Randomness

I really could have linked up with the What I am Loving Wednesday bunch because that is pretty much exactly what this post is going to be! So here are the things i am currently loving….

Scentsy

In all reality I should probably become a sales rep for Scentsy because i just LOVE their products and rave about them to anyone that will listen. A few months ago I saw that their month of July warmer was this adorable cupcake and hoped that I would some how be able to get it. I was so excited when Alex told me to go ahead and buy last week (he loves Scentsy as much as I do). It arrived yesterday and it is just as adorable in person! Next up, maybe for Christmas, i’d love a plug-in warmer and a Scentsy buddy for each of the kiddos rooms.

Lucy’s Room

I cannot wait to show you all Lucy’s room! I am just loving it! I am not into “themes” but if I had to describe her room it would be vintage chic and it is beautiful (it could also be called “thank goodness for pinterest nursery” because that is where so much inspiration came from! I am starting a handmade chenille blanket for her room and can’t wait to see the final product, it is going to be the perfect blanket for her room.

speaking of …. Pinterest

I am sure most of you have heard of pinterest by now and if you have not just close this window and open up pinterest and go…. (see you in a few weeks because it is addicting). I have ALWAYS been one to save ideas on my computer and “star” many, many,  many posts in my google reader with ideas. Well, pinterest is a website that allows you to “pin” aka store all of you ideas and inspirations with the original links to the sites where they came from; which is awesome for recipes and tutorials!

Here are some of my favorite pins from this week…. all fall related

Outfits for fall, I am so excited/ready to be in real clothes again!

I am totally making this for our door for football season!

I am loving these planters with pumpkins for our porch this fall.

 

Doesn’t this salad look awesome?! Pears, cranberries, feta, bacon and chicken …yumm!

Polkadot Posies

Seriously, I have no words to describe how awesome this shop is!! I was telling my Mom that the owner of the shop probably thinks I am a nut because of how many times I have praised her shop and work via conversations on twitter but honestly it is amazing! Obviously when I was pregnant with Liam I was still working and our income was double what it is today so needless to say we had a lot of money to spend on frivolous things for him. With Lucy it is based much more on need than everything we’d want. I knew that my little girl NEEDED bows, BIG bows and lots of them but everything I was finding on etsy was at least $8 each so i held off. I made her a ton of flower clips but just could not get the boutique bow style down enough that i was happy with. A few weeks ago a fellow blogger linked to the Polkadot Posies shop stating that all the bows were under $3, i was so there!!! I got my order three days later (and it came all the way from Texas) and oh my goodness I could not believe the quality of these bows! They are amazing! Lucy now has almost every solid color bow, a big Christmas bow, and a few corkers (which may just be my favorite that I purchased). So if anyone is in the market for bows you much check out this shop! I cannot say enough about it!

Liam’s Age and Stage

I am just loving the age Liam is at and all the fun things he is doing everyday, we have so much fun together and he is just constantly cracking us up with the stuff he comes up with. He loves to play baseball by getting his ball and bat, pretending to hit the ball by throwing it, then drops his bat and runs and then slides….oh and we didn’t teach him this…so it must be genetic to be wired to play baseball! He has to gather up all of his cars before taking a nap, they don’t leave him sight. He is starting to repeat things right after we say them which is so cute but we quickly learned we have to be extra careful.

 

Visits

The Saturday before last my brother graduated from Ball State with his masters and moved a few days later to North Carolina where he will be a doctoral student at East Carolina State. After my parents helped move him in he came back to PA with them for a visit. We went from seeing him almost every other weekend when we lived in Indy to not seeing him since March so we were all super excited for him trip this week. Liam has just been over the moon to have Uncle Matt home. Pop, Liam and Uncle Matt all “plugged in” haha gotta love living in 2011.

Home Stretch

31 weeks….hopefully only 8ish more to go….. yeah the white flag has been thrown and if i could wake up tomorrow and make in the end of September I totally would. I will say that I am super excited that I passed my 1-hour glucose test with flying colors this time (i failed with Liam and had to do the 3-hour test). I totally owe it all to my Mom for being my walking buddy!! I have been 10 times more active this pregnancy than with Liam!

Yesterday I actually googled “can an overactive baby break your water” because I was that concerned that Lucy was going to kick her way through. Holy cow, i thought Liam was active…I think Lucy may give Liam a run for his money once she is here. I have a feeling there will MANY games of tag in our house :-)

Phone Photo Drop

Since getting my new phone I have been taking so many pictures of Liam with it. At our old house I would keep my camera on my bakers rack which was right between the kitchen and living room where we spend most of our day but here in the new house I have not found a safe stop to have it handy at all times so for now the phone will do.

Doesn’t he look so comfy napping on the couch after a hot afternoon

Playing in the tub with his Sesame Street buddies, he likes to make them dive in. 

He struggled using utensils for so long until I gave him a regular adult fork instead of a plastic toddler one and he is doing so good!

 

Lately Liam has become very into lining up his cars. The all have to face the same direction and are always neatly in line. The other day I was making lunch while Liam was playing in the living room, later in the afternoon I went in and saw what he had been working on ….. the car arch, pretty impressive if i do say so myself.

 

The next day we had the car “L” (L for Liam I suppose).

Now instead of solely running around the circle in the house we also ride our quad around the circle.

All of these 90-100 degree days have lead to lots of time in the pool!

 

Early weekend mornings with our Pooh slippers.

 

More lining up of the cars before they raced around the family room.

 

Liam and Lucy snuggling…

 

I will try anything to get this picky eater to eat…for lunch we tried peanut butter sandwich pops…yeah it didn’t work but at least he picked it up….that is a start.

 

Giving his beloved dog a ride this morning.

 

Summer Nights

Do any iphone users know the best way to blog from their phone?

Today we finally got a break from the heat wave we (and most of the country) has been having. It was in the 70’s after we had dinner today so we took advantage and let Liam play outside and run around like a wild man for as long as he wanted.

  

How and when did he get so big?!?

 

Doing a little yoga outside.

 

Taking a break with Dada on the bench.

Oooh look apples!

The highlight of Alex’s night, playing baseball with his son! So much more of this in their future. 

Baseball (bay-ball) is Liam’s new favorite word, i hear it no less than 30 times a day.

Then we came inside and had ice cream with extra sprinkles.

29 Weeks

Total Weight Gain/Loss: 11 pounds so far

Maternity Clothes: oh yes

Gender: it’s a girl! Lucy Anne

Movement: yes lot of flipping and swift kicks to the bladder, Liam and Lucy had this first sibling fight while Liam was laying on me the other day and elbowing her and she would kick him in the back…over and over again

Sleep: oooh sleep or should i say lack there of….i miss sleep! I remember saying this to my co-workers when I was pregnant with Liam and they thought i was the most naive first time expectant Mom but i was so right…i sleep ten times better with a newborn than i do pregnant! At least with a newborn I am up doing something productive with a goal of getting them back to sleep and then when I do go to sleep I am out like a light until the next feeding where as while pregnant I am up, uncomfortable, just staring thinking about how terrible tomorrow is going to be because i will be exhausted, then when I do sleep it is just restless tossing and turning.

What I miss: sleep and physically feeling good…the back, hips, and legs are starting to get really sore.

Cravings: still cereal…two boxes of Cocoa Puffs last week

Best Moment this week: I had my 7 week follow up with my high risk doctor a week and a half ago and everything went great! The cysts have gone away and Lucy is growing right on track despite the 2 vessel cord. I have one more check up with them in four weeks and then may or may not have to go back depending on how well she is growing.

Liam Lately (almost 21 months)

I have not done an update on what Liam is up to these days in quite some time and I feel like I have to to preserve the memory for me.

He loves playing with his hot wheels/matchbox cars. At least one is attached to his hand most of the day. Still loves Thomas and playing with his trains.

Our grocery store has a wall mounted train track and Liam squeals each and every time he sees is. The older men always give him a big smile and comment about how much he loves trains. He is the puzzle king! Puzzles are his new favorite thing to do and he is so good at them. He also loves to read his object picture books and points out things that I ask him to. He loves to count and spell words out (with his own “words”). He can point out colors and shapes now too.

We don’t watch nearly as much tv as we used to but some of his new favorites are Arthur, Curious George, and Clifford. He is obsessed with dogs! For Christmas he got a dog pillow pet from a co-worker of Alex’s and it is probably his favorite thing he owns right now. He loves on dog so much! My parents have a neighbor with the sweetest dog that Liam just adores going to visit.

He still loves being outside and running and has gotten so much better at staying in the backyard where we are and not running off, it makes for a much better time for everyone. He loves swimming and splashing in the pool but isn’t a big fan of sitting in a raft, he’d much rather someone he holding him and jumping/throwing him around in the water. He loves to dance, especially when he is snacking on something yummy, jump, and rough house with Dada.

     

 

Is starting to talk a lot more but still only when he wants to, he won’t repeat anything when you ask him to, he has to want to tell you something. His favorite words are: dog, car, ball, Dada, Thomas, cat, go, bizza bizza (which means yummy). He finally started calling me Mama and calls my Dad “Dad-Ooo”.  There are so many words that he says every once in a while that I couldn’t list them all.

Still a very picky eater and very strong willed about it! He loves fruit and eats a ton of them, pancakes, french toast, cereal bars, once in a while he will eat bacon, all kinds of cereal, snap pea crisps, vegetable chips, gold fish, yogurt covered raisins and regular raisins, french fries, sweet potato fries, grilled cheese, and of course sprinkles, cookies, and M&Ms.

Sleeping has been rough since we’ve moved and really isn’t getting much better, I am still hanging onto hope that it is a phase. He goes to bed, by himself which is a blessing, between 8-8:30 most nights (on the rare occasion earlier or later) and gets up in the 5 o’clock hour every.single.day…. He takes one nap per day on most days (if his nap is really bad he will usually cat nap in the late afternoon. He napes in the morning, usually 9:30-11ish.

I am loving this age because he understands so much that he can be a very good helper. He will get his shoes if i ask him to, stand by the door and wait if we are getting in the car, wait at the bottom on the steps if we are going up to take a bath, hand me things if I ask him to, etc.

4th of July Party and then some

Since the day we purchased our house we have been planning to have a 4th of July party. Alex and I were so excited that the weekend for our party was finally here and we were all set. Little did we know he would only be here for 30 minutes before getting called into work for the rest of the night after an incident. We all couldn’t be more bummed that he had to miss our party :-( Next party I am taking his cell phone battery and hiding it!

Of course we had to start the party with licking the beater. Liam is so funny, as soon as he hears me turn the beater on he runs over and stands at my side waiting for a lick. Yesterday he was hugging my legs as hard as his little arms could saying “Mama Mama Mama”  in the sweetest little voice…he knows how to get what he wants.  Mmmm whipped cream…yum!

Drink stations…we had fresh strawberry lemonade and a sangria-like iced tea in addition to the regular party beverages.

Arrangement for our food table

Food table! We had burgers, hotdogs, pineapple chicken salad (which was awesome), loaded baked potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw, baked beans, and grilled corn on the cob. Dessert was lemon cream cupcakes (one of which i am eating now), strawberry shortcake trifle, brownies, apple pie, fruit salad, and cake balls, oh and sugar cookies for Liam.

 

Devouring a cookie

 

Running it off

 

Riding his quad down the hill

 

Did you see the cute big boy hair cut Liam got? Let’s just saw this hair cut experience was not as easy as our first one…thank goodness my Mom was with me..we both left sweating LOL

Two weeks ago my phone had a poor run in with the trunk of the car and well…didn’t live to tell about it. I got an iphone and could not have been more excited about the little accident Alex had with  my old phone. I love my new one!!! Here are some pictures from the last two weeks from my phone.

Liam LOVES wearing shoes, this was him at 6am still in his sleep sack wearing his sneakers.

This is dog, Liam’s best friend. We have to snuggle with dog to fall asleep….dog may have also went on a car ride with us to the bank…mind you dog is a 20 inch pillow pet. 

Pre hair cut! It was so long!

 

We went to a bazaar last weekend and Liam went to town on a cotton candy!

…and passed out on the way home. Love those two boys!

 

We went to Cabella’s last weekend with Alex’s parents and Liam had a great time looking at all of the stuffed animals.

 

My handsome big boy! I am loving the instragram app!