Me and My Monkey (guest post from Katie)

Mom and Dad, there's someone I'd like you to meet. He's very special to me and I want you to keep an open mind about him because he's a monkey. His name is George and he's unlike any of the other boys I've ever met.

He has the most beautiful dark eyes you've even seen. I find myself getting lost in them at times. He tells me I have pretty eyes too.

We first met over drinks and had an instant connection. He bought me some apple juice, but don't worry - he diluted it with some water.

He tells the funniest jokes - Have you heard the one about the chicken crossing the road? You'll just die laughing.

I know you think I'm rushing into things, but I love him - I really do.

We're going to be together but it would mean a lot if I had your blessing.

All the Leaves Are Brown

And the sky has definitely been quite grey! It's been such a dreary fall in Columbia, in fact I think October 2009 was one of the wettest Octobers on record! But the temperatures have been mild for the most part. I think I have only worn a jacket once so far.

 

We had some family pictures done for Katie's birthday and did some casual shots hanging out in the backyard playing in the leaves. The photographer (Brooke Turner - I've mentioned her before) is so fantastic! I love every picture she takes even the ones where I look fat or old or have bad roots showing.

 

Katie still continues to just love the outdoors. Any bad mood she has is quickly turned when we step outside so the dreariness of fall has been a bummer to her!

 

I was glad the weather held out for our picture day and that we got to get some good shots outside when Katie's personality is at its best!

 

Movin' On Up!

So we're not moving to the East Side like the Jeffersons, but as many of you know, we've been in the process of building our new house since July. The house didn't acutally get started until September 14 and we are hoping to close sometime in mid-late January.

We will still be on the Northeast side of town and because of our proximity to the highway, I will be about 10 minutes closer to work.

Doug's parents house is about 6 minutes away from where we're building so we've been able to go out a good bit and monitor the progress.

Things seemed to have moved painfully slow some weeks, but then there are weeks when we come by and it feels like a ton of work has been done in a short time.

We've had a few snags with some things - doorways in the wrong places or the wrong door knobs altogether. Doug has been excellent at working with the project manager at getting things taken care of.

We're getting closer and closer - There really isn't too much left to do, but I'm a simpleton when it comes to stuff like this.

Our main goal is to be in and settled before the Super Bowl! We are keeping our fingers crossed.

It's My Party & I'll Cry If I Want To

I'm terrible - really I am! My child really should cry over the fact that it's taken me over a month to post about her party. Katie's birthday fell on a Saturday so we were able to have her party on her actual birthday! We woke up early that morning, as usual, and Katie wore her special birthday hat (a present from her great-aunt Betsy before she was even born). She seemed to know that something was going on and was in a really good mood all morning.

When Katie went down for her nap, I finished the preparations for the party. I picked an apple theme and accented everything with green and pink and polka dots. I had so much fun decorating and making things for the party. I took two days off of work to plan the menu and shop and cook so that her actual birthday wouldn't be too stressful.

We had what's become my signature dip - a spicy spinach sausage combo along with cocktail weinies, toffee apple dip, apple streussel cupcakes, apple caramel cookies, and birthday cake. I bought myself this really cool green apple pot to use for something - I ended up using it for the cocktail weinies - but I just loved the pot. It is cast iron and easily weighs 10 pounds but it was fun to use as the center of decoration.

I also made these little apple baskets of her some of my favorite pictures from each month of the year for Katie.

Katie got lots of presents from everyone and had some help from her older 2nd cousins learning how to open them! Just before her birthday, she started making "oooh" noises and it fit in perfectly while she opened her presents.



And the cake...We sang happy birthday and placed the cake in front of her. She kind of just stared at it for a minute or two and then she dug right in! She loved it.


We had sort of stripped her down for the cake event so she was headed for a bath right afterwards. She smiled so big and was so proud of herself! I was glad we had really waited to give her anything sweet so that she could really enjoy the newness of the cake!

All in all, it was a great day. I loved every minute of it. I was really sad and overwhelmed with the thought of her turning one and losing my little baby girl but the fun and excitement of the party and the day spent with friends and family helped take my mind off of it!

It's the Final Countdown!

So my little girl turns ONE on Saturday and because it is too hard to talk about that without crying right now, I am going to do a little countdown of my 5 most useful items I had for her during her first year! Let me start by saying that all of my friends and family that served as sounding boards and advice machines over the last year have far outweighed any physical item's importance, but I wanted to be a little practical here in this post!

5. Medela Breast Pump - Katie was exclusively breastfed until about 11 months when I started tapering off and doing some formula and whole milk to wean her. I have nothing against formula (except the price) and was formula fed myself, but I had a personal goal of wanting to do that for Katie as long as I could. I thought I wouldn't make it at first - I cried during most of the first few feedings because of the pain and felt I must be doing something wrong. I eventually got the hang of things and felt very comfortable continuing to breastfeed her even after I went back to work. I got the pump so that I could have milk for her even when I wasn't there. It was a little pricey but well worth it and I definitely got my money's worth out of it! I am proud of myself for sticking to nursing even when I came back to work. It was quite a hassle at times and having to wash all the parts of everything at night was such a chore, but I am so glad I did it for me and for Katie.

 

4. Snuggle Me blanket by Kiddopotamus - Thank you Elizabeth for the recommendation! This little velcro wrap blanket was perfect for getting Katie swaddled and snuggled and ready for bed. I was super paranoid about blankets coming undone and being loose around her face. She was such a kicker and would wake herself up in the night kicking. The Snuggle Me blanket was wonderful and she slept in it EVERY NIGHT well past 6 months!

 

3. Mylicon - Oh My Mylicon! What a fabulous creation! Katie had such a hard time with gas that Mylicon was her appetizer with every feeding! From two weeks of life and on, she had Mylicon all the time. I kept a bottle with me at all times and was a slave to it. If Mylicon asked it of me, I obliged! The Mylicon worked like a charm - she made the cutest grunting noises in her sleep while Mylicon worked it's magic. I even considered taking a swig of it myself at times!

 

2. Goodnight Moon board book - We actually have three of these books that were all given as gifts and they all have some wear on them. Katie loves to read anything, but she really love Goodnight Moon. We read it every night before we go to bed. Doug and I both have it memorized and have added some little personal touches when we read the story to her. For example, we mamke our voices high pitched when we read about the "little mouse." We hit the blank page when it says "goodnight nobody." Katie has gotten so used to the pattern of the story. She points at things as we read it and she waves goodnight throughout the whole book. It helps calm her down before bed and get her in nightime mode.

 

1. Angel Dear Bunny - we have two of these too. This is my favorite gift from anyone and I can't even remember who gave it to us. It's a little bunny head with a very soft blanket attaced to it. It is Katie's special lovey and she has used it to sleep with and travel with and cuddle with since about 3 months old. We call it Bugs Bunny (our nickname for Katie is "bug" so therefore the lovey is Bug's Bunny) and he goes everywhere with us! When she started getting mobile and inevitably bumped her head a few thousand times, the bunny was her best friend and comforter! She loves holding bunny when we go for trips in the car and loves to snuggle up to bunny when it's time to go to bed! Does your child have a lovey? GET ONE!

There were a few things we purchased/received that I didn't use near as much as I thought and a few of them we didn't use at all! I thought her crib was going to be a waste at first - she spent the first 9 weeks of her life sleeping upright in her carseat! We eventually moved to the pack and play and then moved her to her room by about 12 weeks, so all was not lost. The Boppy and the Bumbo are most new mom's best friends but I just didn't use them that much. The Boppy was wonderful at first with nursing but I eventually got tired of looking for it or washing it, that I just went without. The Bumbo was great when we used it, but I just would forget all about it and would sit behing Katie to support her while we played together. I bought a Chicco baby carrier (front pack papoose thing) and used it once. For about 3 minutes. It just wasn't my thing or her thing. The bottle warmer (by First Years) was a total waste as it often bubbled over and left me frustrated that milk was wasted! My most wasted purchases were the two smocked Christmas dresses I bought for her for last year - she wore one of them once and the other one not at all and I have no pictures to document it at all!

I have just a few days left as the mom of a baby - she'll be a big one year old on Saturday. She went to her little weekday church daycare class today with a birthday shirt and birthday girl shoes on - I thought I would let her start celebrating a little early!

My Five Year Plan

If you would've asked me 6.5 years ago what my five year plan was, it woudl've been jumbled with things like world travel, potentially grad school in a foreigh country, becoming a truck drive in order to have something to write a book about, etc. I was just about to graduate college and was ready for a new frontier. No dating prospects on the horizon and my life was ahead of me with endless choices.

Then one day my mom "accidentally" set me up with one of her co-worker's sons. Are you kidding me? I don't date people really at all, much less people I've never met or heard of. But for some reason, I gave the ok to this and after several emails and one phone call, I was booked for my first date! One year to the day after our first date, we were engaged and 6 monts later we were married!

Today is our 5 year anniversary and I just can't believe how much has changed over the years. I find more reasons to love Doug every day! We have such a good time together and have really become more intentional about the time we get to spend together as life has gotten busier! He is such an amazing father to Katie - I find myself sitting out a lot of times in the evening just to watch the two of them play together. He makes her laugh like no other and I'm actually a little jealous of that!

 

Happy Anniversary sweetheart! And clearly, we need to start taking more pictures of us - this is the last one I have of just the two of us- taken at the Battery in Charleston after the Bridge Run in April 2008.

And if there was ever any question about Doug's patience and his heart - just look at what he has to put up with from me.

Who wouldn't want to try to balance themselves on top of cannonballs when they are 8 weeks pregnant and have a rear the size of Texas. The laws of physics make that virtually impossible.

 

Is Red my color or what? Oh, you thought this picture was funny because of my hair? How superficial.

 

Flips on a swingset at this age? Miraculously, no one was harmed in the taking of this picture!

 

Thank you Doug for your tolerance and understanding for 5 years, but especially this last year as I have cried more than I ever thought possible at the stresses of becoming a new mom! And although you may not know it, I have smiled more than ever too! I'm so excited about our new house, our soon to be one year old, and even our date tonight! I love you!

We Are Family!

I got all my cousins with me! So far, there have been 3 attempts to get pictures of Katie with her cousins Dylan and Cole. I will let you decide if they have been successful.

Attempt 1: Let me set the scene for you. It was Christmas and Grandma Jones had bought really cute matching sweaters for the babies. Dylan is a little over 1 and Cole is right at 2 months old and Katie was about 6 weeks old. Here are the results:
Dylan points at Katie - she starts to cry...Not sure if there was actual contact during the point, but she cried nonetheless.

Katie still crying - potentially harder than before.

Let's move Katie to the middle and maybe she'll stop crying. Nope.

This photo/crying session was enough to send this "postpartum-ing" mom into a tailspin about why her child was the only uncooperative one.

Attempt 2 Fast Forward to February 2009: It's a week before I return to work from maternity leave and Lindsay and I brave some wintry weather to visit Melissa and Dylan in Raleigh. Successful?
Once again, Katie crying. Dylan fine, Cole fine.

Oh, Katie stopped crying for a brief moment. Perhaps she was interrupted by Dylan's crying. I think he was sympathy crying for her.


Attempt 3: October 2009, The kids are older now and are much more cooperative. Let me know which one you think is suitable for framing.
Here you go kids, all of you sit right here.

Wait Cole, sit for just another second. Katie, please smile.

Ok Dylan, I guess you can stand - you are the oldest after all. But katie, take the bunny out your mouth and please smile.

Doesn't this remind you of the scene in Anchorman when the guys won't ever look the same way as Veronica Corningstone?

Maybe kicking her will make her smile.

Maybe if we shake keys at the kids, they will smile. But maybe we should get the keys out of the picture next time.

How about a new location - this cold cement is not doing the trick.

Get me away from this slide!

Wait - remember the keys from the first location. They're back and really making someone angry!


So, did you find one for a frame or even a scrapbook or facebook profile picture? Me neither.

In Dylan's defense - he had just had one heck of a two year old party complete with a fantastic train cake and he did not want to just sit there.

In Cole's defense - he was the most behaved and cooperative despite missing some nap time for the party.

In Katie's defense - she had a mega cold and had not slept well at all the night before, she was out in the cold and was wearing a boy's jacket. She probably decided not to smile because she didn't want any of them making it to a frame when she was dressed like a boy.

I don't see this getting much better as we have a new cousin set to be delivered close to Thanksgiving! I just keep envisioning those beautiful beach pictures of put-together families that are all smiling. A girl can dream, right?