Picking Apples

LE is coming up a little shorter than she actually is.
She's over 2 feet now and 5 1/2 months old.

John's aunt and uncle invited us up to stay the weekend with them in Door County, the peninsula in Wisconsin that juts out between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. Each year, John and Kay rent a cabin and stay for a couple of months. This was LE's first trip up there and first time to meet "Grunkle John" and "Graunty Kay."

Friday was a  b e a u t i f u l  day to drive up, and we had a fun time stopping at an orchard on the way. It was the first day of the season to pick your own, which meant we got the best choice for apples, and, since it was Friday, very few people were there. Perfect! More about Door County to come. For now, enjoy the pics!

Oops! One fell.

Buyer's Remorse

After leaving work yesterday afternoon for the last time in the foreseeable future (read: I quit.), I felt a little unbalanced. I can't turn off that part of my brain quite yet. Checking my work email had become part of my opening the computer routine.

The routine went something like this: Check Gmail. Check work mail. Check Facebook. Check blogs that I read. Check Gmail. Check work email. Do things I set out to do.

For the last three days, checking my work email was easy. I had whittled my emails down to zero, had already announced to the external people that I work with that I was leaving, and the internal people already knew as well. I was only getting a handful of emails a day for the last week, which gave me time to wrap up all of my outstanding projects. Still, it stung a little to click on the "M3 email" bookmark, type in my password without thinking, and have the screen tell me that my password is invalid. I felt a tinge of buyer's remorse. Buying something you can barely afford and being jobless both leave you with less money in the bank and wondering if you did the right thing. I don't think it helped that John is out of town for 6 more days.

As Wheel of Fortune played in the background (Insert John's groan and exaggerated eye roll here.), I thought through it a little more.  I've told so many people already and I'll say it again... it was hard to leave work because I worked for a company where I felt valued. I may not have been doing my dream job, but I enjoyed the people I worked with internally and externally; I worked well with my manager; I felt pride in my results; and I knew what I was doing. It wasn't new anymore. It was comfortable. Now, without my crutch, I'm left a little exposed, and I feel as though I've lost a bit of purpose.

When I got to that realization, I stopped for a minute. Ah ha! That's just it. I was finding my value in the wrong place. Though it's a little strange, I am thankful to be able to have this time out and get things back on track.

So, today is Thursday, the day after my last day. I still haven't removed my work email bookmark from all of my browsers. I still have to intentionally skip over clicking on it. It still hasn't fully sunk in that I no longer work at M3.

Today has been the perfect day after quitting. I have zero responsibilities other than to tend to LE. Like I said, John is out of town, which means I don't have to think about what's for dinner.  LE slept in until 7:05. Ok, actually she woke up earlier than that but thankfully she can entertain herself for about 30-40 minutes by taking out and putting back in her pacifier and just looking at the fan, her feet, and her hands. Then, she spent about 40 minutes playing on her play mat by herself while I had cereal, picked up, and got coffee going. She ate and then shortly thereafter we were both ready for the morning nap. Two hours later LE woke us up. We went through my computer routine sans work email. We spent way too much time reading blogs on everything from home management, to photography, to cooking. We played. We lounged. It rained a pretty rain. We had a photo shoot. We lounged some more. I ate chocolate chip multigrain pancakes with locally harvested syrup for dinner. LE took another nap. I blogged.

I still get little pangs of work thoughts here and there, but it's nice to know that that is all for someone else to worry about now. Look at the sweet face of the little love in the photo below. Who would trade their time with her for work if they didn't have to?

LE at 5 months and 11 days

Big Girl Food Revisited

You may recall LE's first experience with rice cereal. She cried, threw her head to the side, and arched her back to get away. The first attempt at putting a spoon towards her mouth ended up with her hitting the spoon to the floor. In other words, it didn't go very well.

When Susie visited shortly thereafter, she gave it a go with LE. Once again, LE was not a fan. Then, I tried giving her the cereal every few days for about 2 weeks and could only get about four spoonfuls shoved into her mouth before she went back to the same antics from the first attempt.

I took a week hiatus, and with a little adjustments to the preparation of the cereal, we tried again. This time, lo and behold, she opened her mouth for the spoon and willingly took a bite. What just happened!? Thinking it was my imagination, I prepared the spoon with another scoop of slop cereal, and she opened her mouth again. She liked it! By the end, we both needed a bath, but it was well worth it. It's amazing how proud I was of her.

For the record, LE was 5 months and 6 days old.

Grandparent Invasions!

We... or should I just say LE... have had a lot of visitors this month! John's dad, Joe, came up the last weekend of July. He stayed just for one night in Madison, but we managed to pull together marvelous grilled pork chops with a bourbon cream sauce, roasted new potatoes, and caprese salad. Yum!

What?

I think LE was getting hungry. 

Check out the serious bed head.

Mmm! I love Sun Chips!
Ok, really I just love that the bag is so incredibly l  o  u  d!
(P.S. Check out the drool.) 

Reading with Dad...

Snuggles with Mom

Then John's mom, Susie, came to visit the weekend of August 13th. We cooked roasted chicken with rice and lemon cabbage, ate some pizza and gelato at a cute place in Middleton, shopped at the Farmer's Market around the Capitol on Saturday morning, went to church, and had a couple of friends over for dinner on Sunday night. Susie made "easy" beef burritos, I made mojitos, and our guests brought a corn side salad with bacon (way to John's heart) and delicious homemade bread. It was a packed weekend!

I think this was while Susie and I were slaving away.

Susie gave LE a bath.

Not sure you can scrub the curls out.

Then my dad came twice in August. He was in town for work the weekend of August 8th and then again this past weekend. We picked him up from the Milwaukee airport, ate in the Historical 3rd Ward, took a quick tour of Epic's new buildings, and went to church. Oh, I can't forget to mention that we also ate watermelon on the front porch and had brownies with vanilla ice cream for dinner. 

LE and I dropped Dad off at his parents' house in Roscoe on Sunday afternoon so that he and Grandpa could head up to the BMW festival at Elkhart Lake this week. Dad's going to be back this Friday.

Little fishy pjs are from LE's Nanny (aka Janet)

Singing opera-style

It's been a fun and busy month! The only grandparent we didn't get to see this month was Janet. LE misses you! 

Unexpected Visit to Wisconsin

One of my close friends from SMU-- Courtney-- sent me a text on Sunday to say that she was in Wisconsin for a conference until Thursday. I rearranged my schedule for the week, and LE and I drove up to La Crosse to see her on Tuesday afternoon. We stayed the night with Court and then headed back to Madison on Wednesday morning after breakfast. What a great surprise!

Despite getting her shots the day before, LE was a sweet girl all evening and even though she still woke up every two hours at night, she didn't wake Courtney. Even in the almost 3 hour car ride there and back, she did nothing but play with her toy bird and sleep. She was a great travel buddy.

We stopped on the way back because I heard some action coming from her diaper region. She ended up having to get a baby wipes bath and changed clothes because she peed on the changing table when I took her diaper off. The paper towels that I used to protect her from the table didn't end up protecting the table from her! Gross.

At Buzzard Bill's for dinner

Big eyes!

A little while after dinner, we got ice cream walked along the Mississippi.
Thankfully it wasn't buggy though it was quite humid.

Cheese!
(Look at how blonde LE's hair is getting.)