Summer's Over

but it's still plenty hot! We take Ivy outside a few times everyday, just to make her hair curl. Well, it's really for exercise, but the curly hair is a nice side effect. We have lots of fun walking around the yard. Ivy picks up little leaves and rocks and hands them right to us. It's nice.


She continues to find big fun in Mommy's bathroom. I had a brand-new box of unmentionables -- 135 -- and tiny Ivy took every single one out and threw it on the floor. Thanks, fun baby!
The next day, I decided to put that energy to good use, and Ivy helped me rip the advertising pages out of my September Vogue. There were over 400 on the floor when she finished, and I look forward to making this a yearly tradition (though I hope her fascination with tearing paper ends sooner than that.

Ivy's playhut is her favorite toy. She pushes it around the floor and pulls it along as she toddles around the dining room.
She plays peek with her daddy, her grammy, her nanny, and me. She crawls happily along the side to find who she's been peeking at.


Ivy continues to love her raspberries. We boil a lot of water to pour on the stains, but it's impossible to deny her something that gives her so much pleasure.



After a long week at orientation and getting ready for school, we looked forward to time with Ivykins. It had been a tough week -- Brittany had interviews in Dallas and Bryan before taking a job as a teacher's aide for an autistic boy being mainstreamed. We will miss her, but I think she'll miss Ivy even more. We had hoped to take Ivy to the pool, but it rained and rained.

Instead, we took Ivy to the Brazos Valley Natural History Museum. It's basically just a big room with a lot of random stuff in it. She liked playing with the cotton bale display. Josh wanted her to learn about saddles. I showed her how baboons could be killed by wild raving leopards. She was very afraid unless I held her tightly.







Grammy came on Saturday night to take care of (not-so) tiny Ivy while we started school. On Wednesday, we trained her new nanny, Jenna. Ivy seemed to like her. Jenna is 24, hopes to go back to school in January, and has lots of experience working in daycares. We hope this will work out for this term. Next term, we think we'll have her in daycare, and are looking into several Montessori schools as well as the TAMU daycare.

Ivy has been doing a LOT of reading. She pulls her books down, points right at her favorite pictures, and says "Baaah." She really loves the lift the flap books, and the Maisy Mouse is one of her favorites. We like it because Maisy is a tough little cookie, like our little cupcake.



Grammy and I took Ivy for a special brunch. She wore a pretty dress and ate all blueberries we brought her, all the blueberries from Grammy's meal, bacon, french toast, and cheese.






Then she amused herself by pulling all my credit cards out. Earlier, she threw all my five dollar bills (I had 8) on the floor of the ice cream store. She's a very helpful baby.





I am liking my classes very much this year. My PERF301 class, which was so tough for me last term, is awesome this time. Instead of a bunch of Business, Education, and Ag College losers, I have English, Philosophy, Sociology, and Theatre students. I'm really pleased. It's not easy leaving Ivy, but it's easier when my students are pretty nice.

Ivy is having some teethy problems again. It seems like she's got three molars on the way in, but every time they come up, they come back down. She looks so sad when they're hurting her. She just wants extra cuddles and extra love.

But even when her teethies hurt, she is still our beautiful, happy, darling, fun baby.

Peek!