A Birthday and a Big Girl

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Today is a good day. For starters, it's Chad's birthday! We are celebrating with his dinner of choice: burgers. And yellow cake with chocolate frosting. And by not painting a single thing. More on that in a second. His "birthday week" so far (yes, we count the whole week as cause for celebration, not just the day) has consisted of the UPS man making an appearance at our house once per day since last Friday (thanks to his mom and sister, who have been sending wonderful presents from Maine), Chad working a lot on schoolwork as this is the final week of his course, and both of us painting shelves whenever there's a spare minute.

One thing that won't be sitting around (or rather, ON) our dining room table to celebrate tonight? The bookshelves, paint cans, brushes, rollers, tape measures, pliers, and paint spattered towels that have been hogging the entire thing since this built-in project started. Except for one little shelf, everything is done. I can't believe I am typing those words and I really, really, really don't want to touch a paintbrush again for a looooooong time. I know I speak for Chad and I when I say that.

The shelves are in place and hanging out for the next day or two before we can put anything on them. Once that's done and I get some good sunlight pouring through my windows, I will be taking the "After" pictures to show you all sometime next week. I know the suspense is killing you; try to get some sleep.

The other bit of news that is making this day (and week, month, etc.) so great is that our baby girl is walking all on her own now! She took her first steps awhile back, but never seemed interested in repeating. For quite some time now she's been walking all over the place (as in, around the block and to and from the deli around the corner) but only if she was holding onto us--a hand, even just a pinkie finger, it didn't matter. She needed something, and if we let go she would only go a step or two before realizing her security system was gone and she was back to crawling. She's also an incredibly fast crawler, so I don't think she had any incentive to walk. Why walk when you can crawl twice as fast (and therefore cause more trouble)? She's finally realized that there must be something to this whole walking business--and just in time to go trick-or-treating next week!

To entice her to walk on her own, I finally bought her one of those popper push toys. I think everyone has owned one of these in their lifetime, either as a kid or for their kid! I bought it last week and the walking started this week--maybe just a coincidence but I think it helped.

I'm so proud of my big girl :)

And happy, happy birthday to my wonderful husband.

~Stacy