Wonderful Sunday

Yesterday was a really great day. It started off with a trip to the Spot of Tea, my favorite brunch place, for a baby shower/birthday party for Carrie, a sweet friend of mine that I met at Kindermusik. She is due with her 2nd in November. I just met her a few months ago and she has been so kind to me. She invited me to join a playgroup with some other moms that she knew and I have enjoyed getting to know those girls as well. It was so nice to get away without Brady for some talking and laughing. I really needed that!

This cheesecake was so delicious. Another girl, Kim, made it from scratch. She said she got the recipe off of Martha Stewart's website. I will definitely be making this in the near future.

We all chipped in and got Carrie a double stroller and a gift card to Posh Salon. She was so grateful. It was adorable.

Another lady gave her a pink cammo dress and embroidered bib for sweet Violet. She made them herself - I was so impressed. I wish I had the skills and proper sewing machine to make stuff like this!

Some of the guests

More of the guests.

Thank you so much BRITNI for babysitting Brady for me so I could attend!!! You are a wonderful babysitter and an even better friend!

Later that day Brady and I were playing in his room. Actually he was playing and I was reading in his glider. He kept pulling up on my knees and laying his head in my lap like he wanted to climb up there with me. So I scooped him up and started rocking him. Probably no one knows this but when I rock him to sleep or put him down for naps I like to sing church hymns to him. My voice is horrible, but the songs are usually nice and slow and it seems to calm him down. So I was singing and rocking away and he fell asleep with his head on my chest. There were a million and one things I needed to get done. But I just couldn't put him down. Tears started welling up in my eyes as I was thinking about how I'm not going to be able to rock him for much longer. So I sat there, with my arm falling asleep, and let him nap in my arms while I sang to him and prayed for him for over an hour. I love little moments like those.

We need to buy a plunger....and other stuff.

How is it that in 3 years of living in our house not once have we had the need for a plunger, but this little (almost) 11 month old can clog the toilet in just one diaper change? For those of you that don't know, we use cloth diapers. Which means when B goes #2 we must "dump the load" in the toilet before putting the diaper in the wash.

I did notice he didn't poo much yesterday, which explains the 3 stinky diapers today - and the abnormally large "presents" he left for me to clean up! Just one of those little "gifts" was too much for the toilet to handle!

He makes his daddy proud!

Brady was also cracking us up tonight at dinner. I made chicken parmesan and he ate an entire chicken breast by himself! Feeding him is so much easier now that he can often times eat what we are having and I don't have to make special meals for him. Anyway, he was eating his cut up chicken and of course rubbing it all over his face. The hair in the back of his head of sticking straight up and he looked too cute. He's been very entertaining lately.

Look at this face. Isn't he the most handsome baby you've ever seen?

Also, as I was blog hopping about a week ago I found a tutorial on how to make faux roman shades out of cheap-o mini blinds. The girl that posted the link had made some for her son's bedroom and I thought they were too cute, so I decided to give it a try myself. You can find the tutorial here. I must warn you though, it is very confusing. I really had to think it through as I was doing it. Please don't ask me questions about it though, it makes my brain hurt thinking about it!

Making them was actually very easy and I am quite pleased with the results, just the tutorial was hard to follow. Now that I know what I'm doing I think the next time will be much easier. I am planning on making some more for our master bath and kitchen windows.

I've still got a lot more updating to do. I realize I haven't blogged in a very long time, so I probably don't have any readers anymore. I accept that - it's my own fault! However, since I don't really have time to scrapbook, this is kind of a place for me to record some memories. I'm going to try to be better!

Snuggle Time!

I absolutely LOVE that Brady is now getting to the age where he can lay around and snuggle with us. Granted, he must be VERY tired to do so! On Tuesday night we snuggled as a family on the couch for the 1st time & Brady actually fell asleep laying there! Rob carried him to his room and tucked him in for a little nap. So sweet!

p.s. do you notice my new blog header??? Yeah, I made that myself! Go me!

N'awlins, Baby!

What a long day, I can barely keep my eyes open right now. We took a little trip to a REAL CITY today, as opposed to this backwoods, country town we live in called Mobile. New Orleans is only a 2 hour drive from our house and even though we've lived here for 4 years, today was the first time we visited there....with the exception of a little shopping excursion I took last year:) The main reason for our adventure was so we could go here:

Yup, GROCERY SHOPPING! I am disgusted with Mobile's lack of organic groceries, especially when it comes to meat & cheese. So I convinced Rob we needed to take a little road trip, even though he rolled his eyes at me and accused me only eating "snobby beef". BUT, when we got home from our trip today I hear him in the kitchen saying "I LOVE WHOLE FOODS!" He was so excited to find a grocery store that gave out so many samples while shopping.....especially of beer & wine!

Unfortunately, Brady did not get to sample those...

After we were done shopping, we packed everything into a cooler and decided to head down to the French Quarter. Here are some photos of our drive in.

OK, so I know you can't see much in this photo because of the guard rail, but we were driving past the REALLY old cemeteries and you could see that MANY of the mausoleums were destroyed and falling apart, some completely torn open. I remember during the hurricane Katrina mess sitting in our apartment without power and listening to our battery powered radio as they were discussing the mess in New Orleans. They were talking about dead bodies that had washed up out of the cemeteries floating down the flooded roads. Eww! After seeing these destroyed mausoleums that's all I can think of - maybe this cemetery is where some of those bodies came from!

This guy was hilarious. It's a real person dressed up like a robot, dancing and doing "robot moves" complete with sound effects. I think he was mad a me that I took his picture and didn't give him any money! He had to have been HOT wearing tin foil and all that paint on his face - it was 100 degrees today!

Here's Rob & Brady

I forget the name of this place, but apparently it's some famous landmark and I thought it was pretty - I know I should remember the name.

Street Car coming into the station...

I took this one for you mom - I know you love the steam boats! Sorry I couldn't get a better picture, it had just pulled in and there was no place for me to stand to get a better shot. 

Rob & I had been talking about taking another trip to New Orleans for the 4th of July weekend, but I think we've decided we're going to pass. It's simply going to be too hot. The heat today was miserable and having Brady makes it even more difficult. Speaking of which....guess who turned 8 months old today!!!

He is trying so hard to crawl, but just can't quite get it. He loves sticking his tongue out, he falls asleep on his own now and sleeps THROUGH THE NIGHT! Usually from 7:30p.m. - 6:30 the next morning. Although he's been doing this now for a couple months - thank goodness, cause I was about to lose my mind! Frank is his best friend and anything he does is the funniest thing ever - I've never seen a baby laugh so hard before. We plan on trying some egg yolks and beef this week - yay for our organic grass-fed beef we bought today at Rob's new favorite store!

It's Gettin' HOT in here..............

Whew! We have officially reached that part of the year where I refuse to go outside. Today's high was supposedly 99 with a heat index of 107, but as you can see from the thermometer on our back door it was a little higher - and this picture was taken around 5:30 this evening, NOT during the middle of the day. Ugh, I miss snow!

Of course what else is a wiener dog supposed to do when it's this hot out? Poor Frank doesn't even get to go on walks with us anymore, he's can't handle the heat. We had to stop taking him a couple weeks ago when he started laying down in the grass and hiding under cars to stay in the shade during the middle of a walk because he was too hot to finish. Poor thing, I think he's mad at us because of this. 

Here's a sneak peak at Rob's Father's Day present. I dressed Brady up in one of his ties and bought some D-A-D wooden letters and painted them black. I was trying to get a decent picture of him holding each one, but our photo shoot didn't go so well. It was very hard trying to get him to look at the camera and hold each letter in a way that you could actually see it. Instead I bought one of those "photo cubes" and am going to put a few of these pictures in it as well as some others and give it to him. I don't think he has any pictures of Brady at the pharmacy so this will be a good way to display a lot of photos without taking up much space. 

Here's Brady hangin' in the laundry basket with his clean dipes, we had just taken then down off the clothes line. That is the one good thing about this heat - I can use the line and clothes dry VERY quickly!......and yes, I know I'm a redneck hippie for using a clothes line, laugh if you must. 

I bought Brady Mr. Ducky to bathe in and he LOVES it. Now he can finally sit up and play with some toys. Too bad he's almost already too big for it. On the package it said for ages 6 months - 2 years, yeah right! Not when your 7 month old is as big as a 2 year old! Speaking of which, he will officially be 8 months old tomorrow!

Did you ever see a cuter face? Aww, my own real life Kewpie doll!

"Mom, that camera is scaring me!"

Brady got a package in the mail from Grandma A. on Thursday with a new outfit in it! He was VERY excited! Thanks Grandma!

Here he is modeling his new clothes! See that tongue hanging out? He's been doing that a lot lately. Rob calls it his "Michael Jordan tongue". What's really gross is that Frank likes to lick his face when I'm not looking and I know he's gotten a few good licks of this already. Of course Brady squeels and thinks it's the funniest thing ever. EWWW!

And lastly we had some "nakkie time" tonight. Brady's got some red bumps on his belly where the top of his diaper hits and I was trying to air him out. I don't think it's diaper rash, but maybe more of a heat rash. Hopefully it clears up soon.

P.S.   I'm trying out a new format tonight - hopefully the pictures appear a lot bigger than normal.

Just a Preview

We've been home from Cincy for almost a week and things are just now finally getting back to normal. It's past my bedtime and I'm too tired to post a lot of photos, but I will try to find time tomorrow to add more. I thought I'd go ahead and share this one though - Brady went for his 1st ride on the swings while we were there. He had a great time, although I pretty sure he was more excited about watching his cousin, Macy, on the swings than he was about actually swinging himself.

***WARNING! Picture Overload***

This post is for you mom! She was bugging me a few nights ago about not updating the blog recently and wanting to see more pictures - so I just spent over an hour uploading all of these. I went back through some recent pictures and picked out all my favorites - some are as old as March though. Don't be fooled if Brady looks small in some of them. Rest assured he is not! He was 20 lbs 1 oz and almost 30 inches long at his last appointment!

I can't even begin to tell you how much I am FINALLY starting to truly enjoy motherhood. I LOVE spending time with this little boy. He cracks me up. He is always making the goofiest faces and gets excited over the most random things. And he has gotten so much easier as far as naps go. Today he actually took a 3 hour nap in the morning and another 2 hour nap in the afternoon - I hope he sleeps all night like he's supposed to! He is getting ready to cut his 1st tooth though so I think that is why his sleeping has been off. His bottom gums look very swollen and I've never seen a baby slobber so much in my life. He's also had a very runny nose and been tugging at his ears which I've heard are signs of teething. Hopefully it will pop through soon!

I had a great mother's day - Brady (along with Daddy's help) made me a stepping stone for the garden with his handprint in it. I love it! I was actually hoping Rob would get me something like this instead of spending a bunch of money on something we don't need. He did a great job! We started the day off at church and then ran some errands and Brady took another 3 hour nap that afternoon! It was very relaxing and I could tell Brady was trying hard to be on his best behavior for his mama!

Enjoy all the pics! If you click on them they (should) become larger.

Mother's Day 2009

My garden stepping stone from Brady

This is how we found Brady one morning last week - he rolled over sometime during the night!

Excuse me have you seen my puff?

He loves his Babylegs. And don't you dare take that remote control away from him!

In his handsome football outfit courtesy of Justin & Britni!

He was the cutest baby in the nursery that day.

I love this picture

Are these not the silliest faces you've ever seen?

How many of those rolls count as his cheeks?

Preparing to get lubed up during his nightly eczema treatment

My absolute favorite picture of Brady and Frank together. Don't they look like best friends already?