Nothing Cuter Than a Kid with Puppies!

Our friends who gave us Wheezy had another litter of puppies and invited Lu over to play! What a day!

Catching up again...

Ok, so I'm not very good at keeping up with the blog now that I've got 2 kids to take care of. The main problem is that I check my email and facebook on my blackberry, but cannot update my blog on the blackberry, so sometimes I go many many days without getting on the computer at all.

But anyway, enough excuses, here are 2 recent pictures of Myffy! I have to admit, I no longer blame my mother for there being so few photos of me as a child. When you have two kids, the camera never seems to be in reach when they do something cute or photo worthy. The Criminal Mastermind shirt was sent to Myffy by my Bryn Mawr friend Sara Zatz. Cute, huh?

And here is Myffy in her super soft and fuzzy winter coat that her auntie Shana gave her. Unfortunately she did spit up all over it this day, but it will soon be washed and fluffy again!

In other news, Stew very badly sprained his ankle the other day. Not getting stepped on by a horse, or kicked by a calf. Which would have been a better story than the truth. No, he was just shopping in Sam's club with Lula when she suddenly took off around the end of an aisle while he was reaching into the fridge to grab some milk, he turned to chase here and rolled the ankle. No fall. No impact. And yet look at all the bruising and trauma!

Here's the ankle the next day after I made him go to the Urgent Care Clinic for an x-ray. They told him it wasn't broken but he should ice it and stay off of it. I tried to get him to get crutches or at least a walking stick, but proud Stewie refused. At least he did ice and elevate it quite a bit the first day or two, but he's a horrible patient. He gets so bored sitting still that he kept getting up over and over. Oi! I'd shout, what do you need? I'll get it! But if I was attending to one child or the other, or cooking, or doing something else, he wouldn't want to wait or bother me, so he kept getting up. After 2 days I gave up. It's your ankle, you're the one who's gonna pay for it if you don't give it enough recovery time. He says it's much better today, but just look at these photos. Ugh.

Lu's new Rocking Horse

So I'm back tracking a bit on blog posts. This was recorded just before Myffy was born, when my mom, Lu's Grammy, brought a new rocking horse over to the in-town house where we were staying before the birth. Lu loves riding horses!

Myffanwy's Birth Day

Sept. 28th, 2009 at 5am Stew and I drove to the hospital and took one last photo of the enormous belly in the garage before going in to give birth. The OB wing of the Flagstaff Medical Center was completely empty of other patients when we got there which made for a very nice and relaxed atmosphere. Early labor took awhile, and nothing very exciting happened until around 5pm when I was dialated 5cm, had just gotten my epidural, was ready to take a nap and the nurse told Stew he had plenty of time to go out to pick up some dinner. "Sure, no problem," I told Stew. "Go get something good to eat. We might be here for awhile." After that I promptly fell asleep. About 20 minutes later I was awoken when the baby's head crowned. I called the nurse who took one look below and said "Call your husband, I'll call the doctor. Don't push! Whatever you do, don't push!"

Stew raced back to the hospital, Dr. Claxton raced to the hospital, and they both made it just in time for me to push three times, and POW! There was she was.
Myffanwy Turrell Anderson

7lbs 3 oz

19.5 inches long

Here she is just after they wiped the weird white stuff off of her and handed her to me in the delivery room.

Exhausted but happy Mom.

Proud Papa.

Me and my Girls!!! Lu is having to make some adjustments to no longer being an only child, but she's handling it all pretty well. At first she wasn't very happy about seeing Myffy nurse, but now she'll sit right next to us and cuddle up on my other side and sometimes even fall asleep as Myffy does. Sweet girls.

An older video of Lu playing her little pink drum kit

So now that I've learned how to upload video onto my blog I wanted to post a couple of older videos of Lu that I never managed to show anyone. Here is one of Lu playing her Christmas drum kit that didn't really end up being a Christmas present last year. It arrived in November and Stew just couldn't help setting it up and giving it to her right away. She was about 1 and a half back then. Check out the technique!

2 weeks and counting

So we're down to the final 2 week countdown for the birth of "new baby". I'm feeling excited and very ready not to be pregnant anymore. I can't believe how huge I've become and am having a bit of trouble getting around. Especially chasing the very lively little miss Lu. But Stew has been helping by doing some more Daddy and Lula days, like taking her to the free-play gymnastics time at summit gymnastics.

Here she is playing with some of the nice soft bouncy toys.

And here she is after playing for over an hour. All tuckered out and ready to sleep a good night's sleep. Hooray!

In other news I have finally and at long last finished stitching the cover art for the new Mytty Archer album. Hooray! And we're just waiting for our friend Lauk to stick everything into the template for us.

Here's some of the text that I stitched onto card stock as well. I will have to have a little bit of actual type for the spine and the acknowledgements and stuff, but for the most part, I managed to stitch the bulk of it. So glad it's finally done and can't wait for the cd to come out. Here's hoping some people will actually buy it and listen to it now. If you want a preview, we posted a few songs on the mytty archer myspace at www.myspace.com/myttyarcher and once it's done it will be available from www.indiepages.com/boyracer/mailorder.html

I've not been getting a ton of new babyracer stuff done these days, but I have continued to work on a few new fall designs, like these fall trees. I've done them in a few different colors and sizes but haven't managed to list them in my etsy store yet. I'll try to do it in the next week or so since I think I'll be a bit busy once the new baby is here.

Other than that we're just excited that Dave and Vicki (Stew's parents) will be visiting soon and will be here for the birth of the baby. Lu won't be allowed in the hospital at all while we are there because of regular flu and swine flu season so we're hoping she'll have a good time hanging with the grandparents while we're there. Fingers crossed for a fast and easy labor!

Tallulah's First Ride

Tallulah is completely obsessed with horses.  And anything that looks vaguely like a horse (zebras, mules, donkeys, deer, etc.).  She can watch Black Beauty and National Velvet over and over without losing an ounce of enthusiasm for every run, jump, and movement each horse makes.  When The Pie jumps over the fences at the Grand National, Lu's little feet leave the ground and she squeals with delight.  She hardly ever leaves the house without some sort of horse toy clutched tightly in her hand for the car ride and sometimes refuses to put her horse down to eat.  Unfortunately we don't trust any of our ranch horses with our little Lu, but our neighbors Jason and Melissa have a three year old daughter named Wren and a very gentle mule named Jesse and they very kindly invited Lu for a ride.  So here it is, her very first real ride!

I think we're going to have to get her involved in the local Pony Club soon so she can get some lessons and meet some other horse-obsessed kids!  I looked at one of the websites and they had pictures of a 3 year old riding by himself.  And I was happy to see that they train for both English and Western events.  I figure Lu should learn both since she's half English and half American.  Maybe a bit of barrel racing mixed with some English Pleasure?  And now that I finally figured out how to upload video clips as well as photos (thanks to my lovely little Mac) I can try to keep up to date with my blog more often!

Love from the LowDown,

Jen, Stew and little Lu

PS- Nearly 4 weeks and counting to New Baby Day!

Catching up

Boy oh boy has it been a long time since that last post.  Well, a lot has happened since then.  For one thing, I finally made the switch back to Mac from PC and couldn't be happier.  Everything media-related now just magically works!  I hit the power button, the computer comes on, no weird messages telling me it wasn't shut down properly or that it can't recognize it's own battery all of a sudden, and no more mysteriously disappearing programs and files.  Photos, music, video, everything just works!  Now if Obama can just come through with that rural broadband internet access program I'd be all set.

Lu has been loving playing in her new play room since the weather has gotten warm and we've opened it up for the summer.  Here she is as princess TP wearing a headdress and train of her own design.  So that's where all the toilet paper has been going...

We have also finally finished recording and mixing the new Mytty Archer album "if i had a shovel'.  Lu helped Daddy out with the mixing of course.  She's our little mix master.  I'm still working on the hand stitched cover art (I'm stitching everything, including all the song titles and text- might be biting off more than I can chew with this one) and we're waiting on the master, but it should be out sometime in the fall.  Check out

 www.myspace.com/myttyarcher to hear a few songs!

In other music-related news, we have also set-up a new download site for boyracer and boyracer-related stuff at www.boyracer.bandcamp.com.  We really like this site because there are no third party fees other than the paypal transaction fees, but it's also hard to get traffic there relative to iTunes and other, bigger sites, so we're just using this for exclusive and limited-time downloads that won't be available through larger retailers.  We're also planning to always have something up for free, so please check it out from time to time to see what treats are there!

Most importantly of all, Lu had her 2nd Birthday in May.  Annah and David came out from CA to help throw the party.  Annah handled food, drink, and party favors, David provided the Magic Show, Shana picked up the ice cream cake that wouldn't fit in our freezer overnight so it would arrive still frozen, Danica assisted with the Magic Show, Tamlyn and Coml brought Eve out to play with Lu, and AJ and Monika drove all the way up from Prescott to spend the day.  A good time was generally had by all.

In other news, I am now only about 6 weeks away from the birth of the new baby, who we have been calling "new baby" so far.  I'm bigger, heavier, and have been having a lot more early contractions and twinges this time than I did with Lu, but luckily I've also been up and around a bit more towards the end of this pregnancy.  I've even managed to do some crafting lately so I've put up some new fall colors and new designs up on my www.babyracer.etsy.com store.  Please check them out if you have time.  I can always do custom orders too if you see something you like in the wrong size, color, etc.

Out of the Loop...

Okay, so I haven't posted since early February for a number of reasons. One is that I haven't been crafting much (just trying to learn how to knit). Another is that Lu and I haven't really done anything exciting or gone anywhere fun. Also I got my computer "fixed" and now it will no longer recognize my camera when I plug it in so I can't put pictures in. And I haven't been taking pictures anyway.

But the real reason behind all of this (except for the technical difficulties that is), is that we are now expecting another baby. Babyracer #2! We are all very excited about this (well, I've been trying to get Lu excited, but I'm not sure she really understands. She will sometimes pat my belly and say 'baby?' a bit quizically), but I am also, once again, extremely ill. So ill that I immediately went on the anti-nausea drugs that I agonized so over taking during the last pregnancy, and even so have already had to go get rehydration via IV several times. So that's the state of things here at the Low Down. I'm not quite on complete bed rest, but tend to vomit whenever I go vertical from a horizontal position, smell anything, try to eat food, talk about food, something even think about food... Sometimes food isn't involved at all.

Lu is going a little stir crazy with the restrictions this has caused in her life, but Stew has tried to help by getting her a new sand pit to play in and we're going to put up one of those all-in-one playgrounds with slide, swings, climbing area, playhouse, etc before her birthday so she won't miss trips to the park in town quite as much.

So that's the news. I'll try to get the computer/camera problem solved here soon so Lu's overseas family can see how much she's grown lately, but realistically, don't expect much for the next several months because things like getting on line have become pretty low priority next to ingesting nutrients for the new baby and trying to keep Lu's life as interesting as possible.

Due date Oct. 4th!

Lu's trip to LA

So Lu and I took a short trip to LA a couple of weekends ago and Lu got her very first hair cut from her Auntie Annah. I couldn't believe how much hair we cut off and when it all curls back up it looks like we hardly cut any. We saved a couple of curls of course.

Lu also went to the LA zoo. This was great fun, but unfortunately it was hard for her to see very many of the animals. The enclosures are so big and she got tired of getting in and out of the stroller so much, but at least she got a good view of a few. Like these!

Lu loved hanging out with Annah at the zoo.

And when she could see an animal from her view by the fence, she watched them very closely to see what they would do.

Lu also had a play date with her 2nd cousin (?) or maybe cousin one removed (?) Anyway, the son of my cousin Colleen, Max. Lu and Max sort of acknowledged each other, and played near each other, ate some food at the same table, and were generally agreeable. Maybe next time they meet up they'll both be into more interactive play.

New Stuff!

The new year has been busy and exciting and it suddenly seems much harder to keep up with things like posting blogs. But I have been trying out some new things for Babyracer. Most recently, these new vinyl cuffs. What do you think? Here are a bunch. I still need to add snaps to a few.








Here's a close up of the Valentine Cuff.

Here's a Mod Arrow Cuff.

And the back.

I also finished a new version of the vinyl bag for vinyl records. Mod Arrows to match the cuffs.

Here's a close up of the two-tone handle. Every stitch done by hand.

And here's the finished version of the English Flag Bag. They take me a very long time to complete. Especially now that I'm trying to line them. So I think I'll try to get several together before I list them on the site.

Here's a side view showing the babyracer logo embroidered in with pink floss.

And yes we are still putting out new vinyl records through 555 Recordings. Here are some of the covers we just screened for the new Huon 12" which should be coming soon! Look out for other releases in the 555 100 series!