8 month update

Here I am.  I kept starting this post and then deleting it because it would end up depressing or apologetic or somehow 'woe is me,' so I have put it off.  I will just say that I've basically been a single parent for the month of February and it does not agree with me.  Actually, I don't know that being a parent at all agrees with me....but Shaun is home and isn't traveling next week, so I can relax a little knowing I will have his help.  Ashford is 8.5 months old and he is what I guess you would call, "needy."  Or, "whiny, crabby and exhausting."  It's a very good thing he is adorable.         

He is taking steps with his rolling walker.  Crawling so fast I almost can't catch him.  Getting very good at holding his own bottle and feeding himself puffs.  He also lets us hear that cute laugh more often.     

He was not really interested in sitting down for his 8 month photo shoot, which is sort of the story of my life.  I see his butt a lot more than I see his face these days.  He has also started crying during diaper and clothing changes, I pray it's just a phase. 

He continues to put everything in his mouth, including cabinet handles, the dishwasher door, fur throws (complete with cat hair), you name it. 

He still doesn't like eating solids, and lately isn't nursing or taking bottles too well, either.  All he wants to do is play, which might be ok, except his version of fun has nothing to do with his toys and everything to do with stuff I don't want him to touch.  He does love his take along tunes and a few other noisy toys, thankfully.   

We managed to take him out for some winter photos in January, my mom got him the most adorable and impractical baby peacoat.  Who can resist a dapper baby?

And then we had a little snowfall and got him into a snowsuit for some pictures.  We took about a half hour prepping the baby and ourselves to go out, and then came back inside after 5 minutes and left puddles everywhere.  Sounds about right.  

He had no problem crawling through the snow, but I did receive a 'look' that told me he might not appreciate the extra effort.  

We are amazed that he still has his bright blue eyes.  It appears they are going to stay, but I'm not paying out any bets until he's 2.  

I'm hanging in there, and trying to keep up with other blogs as much as I can.  Now that Downton Abbey is over (and broke my blubbering sleep-deprived heart) I have a little extra time.   

7 months and life stuff

Hello. My name is Sara, and I used to run this home renovation blog when I wasn’t at my day job. Now, my 'spare' time is spent following around a baby and wondering what kind of Twilight Zone I’m in where weekends are over in .2 seconds and my house is a constant disaster.  Since Ashford started crawling and cutting teeth last month, I’ve been finding it very hard to do anything but entertain him. Pick up his dropped toys. Pull him away from the cable boxes for the thousandth time. Patiently try to get him to eat solids day after day. Try to make his teeth feel better. Plead with him to sleep when I know he is tired, but he wants to play. Try to hold him down long enough to change his diaper.  He is so beautiful and funny and makes me want to implode from cuteness overload. But, I’m tired.  I just don’t feel like doing anything but sitting around when he’s sleeping.  Damn Netflix is not helping!

Our house is not changing.  We recently threw in the towel on adding shoe molding to the upstairs hallway. The trim was laying in the hallway for months, we finally gave up and moved it down to the basement because we knew it wouldn’t get done anytime soon.  I also found my favorite paintbrush wrapped in plastic and rock-hard in the frig.  I had put it in there when I was touching up the kitchen walls a couple months ago, and I straight up forgot it was in there.  So.  Home project fails aside, Ashford is growing ever more cute and hilarious.  He turned 7 months on Jan 5th and weighed in at 17 pounds when I did the very scientific 'weigh myself holding him and then weigh myself alone' method.  Quickest 17 pounds I ever lost!

He has hit a million milestones over the last few weeks. He started crawling 'for real' December 18th, sitting unassisted December 25th, going from sitting to crawling and vice versa by December 28th, first tooth December 29th (now there are two!), started doing this funny 'downward dog' pose on January 4th...

Then he started clapping on January 5th, and the finale - on January 13th I found him in his crib, standing up and smiling at me in his sleep sack.  

We have since lowered the crib.  He's also pulling up on furniture now.  This kid is not content to just sit around, he wants to be moving at all times.  Thankfully, he loves his exersaucer and jumperoo.  Mommy needs uninterrupted wine time.   

He's still sleeping 7:30pm to 6am for the most part, unless he's fighting bedtime or having a random wake up at 3am (which we usually ignore, by the way).  I'm so grateful for his nighttime sleeping habits.  He is still not a good napper at home, though.    

He doesn't love eating solids, he hates the feeling of even the smallest chunks going near his throat and gags a lot.  I gave up on the finger foods and he is only getting purees.  Hopefully he will find it fun to feed himself soon! 

We are really enjoying seeing him get bigger, laugh more, notice new things, and other fun stuff.  Now if he could just help us with some house stuff, we'd be in business.  Until then, he will earn his keep being a model for adorable photos. 

Have a great weekend!

Huffington Post Feature

Hey everyone, I hope you had a wonderful new year!  We went out with my brother and his lady for NYE while my mom watched the little nugget, and it was divine.  There was champagne, party head gear, and sequins involved. Here is a photo to prove that I did not fall asleep on the couch at 10pm as initially planned...  

Ok, this doesn't prove the time, but I assure you if you could see my raccoon eyes you would know this was about 5 hours past my normal bed time...or, 2am. 

Enough about my shenanigans.  I wanted to share a link to a Huffington Post Home feature on our kitchen!  Amy contacted me before Christmas and asked if she could interview me for a little post on the kitchen renovation, how could I say no?  You can check it out here.  

ps - I love how the first comment says that our kitchen is entirely underwhelming.  Awesome! 

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, I'm sitting on the couch digesting and watching some TV, it feels mighty fine.  Now that everyone in real life has received our Christmas card, I thought I'd share it here.  I used Mixbook for these cards, and they turned out really nice! 

And I snuck a few more pics on the back, because I had about 300 to choose from.  This kid is photogenic, I'm afraid.  

And yes, Ashford did visit Santa and was a complete angel.  Or, elf.  

Random question - does anyone have an opinion regarding Nook HD+ or Kindle Fire HD?  I received a Nook for Christmas and I'm debating getting a Kindle instead since I have an Amazon Prime membership.  Discuss! 

6 months

Our baby is half a year old.  It really doesn't seem like it's been that long, but here he is looking all big. 

At his 6 month doctor visit, he was 15 lbs 15 oz and 27 inches long.  He's skinny, but strong.  He is now 'scooting' across the floor and crawling!  He is slow and shaky, it is hilarious to watch.  Curiously, he can't sit up unassisted yet, but I think it's because he's always on the go.  Who has time to sit around?

He makes some goofy faces and I love capturing them every day.  Boo!

A note about sleep...we had a tough time getting him on a schedule.  In my last update I mentioned that a couple days after he turned 5 months old, he just magically started sleeping 7 to 6am.  I think he was just 'ready.'  However, we did let him cry to teach him how to soothe himself, and we also carefully watched for his sleep cues to figure out when bedtime was.  As soon as he started rubbing his eyes, he was put in his crib.  Bedtime usually happens between 6:45 and 7:30pm.  In case you are interested, he naps from 9-11am and 1-4pm at daycare, not as long on the weekends.  Kid loves to sleep!  At night, he will sometimes wake up once, but cries briefly and falls back to sleep.  

He's not a big fan of solids yet.  He will eat purees, but hates rice cereal and oatmeal.  Fortunately, I don't really care if he eats cereal, and probably won't be buying any more.  I've been trying to give him finger foods a la Baby Led Weaning, but the only thing he seems to like is bread.  Yep, must be my kid.  Carb addict.  

I tried a new perspective with the photos this month, and I love these through-the-crib shots!

We have a thumb-sucker.  I'm trying to discourage it during the day, but at night I pretty much love that it keeps him happy and helps him fall asleep.  Is that terrible?  

We had another milestone last week - he fell off our bed.  I had no idea he could crawl backwards off the edge (from the middle!), so it was totally heartbreaking when I looked up from my laundry sorting to see him laying on the rug screaming after a terrible thump.  I guess I've learned my lesson.     

Making labels

Yesterday Shaun decided he wanted to make cookies.  From scratch, with the oldest baking essentials in the world, because I don't bake and there is no need to have fresh flour or brown sugar in our house.  I think our Baking Soda was from two years ago.  Along with the old products, there were old labels on my Tupperware containers that bothered me every time I saw them.  I promise that is not the reason I don't bake.  I don't bake because I'm lazy, AND I must eat all sweets in my general vicinity.  

The old labels were return address ones that I wrote on with a Sharpie.  Not very cute.  I decided after we bought new essentials at the store, that I would not put them into the containers until I had new labels.  So I went to the computer and drafted up some new ones in PowerPoint.  

The little pics are a font called 'Sugar Coma' from dafont.com, the text is 'Upper East Side' from dafont.  I wish I had some cuter paper, but I just used what I had...some dark blue-violet printer paper.  

I used my paper cutter to slice and dice, then ran them through my most favorite crafty device ever.  The Xyron create-a-sticker!

It is my favorite of the three crafty things I own: Xyron, glue gun, paper cutter.  Oh, and I have a hole punch.  So, I have four things.  It is the best of the four things.  Although, the paper cutter is pretty nice.  And I do love my glue gun.  Just forget I said anything.  So, I stuck all the label strips through the Xyron and they came out in this nice long strip of sticker. 

Then I just peeled them off the backing and stuck them on the containers.  

And here they all are in their home above the frig.  

I still have that other small one that I'm not sure what to do with.  It could maybe hold chocolate chips, but I don't think those would last long enough in our house to have a dedicated container.  I don't LOVE the new labels, I wish I'd used white paper or a patterned one from Michaels instead of the colored, but that adhesive is permanent - so I'm just living with it until I feel like soaking them off.  Which means, they are probably on there indefinitely.  Anyway, here are the cookies Shaun made, which are probably the best homemade chocolate chip cookies I've ever tasted.  

They are soft, chewy, thick, dense, and full of chocolate chips.  Delicious.  I've had four already.  The recipe is here.  

Appliances are junk

I realize this is not a very thankful post for the week after Thanksgiving.  Just to be clear, I am incredibly thankful for my hubby and my peanut, our wonderful families, our good jobs, our nice house, our fabulous friends.  What I'm not thankful for, is crappy appliance manufacturers who build stuff cheaply and charge you exorbitantly.  I already spoke in my kitchen post about the problems we've had with our brand new KitchenAid refrigerator.  We've had at least four service calls on the stupid thing since it was installed (all having to do with the ice maker) and that, to me, is redonk.  But this post is not really about out stupidly overpriced frig, or the range with a 'power burner' that not only doesn't boil water in 90 seconds but cannot seem to boil water in the same amount of time as the regular burners.  No, this post is all about our craptastic Maytag Bravos washing machine.  

A few weeks ago Shaun was traveling for work, and I realized (with ten loads of laundry saved up), that the washing machine wasn't working.  Now, we knew there was a bunch of socks/undies stuck under the drum of this thing because it STUNK to high heaven when we used it and little scraps of my Victoria's Secret underthings were sticking out of the bottom of the inner drum.  But, it kept limping along, so we just took things out immediately after washing so they wouldn't stink and made festive confetti out of the lacy bits.  This particular night, all I heard after pressing start was a revving noise and no action .  I was pretty pissed because this washer and dryer are just 4 years old and were #1 on the Consumer Reports 'best buys.'  Turns out there are several websites dedicated to hating (and wanting a class action lawsuit against) this particular set.  Awesome.  I did what any normal chick would do...I came home on my lunch break the next day and tried to take the damn thing apart in dress pants.  First, I turned off the water.  Riveting photo, I know.  

Then I put a bucket down to catch the spillage, and unfastened the water connectors on the unit to make sure the washer was getting water.  

Of course, there was nothing wrong here because there are these nice little mesh screens inside.  Duh. 

Then I unscrewed the top of the back part and found myself staring at electrical stuff with no clue if anything was out of place or messed up.  Duh, again.  

So then I tried to pry the top of the washer up to get access to the drum.  I used a screwdriver, a scraper, and some other random tools to try to pop the clamps holding it down, but I could not get them to release and was afraid I would damage the paint.  I did what you'd expect me to do, I cried for a while and ate my feelings (they tasted like ice cream) before heading back to work.  But LO, through some kind of miracle, a coworker friend offered up her husband to come take a look at it that night.  Yes, please!!!  He had that top up in no time.    

Then, the bottom was unscrewed, and the drum came out.  That's Jeff, the man who saved my sanity, and the best husband (that's not mine) ever.  

With the drum removed, you could see all the socks floating in the cesspool of old water at the bottom of the tub.  It smelled worse than a diaper blowout.  

And, I about died when this man I have only met one other time in my life pulled my destroyed undies out.  That would be the mess of pink elastic in the middle of this pile:

Oh, and all these socks came out of the water, too...

After all the socks were removed, he put things back together and ran a cycle.  

It ran for a while, and as it was going, I could see the drum spinning through the white plastic tub.  I find it strange that the only thing holding up that heavy drum is some cables and a plastic tub.  Jeff put the back panel back onto the washer and then, of course, it stopped running.

When the unit stopped again, Jeff tilted the whole thing forward and scouted around the waste water hose - and pulled out the longest sock I've ever seen!

That sock had completely blocked the waste hose and was preventing the washer from emptying, which in turn made the mechanical process stop.  The washer was sort of 'drowning' in old water, I guess you could say.  I'm happy to say that it's fixed now, but unfortunately there is not much I can do to prevent this problem.  There are no screens to prevent items from going over the sides of the drum, or into the waste hose.  For now, I've been making sure all smaller items are at the bottom of the washer so they can't jump ship, and all REALLY small items like baby socks and bibs are being washed in a mesh laundry bag.  It sucks that I should have to do that.  For once, I would love to just have something work without any special workarounds in place.  Do things like that even exist anymore?  

To close my bitchfest, here is a photo of me and peanut at the scene of the crime.  Yep, I have a mirror in my gross cinderblock laundry room.  It's so I can check out my fine self while washing clothes.  SNORT.