Whew

Boy oh boy did life get away from me.

I just got an email from the Bump telling me that my baby is 46 weeks old. So, yea, there's that. Don't even get me started on how I feel about it.

This morning I am finishing up some work, thinking about our 48 hour day and the road trip we are undertaking this evening and listening to the music on my iPhone on shuffle.

So far this morning...

1. Mumford & Sons : The Cave
2. Girl Talk: Get it Get it
3. Straight No Chaser: Jingle Bell Rock
4. Death Cab for Cutie: A Lack of Color
5. Raffi: Baby Beluga (yea, you read that right...)
6. Ben Folds: You Don't Know Me
7. Worship Tracks: Days of Elijah
8. Jack Johnson Curious George Album: We are going to be friends

I suppose a shuffled playlist is one of the most telling things about a person. I mean, Ben Folds, Death Cab, worship tracks, a little bit of Girl Talk, Raffi and Disney all wrapped up into one really does explain me in a nutshell.

apologies but not really ready to be back yet

I'm so sorry blogland for my lack of attention to you lately.

See, things have been sort of crazy around here. Well, insanely crazy actually and we're all just trying to get to where we need to be.

Our house is on the market and we're hoping to buy a friend's house that had to move to Stillwater, OK for a new job.

It has been a whirlwind but the house hasn't sold yet which is hard for Paul and I. The more showings you have, the more excited you get and then when nothing comes through, it's sort of a blow in the stomach. Over and over again. And considering the number of showings we've had and the extremely positive feedback the viewers give, we're shocked that we're still sitting on 20th street.

I've been putting off writing about it because if it doesn't happen, I refuse to be that girl that got too excited and jumped the gun and then has to go back and renig her entire post.

I'm excited and nervous and hopeful but I'm wearing thin and waiting for the right buyer is starting to take it out of me.

Everything else in our lives has been just as crazy, so as soon as we settle down, get some clarity, I should be back. Hopefully with lots of re-model projects. They keep me excited!

 

When I first imagined staying home with Addison each Friday of the week, I pictured elaborate days filled with learning and trips and shopping. 

I've been back at work for two and a half months and my Friday's aren't quite elaborate.

In fact, their quite ordinary. But wonderfully ordinary.

This morning, Paul let me sleep in while he gave Addison her 6 am bottle. Then she sat with me on our bed and played while I ate breakfast in bed. (What a husband, right?!) We played and watched The Cat in the Hat for awhile in my bed when she started to get ready for a morning nap. I laid her flat and laid down next to her and the next thing we both knew we we're out. We both took a long morning nap and woke up happy and content. She giggled as I changed her diaper and prepared her bottle and as she ate we watched some classic Sesame Street. She has been playing in her room ever since she finished eating while watching me pack her things and my things for the weekend trip to see my parents. 

It's been a wonderful morning.

Plus it's too hot for the zoo. Right?

4th of July

For the fourth of July this year, we went to see Paul's family in Michigan. We loaded missy up in the car and were off for a 15 hour drive. We spent 4-1/2 days with family, eating, sitting on the lake and boating and loved every minute of it.

 Addison's 1st time on a boat.

 Meeting her great-grandma for the first time.

Isabelle and the cousins (Addi & Ava) with Diane.

 Addison with her grandma Diane.

 The living room was practically a toy war zone. Between two toddlers and Addison, it was wrecked.

 Cousins with their great grandma.

 Lake Macatawa. We sat in the backyard overlooking the lake, eating smores and watching fireworks that people were setting off from their docks.

Paul and I ended our trip in St. Louis on the 4th of July. We watched the largest and loudest fireworks we had ever seen from our hotel room, sipping on some leftover Coke Zero cans from the trip while Addison slept soundly on the king sized bed. Quite possibly the best 4th of July ever.

a typical conversation with my mother

Last night I spent half an hour on the phone with my mom:

Mom:    So I took this woman shopping for an outfit to wear at her daughter's wedding. She wanted to go to the Sonshine House to find something (a free clothing place sponsered by the local churches) but that would be a lot of work to find her something so I told her I'd take her to the thrift store and get her an outfit. So I took her to the thrift store and got her a couple of outfits and got myself some outfits.

Me:       Mommmm....

Mom:    I know! But I found this really cute dress. It was so cute I wore it back to the office. I literally bought it, changed in the dressing room and went back to work. Nancy laughed and said, "Seriously, Connie!? It is really cute though."

Me:      Well I don't blame her. You took another woman shopping at a thrift store and then came back in a different outfit.

Mom:   Well later John came in the room and sort of looked surprised and said, "You weren't wearing that this morning were you?!" Which is funny because the dress isn't really normal for me. You know it's tie-dyed and all.

Me:       I'm sorry, did you say tie-dyed?'

Mom:    Yea, and it's a short (did my mom buy a tie-dyed romper?!)...a mini-skirt (please tell me you did not just say mini-skirt), well it's not a mini-skirt, it's just a shorter dress. Like to my knees (oh heavens mom, a dress to your knees is not a mini anything). AND, it's belted!

Me:       This just keeps getting worse.

Mom:    No! It's way cute! I'll send you a picture.

Me:       Well you probably should. The image I have in my head does not sound cute.

Mom:    And what's better is it matches my suede purple heels that I got at the St. Paul Thrift Store.

Me:       Stop.

This is what I was invisioning and please tell me you would not tell your mother to stop talking too if this is what you thought she bought at a thrift store to wear to work and church. Turns out, she did send me a photo, and the dress looks nothing like this. Thank heavens. It's more of a tribal print dress, not tie-dyed. Again, thank heavens.

discovering

 "Hey Dad, what's that stuff over there?!"

"This isn't too bad."

She liked the grass, at least a lot more than her cousin Ava used to!

Today I only got to spend part of the day with Addi. An impromptu meeting at Tinker Air Force Base with some picky airmen required my time including time to get a military contractor badge. So Addi spent some time at St. Luke's while I tried to keep the air force from asking for her in exchange for a badge.

But after I received my badge, had my meeting and spent an hour walking around an airplane hanger we got to spend a few hours together before Paul came home.

She got a bottle and then we played in the living room and relaxed on the couch together while the painters finished their work.

There is nothing sweeter to me than when she holds me with her hands. She likes to hold our fingers when we give her a bottle, she likes to hold our necks and just recently, she has discovered holding (or more appropriately, tugging) on my hair. Painful, but sweet.

Exterior Reno Update

Day One (Monday, June 20, 2011)

Power washing, sanding, caulking and misc. prep work

(A.K.A. our bungalow at it's worst)

Day Two (Tuesday, June 21, 2011)

Priming trouble spots, painting body/siding (Sherwin Williams Wheatgrass)

Day Three (Wednesday, June 22, 2011)

Painting eves, trim, columns (Sherwin Williams Egret White)

Day Four (Thursday, July 23, 2011)

Painting porch, brick, chimneys (Sherwin Williams Manor House)

Day Five (Friday, June 24, 2011)

Second coat of paint on trim, painting back porch, miscellaneous touch ups, painting garage doors/trim, and prepping, priming and painting the front door.

(That's our painter Luis. He has helpers, lots of them actually, but if you need some work done in Oklahoma City, this is the guy to call).

And excuse the WonderBug activity center. I promised myself I wouldn't be that parent that posts photos of their kids or other things on Facebook/Blogs where there's just kid stuff everywhere in the background. But alas, I was too lazy to move the thing any further than I needed to. 

When that front door gets painted, this house is going to be amazing.

Big reveal next week!

12 months of Addison

When it came time to send out Addison's birth announcements, I took to Etsy to find something that fit our personality a little bit better than the announcements from Shutterfly, Tiny Prints and Bella Baby did. Not that those announcements aren't sweet, they're just not our style. I wanted everything about this to say, "yep, that's Paul and Christa," when the receipient opened the envelope.

While perusing Etsy, I found Oodles of Color and fell in love with this birth announcement. It may not say to everyone else what I was hoping, but I loved every bit of it. It was graphic but personal. Clean but unique. I no longer cared if it spoke to anyone else, it spoke to me. And it matched her baby book (you know, the important things in life).

Paul and I took her picture in our office using a rigged up photo booth/screen. It involved dining room chairs, a coffee table, towels, a white bolt of leftover fabric and a tripod. We we're shooting so many photos and so quickly, we basically recorded an entire 30 minutes of Addison's life including a spit up, a wipe down, rotations and positioning. They're hilarious to look at like a flip book. In the hundreds of photos we snapped, we narrowed it down to our favorite one (amazingly) and sent it off to Michelle at Oodles of Color to do her magic.

She cleaned up our photo, changed it to black and white and added her text. This was the final result:

I loved it so much, that I got a wild idea to do a 12 month series just like it. I had been toying with the idea of weekly or monthly photos for awhile and was sure that I'd miss a week/month and be totally bummed. But purchasing an image in a series every month would keep me accountable to finish. I wouldn't want to pay X amount of dollars for the first 7 months and then bail on the rest because the first months would have been a waste of money. It would keep me taking photos and journaling what she did month by month, better than I could probably keep up her baby book. So I contacted Michelle and she agreed to do the entire series for me (and at a discounted rate)!

We're only four months in but every time I get my proofs or final images from Michelle, I am enamored with the photos and could stare at them for hours on end. It makes the janky little photo booth we set up once a month and Addison's displeasure for being overstimulated incredibly worth it.

After I purchased the first two months I started having a small amount of guilt for not using a designer in OKC since Paul and I are all about supporting local businesses, restaurants and artists. But I didn't want anything else and I definitely didn't want someone knocking off her work. Working via email/long distance hasn't been a problem at all and even though I know a lot of local OKC graphic designers, if another project comes up, I can't say I wouldn't use her.

Check Michelle Hyster out.
And buy something from her Etsy store.

And just for kicks and giggles, here's a behind the scenes photo:

I'll post after our next shoot on how we set up the room and then a before and after. It's amazing what the power of computer editing does for photos.

Judge all you want, it works well for us.

Addison was in a different state for four days.

That meant I had to basically pack her entire bedroom to be sent along side her.

And even though she was with my parents who obviously know how to raise a kid since they raised two, they had never raised Addison, and so I sent some instructions.

I mean, come on. Every single kid is different and even though there are four basic rules to keeping a kid happy, it's always nice to have a little more direction so you aren't having to guess all the time. Or at least that was my reasoning with sending the instructions. For real, Paul and I babysat a little boy a few weeks ago and he was wonderful, but anytime he made a peep I had no idea if he needed to nap or eat or if he just wanted to be left alone. With Addison, she is so predictable that with a routine written out, no one would typically need to wonder why she was fussing.

So I did that. I wrote out her routine. But in Christa-fashion of course.

I typed out her typical routine starting at 6:00 am when she usually wakes up and took it all the way to bedtime. And then just for some good graphic measure, I showed that routine on two clocks. An AM clock and a PM clock.

My mom took the typed out routine quite well. My mom and dad didn't make fun of me, well they did a little, but they weren't offended. In fact, my mom told me she expected nothing less. I won't read into that too much.

But honestly, for those of you that babysit, isn't trying to figure somebody else's infant out frustrating? When it's your kid, you know which cry is a hungry cry, or a sleepy cry and you know that those moments are coming before they even happen. You know that at 8:00 pm almost every single night your kid gets sort of cranky and just wants to lay down quietly so you are able to miss the whole crying scene altogether. But no one else knows that.


Wouldn't it be helpful though if they did?!
Even though they probably wouldn't be able to pull out the whole parenting sixth sense right away, they'd at least have an idea of what was going on without having to go through the entire checklist.

Addison does really well with a routine. From the very beginning, she sort of just fell into it and didn't argue. Now, she's pretty predictable.

I know some people think that's nuts, but when you are an uptight, type A kind of mom, knowing that while you are at the grocery store your kid is going to have a meltdown because she is hungry helps keep that meltdown from happening entirely. So it works for me/us. It keeps us prepared and we've yet to have a "crap, she's hungry and I don't have enough food," or "we aren't somewhere I can feed her," type of moment.

It helps that she is just a well tempered baby in the first place.

Only once or twice has her routine been a pain. There have been a couple of times that I couldn't get to where I needed to be quickly enough (I wasn't paying attention to the clock) or I seriously wanted a nap but old Addi girl needed to do what was next and wasn't going to have it. So to combat those moments, I plan our days, I plan our drives, I plan my naps, I plan, I plan, I plan. And I think it makes all three of us much happier.

My parents tried to stick to my routine as much as possible, which meant a lot to me because getting a kid back onto a routine can be difficult, or so I've heard. My dad even made a legal statement at the bottom of my typed routine that he sent back with us.

"We the undersigned believe that we followed this routine to the best of our ability. No matter what Addison says. Signed, Memaw and Papa"

So thanks to my parents for keeping the girl on a routine, it's made the transition back home easier than I expected.