Celebrating!!!

B is picking up a bottle of this on Friday night. We've never had Veuve, but we are celebrating and this is the true celebratory bubbly.

 

What are we celebrating, you ask? As of tonight, our household is 100% consumer debt free!!! We finished paying off our graduate school debt this summer, and tonight we made the last car payment on B's car. We don't carry credit card debt, so we offcially have zero, zero, zero personal debt!!!!!

 

We still have our mortgage (apparently mortgage is not considered consumer card debt), college savings for the boys, and I will need a new car in 2-3 years (mine is 9 years old), so we aren't running off on an exotic vacation with our new found money, but still........we can't help but be super excited to know that all our hard work and our ability to buckle down and budget has really paid off.

 

I think that the $40 splurge is going to be soooooo worth it!!!

Zulily is killing me.....

How cute are these????? I couldn't help myself. I just ordered a pair for both boys with the appropriate initials. They have white ones with a red initial too, but since they didn't have them in both boys' sizes, I held out. The cuffs even turn up with orange lining. DYING over the cuteness. I know other boy moms will understand how adorable these are!!

I also ordered this darling diaper bag (really just a hobo bag with lots of interior pockets), and I'm going to have it monogrammed in hot pink for next summer. Technically it is reversible, but I'd rather have it monogrammed than reversed, so to the monogrammers it is going!! Won't it be perfect??

Last week on Zulily, I ordered SYT's Christmas present (a Radio Flyer "My first scooter" in red) plus tons of darling outfits for a few babies that I needed to buy gifts for. I also ordered an address stamp for our Christmas cards. Last year I hand wrote all our return addresses, and I would prefer not to have to do that again :)

I often am able to ignore the flash sale sites, but Zulily has just killed it lately, and I haven't been able to resist. If you need an invite, just click here.  Also, if you shop with Ebates (and if you aren't, you REALLY should be), you will get 3.5% cash back!!

Hope you are having a great Friday!

5 months old

PUT is 5 months old now......seriously, time is just flying with my little munchkin. He is a major fan of the pacifier, so the above picture is a pretty accurate picture of my sweet babe.

 

He's over 18 lbs now (yikes!) and is wearing 6-12 month or 9 month clothes, mostly. I put him in a 6 month Carters' outfit for daycare the other day and it was already too short and a little tight. And, coming from a second time mom, I think that Carters usually runs true to size. He's definitely a big boy! I'm hoping he can still fit into a few of SYT's Christmas outfits by the time it rolls around.

 

Peter is still rolling like a crazy man. He would rather be on the floor rolling in every direction than anything else (except nursing- ha!).  He has sat up for 6 minutes (once) but does sit for shorter periods of time pretty regularly. He's a strong little guy. He loves jumping in the exersaucer and is really starting to become interactive with everything he sees. He is "talking" all the time- I could listen to him allllllll day long. It's just so, so, so sweet.

 

We just started feeding him solids two weeks ago. We gave him oatmeal for a few days but that really constipated him, so we switched to veggies instead. We've done butternut squash, avocado, and sweet potatoes so far. We are going to try either peas or green beans next. I make all the baby food which lends itself to being thicker/more textured than regular stage one jarred food. I tend to worry about the consistency/will Peter handle it well/is it too much for him, but, so far, he has done pretty well with all of them. I have had to thin out the avocado with water, but that's not a big deal to me. I could thin it out with breastmilk, but he gets PLENTY of calories, so using a bit of water isn't detrimental to him at all.

 

We saw the nephrologist in September and had another kidney ultrasound which didn't go exactly (read: at all) as we had hoped. We have another test this Friday (which involves an IV and a catheter- poor baby!!) to look further into some new issues and an appointment Nov. 1st to go over the results and see if further changes need to be made. You would never in a zillion years think anything was wrong with him. He's developing normally, he pees like a champ, and he's a really happy babe. All of that is so reassuring. We are now doing a daily antibiotic to prevent any kidney infections, and, thank goodness, it is grape flavored and he loves it. We are just hoping that all of this will work out and that he will "outgrow" most of these issues. We've decided the best approach we can take right now is to not worry until someone says to worry. Yes, we do have moments when the worry sneaks up on us but then we go back to the above stance!

 

Sleep is getting better. He's still getting up once or twice (mostly once- woo hoo!!!!) but that is WAY better than 3-4 times per night. I am only feeding him once overnight, so if he wakes more than that, B will go in and pat him back down or give him the passy. If I go in there, he doesn't sleep until he nurses, so it works better for him to not see me unless it's the one time I'm going to nurse. In a few weeks, we're planning on dropping that nursing session, so you'll definitely get a full report when that happens. Neither of us are looking forward to that; however we know it needs to happen for all of us!!

 

Love you, Sweet P!!! We wouldn't trade you, your waking at night, your incredible thighs, your crazy kidneys, your darling babbling, or your beautiful brown eyes for the world!! Mwah!!

Rolling, rolling, rolling.......

 

As a mom of an infant, I have found that I love the closely spaced pediatrician visits b/c I love getting Peter's weight and height and I love doing the developmental checklists and knowing that he is on track. At the four month visit, babies are supposed to be rolling over from tummy to back, and though I checked that Peter did that on the checklist we have to fill out, he really had only done it once. It made me feel slightly inferior that other babies (including Spencer) were rolling over regularly by 4 months and Peter wasn't. Yes, this is me totally admitting that my self esteem is changed by what my children do. Ugg, I know this shouldn't be the case, but I bet that most honest moms feel this way too.

 

The pedi told me that often her "chunkier" babies took longer to roll and not to worry that he wasn't rolling regularly. He was meeting all his other milestones and he obviously has great tone, so she was not at all worried. I really wasn't either- I just like to check things off on lists though, you know?

 

Well, look who decided to surprise me this weekend when he rolled, not only front to back but also back to front all on the same day????? We were at friends for dinner and we were just chilling in the family room on the floor when PUT just started rolling all over the place. He would do it and then he would look up and just grin like a madman. SOOOO cute! He's got it down now, and yesterday rolled over and over in his room until he ran into the dresser. He started crying so I moved him away from the dresser, and he started rolling around again with wild abandon. It's awesome.

 

As a nurse practitioner, I love, love, love having parents come in and tell me what their kids are "working on" and what they have recently accomplished. I love to see the pride come onto the parents and kids faces when the parents mention how good their child is at something, especially when it is a kid who may not hear positive things about him/herself very often. I feel the same way right now. I love that I see him learning and changing and growing. It's so fun. I also love seeing Spencer getting excited about Peter learning things. He has decided he wants to teach Peter to walk. How do you explain to a 2 year old that that's going to be about 8-10 months from now?? Sweet boy!

 

Soooo, tell me, what is your child working on right now? Why are you a proud momma? Spencer's "thing" right now is his amazing vocab- it's growing by leaps and bounds in the past few months and his sentence structure is amazing. I also love that he wants to practice "back and through" all the time (ie- golf). Are you in the midst of learning how to count, how to say the ABCs, or how to do long division? Are you potty training? Are your kids loving their sports right now? Please start bragging because I am listening!!!!

Applique tutorial

I saw this applique tutorial on Pinterest, and I decided this was something I definitely wanted to try. I'm so glad I did. The tutorial is easy to follow, and as long as you have basic sewing skills (and I mean basic), you can definitely knock this out!!

I had the long sleeved onsie for Peter (actually from when Spence was a babe) and I bought Spencer's shirt for $5 at Target. I bought the all the fabric on sale at Joanns, bought the Wonder Under there too, and went to work. I literally copied the patterns for the pumpkin, the stems, and the leaves right off the computer by taping the fabric to my computer screen.

I've already washed the shirts and, great success, the appliques didn't come off. I definitely was worried that they would!!

I have already cut out and wonder undered a few other shirts and now just need to sew them. I have green and navy trees for a wintertime scene, a P and a S as a simple monogram, and a ghost for Halloween. It's a fun, easy, and cheap way to do cute shirts for boys (which are hard to find, especially when I want them to match). I'm hoping to do an anchor and sailboat for next summer and perhaps a 3 and a 1 for their birthdays next May.

 

Have you ever appliqued before? I promise, you can totally do this! The original poster states that she finds heavier fabrics easier to work with, and after using both lightweight and heavier fabric, I would agree with her. Corduroy is really easy, and satin would suck. So try to find heavier fabric if it's a possibility!! I do have to say that the orange and white stripe fabric used above is quite lightweight and, while it was harder to use, it ended up being just fine. The burlap I used for the stems was a PITA though. I would never use that again!! Live and learn, right?

 

Anyway, I love the tutorial and I thought some of you might find it useful!!

 

 

Who wants to give me travel ideas?

B and I celebrated our fourth anniversary in August. It was relatively uneventful this year as I had just gone back to work, he had to go out of town for a conference, and our heads were spinning in all kinds of directions. We had a good dinner at home with a glass of wine and called it good :)

Next year will be our 5 year anniversary (and 9.5 years of dating!), so we would like to do a trip away. The boys will be 1&3, so we feel comfortable leaving them with my mom and Ralph for a long weekend, but we aren't ready to go somewhere for a week or two.

Here are a few criteria we have:
1. Our time constraint is 4-5 days.

2. We would like to stay continental- US, Canada, a relatively close island would all be fine. We do not want to have jet lag since we will be gone a relatively short time.

3. Since we won't have the boys, we don't need a family friendly place. We would prefer somewhere that has fun daytime activities/lots to explore and has amazing restaurants. We don't necessarily need a huge nightlife scene, but we would probably take advantage if there was one.

4. We don't want to be on more than 2 flights. Living in GR, you can't really get anywhere without transferring at a major hub, but we don't want 3 flights either.

5. Our anniversary is in August, but we would be willing to go anytime August through October. August is beautiful in Michigan and we tend to have lots of plans that month, so travel in the early fall would be totally fine with us!

A few places we have thought about so far:
Boston, Seattle, Vancouver, Charleston, New Orleans, New York City (I've never been and B was last there when he was 18), Montreal, or Napa. We haven't really explored the idea of a tropical resort getaway as we've really been thinking more big city exploration, but we'd be open to pretty much anything.

We don't want to go anywhere in CA unless it's Napa, we don't want to go to FL, Chicago is out, and we'd like to get out of the midwest.

So.......lay it on me. Where should we go (currently we are dreaming so price doesn't matter at all. We also have enough Hilton points to stay pretty much anywhere for free so that helps a bunch!!), why should we go there, and what are your top three must do/see while we are there? I am all ears!!!

Peter is 4 months old

Hey, sweet P! You are 4 months old. I would say I can't believe it, yet I remember so vividly the time flying by with your brother as well.

Peter is a very sweet, very smiley baby during the day. He will, of course, have occasional moments of fussiness, but, for the most part, is a sweet little guy. He is cooing and doing lots of "gahs" and "guhs". Just this a.m. I heard him making new noises with different high and low tones. He is definitely chattier than Spencer was at this age. He will say something and then wait for you to say something back and then make more noises, just like a "real" conversation. I love it! He is also full on laughing now and it's fabulous. He does it at random times and not always for the same reasons, so it's super fun if you happen to catch him in the act. He's starting to interact with toys and loves looking in the mirror too.

 

No rolling over yet and he doesn't seem interested in trying either. He will roll if he is already laying on his side but he certainly can't get from back to front or front to back. He did scootch around on his tummy the other day to look in a new direction. He is sitting well in the bumbo (as evidenced above) and likes the exersaucer at daycare. He's great in the car- it's a great sleep tool!

It's a shame he is in daycare all day as he, like so many babies, can get fussy in the evenings which is the only time we have with him. It's hard to have a baby who is happy when being held but fussy when out of our arms while we are trying to make dinner, attend to both boys' needs, talk to each other, and wind down from our work day in general. Don't get me wrong, I love holding the little guy, but holding babies and chopping veggies for dinner is a little, shall we say, tricky and, I'm certain, not advised by the American Academy of Pediatrics :)

Love these ears!!!!

He is gaining weight very well and growing in length too. No stats since drs apt is next week, but he is outgrowing clothes left and right. The other day I put him in a 6-12 month sleeper and it wasn't too big at all!! Yikes. He takes 3 5oz bottles of pumped breastmilk while at daycare and occasionally will take 1-2 more oz while there from the extra bottle we send. He nurses in the morning, in the evening twice and, lately, like crazy overnight. I'm amazed I'm keeping up with him to be honest!

See this smile? Are you madly in love? Yep, me too. Would you like to see it mulitple times overnight? Yea, me neither. It's hard to say whether or not he is in the 4 month wakeful period or if his reflux is getting worse, but his sleep for the past 12 days has been awful. He certainly has never been the greatest sleeper. He's only had one 8 hour stretch in his little life, most nights he is up 1-2 times to nurse (usually around 1 and then around 4). For the past 12 days, he has been up 3-4 times every single night fussy and not wanting to go back to bed unless he is nursed. Apparently this is not uncommon, and Spencer did this too for two weeks around this time. Not uncommon, but NOT appreciated either. I honestly can say that I have never, ever been as tired as I have been in the past two weeks.

 

He's always had reflux- very spitty, coughs when lying down, you can hear stuff gurgling around in his esophagus, etc, but it seems to be getting a bit worse lately. We started Prevacid this weekend (which takes about two weeks to really take effect). We'll see if this helps him over the next month and then decide if it is worth continuing. At night, we have noticed that he is often comfort nursing rather than really needing to nurse, and I think it is due to wanting to swallow/suck to get the burning from the reflux down as the pacifier is no longer cutting it and that used to be his soothing mechanism. I'm hoping that if we can cut down on the acid, he'll have an easier time at night when lying down. Only time will tell!

 

I feel badly as this post seems to be more negative than positive. I truly adore my sweet boy and wouldn't trade him for the world! We're just have a rough go right now which I don't want to sugar coat as I think people really appreciate knowing that other moms out there struggle with infants just as much as they do. Plus, as any mom will tell you, lack of sleep is incredibly wearing, and at some point in time, it's impossible to be smiley, perfect, happy pants when you are so gosh darn tired. This too shall pass- it did with Spence and it will with Peter. We're incredibly lucky overall, and all the goos, gahs, smiles, laughs, and bright eyed moments of wonder make up for everything else!

If you need any proof that my babies do not look alike at all, here it is! They really could not be more different. The only similar feature are their sweet noses :) (Click here for Spencer's 4 month pics to see how different their baby pics are)

Fall Wishlist

Since I still haven't packed away my summer clothes, I don't really know what I "need" for the fall, but here are a few things I've tried on or lusted after online lately

Milano Rib Blazer- I tried this blazer on in the store and it is just perfect. It would look great with jeans for a dressed up weekend look yet it's still totally work appropriate. Even better, it would totally work with a nursing tank underneath. I love my navy wool blazer from LE, and I know I would love this one too. It comes in a few other colors (all with the contrast edging) if you are looking for an updated blazer this fall. This striped blazer looks fabulous too.

I tried on the downtown field jacket in the store after I had seen a few bloggers blog about it. I love, love, love it!! It looks better IRL than it does on this dual denim model. I like the olive and the navy and would totally buy both except for B would not appreciate the addition of two more jackets to our front closet. I'm going to be lucky to pull off one! I'm going to ask my mom for this for my birthday as she is just as jacket obsessed as I am :)

MCW- I immediately thought of you when I saw this striped cowlneck dress. I love, love, love it. I doubt I will buy it as I'd be terrified of how my backside would look with the stripes going across, but someone should definitely buy this. I'd have a hard time deciding between the ivory/navy and the kelly green/navy.

 The Hopsy Studs from Bridier Baubles are just my cup of tea. Glamorous yet always appropriate and a perfect shade of pink. My mother-in-law would look great in these and will probably be receiving a pair for her next birthday. We don't see each other very often as they live in FL, so I don't think it would be too weird to own the same earrings. Right??

The other thing I'd love to find are a pair of well fitting colored cords. A deep burgandy, plum, green or red is what I am thinking about. I just need to try on a few pairs as I know there out there this season.

So what's on your fall wishlist? Any fabulous finds I should look at too?

Funny things 2 year olds say

Just a few funny things Spencer has said lately that I wanted to jot down so that I'll remember them....

*Often, B will hold both Peter and Spencer and say something like "I love my boys" or "Just look at my cute boys" or "I'm so lucky to have my boys".  The other day Spencer went running over to B when he was already holding Peter and said "Daddy, pick me up and say boys". It was so cute!

*Today in the car, his sippy cup fell, so I picked it up and handed it to him. It then fell again a few minutes later and he said, "Mommy, I keep falling it" (instead of dropping it).

*The other night Spence decided he wanted me to read his bedtime stories instead of B. I asked him what daddy was going to do instead and he said "he go clean the kitchen!". Ha!!

*Last night he asked me if I wanted to wear a bib for dinner. I said sure just to make him happy. He went and picked out one of the tiny baby bibs and said "Here mommy, is perfect for you!"

I love how far his vocabulary has come and I love that through his words, I can get a glimpse of how hard his brain is working every day. Do any of you have funny kid sayings? Post them in the comments- I need a good laugh this week!!

Wedding Weekend

 

We spent Labor Day weekend on Mackinac Island celebrating the wedding of our good friends from Chicago. B has known the groom since their Glee Club days together at Miami, and the bride we've now known for about 4 years. They're an amazing couple, and we know they'll have a fabulous marriage.

 

We were able to see a bunch of our Chicago friends, which was lovely. We miss them a LOT, and though the time together was short, it was wonderful to catch up.

 

We took my mom and Ralph up to the Island with us since we decided to take the boys. They babysat for us while we were at wedding activities. It was so nice to have them there (even amongst the very close hotel room quarters). Spence absolutely adores his Mimi and Bobo (Abuelo), so anytime they're around, he is happy. We had one massive meltdown due to tiredness and hunger from Spence, and Peter was quite fussy in the evenings when B and I were out, but, for the most part, things went well. I would love to go on and on about how awful our "resort" experience was, but I won't. If you do read this and are planning an overnight experience on Mackinac Island in the future, though, please discuss with me first- I would never, ever, ever recommend Mission Point (where we stayed).

 

This weekend away was our last planned trip for as long as I look at the calendar. We don't know our holiday plans yet, and we know we want to get up north one weekend this fall, but we don't have it picked out yet, so, for now, we are just home and settled. This is good as we have a lot to catch up on around here!!