something new everyday

Literally, and such is life with a kid. I love watching her do new stuff, and the look on her face when she figures out how to do something on her own i.e. getting a toy from her toy box. Now she is figuring out that if Dad or I leave the room we didn't just disappear, and she normally will come crawling after. She's even started playing in her room by herself. Today I set her down with her toys and went to fold laundry in our bedroom which is right across the hall. She'd play for 30 seconds and then come check on me, once she saw I was 'ok' she'd go back to her room and play some more. When she drops stuff she now looks for it, and sometimes will purposely drop things just so we will get them for her.

The thing I'm MOST excited about her doing is.... drum roll please.... she finally gives kisses!!! I probably kiss this kid a million and one times a day and I've been really working with her lately to give kisses back. She's so stubborn though normally she'd turn her cheek so I couldn't give her a smooch. Well Sunday I made the kissy noise and she leaned in, mouth open, and planted a big slobbery one on me. I'm pretty sure my heart was in a huge puddle after that! Now, she won't openly give them and sometimes even when I ask for one she just isn't in the mood, BUT when she decides to show momma some lovin it's literally the best thing ever!

Also on Sunday she started clapping. So now every time she claps we yell 'YAY' and clap with her. That just gets her even more excited and then she has the biggest grin on her face.

We've been pulling ourselves up for a while now but on Saturday I walked in her room to find this:

Not cool little miss! Do you have any idea how hard nap time is now? Before she might lay and whine for a little but eventually give in and fall asleep... well now, why just lay there when you can stand and throw your binki out? That sounds way more fun, right? She also will sit with her feet through the bars, whine, and rake her binki across the bars. Guess she must really feel like she's in a baby prison!

Today for the first time she explored the kitchen cabinets:

I'm pretty sure we are going to have a strong willed little girl on our hands. Today we were playing in her room and she tried to crawl over my leg to get out so she could crawl down the hall. I didn't feel like chasing after her so I picked her up off my leg and turned her around to face her toys. By the way she was crying you'd of thought I told her unicorns weren't real! I have a feeling she's going to be a handful :)

Kitties? Anyone? Bueller?

The hoosiers that live at the end of our street have a bunch of stray cats. Now, whatever they do is their business... until it affects me...

Last Wednesday I saw one of the cats in our bush, no biggie. Then Thursday I heard rustling in our bushes and told Pat about it, well he text me when I was at work and said we had a litter of kittens in our bush. I made a call to animal control that went something like this:
Me: Hello?
AC: Yeah...
Me: I was just wondering how we go about getting a litter of kittens picked up... Do we need to be home? Or can you just come by and get them?
AC: Well, I can't take the babies if I can't get the mom and I don't even have a trap on my truck right now...
Me: So are you telling me we have to catch the mom before you'll come get the kittens????
AC: Well, I don't have a trap on my truck right now... What's your address? (I tell him) Oh there's already a trap on your street.
Me: Ok... so am I just supposed to live with these cats living at my house?
AC: Uhhh, I don't even know if the mom's feral and I can't take the babies if I can't catch the mom because they will die without her, but I probably won't be able to catch the mom so...

And it got progressively worse from there... When I got home there was a trap set up in between our two bushes with a can of cat food in it... the metal lid from the can? Thrown in our front yard... Real professional if you ask me!

Fast forward to today, it's storming real bad and we came home to the trap on our front porch with one of the kittens in it. Now, as much as I'm NOT a cat person, it was pretty sad to see that little kitten, cold and wet, sitting in the cage. So we let him/her out. What were we supposed to do? Maybe it would of died over night and that's just sad, it's not their fault... I thought about trying to catch them and walking down to the hoosiers at the end of the street and asking if they would mind getting their damn cats fixed... problem being, we cannot catch the cats. So I guess for now they will make their home (6 kittens and a mom) under our porch. I don't know what other options we have at this point.

Speaking of hoosier neighbors, I spent Saturday afternoon being entertained by the people that live across the street. This lady apparently lives with her mother, who I'm guessing is ill because she just sits in her bedroom and smokes and only leaves the house when the Oats van comes to get her. Speaking of, I haven't seen her in her room in a while.... hmmm.... Anyways, she wrecked a car so it's been parked in her driveway since before I had Kimber. Saturday the real fun happened... fat chick in a moo-moo, another chick showed up with her two kids (3 or 4 yr olds), one just wearing a diaper, and an old dude working on her other non-working car. The kid in the diaper proceeded to 'pick' flowers from the flower bed and the chick that lives there came out and asked her 'What the hell she was doing???' Now, the word picked is in quotes because the woman has 'planted' FAKE FLOWERS.... And of course, I have a photo for proof:

Gosh I love our neighbors and cannot wait to spend the rest of our days living in this house ***insert sarcasm***

Traditions

We don't really have any traditions and that kind of bums me out a little. We decided that one thing we are going to go every year is that we're going to get a movie as a Christmas gift and then after all the hoopla of the festivities we will come home, as a family, and watch said movie. This past year was Despicable Me.

That's all fine and dandy, but I want more... We then decided that (if we are able to) I'd like to continue to pass on the diamond in my wedding ring. The only problem would be if we had more than one girl. I figure if we have a boy we can help him pay for a ring for his fiancée, but she probably wouldn't care to have a diamond from her MIL :)

My mom gave it to Pat to put in my ring. The diamond actually came from her ring when she married my biological father, so at first I was hesitant on taking it since we joked that our marriage would be doomed to fail.... but... my mom informed me that bio dad didn't actually pay for the diamond and that my great aunt did so that made it all better.

But I want more.... I don't know what else though. I don't want to just Google 'family traditions' and steal something from there. If I liked real trees, I'd go to a tree farm every year and cut down our own Christmas tree.

I plan on making photo album scrapbook type things throughout her life, but the cooler thing I plan on doing is a scrapbook for when she's a mom. I'm going to write about my pregnancy, birth, her first year by months, and then write synopsis' for each year of her life and I plan on giving it to her the day she has her first kid. I'm real excited about it and need to start so I don't forget things about the first few months. Maybe I'll post each of them here... hmmm....

I did a very bad thing...

I woke a sleeping baby!!!!!

Let me explain before you rip into me that I broke a cardinal rule of parenting :)

I picked Kimber up a little late today because everyone and their mother was leaving work early because of the storms. Mary told me that Kimber just had a bottle and veggies. Score! Play time when we get home! Well, I wasn't home 30 minutes and she was fussing so Pat put her down for a nap... Time: 4:30...

At 6:30 (!!!!!!!!!) I decided I'd get her up from her nap, and honestly at this point I was a little worried I was going to find Kimber had succumb to SIDS, I mean a TWO hour nap?!?!?! Not unusual during the day, but never at night.

I walk in and she moved, I rubbed her back and she just laid there, with her cute little butt up in the air. Finally she woke up, and proceeded to cry. We got her to calm down and both sat on the floor to play for a while since we figured she wouldn't be tired after that massive nap... Wrong!

She was awake for maybe 5 minutes before I decided I'd feed her and put her to bed.... She went right back to sleep so I'm interested to see what time she'll be waking up in the morning.

Lesson learned, I will never wake a baby again! EVER!

Side note... Kimber is 8 whole months old!!!

My first Mother's Day!!!!!

Last weekend was CRAZY!!! Friday night at Kimber's bedtime we drove to Ottawa, KS for Jon's graduation. We got in around 11 and Jon & Rae came over and played with Kimber. Surprisingly Kimber went right back to sleep. We got up and headed to graduation brunch. Can I just say that they made this french toast stuff that looked kinda like monkey bread... it was amazing! I wish I knew how to make it... but I digress...

Then it was time for graduation. Kimber wanted to talk... during the prayer so we left to go to the cry room which we were told would have a tv with the graduation on. Well of course they couldn't get the tv working so there we sat, just me and Kimber. Wanna know why? Kimber scared all the other kids/parents out of the room!

It was like we were in freakin detention. Boring!!! Luckily Daddy came in and we both took her to play outside. So much for seeing the brother in law graduate!

Pretty sure she would of eaten that cup if we'd of let her!

So after graduation we were going to get her to take a nap, have dinner with Jon and Rae and make the 4 hour drive back home at Kimber's bedtime again. Well, that plan went to crap real quick! Pat put her to sleep, then my MIL's dog started barking and it woke her up. Then I spent probably 30 minutes putting her back to sleep only to have Pat's grandma's dog bark and wake her up. At that point I said that we were leaving and packed Kimber up at 5 and headed home. You know, she fell asleep at 5:30, slept the whole way home, when we got home at 10 we fed her and she went back to sleep until 7:30 the next morning. I'm gonna say she was tired!

Sunday was my first 'official' Mother's Day (Pat says being pregnant last year really doesn't count). Kimber and Pat gave me cards (we're going to get scrap booking stuff later), MIL gave me a Teething Bling necklace that I love! Seriously, if you have a teething baby go check them out! Jon and Rae got me this really cool bracelet, a huge bottle of Jaeger, and bath salts. I'd say I made out pretty well.

Kimber was in a particularly good mood that morning, and her gift to me? A TWO HOUR NAP!!!

After the epic nap we went over to my aunt's house to lunch/dinner. It's nice to have the five generations together. When we got home I told Pat I wanted some pictures of Kimber and I. Kimber did not want to cooperate, she cried, and cried, and cried some more. Oh well, we still took pictures:

My perfect ending to the perfect 1st Mother's Day:

Hope everyone else had a fantastic Mother's Day!!!

Homemade Baby Food

Ok, so I posted about making my own baby food a while ago and I just thought I'd give a little update and some tidbits I've learned along the way.

First off, yes, I'm still going strong at this whole homemade baby food thing! A few people have asked if it really saves money, and while I have actually sat down and done a numbers crunch, I do believe it saves some money... just not sure how much. A one ounce can of baby food is what, $0.75? Well I can make almost 20 ounces of green beans from one frozen bag, which is like a buck, maybe! It just all depends on what food you're talking about. For instance, plums, I can only get like one ounce per plum. Plums are like $0.50 a piece, so I'm still saving money, but not as much compared to green beans/peas.

One of the greatest benefits is how convenient it is. I made tons of food over two months ago and still have over two weeks of food left. It's hard for you to wrap your mind around how awesome that is, huh? Plus it's all perfectly portioned so I know exactly how much food I'm feeding her since every cube is roughly one ounce of food. Oh, and it's pretty cool to talk to other people about making baby food and I've always received positive comments which makes me puff out my chest a little bit I must admit :) It's just neat to me that I'm able to do this for her, I know it's so minuscule in the grand scheme of things but hey, I think it's pretty awesome!

Now on to my tips:
1. I don't do avocados. I know nothing about them so I was afraid they'd be too ripe or not ripe enough. Plus those suckers are expensive! I've never seen jarred avocados, so I figured with all the other foods I was making, she wasn't missing much!
2. I don't puree two different foods. The website I use says to mix like bananas and apples to puree them to a mixture. Well I didn't want 100 different baggies of food in my freezer so I just make all the food separate and then take a cube of apples and a cube of bananas, thaw them together and serve. Much easier in my opinion.
3. When introducing new foods I make a calendar. That way I know what foods have been introduced for three days and what foods we have left. Plus it's so much easier to look at a food schedule than to stand at my freezer for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to feed her.
4. I do use frozen foods. Right now we're doing frozen peas and green beans. The work that would take to use fresh is something I don't have time for (I mean it's hard enough to find time to make the food lol), plus frozen is the next best option.
5. With my next kid I'm not introducing green beans until 6 months. You can't get a smooth texture unless you use a strainer (and even then I'm not sure how smooth you can get them). Kimber didn't really care for green beans at first because it was rather chunky compared to the other foods you are introducing at that age. Once she had eaten food for a while it's a lot easier for her to chow down on some beans!
6. We just introduced turkey, and it's needs to be like 2:1 ratio with protein and another food they've already had. The texture is funky to them and I'm thinking she doesn't dig the taste because she gags. So far 2 bananas to 1 turkey has worked best for us.
7. If one of your purees is thick, it's ok, just mix it with water when you microwave it OR do what I do and mix it with a fruit or veggie that is watery. For instance, sweet potatoes are kind of thick so we mix it with squash so it balances out perfectly. The squash is kind of thin for her now since she's been eating for a while but the sweet potatoes are pretty thick, together they are the perfect little mixture.
8. Cook and/or cut food one day and puree the next. This is only something I just started doing and cannot believe I didn't think of it before. If you have a baby that doesn't mind momma being occupied then this might not be a tip for you, but my child wants to play and who am I to take play time and turn it into cooking time? The proteins I cooked and cut up one night and then pureed them the next. It's much easier than trying to get it all done in one night. Currently I've got pears and sweet potatoes in my fridge that are ready for the food processor.

I'm sure I'll have more tips and mostly I wanted to write them down for me, for future children. What I plan on doing next it sitting down and figuring out how much food yields how much baby food, as it's pretty much been trial and error so far!

And since I've made like 3 posts without pictures I feel like I should add a pointless picture to this post:

Who me???

I am???

(Warning: Pointless Post Follows)

Sometimes I don't know who I am anymore... I'm not sure if it's that I don't recognize this 'adult' I've become or if I've just become lost in the everyday. 

I was talking to my husband about this tonight because I feel like I wake up as a mom, drop Kimber off at daycare and become a working mom, come home and am a wife (cooking dinner) and a mom, then when she goes to bed I my mom hat off and become solely a wife. When do I get to be me?

Then as I further thought about it... that IS me. I am a wife and a mom, and nothing less. I'm exactly what my child and husband need me to be. Not only that but that's what I need to be... I need to be a good mom, I need to be a good wife. Those two 'jobs' are so rewarding and make my life fulfilled in a way I could never imagine.

I seriously wish everyone could experience the amount of love I feel on a daily basis. The laughs produced by Kimber when all I do is smile in her direction, the 'thank yous' I get from my husband after cooking dinner, and the endless other ways they show their love for me, and I, in return show my love for them by taking care of them the best I know how. That's what defines me, my love for my family.

Finally Done

I've probably spend over 20 hours in my dentist's chair since December and I can finally say that all my dental work is done!!! All I have left is whitening, and that's not until June when the trays go on sale. Can I just say that I am in LOVE with my new smile!

When I was 14 or 15ish I got veneers put on my front 6 teeth because I had huge gaps and my teeth didn't look like they had any enamel on them. Fast forward 10+ years and one of the veneers popped off, one was made smaller so I wouldn't grind it off, they turned yellowish, and one had a chip in it from being put under for my c-section.

Lovely, huh?

I've always been self conscious about my smile... not anymore!!!

LOVE!!!

(Please ignore the horrible 'end of the day' hair do!)

Words cannot express how happy I am with the end result. The 20+ shots in my mouth over this whole ordeal was totally worth it!

The big reveal! (Bathroom - Before & After)

Remember this post? This bathroom has been the biggest project ever! Numerous curse words were flown around any time anyone ever asked about our renovation. I can only hope and pray that the rest of the first floor goes more smoothly. Ok, so are you ready for some before and after? Grab some popcorn, this is going to be a long one!

BEFORE:

I can't believe I'm posting this... How nasty is this? And it's CLEAN! We tried everything under the sun but the bathtub was just stained, and it had a crack down the middle so we couldn't even use the tub... not that we would :)

Gross

Horrid mirror & Cabinets

Boring!

Vanity

Worst Light Ever

Laundry chute that went to the basement bathroom, not cool!


DURING DEMO:

Everything was ripped out!

DURING:

New tub with 3 piece wall surround & drywall back up.

All in!

New ceramic tile!

Grouted!


AFTER:

I love the edge of our mirror!

Prints from Sometimes I Swirl

Button flusher :)

 

We literally replaced every single thing in the bathroom. Pat and my dad did the bathtub, surround and drywall. My dad did our new 6 panel door. A guy from Pat's worked helped with the tile work. We had a guy come in and mud, tape and sand the drywall. Oh, and Pat's dad helped with the vanity because we had to move where the pipes were to fit it flush with the wall. Everything else, Pat and I did. There are still a few things left to do like: paint door and door jamb, fill trim, secure down the toilet tank, and install the fan/light we bought. I have no idea why we take on such big projects but man do they look good after we're done!

Looking back at pictures of how the bathroom used to look, I cannot believe how gross it was! I am still in love with everything we've done with this renovation and can't wait to finish the rest of the main floor! 

I'll spare you with all the gory details of every thing that went wrong with this project. Let's just say we will never buy a house that needs more than paint and hardware updated in the bathroom!