We noticed tonight that we recently had some traffic to the site from the google search ‘missy moo’. This peaked our curiosity. What other missy moos are out there?

Well, it’s a popular name for a cat. Missy moo is Oober Yuckems ‘ not so secret admirer. Somewhere along the lines we ended up buying a bib from Australia (fyi-delivery by sea takes 2-3 months! we opted for air). We found some cute onesies (Link Removed on Remote Site) for identical twins, and the true meaning of missy moo.

gotta love the net

I thought I’d share a few of my favorite things.

We love to read. From day one we’ve read to Illianna. One of her favorite books is Peek-A-Zoo. It’s been a great book that’s grown with her. It’s more of an activity book. Dr Seuss has been great as well. My Many Colored Days is not a well known Dr. Seuss. Illianna has loved Oh The Places You’ll Go from when she was little. I think the illustrations catch her eye. It plays with black and white and bold patterns, which is good for babies. Recently Horton Hears A Who was turned into a movie. I haven’t seen the movie, but the book has a great message. Your tounge will get twisted when you read Double Trouble in Walla Walla, and The Cranky Sun has beautiful artwork. A Day With No Crayons is very creative and helps encourage children to see art in everyday things.

We’ve been busy with lots of firsts lately. This weekend we managed to make it to the zoo. It was Illianna’s first time. I wasn’t sure she’d enjoy it just yet, but she sure did. There was a lion who was not in the best of moods and kept pacing back and forth and roaring. She *loved* that. Here’s this big intimidating lion giving it his all and she’s giggling at him. It was so cute. I now know a new noise to make to get her to giggle.

There was also this cool avery that had tons of birds flying around. You could go in and feed them. Ryan took Illianna in while I stayed with our stuff. When the birds would get spooked they’d all fly from one end to the other and the wave of ooooh’s and ahhhh’s from all the kids watching was adorable. Here’s a photo of Illianna checking out the birds.

Today was our second week of swim class. Illianna loves it. With her love of bath time, I thought she’d enjoy swim class. Illianna was chatting with another little girl, Sophie, during class. They were cooing back and forth. Sophie started splashing and giggling and then Illianna started kicking and giggling back. I wish I had a video camera. I did manage to get a pic of us after class.

We ran to Target just a little while ago and she successfully sat in the basket. I don’t have a shopping cart cover just yet. I actually went there to get one, but I’m not sure if it’s truely needed. I understand it’s supposed to help keep germs at bay, but kid are going to get germs and get sick. I don’t know if the hassle of having a cart cover is worth it. I think it would be easier for me to carry wipes and just disinfect.

Today was such a fun day! The weather was great… sunny and 70’s. We started out the day doing some gardening that was long overdue. You can tell I didn’t get out there much last year. Illianna wore a cute little outfit with flowers on it and a sun hat while sitting in her swing watching Mommy and Daddy play in the dirt and the doggies run around. Missy Moo’s time was cut short due to her morning nap, but we got the front yard done.

We then cleaned up and headed out for some toy shopping. I’m all about quality over quantity for toys. I think toys should be educational and developmental, not just brightly colored noise makers. We hit up a couple of the boutique stores in Ft. Worth and scored big time.

We found a hand puppet. OMG Illianna LOVES this puppet. She was laughing so hard and so long in the store. It was adorable! One husband went to go get his wife so she could see how much Illianna was laughing and how much fun she was having. We also got some little stacking pond pals by Lamaze. We have quite a few of their toys. I’m really impressed by them. Ryan and I don’t just go buy any toy, we spend hours ‘literally’ playing with everything at the toy store before we buy anything. Illianna liked the play table set up with Brio trains. She was holding herself up ‘albeit a short period’ and playing with the trains.

Today actually marks a milestone for Illianna. She can now sit up by herself. She’s been working on it for a while now, but today I plopped her down next to Tiki and she sat there all on her own for at least 5 minutes. While I didn’t take a photo of her sitting with Tiki (I thought about it) we do have photos of a proud mama holding the growing baby girl.

A few weekends ago Ryan suggested we attended our first ‘but not last’ comic book convention. He’d heard on the radio that Wizard World was going to be in town and found out Top Cow was going to be in attendance. Our $20.00 admission bought us 3-4 hours of fun and we could have stayed longer if Illianna wasn’t getting fussy.

There were so many cool vendors, the people watching was great ‘yes there were people in tights and capes’, and I had flashbacks to my teen years. Ryan and I both were on the look for old friends, but never came across any. It was great to see how the typical social misfit was totally in their element at the convention. I think everyone has a place in this world and figuring out where that is is a continuous process.

We found lots of goodies. Pawstar was one of the first. They have all sorts of cool things, but what really caught my attention was the cute bear hats. I recently had one of my coworkers pick me up the original Japanese version from Miki House when he was back in Tokyo for a visit. ‘I’ve got the shopping site bookmarked at work because it took me hours of randomly clicking around seeing as how I don’t read or speak Japanese- so good luck.’ Pawstar is much more reasonably priced and available in the US. Ryan was excited to come across Uberclok. ‘I think he goes to their website regularly and drools.’ We’ve got a pile of anime we need to watch and now we’re adding another movie to it.

The biggest find was some artwork by Dirk Strangely.

His name seemed very familiar to me and I thought I might have seen something of his at Hot Topic, but it was determined I’ve come across him from my shopping on ebay. He has a unique blend of dark and light. It reminds me of Mirror Mask.

All and all we had a great time being nerds and I can’t wait until next time.

It goes so wrong, right from the start….

My baby barely fits newborn clothes. Where in the world has the time gone? Mainly the issue is length. When we bought a couple of new footie sleepers at Target the other day, the woman told us to cut the feet off. Needless to say I’ve already chopped a couple of outfits. We keep meaning to measure her. The tape measure has been sitting on the counter for a few days now.

Yesterday was a busy day. We got to see how wonderful Illianna is with going out.
First, we ran to Staples to return a chair because Ryan initially bought one at Office Depot, which was supposed to deliver to the house on Wednesday, but of course it didn’t and when he called to find out where it was they didn’t know, so he went to Staples and bought a different one because he’s been programming again and our old chair is way old and kills his hip. Well, the Staples chair had a screw hole that was messed up so he had to take it back anyway and meanwhile the Office Depot chair showed up.
Then we went to Lava Grill because we’d been watching Bleach and it made me think… Sushi! It was our first experience dining out with the little one. We went at an off time to be on the safe side, but she was great, so we decided to keep on running around and headed to Walmart to check out the Halloween gear.
We love Halloween. Halloween starts off a great few months of decorating, entertaining, and family. For the past few years now we’ve really gone all out at Halloween ‘party 2006′. Last year we got a comment from one of the trick-or-treaters, “I knew your house would be creepy!” That of course has only encouraged us to top ourselves this year. We have our theme ’sorry I cannot reveal’. We just need to find our props/costumes. Of course Illianna is going to partake. We’ll get lots of photos so we can show her all the fun torturous things we did to her when she didn’t have a choice in the matter. Walmart was a a total bust, but on a side note they have some elegant black Christmas decorations. I’m not sure what theme/style I’m going to do for Christmas yet, so I was very good and didn’t buy anything.
Next, we ran to BabysRUs because we always need *something* from there. This time it was a hunt for ready-to-feed organic formula. They didn’t have it, but I did get a cute little outfit.
She started to kind of fuss while at BabysRUs, but we managed to sneak into Party City to search for props for Halloween. Again, total bust.
Something happened to Ryan while working in Pampa, TX because he actually wanted Chick-fil-a for dinner. I haven’t eaten there in years, but their charboiled chicken wrap wasn’t too bad, and instead of fries you can get fruit! Thank goodness fast food places finally have a “healthy” option, so those of us who are forced to eat there against our will, don’t die.
We made it home just in time to feed her and get her in bed without a wailing session. She’s such a good girl.

We just got back from another trip to New Mexico. I would say where we stayed, but it’s such an oasis for us, I don’t want others to find out. I will say it was as beautiful as ever, and I can’t wait to return.

We ran into so many odd people on this trip. The whole town of Roswell is really into the whole UFO thing. I personally am open to the idea, but what we saw of the town was all hokey. We experienced the one and only spacewalk! A guy spent 6 years of his life creating a maze with black lights that included a little story of Roswell and the aliens. It was a well spent two bucks for the experience. He was actually very talented. I think if I were a retired actor, Roswell would be a fun place to live. You can just be a character and fit right in. While that is to be expected in Roswell, NM, I didn’t expect it in another little town we visited.

While visiting another town we saw a sign that said, “Rare Books”. Of course with Ryan’s hobby of collecting books, we had to stop. The “store” was run out of a motel, a strip motel. I don’t know if the guy owned the motel or what, but he’d knocked out the walls between three rooms to create one larger area. I was going to say the odd thing was he still lived there despite the musky paper/dust aroma lingering in the air, but I’m not sure I can confidently make that statement. There were so many odd things. Like when we walked in and I saw him lifting the mattress to reach under it. Then there was the fact that he was wearing penny loafers, cargo pants, a tweed jacket with the arm patches and all, or how he was rambling about how he just got back from Africa, or how he excused himself because he needed another libation. Not to mention the creepy mannequins dressed in various military outfits. It was a very interesting experience. He was a very nice man, just a little off. I think that’s what happens when a woman isn’t around. For Ryan’s sake I hope I live longer, but if I don’t I want to be able to come back and see how eccentric he’s become in my absence. Anyhoooo.. Ryan found a first edition he’d needed to complete a collection of his, so it was a worthwhile excursion.