Lists

I adore making lists, especially to-do lists. I love the satisfaction of checking things off the list and then rewarding myself after I have completed the tasks. Yeah, I know I'm a nerd. I haven't done a bloggy list since these glorious days, and I think my current feelings would best be summed up by a couple of lists.

Things that make me sad:

1. Leaving the position I've held for the last 4 years at work.

2. The fact that our soldiers, including my brother, are in harm's way.

3. When teething makes my sweet girl cry

4. Leaving my baby

5. The fact that Amelia isn't a snuggly little newborn anymore who wants to be held 24/7.

Things that make me happy:

1. Starting my new job across campus on Monday

2. The fact that Mare's fiance', Uncle Justin, is home safely after 5 months of military training

3. Seeing Amelia discover something new

4. Eating Mexican with my hubby

5. When Amelia crawls over and pulls up on my legs wanting me to pick her up

I'm feeling a little melancholy today because I'm packing up my office to move to a new position on Monday, and I'll miss my co-workers. I'm also bummed because Amelia did not want me to leave this morning but I had to anyway.

However, I just love this time of year because it always feels like a fresh start, even though I'm not in school anymore (hallelujah!) I love seeing school supplies on store shelves, as well as all the fall clothing, even though we won't be able to wear it for several months because it's still so dang hot. Change is a good thing, but the transition isn't always easy. Just ask the girl who is currently waiting for new teeth to break through her gums.

At last!

The Fathers Day slideshow is no longer on the main page, so if you were too lazy to scroll down to turn off the music and didn't hear the bye-bye video, you should be able to hear it now.

9 months!

Nine months ago today we met our sweet princess! Time is flying by, and as sad as it is that she is quickly going from a baby to a toddler, she is at such a fun age, and we are having a ball with her.
At 9 months, Amelia:

• has started crawling more, but still would rather stand and walk. She crawls just to get to a toy she wants or to get to something she can pull up on. She lets go and will stand on her own for a few seconds before falling down. I expect her to be walking very soon.


• is not one of those babies who ventures all over the house on her own now that she is able to. She still wants to be with someone at all times, and will cry when I leave the room most of the time. She has become very clingy to me, which I love, but it makes it harder when I have to leave her. I now have to sneak out rather than give bye-bye kisses.


• finally will hold her bottle on her own. She has been able to do this for a while now, but has practically refused to do it. But since she'll be starting daycare again in a couple of weeks, we've started forcing her to hold it and she's been doing fine. Really, we enjoy cuddling with her and giving her her bottle, but I don't want her to be the high maintenence one at school! This year she'll be in the same class as last year, but she'll be one of the older ones, and I want her to be a little more self-sufficient. Those teachers need free hands for the babies who will be like she was last year and insisted on being held constantly, ha.


• has two teeth on bottom and is working on cutting the top ones. Her teeth came through a couple of months ago, but somehow I forgot to blog about it! You can see them when she smiles, but I haven't been able to get a photo.


• is so busy! She isn't one to crawl all over the place to get into everything, but she definitely always needs to be trying to get to something she shouldn't have, or trying to pull up if she's sitting down.


• has quite a temper, and will still throw a huge fit if she's told 'NO' or gets something taken away from her. We're still working on that, and I hope she'll be a little better before daycare starts back. We wouldn't want our Mimi to get expelled!

Here she is last night in her footie-pjs with giraffes on the feet.

What happened to this two-month old yawning in her Christmas pjs under the tree?

Look at that ruffled booty! Love it.

Now that she can feel her bottom teeth, that tongue stays out all the time! She's venturing away from the toy box trying to walk to me. She looks like she's concentrating so hard with that tongue out.She's made some big steps from 8 months to 9, with the biggest being her increased vocabulary, and bottle-holding ability. I'm interested to see if she really gets going with the crawling and wants to crawl all over the place soon, or if she'll keep trying to walk. We shall see. Either way, the child proofing we've been putting off has got to be done soon!

A birthday party and Sunday lunch

This past weekend was spent catching up with family that we don't get to see often. Friday I took the day off work and Cliff, Amelia and I traveled to Laurel to visit with Cliff's grandmother and aunt. We enjoyed our visit but I failed to take any photos. Boo.

Then Saturday Mare and I took Amelia to our cousin Mandy's little boy Bode's 3rd birthday party. After that we jetted over to visit with my grandparents for a while. Here are a few pics from the party.

Amelia and the birthday boy, who obviously has had his photo taken a time or two. He was much more willing than Amelia to pose for my camera.

Amelia got that balloon as soon as we got there and she wouldn't let go of it for the next 5 hours! The thing was so droopy by the time we got home. She wanted to chew on it, so Cliff finally popped it. She was devastated.

Still holding onto that balloon and of course would not look at me when I asked her to smile. Stinker.

Crawling with the balloon in hand.

Admiring a fellow party-goer's shoes (She's SO my kid), yet still not letting go of that ballooon.

Putting the balloon behind her back to pose for a pic with mommy.

Then Sunday after church we enjoyed lunch at Porches with Cliff's dad and his wife, Joyce as well as Aunt Katie. We ended up eating outside, and you can tell from Amelia's rosy cheeks that it was a little warm.Mimi and Aunt Katie in a rare pic together.

Trying to get a pic with Papaw Bob and Joyce but Mimi wasn't having it. She is such a drama queen about posing for pics!

Giving a family shot a try, but no success on smiles from everyone. Not naming names here...

Ok, there's the happy baby we know! She is a smiler after all.

It was a great, but busy weekend. We're looking forward to a more relaxing one this week. Tomorrow our big girl turns 9 months old! Hopefully I'll have time to post an update on her newest tricks. She's made some big milestones in the last couple of weeks so I look forward to sharing them soon!

She talks!

It's only been a month since she was babbling about coupons, but these days her babbling is making a little sense! She's been saying da-da, ma-ma, and others that sound a lot like words for a while now, but she is just now able to mimic on command. Check her out saying 'Bye' for us in the video below. She even waves when we ask her. OMG, Y'ALL. Seeing her do this for the first time was almost too much for Cliff and me to handle. Her little voice speaking the English language is just about the sweetest sound on earth. Just see for yourself!

Bye-Bye! from Angela Furr on Vimeo.

There's nothing more cozy

...than hanging around the house in your robe and slippers after a bath!

8 months

As quickly as these months are slipping by, she's going to be nine months old before I get to her 8 month update. So here we go. At 8 months, Amelia:

• can crawl, but still isn't that intersted in crawling to get around. If there's a toy or something out of her reach that she wants, she'll crawl over to get it or whine until I get it for her. She is much more interested in pulling up, and lately she's been testing herself to see how long she can stand without holding onto something. I'm afraid walking is not far away for her.


• loves to eat! Squash still seems to be her favorite, but she loves almost all baby food. She gets so excited and kicks her legs when the spoon is coming for her.


• is a dream to bring to restaurants now that she is old enough for little puffs cereal. She loves being able to feed herself. We just pour some onto her high chair and let her go to town while we enjoy our meals. We had to start being bigger tippers because sometimes more ends up on the floor than in her mouth


• has a temper and has mastered the art of throwing a fit! I better go ahead and order Dr. Dobson's books now. I think I'll start with The Strong Willed Child.


• is understanding the meaning of "NO" and has decided she's not a fan. Oh my.


• Still loves her bath, and tries to be a daredevil and stand up in the tub. We've already had lots of head bumps.


• just loves her Daddy and lights up when he walks in a room.


• is pretty crazy about Mama too, and the three of us have so much fun together.


• is getting tough to handle sometimes with that temper and a newfound hatred of sleeping, but most of the time she is an absolute joy. Her little personality is really coming out, and we couldn't be more thrilled to have this silly, funny, high maintenence, happy girl in our lives!

And now a few photos. Here she is enjoying her new maracas and wearing the pretty Mexican dress we brought her back from our trip.

Doing what she does best. Testing what she can do and scaring her mama to death!

Did you notice the biggest new development of all???? She is getting hair! Those bows can finally stay in without a headband! Her hair is so light, it's hard to see in photos. I'm not sure if it's going to be red like mine, or dark blonde like Cliff's. Both of us were blonde as children, so it's a toss-up. I do think it might be curly. It's so cute when she gets hot, and it starts to curl (and frizz) up like her mama's.

Looking cute in her very first t-shirt, ha. Aunt Mare brought this back from Destin. She was too busy to let me get a good pic.

She had some special visitors this weekend. Uncle Chris and Aunt Kathryn were in town!

Aunt Ann also came in from Texas for a visit.

Then Sunday night another special guest stopped by, Amelia's big sister, Taylor! Did you guys not know that Amelia is not our first child? She's actually our third, after Cash and Tay. Taylor was a student at Mississippi School of the Arts last year, and we served as her host family. We loved having her around as we got ready to welcome Amelia into the world. Even though Amelia kicked Tay out of her old room, she still loves her. We were so glad she was able to come meet her.

And I have to be a proud "host mama" and brag on Taylor. She graduated first in her class and will be going to Ole Miss in the fall on a full scholarship. She is an awesome girl, and we know she's going to do great things!

So that's the latest on our 8 month old. Less than 4 months now until she's one! Yikes! Gotta start planning that birthday party!

Everybody needs a little time away...

...especially new moms and dads! Cliff and I had a fabulous time on our cruise. Even though I missed my baby like CA-RAZY every day (and may or may not have cried about it at least once every day), I'm glad Cliff surprised me with this trip because it's something that we as a couple and as parents needed whether I realized it or not.

Of course I have a gazillion photos. Why can't I ever narrow it down and post just a couple? Sorry! For the first time on this blog, they don't include Amelia. And I know that's why most of you are here, so feel free to ignore these and just pop on in later for some cute new pics of her.

We only took about 5 photos on our honeymoon and most of those were self portraits and photos that looked like this:

or this: (We took these of each other relaxing on our first day on the boat)

But this time I made an effort to take more photos and to actually ask others to take pics of us together. Like this one:This was before going to the Captain's cocktail party before dinner on our second night.

Here's Cliff doing his best Leo impression. Don't tell him he has rolls in the back of his head. He won't believe it. He thinks Chris is the only Furr sibling with a roll head. Sorry, buddy. Photos don't lie. Which is why you won't see me doing my Kate impression.

After dinner each night, all the wait staff put on a show and danced to something ridiculously American like "Shorty Got Low" and they try to engage the guests. Guess who got picked by our awesome waiter, Al?

I love how they treat you like royalty on cruises. Every night after dinner this is what our room looked like. Our precious little steward would apparently watch us like a sniper to see when we left for dinner, so when we came back our room would be clean and we had these fun little towel animals on our bed. This is what I saw from my window when I woke up the next morning as we were arriving in Cozumel. Fabulous. This was on the beach in Cozumel. We were kind of disappointed that this was the beach we ended up at because the water wasn't very pretty close to the shore and it was more of a tourist trap than the exotic Caribbean fantasy beach I had in mind. But we had a great time.

Behind us in this photo you see what I mean by tourist trap: water trampoline and a slide, plus huge mats floating in the water to lay on. Even though they didn't contribute to the natural surroundings, I really enjoyed laying on that mat. And we actually climbed up and went down that slide together. I'm sure it was not a pretty sight, so glad we don't have pics of that adventure.

Here we are getting back to the ship after a long day of shopping and hanging at the beach.

We sailed all night and arrived the next morning in Calica. I was so excited about the excursion we had planned for that day- until the next morning when we found out it had been cancelled. We were supposed to have gotten on a catamaran similar to the one in the photo below and travel out to several fabulous reefs to snorkel.

At the last minute we booked a cavern tour in which we thought we would be snorkeling in some awesome caverns. Wrong. It was hot and muggy and there was barely more than a few muddy puddles in those caverns. After visiting the fabulous caverns in the Ozarks where Chris and Kathryn live, these were just disappointing.

Here we are attempting to make the best of our excursion:

Here's when I realized that this was nothing close to the cavern snorkling tour I thought we had paid for. I also kept thinking about that catamaran we should have been on.

Cliff kept telling me to suck it up and quit complaining until he realized why they made us wear the hardhats. This 6'3" boy had to duck almost the whole time. This wasn't just a cavern tour. It was real, live speleunking.

Here he is finally agreeing with me that this bites.

So we amused ourselves by taking silly photos. Here's a couple who thought the caverns were awesome and did not show up wearing beach wear like us.

The tip bowl at the end of the tour. I think the photo speaks for itself.

Just when we thought it was over, we had to hike a mile through their "jungle park" to get back to our bus. We got to see some exotic Mexican animals, such as these white tailed deer.

At this point I am so over this excursion, but then I met a cool monkey. He freaked me out grabbing onto my dress. I think he wanted me to bust him out of that terrible park.

Being dorky. After that was finally over, we were pumped for the second half of our tour, another beach. They redeemed themselves when I got to my chair and saw this:

No touristy stuff at this one. Just natural water and beach. And some huts made out of limbs and grass. Loved it.

Back on the boat for dinner. The sunset was too bright to get a good pic.

I tried to rock that flower at work a couple of weeks ago, but it was determined that wearing flowers in your hair is only acceptable when you're on vacation. Or if you're Amelia, in which case they are always acceptable.

Ouch, Cliff's legs look really painful. Boys never listen regarding sunscreen.

Another attempt at a sunset pic on our last night, but my camera lens kept fogging up. And the wind kept totally ruining my hair in pics. But it felt fabulous.

Sunset over the Caribbean:

Ahh, paradise. But as fabulous as that was, I think this is the most excited we were during the whole trip:

Almost home to see our sweet baby! It was like waiting for Christmas. We couldn't get there fast enough. We thought we might hurt her we hugged and kissed her so hard. And we haven't stopped loving on her since! Thanks to Grammy and Papa for making the sacrifice and keeping her. I'll be back later with an update on her 8 month old tricks and perhaps even a couple of photos if you can believe it.