Oh, That Hadley...

Shell always says no one will ever call Hadley naughty. She says they'll just look at her, shake their head, and say, "Oh that Hadley..." Shell is of course biased because Hadley can do no wrong in her eyes. ;-)

This is the picture of someone who had been laughing and giggling all night after her bath chasing Gus around the house. This is the picture of someone who chased Gus into the kitchen. Her parents were watching tv in the living room. Her parents then realized it was very quiet in the kitchen, which is never a good sign. Mama called out to this special little someone, realizing the little stinker was probably up to no good in the kitchen.

This is the picture of Little Miss Mischievous who had decided to take a second bath in Gus' water bowl.

Stream of Consciousness

Remember wayyyyyy back in your 6th grade creative writing class (was it even 6th grade?) where they taught you about stream of consciousness? And how you were supposed to write down everything that came to mind and just let it all flow out? What grade was it that they taught you that you shouldn't start a sentence with "and" like I just did up there?

So I'm just going to write and get it all out.

Work is stressing me out. We've been working towards our big SAP upgrade probably close to two years and it'll all come to fruition starting tomorrow night. I work late tomorrow night to shut down the old SAP and start bringing up the new version. I work on Sunday also for who knows how long. If all goes well, when everyone comes into work on Monday morning everyone will log into the new SAP and all will be right with the world. But why am I picturing mass chaos and craziness and just MORE STRESS? I'm normally a "glass is full" kind of gal but I'm really not getting that sense with this project. Ugh.

I love pistachios but I've been trying to be really good and careful about what I've been eating. But a co-worker had to bring out the hidden bag of pistachios so of course I poured myself a huge handful, or let's be honest--2 handfuls, into a cup. So I'm breaking the shells apart, eating my pistachios, enjoying my salty snack, when I notice that this one particular shell had a weird sort of fuzzy moldiness inside of it. I just kind of said "huh" to myself and kept throwing the shells into my garbage can. THEN...there it was...on my desk...A DEAD CRUNCHY WORM!!! Everyone had been working along quietly until I noticed the dead worm on my desk and shouted "SHUT UP!" The co-worker who sits right across from me whips his chair around and can't believe I just told him to shut up when he hadn't even said a word. I had to quickly explain that there was a dead worm on my desk and it came from the pistachios and oh my gosh I'm so grossed out and then ALL my co-workers are laughing at me and I'm telling them to quit laughing that I may be getting a little teary-eyed here and then I was laughing along with them and it was quite a funny side diversion and stress-reliever. But seriously, why is it always ME who finds the nastiness in food? I'm ALWAYS the one who gets someone's stray nasty hair in my salad or chicken fried steak or whatever. Ask my family. They'll tell you.

Hadley is good and so very cute. I probably shouldn't say she's good because she's getting into a naughty stage and likes to get into things she shouldn't. She also likes to throw whatever she has in her hand when she gets frustrated or mad. Gus seems to get the brunt of her sippy-cup-throwing-temper fits so we're working on that. Her hair is getting quite long and it drives me crazy how it hangs in her eyes, but it doesn't seem to bother her. But I'm constantly trying to brush it back from her eyes or sticking a bow in her hair. She'll only put up with the bow for so long. By the end of the day, she's usually yanked it out of her hair and thrown it down on the ground with great emphasis. I'm surprised she doesn't then stomp on it after that for good measure. The bows are so cute! Why does she hate them so? She's learned to give hugs and she'll give you one if you ask her. Melts your heart. Aron and Casey had a date night on Tuesday so we watched Avery for them. Hadley can now say "Avery" instead of just calling her "Rey." She's talking soooo much. She seems to be into animal sounds at this point and can tell you what the cat says, the dog, the sheep, the lion, the snake, the fish, the cow, etc...She loves the "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book. For the bear, I taught her that the sound they make is "heyyyyy Sic 'em Bears!" She even does the hand motion! Maybe that kid will be a Baylor Bear yet! After her bath Adrian usually dries her hair all crazy-like and she gets this super proud look on her face and you have to acknowledge that she has crazy hair. So I always do the "rock on" hand motion to her and tell her to "rock on with yo bad self!" She thinks that's funny. I love that she thinks I'm funny. I know that won't always be the case. Wonder when I'll have to start preparing myself that someday she'll prefer Adrian over me and will prefer to be a Daddy's girl. Does that start around age 10 or earlier than that? Not that I think she really prefers me now, but I do think my name is mentioned quite more often than his. Mama...mama...mama...mommy...mommy...mama...ad nauesum.

Vacation to Cabo is off. Wish it wasn't, but it just isn't practical to spend that money right now. Adios Mexico...Hola mas dinero para que? Para mas ropa? Para mas zapatos? Just kidding. I'll quit with the espanol. I was trying to figure out how to say "brakes for my car" and I don't know the word for brakes. Michelea gets into town on March 9 for a visit. We may try to get away to the mountains for a couple days. I'm going to need a vacation after next week. Dos mas cervezas por favor! Speaking of 2 more beers, ski trip to Breckenridge is next weekend. Bet I'll have at least that many that weekend. Yahoo!

I think this is probably the most boring thing I've ever written. No deep dark secrets or even deep thoughts in this one. But maybe Jamie will be happy I at least wrote something.

Hadley & Stewie

Hadley must be watching too much of "The Family Guy" lately (which is NOT a kids show, by the way) because I feel like Stewie is rubbing off on her. "Mama" is usually the very first word she says in the morning and I'm pretty sure it's probably also her last word of the day as well. She'll randomly say "Mama...mama...mama..." and I'm constantly saying "What, Hadley?" to her afterwards. This goes on ALL DAY LONG. Honestly, I'm really not annoyed by it...yet. I'm sure I will get annoyed at some point. I do remember my Mom yelling at us once, "I'M GOING TO CHANGE MY NAME!" I'm sure we had annoyed her all day long and she was at her wits end! So, I can relate to this video below.

Girls' Night Out!

My friends and I have needed a night out for quite some time now. We finally put a date on the calendar and I think we were all so anxious and couldn't wait for Sunday night! (Adrian was a sweetheart and agreed to watch both Hadley and Noah. He must've been feeling brave when he agreed to that!) We started out at the Rio downtown for dinner. The last time I had been there was for my bachelorette party a little over 3 years ago. The margaritas are smaller and cost more now, but hey--we still had a good time.

After that we headed towards Crocs to go dancing but there were 3 people in there sitting at the bar and that was it. We were standing around discussing our options and we hear someone from a downstairs bar telling us that they had 2-for-1 drinks. Not bad! It was a jazz bar but after we had been there for a while, they started playing this weird death metal music. We decided to get serious about finding a place to dance.

I think this jazz bar was called Pat's.

We made our way to the Tavern Downtown (which used to be The Soiled Dove back in the day) and they were playing dance music. We were much happier campers!

Kelly and Ann being goofy

Kelly Festi, Kelly Kepler, and Ann Kjellstrom

Ann, Kisha St. Peter (she's a Denver cop--watch out!) and I

Jenny, Kelly and I

I think we're going to really try to do a night out once a month. Sunday nights downtown are a little lame, but then again, we're not as young as we used to be and going out downtown when it's crowded on a Friday or Saturday night may have lost its appeal. We'll see!

Big Shoes to Fill

One of Hadley's favorite things to do lately is to try on our shoes and attempt to walk around in them. Pretty funny! Here she is trying to walk around in Adrian's slippers.

"Working" From Home

Working from home when you have Hadley here, too, is not really working. But don't tell my boss that. Working from home means trying to keep Hadley entertained long enough to get through one single email. It means reading her "Fox in Socks" over and over again, and you KNOW how hard that one is to read! It also means a lot of "shhhh...Daddy's sleeping!" because he was home today, too, attempting to sleep because he works the grave shift tonight.

I worked from home today because Kim's son Nicholas is sick with 100-degree temperature. I'm not feeling so hot myself (stupid stomach bug AGAIN) so guess it was a good excuse to work here.

I thought Hadley was playing quietly in the bathroom with the box of bandaids, which is her most recent fascination lately, but no, it was the box of corn starch.

OK, so it wasn't the world's largest box of corn starch, and it didn't make that big of a mess, but still kinda funny all the same.

I didn't have a good day today. It's just too hard to try to work and then deal with her at the same time. She's not a bad kid, it's just that she's at that age where she's into everything and is little Miss Independent.

So the other news is that things aren't good on the job front. They're doing everything they can to avoid layoffs. They're trying to be a bit creative about it. Hourly employees are forced to take every Friday off starting this Friday until at least the end of March. My company also offered a voluntary resignation package but they know most people probably wouldn't take it. I found out later today that none of this applies to my team. Because I'm in the corporate IT department, we'll be working every Friday and can't accept the package. They made it sound like our jobs were more secure, so I guess that's a bit comforting. It's still all a bit unsettling in the grand scheme of things. Stay tuned!

Hadley's First Shiner...

...and by shiner, I mean black eye, not the favorite beer in the Peech household!

I pull into the garage after getting home from work last night and I can hear Hadley crying in the house. I thought she was whining about Daddy not giving her any more graham crackers. You know, the usual reason she's whining and crying when I get home from work.

I walk in the door and both Adrian and Hadley are upset. Adrian's got a paper towel over Hadley's eye and he's ranting and raving about the "stupid coffee table" that's outside on the back deck.

Adrian was grilling outside. Hadley wanted to be out there with him. We have a coffee table that's like the coffee table of death that a friend made for us. It has cute Mexican tile on top that I picked out myself, but then it has these metal edges that just cry out for someone to bang their knee on it or whatever.

So Hadley somehow stumbles and, of course, heads towards the coffee table of death. It pokes her above her eye and then scratches her down her cheek. It bled for quite a while above her eye. We tried to put ice on it, but she wasn't having any of that.

Adrian thought for sure she'd have a black eye today. But she doesn't! She just has scratches. She's all good! Don't worry Daddy! He felt sooooo bad about the whole thing.

So here's hoping Hadley's first Shiner will be the beer, and not the black eye. (And if she's anything like her parents, her first beer won't be when she turns 21! HA!)

Posing...


OK! Enough with the pictures already!

Aunt Meanie Babysits Noah

Friday night is usually "date night" in the Coleman household. I got to watch Noah for the first time and it was definitely good practice for having two kids...someday. Noah was the easy one--he eats, coos for a while, poops, and then goes back to sleep. Hey--I can handle that! It's the "no, Hadley, don't swing that around Noah," or the "please, Hadley, rock him GENTLY" that gets to me. Hadley's the handful...Noah is just sweet baby Noah! I look forward to more adventures in babysitting in the future.

Gus is very good with and very protective of babies. He normally is on one of the couches, but while Noah was here, he slept on the floor in front of him.

Don'tcha just wanna suck on those cheeks??!!

Hadley Had a Playdate with Avery

Aron and Cayce had a night out so Adrian and I watched Avery. She's a month younger than Hadley, but they were supposed to be born only a week apart. The two of them have a really good time together and it's fun to watch them interact. We hope they grow up to be as good of friends as Aron and Adrian are.

Having spaghetti for dinner means straight upstairs for a bath afterwards (and no, the bath water really isn't that dingey--it's the oatmeal bath wash)

Avery realizes Hadley has some crazy hairdo

All clean and time to read their books

This picture cracks me up! Did they realize at exactly the same time that they don't think they like the book "Where The Wild Things Are"?

Hadley plays designated driver. I'm sure Adrian and Aron will be giving several "don't drink and drive" lectures to these girls!