Doors, Diapers, Dogs, and Cake

Phewf! It's been a long time! (Does anyone else besides my family use that expression? My beloved Tom claims that they do not. I disagree.) The reason for the giant gap in postings : a move to a new town. The reason for me posting today, this beautiful, fall-ish afternoon: I painted a door.

This is my door, the door to the house I just moved in to in Fredericksburg, Texas. It's worth noting that the door is heavy. This matters because I did this project by myself. Yep. I figured out how to take a front door off it's hinges (my beloved Tom later told me a much less sweat-inducing way), how to make sawhorse wannabe's out of four chairs and two old, spider infested boards, how to maneuver the door down the front steps to the "sawhorses", how to sweetly ask the neighbor next door to help me hoist my door onto the "sawhorses", how to get over my frustration when the neighbor left and I realized the door had been placed wrong side up, how to ask the neighbor across the street even more sweetly (different neighbor) to help me turn it over, how to use Tom's sander, and how to paint while watching a baby. It was quite the learning experience.

Result: a fresh new door to symbolize a new beginning in Fredericksburg this fall.

Some things, however, remain the same.

Diapers, for example, still need need to be changed in Fredericksburg. Then they need to be washed, dried, and folded just in time to be worn again by my sweet baby Piper Joy.

Waffles still has to get abnormally close to me whenever possible so he can stare into my eyes.

He still loves tug-of-towel as well.

For those of you who visited our old house, the yellow bookshelf is still going strong in the living room.

These sorts of constants, yes, even the diapers, make moving bearable. It's quite fascinating to me that humans are capable of transporting their lives to new places. But, the transport is never complete. There are always pieces left behind, people that you can't take with you, holes that you have to look at until you can see how they fit into the larger pattern. It is during this time, the time that my family and I are now in, that doors, dogs, and diapers take on a certain significance. They help keep you patient while the newness wears off.

In the meantime, big things are happening! My sweet baby Piper Joy had her first birthday! We celebrated with family and friends. Some pictures are on facebook, but for my blog audience, I have reserved some select pictures of this momentous occasion.

Here we have the first birthday cake I have ever made for my child. It was pretty fun to make it. I used a supposedly baby-friendly recipe that called for things like apple juice and carrots and still ended up tasting pretty good. I blew the baby-friendliness though when I doused the cake in cream cheese icing loaded with powdered sugar...

We spent the evening at the Akins, our good friends. They provided the candles (thanks, Megan!) and photography.

Piper Joy quickly embraced the idea of birthday cake.

It looks like a small bear attacked that cake! She wasn't too excited about getting cake on her hands though. I (depicted by the set of large teeth in the picture below) apparently thought this was hilarious.

It was definitely a team effort, the team being Mom and Piper. Mom did not want to be a team player, but Piper insisted. We were both covered in icing by the end of this game. 

But how can you resist a face like the one below? 

 And those were our birthday adventures. Piper Joy is now 2'5", in the 14% for weight, and the 88% for height. But who is surprised by those stats? She will probably be walking before Thanksgiving; she crawls like a maniac now. And best of all... she sleeps through the night! This is another, long-awaited, new beginning.

More to come in the near future on our life in the Burg!

Until then, as Aslan says in "The Last Battle" to the people who have just arrived in his new kingdom, "Onward and upward!"