as promised...here's a blog about the girls. miss lucy and miss olive are growing up so fast! we've had such a good summer, and though we don't go to school (or work, for that matter) i still feel like we should by school supplies, new backpacks, and new shoes right now...but we won't. so here's a not so quick re-cap.

1. OLIVE is now 9 months. (i know, can you believe it!) in the past months she has started crawling really fast..and gets faster when she knows she's going somewhere she's not supposed to. i am blaming her friend nate for telling her about the little caps on the base of the toilet and how fun they are to put in your mouth (GROSS!!!) and play with...thanks nate. btw, baby gates are from hell. i am so tired of them already and they've only been up for a few weeks. at least i'm not really pregnant and trying to step over them like last year.

olive also now has 5 1/2 teeth. that's right...three and a half on top and two on bottom. she's an excellent biter. i'm thinking of getting one of those step counter things...but have it changed to count how many times i say "what did you put in your mouth" in a day. oh wow...it's insane...lucy was not this bad. she is also, pulling up on everything. she'd rather stand at the coffee table all day and dance than do anything else. she's so funny. she's started waving and trying to blow kisses, and even doing this weird winking thing. she is also making lots of sounds...which mostly sound like "mama," of course :)

we had a little scare last week when olive woke up, trying to breathe, was kinda purple, face swollen. and i totally freaked out. it was about 11 at night, so we woke up lucy and ran out the door to the ER. by the time we got there, of course, she was mostly fine...but she was barely breathing...and i wasn't going anywhere till we found out why. so after a fun night in the ER with two sleepy girls (and a sleepy daddy, who fell asleep at one point) we found out she had croup. which is usually taken care of in a steamy bathroom or by going outside. that would have been a lot cheaper than the bill... jk, she had to take a steroid to reduce the swelling of her airways. so it's all okay. and she was better off than the guy who came in who had just been stabbed...wah, wahhh.

2. LUCY is as crazy as ever. she's totally obsessed with the grinch and watches it maybe once a day or at least once every two days. yeah...it's a problem. her new favorite things to do are: stealing olive's pacifier, eating desitin (well, that's not new), not want to sleep in her bed....you know, the usual. her most recent favorite sayings are "i need that," as in "i need olive's pacifier i just stole from her." and "I want take it," for when she grabs anything in site to take in the car with her every time we go somewhere, or when she needs to pick up 5 sticks to take with her in the car. apparently she's a very needy and greedy child... not really. she really is sweet. she is picking up on everything and saying so much.

she loves going to library storytime, a small cherry lemonade from sonic, and long walks at the park. ha. she is very adventurous, meaning she's taken off up the climbing things at the park...and i've got to crawl up in there and get her down. not fun or pretty. or she'll just hang on the bars and i have to rush over, while holding olive, and save her from crashing to the ground...she is very brave. and i cannot even express how much she loves dressing up. i know she gets it from her aunt ann. it is absolutely ridiculous.

3. I am currently staying busy with the girls. And with my etsy stuff. I am coming up with new ideas and actually making a little money at it...not bad. i've also done a few cakes here lately. i really enjoy it, even though i have A LOT to learn. I'm enjoying figuring out how to do all this fun stuff...and they taste pretty good too! sad note...prepare yourself...don't cry...my iphone is dying. and very slow and painful death, well, at least for me. it has gone crazy and will only work when it wants and then just randomly shuts off all the time. it's so frustrating. i think lucy is having a hard time with it as well..she had at least 10 games she loved to play on it...

most exciting right now...i am getting ready to start a new business with one of my dear friends, cara beth. i am not going to give too much away just yet...but our website should be up in the next couple of weeks! we've already got business cards and all...super exciting.

4. RYAN is really busy with all the new church stuff. we've had our first few gatherings and are planning for this month. he did a fabulous job designing the website and i am so proud of him. we have a lot of exciting things happening with the church and are so excited about the people who are coming on board with us. it's so great to actually have others who share our vision for what we moved here 2 years ago to do.

he also is the best husband ever (i meant to blog about this, but haven't had time) because he planned a surprise anniversary trip for us! we celebrated 6 years on august 16, and we went to eureka springs for the night and had a great time! it's so nice to get away and spend time together...which we never get to do. we had a great room at the basin hotel (which is apparently haunted...we didn't see any ghosts though, i was disappointed), and spent the day walking around taking pictures and going into quirky little shops. it was a much needed break from life.

well, that's all for now. i will post some pictures soon...i promise. a little at a time, please. i would add a few iphone pics...but again, my phone is dead.

for those of you who do not know, ryan is an amazing writer. let's be honest...what is he not good at? okay, i know i could come up with something, but i won't. he is an advertising art director at arkansas business publishing group, and was recently asked to write a little piece for little rock soirée. i have heard this story many times, yet i was so drawn in while reading it...i've read it maybe 4 times now. i know you will enjoy it too. and i'm so proud of him! also, check out ryan's blog.





The city is full of strangers. Well, maybe not strangers, but people waiting to cross paths. To engage. To enter the other.

So it was with Charlie. A Jesus-like figure. Not the triumphant Jesus, but the frail, broken Jesus. Scruff beard, gaunt, but with a focused look about him—like a man on a mission.

Beyond the occasional sputtering car or the screechy pack of girls chasing the lone neighborhood boy, our little midtown community was still, waiting for its break from normalcy. From my front porch, I observed this strange figure, this break from normalcy, who—sweeping his wiry broom through the nearly-clean sidewalk in front of our home—looked like the type my wife warned about: “You keep talking to people like that and I’m gonna find you dead one day.”

I approached.

Like a low man’s scepter, he hoisted his broom in the air pointing toward our house, “It’s Charlie. Like the Peanuts kid. I used to jam here.”

“Come again?”

“The name’s Charlie. Yeah, this house, you live there? (Never ceasing for a response.) We used to sit up ‘til we couldn’t sit up no more, just jammin’. There’s soul in them walls. And probably a couple tears. And maybe a couple spilled beers,” he concluded.

I baited his most-assuredly tall tale, sure to only grow taller.

“Sounds like quite the time you had. Did you used to live here?”

“No, no, no. I ain’t got no place. Not since the band broke up down in New Orleans. Nah, I used to come jam here. Hell, we coulda been somethin’, but we just liked to jam and have a couple of beers. Phil played the guitar, and I played that old piano he had. Phil’s brother, Mark, would slap his leg or beat on whatever the hell we had layin’ around just so we had somethin’ to keep the beat. I ain’t never stepped back in that house since maybe ‘88. I’ll tell you, that old piano could play, and I knew how to play it. I ain’t never forgot that old thing.”

Little did my new friend know, but that old, dusty piano of Phil’s still sat in our living room, just waiting to be reunited with its supposed long-lost homeless messiah named Charlie. So, I couldn’t help but to—like Satan testing Jesus in the wilderness—invite him in so I could shake the proverbial finger, showing Charlie just how tangled his tale was woven.

Abandoning his dutiful quest on the sidewalk, Charlie skipped behind me, up the steps and through the doors. We rounded the corner and faced the piano. I turned, “Here she is. Is this what you remember?”

In that moment, Charlie changed from a dirtied storyteller into a beaming prodigal, newly reunited with his father. Without saying a word, the worldly Jesus-man opened the hinged piano cover and began to play.

With tears in his eyes, his broken and calloused fingers glided over the keys, playing the most sweet and palpable bluesy riffs, as if Ray Charles himself had inhabited the diminutive body and hands of this new friend.

That day, in my own home, I was the stranger, quietly observing two old friends renewing their bond.

I simply sat. And listened. And believed.

Charlie was a stranger, in a city full of strangers. On that day, though, Charlie and I crossed paths. Jesus-like. Not the broken, frail Jesus, but the triumphant Jesus. Like a man on a mission.

so yeah, i haven't blogged now in over a month. i am just not good at this. when i do have things to say, i don't have time to blog about them. so i am now on twitter, so you can follow me on there if you like my sarcastic comments or thoughts on potty-training. so i just thought i'd give you a rundown of what's been going on in our lives lately. a lot has changed. and i got an iPhone, so you will have pictures along with your blogging pleasure!

1. we have moved! we moved the beginning of march, across town to the quapaw quarter. we love it! we have a nice yard for lucy to play with her "elmo bubbles." lucy and olive have started sharing a room, which is going fairly well. lucy sleeps a lot better in this house anyway, so they don't bother each other much.

2. lucy is doing great with potty-training. she's almost mastered it! yeah for being a big girl. she got some elmo panties, i had to use that word because ryan thinks it's gross. he will only use the word underwear, which lucy can't say. so she loves wearing them and saying "elmo panties." (just had to throw that in there again.) she is also saying so much! she's repeating everything you say (not always a good thing) and putting together words. she has grown up a lot over the past month. i mean, she'll be 2 in may...what happened! we're trying to break her of the pacifier right now. yeah, it's way past time...i know. she's about got her room all set up. the other day she had a tea party...with her ugly dinosaur. i'm glad to know she loves everyone...



3. olive is growing as well. she's 4 months old now. she is so pretty and just so sweet. she's laughing now and playing with toys. she can pull out her pacifier and tries to put it back in. one of these photos is her when she got it back in by herself...upside down. she is still so good...sleeping through the night and just generally being quiet and not causing any problems. lucy got a little bored the other night and decided to decorate olive with the laundry...at least it was clean!



4. we went to the zoo this past week with my parents and ashten. lucy loves animals, so she had a blast...except when she just got so sleepy and turned into a little monster. other than that, it was great. i carried olive the whole time, which was fun! shocking...we both got a little sunburned...me and my pasty white kids!



5. this weekend we had some friends come visit from paducah. my friends beth and terri, that i used to work with came to visit us for the first time. i wish the weather had been better, but we had fun shopping and hanging out...minus a little puking incident in the car...haha.

well, that's all for now. i'll hopefully be back soon with more updates. and maybe more pictures!

here's little olive sleeping next to me while i'm blogging.

i must say, my favorite times of day are in the morning when everyone is waking up and in the evening when it's time to go to bed. mainly because in the morning, we all pile into our bed, where we watch mickey mouse clubhouse until ryan can't take it anymore and changes the channel. we mainly have to keep lucy from kicking olive in the head because she can get a bit silly. we are not morning people, so we stay in bed as long as we possibly can. this leads to a lot of crumbs in our bed because we let lucy eat breakfast in our bed. however messy it may be, it's always nice to spend that time together.

ryan always calls me an old person because i've started going to bed so early. it mainly started when i was pregnant and went to bed at like 8:30 every night because i was so exhausted. now, i love to lay with the girls in our bed before we make lucy go to bed. sometimes she just crashes and falls out completely. other times, she could be so near sleep, but if ryan comes to get her she gets up and tries to run away from him on the bed. and eventually gives in. in the bottom picture, you can't see it, but lucy is also holding her nativity figurines. apparently mickey and goofy were at jesus' birth. btw, nice hair lucy.

thanks to my wonderful husband, who just happens to be an excellent photographer....we have great pictures from olive's birth. i have clearly had no time or motivation to take pictures, so he has picked up the slack in that area, and they really look great. i'm so excited about them! i will take credit for the picture of him holding olive right after she was born, only b/c it's my favorite! these are just a few, to see the rest, go to my flickr page.

also, check out ryan's blog for more updates!

welcome to babybyrds.com! this is the new home for all things, well, baby byrds. this is where you can come to check up on lucy and olive...and all other byrd children to come. and, in the process, you'll get a little glimpse of what's going on with christen and ryan.

mainly, christen will be blogging and giving updates on the girls (although this is ryan writing this post). i'll be on here from time to time, but this will mainly be christen's thing.

also, do a couple things for us:

1. bookmark/subscribe to our rss feed. you'll notice a link to the right in the sidebar. it will help you keep up and it makes us feel important... :)
2. check back soon/often. right now, as you can see, we don't really have any other pages up right now. we'll probably have, at least, an about us page and maybe a photo album page. for the time being, i just wanted to get up the home/blog page to get the ball rolling (because we very well might be putting this site to good use in the coming days if olive decides to pop out).

so, enjoy the site!