No More Dolly

Yesterday Rebecca showed me the "white stuff" that was coming out of the holes in her Dolly. Today she told me that she wanted to go to grandma's house so that she could ask grandma to sew Dolly up again. I told her that maybe it was time to go to Target and find a new toy to replace Dolly. I've said this to her many times, and she always says, "No. I don't want to do that." But today she agreed that maybe it was time to throw her away.

Dolly was a present from Kevin's Granny and Grandad Kearney when she was born.

She started out bright pink and full of stuffing.

Here's Dolly throughout the years:

age two


age three

age four

Here's Dolly at age five. She's quite a mess, as you can see. Washing doesn't help anymore - it just makes the holes bigger.

And here she is in her final resting place. We will miss you, Dolly.

Update: I wrote this post earlier today, and since Dolly has been thrown away we've had two meltdowns. After the first meltdown, I gave Dolly back to Rebecca. Kevin later got Rebecca to throw her away again, and she had another meltdown before bed. But Kevin convinced her she didn't need Dolly anymore, and right now she's upstairs sleeping without Dolly. And as I'm writing this I think I might get her out of the garbage and hide her somewhere until Rebecca is older because I'm having a hard time losing Dolly too. Who'da thought?!

Sorry, Sarah

The other day I was checking my statcounter account to see who has been looking at my blog lately, and I came across a site called swagbucks.com where someone had done a search on "family isn't it about time". I've seen this search a few times on my statcounter but usually from google. I think people miss those church commercials as much as I do, and they are looking for them on the Internet to watch again.

I'd never seen this particular search site, so I went down the list of websites to see what came up. My blog address was there of course, but what caught my eye was another blog under my blog called Family, isn't it about...time?. It wasn't so much the name of the blog, but the description of the blog that grabbed my attention. The description started with Anthony Vidal, Sarah Marshall Vidal, etc., etc. I wouldn't say these two people are my friends, but I definitely know them. I was pretty good friends with Anthony's brother Eddie and Sarah's brother Loren in high school. And wouldn't you say that my blog title is eerily similar to their blog title:

Family: Isn't it about...time

vs.

Family, isn't it about...time?

I mean the dot dot dot thing is just crazy to me. I really felt like I was pretty original with this title, and now I am totally second-guessing myself. I'm almost sure I've been to the Vidal's blog before back in my blog-hopping days. It looked familiar to me when I went to it yesterday. I'm thinking that I saw their cute blog title, stored in my subconscious memory, and remembered it two or three years later when I needed a new title. I guess I should have done a search on the title before I picked it, but I just thought I was so stinkin' original that I didn't need to do that.

And now I feel like a big bad blog title stealer, and it's making feel a little sick to my stomach. I'm sorry to any of you who've been to the Vidal's blog (because I know some of you are friends with me and them) and noticed the similarity. I promise I did not intentionally steal Sarah's blog title.

So now I'm looking for a new blog title. I'm thinking about using Bowman's because I am not a creative person, and I don't want to rack my brain again for some cute, mormony title. To quote Wendy's title, Nothing Clever Comes to Mind is how I'm feeling about this whole thing. (Don't worry, Wendy. I'm not going to steal your blog title too.) And I didn't use our last name before because of all the weirdos out in the world, but I'm not so afraid of that anymore. Should I be?

I am open to suggestions.

Happy Birthday, Braden

Today is my baby's first birthday. We threw him a little party yesterday to celebrate.

He didn't really like his little cake. He stuck one hand in the frosting and was done with it. I think he might be a clean freak like his mother.

He spent most of his party standing at the back door trying to go out and play with his cousins. He looks like a little boy to me in that bottom picture. I don't know what happened to my baby!

Here are some things that Braden is doing right now:

• He went back and forth with crawling for a little bit, but now he is a full-on walker.



• He says "uh-oh", "no", "dad", "mom", "hi". And he waves while he says "hi" which sounds more like "i".



• He loves my in-laws new cat, and he squeals every time the cat somes around.



• He likes to eat Pop Tarts for breakfast. I send Pop Tarts with Rebecca and William every morning for breakfast when they go to my sister's house. A few weeks ago he let my sister know that he wanted one too. So he sits in his high chair and eats his own Pop Tart.



• Going along with that, he's not a fan of baby food. He wants to eat everything we are eating.



• He is a thumb sucker like his big sister. We pushed the binky, but through the night he would put himself back to sleep with his thumb. And now he wants nothing to do with binkies.



• He's ticklish, and he giggles when anyone tickles his belly.



• He is a little lover, and he'll still lay on me every once in a while and drink his bottle.



• He's still not quite sleeping through the night. He will about three nights a week, but the other four nights he wakes up at 4 am for a bottle.



• His hair has lightened up, and lately he reminds me of my nephew Ryder:
  
  

• He is such a joy in our family. I couldn't have asked for a better accident.

Happy birthday, Braden! I love you, Shoobie!