Seriously Sweet

This little girl is so so sweet. Even teething and grouchy she is sweet. Here she is with bunny lovey and her blanket all ready for bed. She sucks on the ears of her bunny lovey as she falls asleep or cuddling. It's this weird cute and gross thing all at once. I have to wash that thing at least once a week. We really need to invest in another one.

On a side note. Can you see the little scab under her eye? Well, she has taken to pulling on her eyelashes while falling asleep. So far I don't think she has pulled them out. But she keeps scratching up underneath her eyes. I feel like I have to explain it to everyone who sees her because it looks pretty goofy those scabs and scratches on her face. 

So onto my problem right now....all I want to do is play with little Adalyn. She is so much fun to make laugh and giggle. Really it's just so easy. Make a silly sound and it has her cracking up. She is the best cuddlier, too. She snuggles her head into your neck. So sweet. She is starting to wave and even pick up on a few signs I've been teaching her. All her problems are solved with food/bottle, a diaper change, a nap or a snuggle. Her little world is just so simple. Have fun, eat and sleep.

Then there is my son. A 4 year old ball of emotions. He has huge highs and super low lows (even as a baby he was like this). It's like riding an intense roller coaster ALL day long. One moment he is happy and we are playing or cuddling. The next he is pissed off and stomping down the hallway slamming his door like a teenager. His problems really most often are unsolvable or so complicated in his mind that I can't help make things right. I don't me wrong. I love him to pieces. He is so smart and has the best stories and ideas. When he is on an up swing time with him can be really fun and nice. When he is in a helping mood he is the best helper ever. It's just those lows that get me by the end of the day.

So you see my dilemma right now!?! Though I love them both....my little baby girl just takes the prize at this moment. I work hard every day to make sure I give my undivided attention to Shane. I think so far I am hiding my secret well. I got to snuggle in bed with Shane tonight. We had a nice quiet talk together. Those are the moments that make the roller coaster ride not so bad in the end.

Six Years

Did you know the traditional gift for your 6th wedding anniversary is iron? I found this list of ideas:


- Weight set
- Boxset of Robert Downey Jr. movies (you know, because he's Ironman)
- A set of cookbooks from Food Networks Iron Chefs
- New gate to spruce up your home
- Cast iron skillet
- Football tickets to watch the battle on the gridiron
-Gold Club

The whole thing sorta made me chuckle. After more research I found out that the modern gift is wood. As Kenny and I are celebrating are 6th year of marriage today, we will be purchasing ourselves some trees for the back yard. Now doesn't that sound oh so romantic.

Car Seat Strap Pads

Adalyn recently moved into her convertible car seat. I really don't care for the infant carrier, at least in the sense it is so awkward for me to carry. I am just too short and having it bang against my legs just isn't fun. Even when she was smaller I would just take her out of it and carry her in my arms most of the time.

My point is that her new car seat doesn't have pads on the straps. There have been enough times in the last couples weeks that I have pulled her out and found red marks on her neck. OUCH! Plus, she has been getting fussy in her seat, so I am hoping pads will make it more comfortable. Since we will be in the car 12+ hours in a couple days, I thought it would be best I stopped thinking about making those pads and just do it.

Twenty minutes later (including clean-up and answering 100+ questions from Shane) voila, I have car seat strap pads.

I had all the materials I needed at home already so they were free basically. It looks like on Amazon they run $4-$10. I choose not to buy mine for two reasons. I kept putting it off and didn't have enough time before our trip. Secondly, I feel like a bunch of the store bought ones are to long. They make you have to put the chest piece lower then I think it is should to be for safety reasons. I found this tutorial online, but found it to be slightly more complicated then I had in mind.

This is a quick little walk through on what I did, just in case you want to whip up some for your kiddo. Oh, and I am NOT a sewer. Straight lines are all I can do. Also, on my side for time...the sewing machine was all ready to go. No re-threading, etc. That part always sets me back way to long.

I used a piece of fabric for the outside cover and two pieces of felt for the inside padding.  I made the felt slightly smaller inside the fabric. I used my strap as a basic guide in width and length.

 Then I sewed both sides shut. I just folded over the fabric ends onto the felt. Super easy!

 Then I finished it off with two strips of Velcro on the opposite ends.

 Viola! Super quick and easy. No were near perfect either. But for free and only 20 minutes, I don't think you can beat that!

Garden 2011

Our garden this year is fully under way. Here is a little tour of what we have going on.

Here we have a dill plant and 3 rhubarb plants. The first one on the left you can't see since it doesn't have any leaves yet. I can't wait to use the rhubarb next year!

The back box has 5 pumpkin plants. I wasn't going to do pumpkin again this year. But the cul-de-sac we used to live in is having a pumpkin growing contest. How could I turn down that challenge. Thanks, Julie. Now we MUST produce a pumpkin this year!!

The front box has carrots and lettuce. This was the first year I tried lettuce by the seed. Seems to have done fine.

 The back box here has miniature sunflowers. They are growing REALLY slow.

The front box has strawberries. We started last year with 5 or 6 plants. They have just gone crazy in a year. The big problem this year is the dogs have discovered a taste for strawberries. Too many times we've found them in the middle of the strawberry patch eating every single beautiful ripe strawberry. Dang, Dogs!!! We've gotten our hands on a few of them.

Finally, we have two tomato plants up on our deck. They started in the garden, but were doing really poor there. I transferred them into pots. They have taken off since then. We've had two ripe cherry tomatoes so far. 

Wordless Wednesday

One More Reason

There is a long list of reasons that we won't be adding an additional baby to this family ever, but the one screaming in my head the most right now is TEETHING! We are in the midst of teething with Adalyn and it is not fun AT ALL. Her bottom two teeth came in with some fussiness on and off. Along with some extra wake-ups in the middle of the night. But all in all it wasn't too bad. Now her top two teeth are coming in and it is UGLY. Our even tempered baby is a hot mess on and off all day long. I can't wait for those two little suckers to pop through her gum. We can see them sitting right there just causing a ruckus. Big white bumps sitting underneath her gum line. I can only imagine that it is so uncomfortable. Thank goodness for this: Borion Camilia. It really appears to help keep her irritability down to a level we can deal with. I went to get more of it at the store a few days ago, so we'd be stocked up for our road trip/vacation coming up soon. They were out!!!! I freaked. Luckily, I was able to track some down at another store. Please, baby teeth come through before we are in the car with Miss Adalyn for 14 hours!!!!!

If you have a teething kiddo this is also a great resource: Ten Natural Teething Remedies.

Flashback Friday

Shane and Adalyn at 8 months:

 

Kids Were Here Week 4

This is the last week of my photography challenge. I really enjoyed doing it. I certainly found a new appreciation for the little beings in our house. Their messes can actually be kinda cool when you look at them through the lens of a camera. It also made me want to learn a bunch more about lighting, because it is so key to taking good pictures. I have a photography class I will be taking soon...maybe those questions will get answered.

Wordless Wednesday

8 months old

Adalyn Makenna is 8 months old today! Here are some highlights from her last month of life.

Milestones: She is a fast little crawler and a huge explorer. Unlike her Big Brother (who even as a crawler never left my side), she has no problem heading down the hallway to check things out. I often find her in Shane's bedroom where she can get her hands on all kinds of things she shouldn't. Her favorite room in the house, for sure! I love it when she crawls over to me and bats at my ankles asking to be picked up. She is standing up on everything now. If I am sitting on the floor all she wants to do is climb all over me and practice her moves.

Sleeping: She has pretty much as of last week dropped down to two naps a day. Her bedtime has gotten later (6-7pm) and she is finally sleeping in past the 5am hour. We may even be getting close to having a consistent napping schedule, which would be SO nice. I would say during the last 2 weeks she has been up only once per night more often then twice per night. Which is also a HUGE deal. Her night time sleeping stretches are slowly but surely going any where between 5-9 hours at a time. Progress...oh, so, slow...but progress none-the-less.

Food: She is a full on solid/finger food eating kiddo. We continued to try and offer baby food at each meal up until this last week, but it was such a waste because she truly wanted NOTHING to do with any of it. It got to the point where she would spit/spew it all over you if you got any in her mouth. She was even feeding herself with a spoon a few days ago. And she loves her sippy cup of water.

Personality: Right now I think she is the perfect mix of independence and cuddly. She has no problem if you leave her in the room to play and is happy as a clam to crawl around the house exploring by herself, but she is also happy to let you pick her up and carry her around the house with you. She is more then willing to give loves and snuggles. I love bedtime when Shane gives her a kiss. She just giggles and grins this huge grin. She continues to be a happy camper most of the day, but she'll let you know if she is not happy with something you did (like take a piece of paper away from her).

Siblings: It took just about 8 months, but we are starting to see some sibling issues with Shane and Adalyn. The fact that she can crawl now has Shane on the defense most of the day. Making sure she isn't touching or playing with any thing he thinks is his (which is everything in the house including her toys as well). He watches her like a hawk and attempts to keep her out of harm, but most of the time he just drives me crazy by telling me blow-by-blow what she "shouldn't" be doing. If he isn't doing those two things he is then acting like a baby. Crawling or rolling around on the floor, baby talking or just acting plan goofy (in a very annoying way). Daily we are working on the sibling interactions. All Adalyn wants to do is play with Shane's stuff or follow him around (already!).

July 17th

Tuesday, July 17, 2001, was the first time Kenny and I met. Certainly a lot has happened and changed since that evening he came over to my apartment in Capital Hill.  We watched a Brad Pitt movie that I can never ever remember the name of. Pretty much since that day we've been "together". Ten years ago today....

Timber....

At the start of last weekend our backyard looked like this:

By the end of the weekend it looked like this:

 

 

After continued debate over what to do with the bushy looking asian pear tree, that dropped tons of rotting pears for months during the fall. Had our dogs fighting over who got to eat them. And blocked what precious few rays of sun light we may get during the morning. We decided to take it down...well Kenny did the actually work portion of it, but we decided together that it needed to go. The biggest downside right now is the new view of the neighbors house to the left of us. We have future plans for some trees to help with blockage in that corner. 

The rhododendron you see in the corner eventually went as well. Chopping things down gets sorta contagious. The dogs were pulling the baby pears straight off the tree to eat. Shane had a blast making forts out of all the branches. Kenny and I are enjoying the extra sunlight. I am actually very surprised by how much of a difference it actually made.

Swing!

Baby Girl had her first time in the baby swing last weekend. Like her Mommy and her Brother, she loved it! It was hard to get any pictures of her because all she wanted to do was keep her eyes on her Big Brother who was swinging next to her and running around the back yard. 

On a side note...her first tooth is in...bottom right side. You might even be able to see it in the picture. And the left side is super close to coming through, too.

Swimming Lessons

Shane just finished up a session of swimming lessons. It was his first all by himself in the kiddie pool. This was day 1 (click to enlarge so you can get the full appearance of his face):

Day 2 was better when Kenny took him. Then on day 3 I took him and we were back to square one. Kenny then got the permanent Swim Dad job. Days 4-7 have been super successful. He had a blast, talked to his teacher and the kids. Even made small progress on his swimming skills. All with out any whining or crying! A pure miracle if you ask us. He was so sad on his last day we are trying to get him into another session, but so far with schedules and wait lists it isn't looking good.