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.

Unfortunately, what would have been my first Friday with Addison since starting this little series is missing a key ingredient.

Addison is in Texas staying with her grandparents while Paul and I celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary today. Woot Woot!

We just recently found a new home for our cats and so today, on our very special fifth wedding anniversary, we are doing what we love to do. Organizing, cleaning, de-catifying and working on projects like painting dressers, making Addison hair bows (me, not Paul) and making our house our home.

We're also waiting on our painter to stop by so we can discuss what they will be doing starting, get this, next week to the outside of our casa.

And tonight, we're having dinner at one of our favorite local classy restaurants. I'm already salivating just thinking about it.

I have a post later about my neurotic OCD tendencies. It includes a very detailed list and pie charts. I know, you are just anxious to hear about it.

"why grandmother, what big eyes you have!"

Addison is off to visit her grandparents tomorrow for an extended weekend.

She's been to my parent's house once before on her own, but I had the stomach flu and was not conscious enough to realize what was going on, nor was I awake long enough to really miss her. When I did come around and realize that she was gone it was hard for her to not be with me.

This time, I'm willingly sending her down to Texas for a few days and I'm starting to get sad.

Paul and I have plans to work on our house and we'll be celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary while she is off being spoiled. I know she'll have a great time and I know it'll be good for Paul and I to get time to be a couple again and to celebrate the last five years of ups and downs.

Wednesday night we take miss little red riding hood down to her grandma's (and grandpa's) house. That's where the similarities to the old story will end though (I hope). Got it mom & dad? No big scary wolf, I'd prefer her to stay out of the woods and lets keep her away from men with axes. Ok, I think I covered all the rules.

Stamp (and image) found on Etsy

Fridays with Addsion

Since returning to work I have been incredibly blessed by being able to take Fridays off every week. My company has been gracious enough to let me only work 32 hours/week but still qualify as a full-time employee (which means I receive all holidays, my vacation time and any & all benefits) and Paul was gracious enough to let us loose some income every month so that I could spend an extra day with Addison.

I really struggled with going back to work. I still struggle with being back at work if we're completely honest here. I'm only a month and a half into this new routine so I'm still giving it time. So far, it's been good overall and working four days out of the week makes me really appreciate my other three off. But especially Fridays. I love my Fridays with Addison. It's our day. 

Sometimes, our day is nothing but laundry, bottles and naps but I love those days as much as I love, errands and trips to the zoo.  

These days are already going so fast and she is growing so quickly. Therefore, every Friday I'm going to write about our day. A special reminder to myself of how precious my Fridays with Addison are.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Lately, I've been thinking about my relationship with Addison and what it is now and what it will be in the future. Currently, I don't have a strong passionate need to keep her safe from emotional harm, because really, no one can harm her with crappy comments or hurtful things yet. I have a desire to protect her phyiscally, but not emotionally yet.

Last night I talked to my brother on the phone for quite awhile and after our conversation ended and it was time for me to crawl into bed my head was spinning and I wasn't even remotely tired. I had a memory running through my mind that I couldn't get rid of.

When we were kids we rode the bus to our elementary school. We we're one of the last pick ups so it wasn't too shabby of a deal because we were never on the bus for more than five minutes. I believe I was in fifth grade and Keith was in second the morning that my memory is from. We boarded the bus as usual and started walking to find seats. We walked by a girl who was in the sixth grade and was a brutal bully. We're talking, absolutely, positively brutal. She went to our church and we knew her outside of school and I HATED her guts. I was terrifed of her. I mean, I think adults were even scared of Joie. Have I conveyed how much I hated her? Well, as we walked by, Joie, as loud as she could, screamed, "Look! It's Christa and her brother Dumbo! Look at those huge ears!" Of course the entire bus erupted in laughter. It was the longest five minute ride of my life. I wasn't embarrassed, I was furious.

I had never felt such a rage towards someone before. You would have thought that my little, scrawny ten year old body had erupted into that of the Hulk. I wanted to crawl over the seats, grab her by her long blond pony tail and make her pay (with as much physical pain as possible) for making my brother feel bad about himself. How dare she?!

I don't know if Keith even remembers this or not. But as I was laying in bed last night, I still had the same anger and hurt balled up inside of me about the event. I think I could still physically hurt her for that morning that happened almost fifteen years ago. I stalked Joie on Facebook from my phone while I was trying to fall asleep to see where she was at, what she was doing and so on. And without totally bashing her, let's just say the Willson kids are living a MUCH better life. I believe in a little bit of Karma.

I've had these unbelievable chest pains/anger bursts about situations that have come up with my dad and Paul too.

I wanted to punch an 80 year old woman in the jugular a few months ago for bad mouthing my dad and not thinking that he would hear about it. He heard about it. And so did I and I about went through the roof.

And before I even knew Paul, back in the day, his high school friends stood him up and he ended up sitting through a movie by himself. Alone. In the dark. He is friends with most of these people still today and I like them all, mostly, but talk about an anger I have buried inside of me. There are times I've wanted to pop off some nasty remark about how crappy of people they are for that one moment.

I've hurt for my mom before, but have never felt like I needed to do something about it. She takes care of herself and quite well might I add. She doesn't let people walk on her (not that my dad, Keith or Paul do. I just have some kind of protection reflex for them).

So I know this will come for Addison. I know that the physical protection I already feel that I need to provide for her will morph into an emotional one when we get to the stage. But it'll probably be 1000 times more intense.

This is your heads up people. If your kid hurts my kid, lock your deadbolt.

in my purse today...

Let's play a game shall we?
Let's play, what's in Christa's purse!
Ok.

Today, in my purse I have:

Two cans of Infant Enfamil Formula
A handmade doll that Addison's aunt Jenn made her
A dirty pair of Addison's pajamas (with embroidered super cute whales)
A pacifier
A gold necklace
Chapstick
Lip Gloss
Lipstick
Two red pens
Two blue pens
Two black pens
A planner
A small notebook
A Lean Cuisine
A can of Coke
A bag of tortilla chips
My wallet
My cellphone
My keys
A screwdriver
4 Allen Wrenches
A small box of extra screwdriver heads
Command picture hanging strips
My library card
Paperwork from Addison's doctor's appointment
And a pair of sunglasses (Did you sing that like "And a partridge in a pear tree." Because that was the goal...)

Oh, and an empty wallet. Because you never know when you'll need one (that was sarcasm).

cooking for an infant

Addison had her four month wellness check up today and she checked out great. She's in the 25th percentile for her weight and head circumference and in the 50th for her height. I find that odd because she's looking a little chunky to me. Not bad chunky, baby cute chunky of course.

She's also doubled her birth weight and has been eating rice cereal lately like a champ. We're going to keep that up for another month but her doctor said that around the five month mark we can start her on some fruits and vegetables.

Seriously?!

I just got this whole formula feeding thing down and I'm good at it. Like really good at it and keeping up with it. Now you want me to figure out how to start serving solids, and displace bottles and get my child to turn into a normal human being who eats regular food one day?!

Fuh-reak-ing out.

The plan has been and is to make her baby food. Paul and I got ourselves back in the kitchen at the beginning of May and have been truly enjoying cooking our food again. We were tired of the restaurants we had been frequenting and we we're tired of the effect they were having on our wallets. So, we want to consciously make Addison's food too. We'll know what's in it, how long it's been "fresh" and it'll be cheap, cheap, cheap. And since she eats like a little bird, the cheap, cheap, cheap part seems quite appropriate in more ways than one.

Back when I was pregnant, I swore that I needed one of these babycook do-dads. But now that it's actually getting to be close to time to start this whole process, shelling out $145.00 for yet another kitchen appliance seems ridiculous. Considering we own a steaming pot, KitchenAid blender and Cuisinart food processor. Oh and our kitchen is the size of some people's powder baths and storage space is limited.

So, I've decided to forgo the fancy little steamer/pureeing combo and use the ridiculously expensive appliances I already own. Oh darn.

OK, so I know what I'm going to use, however I have no idea what to do with them. This cannot be rocket science.

I started googling for baby puree recipes and did you know there are entire baby food cookbooks out there? Genius, sort of. Most of the first food recipes say things like, "Steam one cup of carrots. Place in blender and puree. Serve and freeze."

Yea, OK, I know how to do that. I don't need a cookbook for that but I do need one for things like Pumpkin Banana Puree and Banana Avocado Puree. I mean the whole point of making her baby food is to watch what goes in her body right? So I don't think letting someone whose never made baby food before, just whip up whatever she wants and shovel it her kid's mouth is accomplishing the same goal. So I do want a little direction. Mock me if you must.

Here are the ones I've researched online and want to check out at B&N or BAM before I buy:

I know, you probably think they all look ridiculous but I'm at least going to check them out.

The only other question I'm working through is how to store, carry and keep this food. I know a lot of people use ice cube trays to freeze the food they make and that works, but we currently have two ice trays, and we use them for, wait for it, ICE. So I could go buy one, but why buy an ice tray when you could buy one of these puppies:

My only beef with the Beaba trays (above) is that they don't have a container that their little frozen food will fit in perfectly like the same shaped Tupperware or jar. So while it will be fine when we are feeding her at home, it's not so convenient for daycare, trips, etc. 

I know a lot of people also buy 15-20 jars of baby food at first and then reuse them to store the items they make. But I'm not a huge fan of glass jars. I do know Gerber has been making their packaging a BPA free plastic container lately. The only thing I'm not sure on is if they are re-usable, dishwasher safe and if the lid snaps back on tightly. I guess I could buy one and check it out.  

Anyone use these before and know if they are re-usable?

Exterior Updating

We are finally biting the bullet and painting the house.

The Sunday afternoon we pulled up in front of the open house almost six years ago (without any intention to buy it) I said, "Cute, cute house. Needs a new paint job though. The colors are a little whack."

That night we put an offer on the house, whack colors and all.

Every time I showed someone photos of our new house I made sure to preface the entire conversation with, "Oh, this is the color now, but we'll be painting it soon."

And here we are, five and a half years after owning this house and it's still covered in the light blue siding, crayola Kelly green trim and pinky tan brick.

But not for long...

Here is the color palette I put together and that we both agreed on. Finally.

For the last five and a half years we've pulled color scheme after color scheme together, all of them being fine and looked right for our home but without a plan to paint, who knows what I did with all of those options. So when our neighbor recently had their house painted and the painter gave us an amazing deal to do ours too, we had to start all over again selecting colors. We tried probably 50+ different combinations. Everything from light blue, red and gray to a monochromatic blue scheme. One day shortly after I had returned to work and didn't have a project to work on yet, I Sherwin-Williamsed our house and messed around with colors until I came up with these.

So, in a very crude rendering, here is where we hope to go. (Note: the photo is from 2004 and our shrubs and tree are now huge and block too much of the house for me to use to test paint schemes).

I've gotten some mixed reviews about it, but I like it and Paul likes it, so it's what we're going to do. I mean, when you're the person living with it and paying for it, it should be something you like, right?

We are going to keep our existing house numbers that are to the right of our front door:

But the mailbox could use a replacement. The mailbox we currently have is dated and looking worn. I want something simple, clean and cheap.I'm thinking one of these two:

And speaking of mailboxes, have any of you priced them lately? I have and let me tell you what, I think I could convince my mail man to stand on my front porch and personally hold my mail in his hands every single day until I got home for less than some mailboxes cost. Geez Louise.

The light fixture is fine, and technically I don't think we're allowed to replace it without going through some historical preservation hoopla. So it stays.

The doorbell has been broken for about a year. One day it just stopped working. It's the old school bell, none of this new age chime stuff. The bell is in our kitchen next to the back door and we have no idea what caused it to quit ringing. Paul's going to take a look soon. When he does and he figures out how to fix it, because he's Superman and all, I'm going to have him replace the button with this one:

We have two large ceramic planters that are a good mixture of the blue and green that we selected for the house and have that paint drip effect going on that are currently on the two brick ledges that protrude from the house. We'll put those back out and I'm going to save up for a super tall planter to go in the corner to the left of the front door. We're talking like hip height tall.

The furniture and swing on the porch will get a good wash down, the white should pop off the brown/gray and the cushions/pillows will be tweaked (possibly) when we get done.

Things are buzzing around our block.