Fall, fashion, and craftiness

Two posts in one day!  I know! 

I LOVE fall!  The colors, the weather, the food.  Everything!  So now that I have been wasting lots of time on pinterest, I have been getting lots of great creative ideas.  I am not naturally creative on my own, but if I see someone else's creativity, sometimes I can recreate it.  So here is my new fall wreath! 

I haven't decided if it needs more or if I should just leave it.  I am open to thoughts.  I got all excited about these flowers and I made lots of headbands for Blakely.  They are SO easy. 

FASHION:  my good friend Claire has a gift for fashion.  I do not have this gift.  So she came over and looked through my closet and put outfits together.  I was so excited, because she pointed out LOTS of outfits that I didn't even know I had!  Here are a few!  

Maybe this seems super simple to everyone else, but I never would have put these things together!  Navy and black?  Apparently they go!  Leopard=neutral.  Who knew?  So it's almost like I got new clothes, but I didn't have to pay for any!  She also told me a few key items that I should consider adding to my wardrobe.  She even helped me find some of those things!  We got interrupted by our babies, so I am hoping she'll come back over and continue this super fun game of dress-up.  I also want her to purge my closet.  I know there are some things in there that I just need to let go of, I just need someone to tell me to kick it to the curb. 

Anyway, she is SO talented, so if you need a wardrobe makeover but don't have What Not to Wear $5000 credit card to do it, then you should hire Claire Heido! 

Somebody's old...

So, I turned 27 this weekend.  And I really feel old.  There's something about 27 that just sounds older.  It was a great birthday though.  Stephen got me coffee, donuts, let me sleep in, got me some goodies from J.crew, and took me shopping.  He's the best.  We then had a slumber party with my brother, Joe. 

Blakely didn't mind being tortured by Uncle Joey.  She got to have stuff put on her head, got turned upside down, got put in other awkward positions, and got to put strange things in her mouth. 

Unfortunately for us all, I didn't get a picture of him taunting her with his toe- which she did manage to get in her mouth at least once.  He is such a big brother...

Isn't she a cutie!?  I am so ready for fall.  I love dressing her for cool weather.  I will say, it's a little harder to keep a little crawler warm, but she is just so cute in her jacket and leg warmers. 

In other news, the neighbor across the street thinks her name is "Bailey" and I don't know what to do about it.  I feel I have missed my window for correcting her.  I think the first few times she said it she didn't say it loud and I thought maybe I misheard her...and now it's just too late.  What should I do?

visitors

This past weekend, Stephen's parents came to visit.  I always say I am going to take pictures for things like this, but I always forget!  Luckily, one afternoon Stephen reminded me to take a few.  They were here for a few days, but these are all I took!  Hopefully I will get better at this. 

Blakely had a great time having constant entertainment.  She not only had constant entertainment, but one of her favorite things, a constant audience.  This girl loves to show off.  She is a people person, and the more the merrier for her.  She might take a few minutes to come out of her shell, but once she's out, she's out.  She quickly learned that Grandma and Grandpa equals someone to always help her walk around, distract her when she is fussy, make goofy faces and noises at her, and praise her when she does pretty much anything. 

They also were a huge help for us!  Bob fixed our fence, watered our flowers- Blakely enjoyed helping, cleaned off our patio, and trimmed some trees!  Our yard always looks better after Stephen's parents visit.  :) 

Lucky for B, she will finally have a cousin to play with in March!  (well...it might be a little longer before any "playing" occurs.)  Stephen's sister, Anna, is pregnant.  We can't wait for little Moore to make his/her debut! 

Blakely also started for real crawling.  She was moving around just fine, but it wasn't exactly a conventional crawl.  It was actually surprising because she did next to no crawling while Grandma and Grandpa were here- it was all walking (with help, of course).  It was like, the knees and the arms finally clicked.  She just started doing it.  She is now much faster, much more efficient, and much happier!  She doesn't get frustrated when she wants to go somewhere else, she just goes!  It is pretty amazing how much faster she can get to the power cords than she can her own toys.  She is also enjoying finding all the tiny things on my floor for me to run over and swipe before she can stick it in her mouth...  I have already vacuumed 3 times this week.  I guess my house will be cleaner these days! 

4 years!

Yesterday was Blakely's 9 month birthday.  But more importantly, it was our 4 year anniversary!  Without the last 4 years of marriage, there would be no Blakely!  I can't believe we have been married that long.  For some reason, 4 sounds so mature to me.  :)  We left B home with the roommate after we put her to bed and we headed to Kansas City for some Jackstack BBQ.  It. Was. Awesome. 

This was our food after we already started!  I made Stephen run out to the car to get a camera.  Jackstack has the BEST brisket I have ever had.  The ribs were fall off the bone, and though I am not a baked beans fan normally, these beans were INCREDIBLE. 

Stephen is a really messy eater.  :)

We were holding hands (awe!) and Stephen made a comment about my engagement ring and the waitress thought we just got engaged.  I kinda wanted to pretend like we had.  :)  Sometimes it feels like we just got engaged! 

It was such a fun night! 

NINE

Nine.  3/4. 75%.  of a year!  wow! 

This is her new trick- I found her like this yesterday morning.  (Standing herself up in her crib)  Always wakes up happy!

I have no idea how much she weighs, but she is HEA.VY.  I have been trying hard to hold her evenly on both sides so my arms don't get lopsided.  :)

She is so crazy with eating.  Just a few days ago, I couldn't get her to eat hardly anything all day.  Then other days she is like a bottomless pit.  She is also SO temperamental with eating.  EVERYTHING has to be perfect.  Like I'm talking, tv on cartoons, laying at the correct angle, no talking, etc.  If she is having a bad day and we get her to drink a bottle, the other person isn't allowed to talk, sometimes isn't even allowed in the room cause it will mess her up.  My parents were in town this past weekend and she stopped eating halfway through her bottle when she heard their dog's collar jingle.  Once she stops, it's over.  She's a stinker!  She has been eating (if we are lucky) a 6oz bottle 4 times a day.  I am going to try to move her to three times a day, eating more.  I have been giving her more table food lately, and this girl is a BEGGAR.  She throws a fit when I don't give her what I am having.  I had to hide my chocolate donut from her today cause she wouldn't stop whining.  She loves anything that she thinks is MY food.  She was loving my avocado a few days ago, but then I mashed it up and put it in one of her small bowls and tried to feed it to her with her spoon and she wasn't interested. 

Still no teeth! 

She is getting really silly.  She has such a hilarious personality.  She is VERY emotional.  But that has plenty of good things that come with it.  When she is excited she is EXCITED.  Like, arms and legs going crazy, huffing and puffing and squealing.  It's hilarious.  The above pictures are her signature silly face.  It's pretty cute. 

She is crawling!  I think I said this in my last post.  Man, how that stuff develops fast!  Just two weeks ago she wasn't crawling at all.  Was barely even inching forward, and now she can get herself across a room to the electrical cords in no time.  For a toy?  Well, it's faster to just whine until mom gets it.  But anything that is a "no"- she is lightening fast!  :)  Her crawl sortof looks like a body roll.  I'll have to video it sometime. 

She is still SUPER obsessed with standing up and walking.  Her favorite is to lean against a mirror and lick her reflection.  Hilarious.  I also need to video this...

She is wearing size 3 diapers, 6 month onesies and outfits.  Anything that is 9months is huge on her.  She won't leave bows in anymore.  As soon as I put it in she grabs it and pulls it off. 

Oh!  In the last few days she has learned to sit herself up from being on her stomach.  She was just getting stuck there and crying until I picked her back up.  But now she can push herself up on to her rear.  Which means when she doesn't think she is tired and doesn't want to go to sleep, she can just sit herself up and play in her crib. 

She is having some SEVERE separation anxiety.  I'm talking, Stephen is on the floor playing with her and I am BARELY paying attention to her, and as soon as I turn my back and even start to walk away, she starts sobbing.  She gets over it when Stephen distracts her.  But when it's just me here, she will literally wail until I come back into view.  Sometimes she even will cry until I am holding her.  It's funny (and sometimes aggravating) to see her be this clingy! 

Her and Dad have a good time though.  He use to think I made her laugh more, but I don't think so.  I think especially cause he is gone all day, when he comes home, she is SO excited to see him.

My two loves. 

One of her favorite things here.  As soon as Stephen starts to lift her onto his shoulders she gets the biggest goofy grin on her face. 

She is quite the squirmer.  The only thing that makes her still is the tv. 


She hates the car.  She will cry as soon as I set her in her carseat.

I know it's a little bit of picture overload, but I just think she is so pretty. 

She LOVES other kids.  The smaller the better.  We had a play date with a friend and Blakely just wanted to grab him.  We also babysat for our friends Brett and Claire.  Ava is about 10 weeks old and TINY.  Ava was crying, and Blakely was SO concerned.  She would cry unless she was right next to Ava and could look at her.  It was pretty funny. 



Whew!  That's all for B at 9 months! 

"these days"

That's right, people.  Less than 24 hours after my last post, another!  I am totally stealing my post title today from Kate.  She randomly updates on just regular life, and I am wishing I would have done this more throughout the last 9 months.  That's right, folks.  In just a few short days B will be officially 9 months old.

I laughed today as Stephen and I read her 8 month post...my how this girl changes everything as soon as I write it down.  Ha!  These days, she is all over the place.  I feel like we were in a pretty steady routine through July, and then August started the ups and downs.  Pretty much no predictability.  But not to worry- we spent most of 6 months here so we are familiar.  Sometimes she sleeps great, sometimes she wakes up several times.  Sometimes she sleeps til 7:15, sometimes she sleeps til 6 (though 6 is a lot more frequent lately...) Sometimes she eats like a champ (like tonight she ate 10.5 oz of baby food for DINNER- that's right, DINNER.- oh, and that was after a 6oz bottle!)  Then sometimes she eats hardly anything all day- like last week she had a day where she barely ate any baby food and only had 12oz total of formula that day.  Naps are back to being way to short.  I can't decide if she just doesn't need as much sleep anymore, or if there is something I can do differently.  She never sleeps more than an hour, and only takes two naps a day.  I know this is normal for her age, especially with her sleeping almost 12 hours at night, but boy do I miss those TWO 2hr naps... *sigh*

At least she wakes up happy.  :)

Although many things are unpredictable, some are still consistent with our day.  Stephen has morning time with Blakely.  He usually feeds her a bottle, plays with her, then feeds her breakfast each morning.  I sometimes sleep a little more (which I usually regret) or I get up and just lay on the couch and read and watch them.  I love watching them play.  He has so much more patience with her.  I love it. 

After breakfast, I usually take her so Stephen can get ready and start his work day.  We play, sometimes read, watch Sesame Street and the Today Show.  She usually goes down for a nap around 8:30.  She sleeps for about an hour.  Blakely is a SUPER light sleeper, so I don't get much done while she is sleeping.  Our house is extremely creaky, so I don't even use our bathroom upstairs...I go downstairs, or hold it.

Anyway, then she gets up and we play some more.  She has another bottle around 10:30 or 11, then lunch around 11:30.  I try to run my errands after this cause we are both usually pretty ready to get out of the house.  But we can't get too far cause she goes down for another nap around 12:30 or 1. 

She is obsessed with standing, getting into things that are "no's" (cell phones, computers, cords, paper, glasses of water, remotes, etc.)  She lives to get a hold of these precious items.  And basically whines all day unless she is standing or has one of said items in her mouth.  :)  (no, I don't let her put any of those in her mouth...except sometimes the remote.)

*please excuse the unmade bed, unfolded laundry, and well, what my house really looks like most of the time.  :)
After the second nap we play- duh.  Or we run more errands.  Today I think we will go to Hobby Lobby.  I'm feeling crafty.  Oh, and a bottle around 2:30. 

We try to keep ourselves pretty busy for the rest of the afternoon.  2pm to 5pm seems to go by the slowest.  We are BOTH ready for dad to get home.  He comes home, and takes over again and I try to make dinner.  Stephen usually feeds her dinner, until she has literally bathed in baby food, at which point I take over to get the rest of the food in her mouth instead of giving her a facial.  :)  I don't know if it is a man thing or what, but I swear, 75% of the food ends up not in her mouth.  I'm not complaining though- I love when he feeds her. 

Then we attempt to eat dinner.  We put her in the jumper but she usually goes so bonkers that we feel like she is burning too many calories so we take her out.  Seriously though.  She goes NUTS.  There is a lion on her jumper that for some reason she loathes him and she just screams at him too. 

Then we give her another bottle and she watches Baby Einstein during it so she will hopefully start winding down.  Then it's bathtime with dad, and I put her to bed around 7.  I love my days with this girl, but I also LOVE her bedtime!  :)

So that's our "typical" day! 

Rug saga...

Confession time.  We have been searching for an area rug for our living room for 2 years now.  Since we bought this house.  When we first started looking it was purely for aesthetic reasons, but we really didn't want to spend much money.  World Market was having a sale on rugs so I bought one that was red.  Didn't look good, so I took it back and got the yellow one.  Didn't look good, so I took it back and got the green one.  Didn't like it, but I thought maybe I made the wrong decision about the yellow one, so I got that one instead.  Sure enough, I did make the right decision, so I took it back, again.  We decided to take a break for a while on our rug hunt.  Until I got pregnant.  Then I decided that we needed a rug if we were having a baby because she needed somewhere to play since we had hard floors.  So we began the rug hunt again.  We bought a flowery one that was really big that we were just sure was going to be perfect.  Let me also say, rugs are NOT easy to just flipantly put in and out...  So we got this big rug down and died laughing because we hated it.  Part of our problem is we were trying to be too cheap.  We just weren't going to like a cheap rug, but we were unwilling to spend anymore money than we had already budgeted.  So after many hours of rug shopping, online and in stores we decided to swear off rugs.  We didn't need one, we weren't going to find one, end. of. story.  Until last week.  Blakely is now on the move.  I won't say she is crawling because I think that would be a bit of an exaggeration.  But she can get from one side of the room to the other, and her pace is picking up quickly.  We had a janky little makeshift play area in our living room with a big comforter.  Tacky, I know, but we are too cheap for a rug, remember!?  And we had toys spread throughout the house, because our bedrooms are carpeted.  We have been going from room to room for the past couple of months.  It is easier for her to play on the floor in our rooms cause of the carpet, but we don't like being banished to the bedroom.  So now that she is on the move, I decided we needed a rug in our living room again, despite the fact that I had promised never to whisper the word "rug" to Stephen again.  (He is a little put out with me and my rug indecision- but who can blame him?)  So he reluctantly agreed that it would be better for B if we had a rug.  So I convinced him to just go to this local carpet place to check out remnants.  Jackpot.  They had 8x10 bound remnants for cheap!  They had a big grey one that felt pretty soft and I thought that grey would be neutral enough so we got it.  (clearly I am not an interior decorator...)  So we got the huge thing home, moved the furniture, and rolled out our rug.  Fail.  It looked like old lady hair with the slight blue tint.  Know what I'm talking about?  Not cool.  But I refuse to allow my pride to cause me to have an ugly rug in my living room, so I declared my hatred for the rug and told Stephen we had to take it back.  I think he wanted to throw up at the thought of more rug shopping. 

We actually hadn't given much thought to our rug disease until we told our roommate about all our rugs.  (We have a guy living in our basement currently.  Don't worry, we know him, and we like him.)  He died laughing at our story and asked us if rug shopping was our "hobby."  This is what really opened our eyes to the ridiculousness of our rug problems.  But still, I hated this rug and it had to go.  So I promised Stephen that if the next rug didn't work, we really were done with rugs for forever.  (or until the next time I decide we HAD to have one.)  So we went back, found the most neutral color we could find that was relatively soft and got it.  Lucky number 7.  And we LOVE it.  We are kicking ourselves for not getting this a long time ago!  Blakely loves it, and the tidiness of our house loves it too.  We keep all B's toys in here, it is easy to pick up when she goes to bed, she has her own space that she can crawl around, plus I hate when hard floors are dirty and stuff sticks to your bare feet- don't have to worry about that with rugs.  Yes, I know that means I need to clean the floors, but I have a baby, who has time for that?  :)  So come on over to our house and sink your little toesies into our nice rug.