismay!) Brian grew up with big dogs (think golden retrievers and labs) while I grew up with a small dog (rest in peace, Otis) :( so when we moved in together & started to talk about dogs, obviously we had conflicting interests. Fortunately for me, we were in an apartment at the time with not much room for a big dog, so for my 24th birthday, Brian said we could get a small dog!

We started to research small dogs and Brian immediately ruled out anything so tiny that it resembled a hamster, so that eliminated some of my early picks, such as Yorkies or Malteses. I'm not even sure how I came across Lhasa Apsos, but the pictures that I saw of them online were adorable & they got a little "bigger" (average is 12-18 lbs) so it seemed like a good compromise. I met Gracie by myself one day....she was the only female left in the litter, so she was kind of our choice by default. I had told Brian I was just going to go look at her, but of course it was love at first sight! (even though she resembled a fluffy guinea pig)

We brought her home in early January and she's made herself right at home with us ever since!!

Here are some of Gracie's baby pictures....enjoy!

TOUCHDOWN!!

Though the Steelers lost yesterday, we still have reason to celebrate....Jake has started doing our sign for "Touchdown!" that we have been teaching him for the past 2 weeks or so and we were finally able to get it on camera:

My weekend as a 12 year old girl.

The day was finally here....I had been counting down for months...the anticipation had built up & I was hoping to not be disappointed....it was SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE day!!!!

*insert girly squeal here*

Saturday night, my BFF Melissa, my coworker Lisa and I met up in Oakland to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour at the Petersen Events Center. If you don't watch this show, you MUST START. It is reality TV at its finest (I'm not kidding either, these dancers are amazing)

After seeing other groups of adolescent girls, we realized that we should have made our own shirts using sharpie markers and writing the names of our favorite dancers...we then tried to become friends with this group of girls, but I think that we (as old ladies) scared them away. So, we moved on and found our seats.

The rest of the night was spent with more screaming and cheering for the dancers, crying and just being awed in general.

If you would like to see my favorite 3 dances of this season, follow these youtube links....I promise you won't be disappointed.

"The Door Dance" (Mercy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnMmON6vrfw

"Bleeding Love"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4OtJgNdrY

"The Garden Dance"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45AtlQEz8pU

The Perfect Fall Day

I love fall, it's by far my favorite season. Summer is too hot for me and I get whiny when I'm uncomfortable (no one wants to be around that)....and if you've ever seen my skin, you know that I don't appreciate the sun much!! So fall is always a welcome change and this past weekend was PERFECT. We took advantage of it by playing in the leaves at GG & Pappy's house!

Jake & Gracie both received Halloween gifts from GG & Pappy (while Brian & I received the traditional bag of candy plus toothbrushes to brush away the candy cavities!)

Both enjoyed trying to eat the tissue paper.

Later that night, we went out to eat to celebrate Nate's 23rd birthday. Nothing says a night of fun like tortilla chips, burritos and itty bitty baby sombreros.

Hola chicas...want to come to my fiesta??

All tricks, no treats.

Jake's first Halloween was....interesting, to say the least.

Trick or treat started at 6pm on Friday....around 5:50, we had Jake all ready to go in his costume & we were going to take him over to our next door neighbors before the kids showed up to show him off. So we're in front of our house and Brian has 2 chairs set up....I have our digital camera in my hand (which I meant to put in my back pocket to take pics of the little girl next door in her costume) but I'm trying to get Gracie clipped to her leash, so I set the camera on a chair to free up a hand....and totally forget the camera. We go next door for maybe 3 minutes and a big group (probably 12 or so) teenage boys come to the neighbors house & they're being all rowdy & pretty rude. They leave & Brian says "I bet they took all our candy" (we had left a small bowl on the front porch since trick or treat hadn't started yet, we didn't even think about it) so we back to our house and realize they had taken the candy. So, I'm annoyed, but I get over it & refill the bowl quickly because there are other kids coming toward the house.

Fast forward about 20 minutes and I go to reach in my back pocket to take a pic of Jake & Gracie....and my heart just stops as I realize my camera isn't there & I remember leaving it on the chair. So we frantically search everywhere, thinking it might have fallen in the grass or something....nope, it's GONE. We are 99.9% positive it was those boys since they are the only ones who came through. Brian calls the cops & they say they'll send someone out...in the meantime, he gets in his car to find them & make sure they haven't left our development. he comes back about 10 minutes later & said he found them, but there are about 15 of them by now (and it's dark, so he doesn't want to say anything to them by himself). He also didn't want them to get away, so he decides to "pursue them on foot" by locating them again & walking a little ways behind them. The cops show up, take my statement and Brian tells them where they're at, but the cop basically said since we didn't actually SEE them take the camera, there's not much he can do if they don't turn it over.

So I've pretty much convinced that the camera is gone (and I'm so mad at myself for leaving it), I'm in tears...the cop shows back up about 10 minutes later with the camera in hand!! He said told them that we saw them take the camera and if someone didn't turn it over, he was hauling them all to jail!! I guess that scared them enough that they quickly gave it back :)

they did delete all of my pictures which was upsetting, but I had most of them uploaded already....and they did take some lovely shots of themselves flipping the camera off & other classy things (I thought about posting the pictures on here & telling everyone that if you see any of these punks lurking around the streets, give them a quick kick to the shin, but then I thought better of it....)

At least this gives Brian a good story to tell...he enjoys using the phrases "I tailed them in the car" and "Then I pursued them on foot to stake out their location". We were one wife beater shirt away from a real episode of cops. (Sing it with me now...."Bad boys, bad boys....whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?")