TV Comsumption

I love mornings. And by morning, I mean mid-morning. I'm not a getter-upper at 5am type of gal. Luckily my girls are usually on the same wavelength and we wake up around 7-7:30. Key words there are "wake up." Then we usually lounge around in bed and play upstairs for a bit, making our way down for breakfast eventually. This is as long as we don't have to be somewhere super early. I've learned to not make plans early because we like to take our time, we live 30 minutes from anywhere, and I'm usually late to begin with. I love being able to enjoy breakfast, have my tea and just go with the flow. The girls, on most days, end up outside. Since we live in the dessert and our yard is very natural (as in we haven't done a single thing to groom it, YET!) I anticipate tears pretty much every time we go outside. Whether it's falling and scraping hands on rocks, stepping on a giant thorn, or running into a cactus. I should just send them out in full armor...swinging may not be as enjoyable at that point. Either way, it's beautiful up here in the mornings, especially now that "fall" has set it. It's hard to complain when I don't have anything to technically do. I mean, there is always cleaning, laundry, parenting, etc, etc...but sometimes I just want to watch Modern Family while eating fritos dipped in cream cheese and ignore my kids for 30 minutes. I'm not alone here, right? RIGHT?

Speaking of Modern Family. It's hilarious. Ian totally had a Phil Dunphy moment the other day and it made me laugh. I wish I could remember the joke he made. He was so proud of it and I just stared at him blankly, wondering how he thought that could ever be funny. More importantly, how much TV does your family watch? I'm not super concerned with my kids' well-being because they watch cartoons. I used to be weird about it, but I notice Piper does learn from some shows and still enjoys playing with toys, friends, and has a blossoming imagination. I'm not worried she will be a slug that stares at the TV screen whilst chomping on chips, otherwise known as a "couch potato," or basically myself as I described above. HA! Fritos are made of corn, so it doesn't apply....I digress.

I would say on average, I sit down and watch TV for an hour a day. I'm not going to add in the SEVEN hours of Grey's Anatomy I watched on Saturday (I may or may not have had too much wine the night before). It's usually in the evening after the girls are in bed or in the afternoon if they are both sleeping and I can actually watch something, uninterrupted. Now, if Ian is home, that number jumps significantly. He is a total TV guy. It's on alllllllll the time when he is around. Even if he is in the garage listening to 610 radio, it's on. It drives me insane. As for Piper --Willow could care less about TV, she's too busy attempting to summit anything taller than her -- she watches on average 1-2 hours a day. This number fluctuates obviously. Some days cartoons never get turned on and others they are on for WAY too long. We do limit what she watches, it's usually NickJr (with the exception of Spongebob), PBS, or a movie.

So again, how much TV do you guys watch? What do you think is average?

here are the pics from this morning...enjoi!

Willow is ONE

WOW. This year flew by. Willow is such an incredible child. She is growing so fast and says something new every day. She is wily, spunky, sensitive, silly, beautiful, and the list goes on and on and on...

It's funny how a nickname evolves. It was Willie first, then Willie Billie, then Billie, then B's, then BB's...who knows? We just call her BB's most of the time.  She is a total momma's girls and she gets into EVERYTHING. I mop up the spilled dog water multiple times a day. Why don't I just move the dog's water, you may ask? I'm honestly not sure. As my sister would say, she is a meddler. She toddles around all day, completely tearing up the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom, pulling every book off of the bookshelf, gleefully unloading a drawer if I leave one open...all the while leaving a wake of stuff behind her.  She has finally decided she will sleep through the night in her own bed, sometimes. She is walking like a champ. In fact, she marched down the entire driveway tonight on our evening walk (our driveway is about a quarter mile long!) Her first word other than "mama" and "dada," was "dog." She is following in her sister's footsteps with that! She is a handful, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Willow is special to us. She has a way with people; she has the ability to just suck you in with one look. There is something about this child I can't describe. Ian and I have tried to describe to each other this "specialness," but we can't find the words. If I'm having a momemt, a snuggle from Willow is good medicine. I can tell she has a tender soul and will be and amazing sister and friend. For now I would just appreciate it if she would stop getting so big and just be my little BB's.

Her actual birthday was the 2nd. We were in Kansas visiting friends and family and I didn't update the blog for weeks. I'll dump my iPhone pics on the next post, since i forgot my camera and I have zero "real" pics from the entire trip. Errrggg.

Here are the pics my sister  (at Knecht Images) took about a month ago. Enjoi!