Little Sister Duties

The Pie says she can't wait any longer for a playmate, but V-Pie isn't due for another 16 weeks. Luckily, Bella has agreed to "chip in" and take on some of the little sister duties until then.
As you can see, The Pie has gladly accepted her offer.
Because sometimes dolls just aren't enough.

{Yes, that is Bella and she is neither a rat nor a Chihuahua,
she is a purebred Italian Greyhound, fyi.}

The Creative & Amazing Photographer

On Tuesday we went with Great Grandma Sander & the three cousins from Justin's side of the family to get portraits for GG Sander's Christmas cards.

We were fortunate to have that sort of creative, artistic photographer for our session. He directed the kids so wonderfully, and as you can see {below} we got some really amazing photographs. I want to give you a recap of how professional and creative he was in directing his subjects - I only hope I can recreate the magic of the session just a little bit. Here are some of the brilliant directions he gave as he was working his magic:

"Okay, Eisley, give me your best vampire look for this shot -
YES! Show me those fangs! Work the fangs!"

"Noah, you're drunk at the bar and a beautiful woman just sat down next to you, show me drunk lust - YES! Perfect!"
"Eisley, I just informed you your puppy is dead - you're shocked and in disbelief, give me shocked!"
"Okay for this group shot, I want to capture the essence of family. Eisley, you just passed gas and you think it's funny. Grandma and Moriah, act repulsed, but Noah, I want to see you pointing the finger at the offender. YES! GOOD!"
"Turn around, Eisley, and scowl at Noah for pointing you out.... Noah you're uncomfortable now, show me uncomfortable! Moriah, you're worried!"
"Eisley, give me disgusted! You're grossed out, you're gagging! Work it! YES! BEAUTIFUL!"
"Noah and Moriah, give me sleepy... but, Eisley, show me delighted - what's over there? - show me how great it is, yes! Make us wonder, intrigue us! What's over there and why do your cousins not care? YES! WONDERFUL!"
"Moriah, I want to see sophisticated, thoughtful, good! But Noah and Eisley - you're unsure about what's going on to your left. Yes! Amused yet awkward! That's great! BRILLIANT!"

"Eisley look poignantly upwards, yes, you're thinking about God and life and deep thoughts. More deep thoughts, show me more! You're pondering the meaning of life! Moriah! Box your little brother's ears - YES! WORK IT!"
"Eisley, you're sucking on a lemon! Show me how sour it is! More sour! More sour, it's unbearable."
"Let's get Grandma back in here, Grandma, I want you to watch adoringly as your grandson picks his nose... Eisley, I want to see the 'my puppy just died' face again! PERFECT! Moriah, you're in control of the situation, you're calm amid the chaos - YES! BRILLIANT!"
As you can see, it was intense, artistic and insightful! We just went in for a Christmas card shot, but what we got was just pure art!

Okay I've had my fun... but really, we did get some good ones...

Family Outing No. 1 1/2: Black Hawk

Dear Papa Erickson,

A couple weeks ago you recommended going to see Central City & Black Hawk. You told me about how the old mountain mining town had turned into a mini-Vegas with mega hotels and that it was really a sight to see.

In fact, you said, "Go up there some afternoon just to look around and get an ice cream." Those were your exact words.

So today we did just that, promising ourselves & Eisley an ice cream. We got to see the aspen starting to turn on our way...
Central City was still quaint and had that Old West feel that so many Colorado mountain towns do, Black Hawk {literally down the street} was another story. Mostly thanks to the new & huge Ameristar hotel. It is a Goliath of a hotel/casino, springing up unnaturally from the Rocky Mountains. 33 stories.
We parked in the 10 story parking garage {upon exiting the car, I could smell the $5.99 prime rib every hotel advertises on billboards for miles before town} and wandered the hotel, Eisley was not allowed on the gaming floor. It was a grand hotel. We went to the 32nd floor to look out a window.
It is like Vegas, only a lot classier with less smut {does that make it better or not as good as Vegas? Honestly, I'm not sure... the vulgarity being part of Vegas's charm, you know. If you don't understand that, you haven't been there.}

Having seen that, and not willing to lose any money on gambling, we headed back up the street to Central City, here is the courtyard at the Central City Opera House. There were definitely some pretty sites worth seeing here.
But two things bothered us about our day trip.
1. There was no ice cream to be found. This town is 100% casinos & saloon style restaurants. Even the clerk at the grand Ameristar hotel didn't know where to direct us when we asked her to recommend a place. She asked 5 co-workers and finally told us to go to Cook's Palace - a saloon style bar. For ice cream. We were told there would be ice cream. Papa, you owe us an ice cream.

2. This town is devoid of children. It actually gave us a weird feeling. We were freaks that stood out toting our two year-old along. We saw three teenagers walking home from school - does that count? You don't realize how strange it feels to be in a place with zero children until you find yourself there and realize how unearthly it is. I kid you not, it made us a little depressed, and we came to the conclusion that a world without goofy, silly, whiny, excitable, stinky, smiley children is no place we could ever call home.

What's usually the demographic that fawns over Eisley the most - the retirees & elderly, who were all out gambling on a Tuesday afternoon - passed her by as if she was a common houseplant. At Great-Grandma Sander's retirement community we practically have to pry them off of her - they act as if they haven't seen a child in 1,000 years and she is the Chosen One, surrounding her like vultures and making all three of our heads swell. It was probably good for us to be humbled this way, actually. We're sort of jaded by how much attention she gets in public sometimes... What do you mean she's not the center of your universe? Go figure.

But seriously, Black Hawk made Vegas look like Kiddie Land.
Here is the only sign of any family friendliness we saw in the entire town. Yes, Dostal Alley actually went so far as to post it on their window - they have pizza, beer, and also allow children! Wow. In spite of the warm welcome, there were still no children in there. {I imagined walking in with Eisley and the bartender eyeing her and saying in a gruff voice, "We don't take kindly to your types 'round here."}
In fact, it was so eerie, so strange to us - the way people looked at us & Eisley and the way we stood out in her presence - that I seriously would not have been at all surprised to see this guy come around the corner. I was pretty much expecting to see him at any moment:




Creepiest. Guy. Ever.

And I'm fairly certain Black Hawk hires him to keep the kids out of their casino town.

Anyway, it was still a good time, just to finally see Central City where - despite being a 4th generation Colorado native {or is it 3rd? I always forget about great-grandpa Erickson...} - I have never been before. We left hungry and feeling guilty that Eisley hadn't been at all entertained. So we sought solace in Idaho Springs at a little place dear to my heart: Beau Jo's. There they had a kiddie menu, a booster seat & crayons waiting for us. Along with other children also dining nearby, we breathed a sigh of relief.

Thanks for the tip, Papa Erickson! We did enjoy. But don't think we're letting you out of an ice cream date...

Love,
Heather

When I was your age...

{Dear Eisley & Pie #2}

I grew up hearing all about things from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Parents love to say "when *I* was a kid..."

So now I would like to share with you how different technology was during my youth. The 80s & 90s.

Here is what my first cell phone looked like. It was just a phone. There were no calculators, alarm clocks, texting, or fancy ringtones. If you were to see a side view of this baby, you'd see it's about the size of a brick. This was when I was 15. Prior to that, if you were out and about and wanted to make a call, you had to find a quarter and a payphone.

I watched TV during my early years on something just like this. Yes, ours even had a faux wood box {to match your furniture!}, turn dials, and {WHAT?!} no remote!!!
The first computer I ever used looked like this. Mind you, there was no internet quite yet. No searching Google for this or that. Instead we'd pull out the phone book to find a good plumber or the local pizza delivery.
Your Auntie Bea & I both begged for this one Christmas {and got it}, our first Nintendo Gameboys. This was how we played video games from anywhere, on a pixelated black & green screen, roughly 1.5" square.
And when people in my day wanted to listen to music "on the go", there was this handy invention - the Sony Walkman. You'd just pop your tape cassette in there, press play and - viola! - you're listening to music anywhere! If you wanted to repeat a song, all you had to do was hit the rewind button.... and hold it for 2-3 minutes. But *THEN*, my dear, was yet another great invention, one that came along when CDs overtook tape cassets: the Sony Discman! With this portable CD player, all you had to do was pop in a CD and press play. Later versions had skip protection, and that was a good thing...
And computers really got high tech when the Mac Classic rolled out. Notice the sleek mouse on this baby:
I remember how big a deal it was when we got our first caller ID! Now we could tell who was calling when the phone rang. It was utterly amazing technology.
And when someone called and we didn't have time to answer it, our handy-dandy answering machine allowed them to leave a message for us:
Mommy's first car was a 1986 Honda Civic. My arms got toned that year from the lack of power steering.
When we wanted to watch a movie, there was no pay-per-view or on-demand place to simply download it. Instead, we hopped in the car and headed here, a video rental store:
And we rented this, a VHS cassette:
And we popped it in this, our VCR:

We've come a long way, Pies 1 & 2.... a loooong way.

What NOT to do in life...

{Dear Eisley}

I want to tell you about a few mistakes I've made in life. As your older & wiser mother, I want to share this with you so that you do not make some of the same mistakes I have made. Hopefully I can save you some grief in life. I want to list some, lest I forget!

So, my dear daughter, don't do the following:

1. Fart in front of your pastor and blame it on another kid. He knows.

2. Seek fun with your friends by driving up to shopping carts in parking lots and pushing them with your car, working up speed, and then brake and watch the cart soar across the lot. Hitting another car with the speeding cart is inevitable. I know this from experience. {Note: Especially don't do it just weeks after getting your first driver's license. And ESPECIALLY don't do this when there's a beautifully restored classic Ford Mustang in the lot.}

3. Stir the pot for fun. Even though it often is amusing, it's also mean.

4. Dress the pets up in your nicest dresses and parade them through your parents bedroom when they're still asleep on a Saturday morning. Believe me, they'll think it's a lot funnier if you do it after they wake up and have had some coffee.

5. Cut up your mom's sewing projects in attempt to make even better sewing projects. She won't be impressed.

6. Go to college and: take multiple prescriptions known to cause weight gain, wear only lounge clothes and never your sized jeans so you don't realize when they don't fit anymore, not work out in rebellion for the last 4 years of forced high school gym class, not have a full-length mirror, and let yourself splurge at the college dining hall one too many times (to be fair, the salad bar WAS disgusting). Trust me -- recipe. for. disaster. It's okay to gain a little weight in college but if you do all of the above you're soooo asking for it.

7. Let friendships dissolve just because you want to prove a point {even when you're right ;-) }

8. Not save at least some of your money.

9. Get credit cards. They're the devil. Seriously, watch this if you don't believe me.

10. Stop learning a musical instrument once you've started. You'll regret it...

11. Set booby traps for Santa.

12. Go too far with your sense of humor. Your 2nd grade teacher might not find it as amusing as you do when, say, you draw a "Kick Me" sign on Martin Luther's back when studying the Reformation. {Post edit for clarity: I'm talking about Martin Luther the theologian. NOT the civil rights activist.}

13. Climb up cliffs without adult supervision. Especially when staying with grandma. Thank God she didn't have a heart attack that day.

14. Run from a horse when it charges you.

15. Try and reason with your philosophy professor in college. Especially if he looks just like Snape. That should have been my first clue not to contradict him.

16. When sledding, and your dad is at the bottom of the hill watching you come down and you *think* he's saying, "Steer towards the tree! Steer towards the tree!"... he's probably not.

And that's all I can think of right now. We all make mistakes, but if I can save you from a few of the ones I've made then I've done my job.

Love,
{MOM}

The House Elf

WHY?

Why can't we keep up with the laundry? The piles just keep growing.

Why do the dishes never seem clean anymore? There's never a clean cup when we need a drink.

Why are Eisley's toys always strewn throughout our living spaces? Tripping us in the middle of the night if we get out of bed...

There's been a lot of extra mysterious messes around here lately.

It's the strangest thing. We clean. And then the very second we turn our backs, the room is messy again. It's... well, disturbing.

In fact, I'm beginning to suspect our home is infested.

With a house elf.

And I even think I caught it on camera the other day. Making a mess.

So tell me what you think, could this be a photo of the little elf, in my crafting room where a mess suddenly appeared out of nowhere the other day? The reason why we can't keep anything clean anymore???




Do you see it, or are we just going crazy?

Now We Know!

Have you ever found yourself wondering....




"just what would Eisley look like with Brooke Shields-esque eyebrows???"







What a coincidence, SO HAVE WE!










And so now we know.

{No adorable babies were harmed in the making of this blog post.... but she might be, if you don't LEAVE A COMMENT! j/k... about the harming part. Seriously though, leave a comment.}

{Dear Eisley - Vol. 4}

{Dear Eisley}

I can't wait until...

- you can take ballet classes
- you have your first sleepover
- you have a say in the decorating of your room
- your hair is long enough for me to French braid.
- you can tell us, with your own spoken words, that you love us
- you can understand just how much we love you. This, unfortunately, probably won't happen until you have kids of your own
- your Grandpa Erickson can enrich your childhood through crafts, art, and stories {with all the best voices for the characters} - just like he did mine
- your face lights up on Christmas morning, filled with the excitement that only new toys from Santa can bring
- you can tell me what you'd like to dress up as for Halloween
- you choose Christ by your own free will, it will happen one day, when you realize you are a child of God whether or not we force you to go to Sunday School
- you and daddy go to a Father/Daughter Dance, and I can do your hair all fancy
- you become more my friend than my child

but then again.... I can wait.

Love you,
Mom & Dad
-

{Messy Face Poll}

Here's a confession: I've always cringed at pictures of other people's kids with messy faces. Baby splattered with spaghetti sauce and half eaten noodles? "Eew," I think.

And I honestly always thought everyone thought these pictures of other people's messy faced kids were gross... {which left me wondering why so many parents post them?}

Then I snapped my own kid's messy faced picture. Cutest messy face picture ever! But now I wonder if other people will cringe at it, the way I cringed at theirs.

SO - it's poll time, you tell me {and be honest!}:

For the love of Eisley leave a comment! Click down there and say hi.

{Dear Eisley - Vol. 3}

{Dear Eisley}

It's recently come to my attention that you seem to be growing up. This disappoints me very much, and you may or may not recall that when you were born we had an agreement: I'll give you all the love I have to give, all I ask in return is that you stay my baby forever. Do you not remember this? Because you've been acting pretty mature lately, what, with the walking and talking...

August 8th is coming up in just over a month, and I'm worried that you have intentions of turning 1. You'd better think twice if that is your plan, Missy! It's just not right for you to grow up so fast on your poor mother. What makes you think this is ok? Did one of your grandmothers put you up to this?

Well, this is your last warning. We'll have a party with cake and presents and such, just like I promised, to celebrate the anniversary of your birth. But you are not to turn 1! Is that understood? If there is one thing I won't stand for it's a defiant baby.

{Love Always (no matter how naughty you are) - Your Poor, Poor Mommy}



PS - If you read my blog, you should comment every so often... it's a nice thing to do. AND I hope Eisley will someday come back and read this... it'd be nice for her ;-)

{Finally}

Bow + rubber band = hairstyle.

It's finally long enough. I am one happy Momma Pie.

And a happy Momma Pie = Happy Baby Pie.

Smörgåsbord

I have blogger's block.

Have you noticed?

Can't think of anything good to blog about these days.

Well, actually, I think of a lot of things, just not many good things.

Driving home in the storm we had today I was thinking - maybe I should just post a smörgåsbord. Here are things I've played with posting about lately. Little topics. My smörgåsbord.

• A smörgåsbord is Swedish for "large heterogeneous mixture" {or buffet/mixture of foods}. And how appropriate considering I'm Swedish {well, of descent}. My Grandpa used to call me his "Svenska flicka" {Swedish girl}. His father was quite Swedish {hence the Erickson, which I'm told used to be spelled Ericsson.}
  
  
• When chosing a bank, DO go with Key Bank. DO NOT go with US Bank. {Why? I love Key Bank. My business and our personal accounts are with Key Bank. They're great, and recently were rated very high for customer service. US Bank on the other hand, well thats a whole other post. But ask me sometime and I'll be happy to enlighten you on how those criminals swindled us out of hundreds of our wedding gift money. They're evil.}
  
  
• My Favorite Songs of Spring 2009 is a hang up between Love Story by Taylor Swift {who is the cutest darn girl that ever happened, after Eisley of course} and Pirates from The Blue Sky Project.
  Pirates is a song based on this commercial - which I've loved loved loved ever since the first time I've seen it {so much I had to go hunting down the composer on AdTunes.com}:
  
  

They made a whole song out of it, WONDERFUL:



And I have to post the Love Story music video, too, because I am equally in love with it - it's chock full of regency era romanticism:

Click Link - embedding video is disabled

• Peonies are in season. :::sigh::: Approximately two weeks out of the year I get to enjoy my favorite flowers in real life instead of just in pictures. They're so delightfully shabby pretty.
  
• Eisley is walking. Sort of.
  

• I actually wrote a blog post about guacamole the other day. I'm glad I decided not to post it. It was lame {lamer than my smörgåsbord}. Who blogs about guacamole?
  
  
• I got a birthday gift in the mail already. From Anthro! A 15% discount card. Not that big of a deal but the adorable little envelope it came in was super cute. If you don't have an Anthro card, make sure to sign up for one, they're free and come with perks.
  

• Speaking of my birthday, it happens to fall on Justin's first Father's Day this year.
  
  
• I drove past a tornado last weekend. On my way down to a family dinner with my family I was taking the "scenic route" and it was really stormy. I saw what looked like a tornado but I wasn't sure. It was a couple miles away, some people were pulling over but I didn't. It went away soon after that. I didn't actually know it was a real tornado until Justin told me later that there was one down there. Weird.
  
  
• At the said family dinner my parents recently confessed that they actually pulled the "replace the dead pet with one that looks just like it" stunt with my pet fish. I had always thought it was amazing that Cocoa lasted like 9 years. {Who does that with fish? My parents, apparently.}
  
  
  That's all. Did you enjoy my smörgåsbord?

Now hopefully my blogger's block will past soon or we'll be stuck with more of this...

Wait, one more thing. Do you get Showtime? If so, you should be tuning into Nurse Jackie. It's really good. So far.

everybaby, everwhere...

There comes a time...



for every baby.....



everywhere....




when the wonder....


the magic....


the amusement....




of the tupperware cupboard is discovered.

Oh the joy.

{ Eisley's Best Friend }

Eisley has a best friend. His name is Oscar and he's a 6 month old cat. Oscar has always gravitated towards Eisley, and Eisley has always adored Oscar.

He is the best sort of friend, he let's Eisley pull his fur and tail and he doesn't care. If Eisley is having a day nap, Oscar is usually napping with her, cuddled up against her feet or side.


I know we hear those old wives tales about cats smothering babies, but Oscar always is careful to sleep to the side of Eisley and never to disturb her. {Mom and dad keep a watchful eye anyway, just in cases.}They're totally pals. He's always nearby to keep our little girl company. He even plays with her sometimes.


{Those napping pictures were taken at a weird angle, Eisley wasn't sloped backwards.}