18 months old-lotsa pictures!

oh.my.stars.



(playing with Butte-kid has an arm on him)

Logan turned 18 months old on Monday. Is this for real?? My squishy little newborn baby is now a toddling, tail-pulling, tantrum-throwing, hug-giving, self-feeding, nearly-talking little boy who just so happens to have the most heart-melting smile in the world.

Notice anything different? Why yes, Logan got a hair cut by none other than yours truly. I just buzzed it and he did great! Didn't cry and was very patient with me. Shorter hair makes him look even OLDER and more like a toddler. What a little ham, though. His eyes just pop and OMG he has the longest eyelashes. Yes, I am totally bragging about my kid.

(lovies with mama)

Life with a toddler only gets better, really. I know that it *may*get worse (hear the optimism in my voice here people) and that's okay. He's learning how to be a person and that is such an amazing thing to witness, even if it means thrashing and hitting and constantly pulling him off the TV stand. He'll get it.

(water color painting-very artistic just like daddy!)

The last month has been a little chaiotic but we are settling into our new home nicely and we know Logan loves his back yard. He takes chalk and marks it all over himself, the dogs, the chairs, the siding of the house, and of course the sidewalk. He throws sticks at the dogs and thinks squirting Butte in the face with a squirt gun is the funniest thing known to man. His belly laugh just about kills me. I love it.



(monkey shots)

Daycare is going great. He rarely ever cries when we drop him off. A few things we've noticed that help this transition is to let him walk into the classroom holding our hand. He feels like he has more control of the situation and welcomes it more easily. Also if the kids are sitting down for breakfast I'm pretty much forgotten. He immediatly sits in his chair and waits patiently for the teachers to bring him his food. When we pick him up he RUNS to us, giggling the whole way into our arms. The excitement makes our hearts burst. We missed him just as much as he missed us. Logan has been going 3 days a week which has worked out well for us financially and we LOVE the social, creative, and developmental things he is learning as well.

Sleep has been wonderful. He sleeps 10-12 hours a night and even in the mix of cutting his very last 1 year molar he has only cried out once or twice and soothes himself back to sleep quickly.

Things we're working on:

• The Paci: We had been doing really well there for awhile and then I got sick and it just wiggled it's way out of the drawer. Dang it.


• The Bottle: We have not been very pushy about this with Logan. He only gets it for his am and pm milk and uses a sippy for the rest of the day. However, I noticed that at night he is still picky about having his milk in a bottle, not the sippy.


• The Potty: Ever so slowly am I starting to introduce the idea to Logan. I have been sitting him on the toilet for a minute, or as long as he will sit there, before and after his bath. It does not seem to scare him which is great and all I am trying to do is get him used to the idea. We don't expect anything yet and know it's going to be a long process.


• Talking: Logan has really started to say more, even through signing. He can sign more than he can say but new words this month were "duck" and "out" for outside. Go figure.

(exactly 1 year ago)

Most recently we have started to let Logan feed the dogs in the morning and evening. He LOVES having a job. The kid practly jumps out of his skin he is so excited to help mama out. I fill the cup and he carries it over to the bowl. If he spills a little he picks them up and puts the pieces in the bowl, rather than eating it (which he was doing). Then he puts the cup away and claps for a job well done. I love it.



(1 year old with monkey)

I've decided that after this month I will no longer refer to his age in months. I will say "he's a year and a half" or "almost two". Saying in this manner makes him seem so much older, as if referring to months actually makes it still seem like he's a baby. It's a growing process for both of us. I cannot believe that he is more than half way to two now.

This age is so fun. SO FUN!

Go take a peek

I have another side project blog, Midwife 101, and wrote up a post on WHY I want to become a midwife. If you're interested, take a peek. It's rather long and I love you for reading the entire thing. :)

WHY? <<<click here

One of THOSE Weeks

I won't lie: this week was rough. We had so much going on and a few job-related issues that even writing about it now is difficult. However, everything has seemed to resolve itself so no real reason to worry about it any more.

I turned 27 on Thursday. I worked at 6am and spent the afternoon hanging out with Logan. We were heading to the park and got rained on. B came home from work and made the most wonderful spaghetti I've had in a long time! We had a friend over to watch TRON. Not my fav and Disney still has a way of sneaking in really bad sexual innuendos that we mostly made fun of it the entire time. Overall I had a nice time, but it was just like any other day and I'm okay with that.

On Friday I rode my new bike to work and back. It felt great!! Just under a 4 mile ride one way. My legs still feel like jelly! I am so out of shape and really hope that this helps me tone things up. I am nearly 11 pounds under my prepreg weight and not by accident. It's just happened so I'm really hoping to build up some more muscle mass by riding as often as I can. All we need is a trailer for Logan to sit in and then the entire fam can ride around town.

In the mix of all this I have been dealing with crippling stomach and abdominal pains. No sooner did I get over the Hand Foot and Mouth disease did the stomach issues begin. I'm a veteran to stomach pain, unfortunately, and over the last 10+ years I've gone back and forth to the doctor to try and figure out what's going on. In college I was diagnosed with IBS and other than that I've not had any other real diagnosis as to what ails me. So I'm taking things into my own hands. My blood work this week came back perfect. I'm trying a new stomach-relaxing medication that does not hold off the cramping more than a few hours. Several family and friends have suggested it could be dietary and while I have felt they may certainly be right, I've not wanted to admit the truth I am now seeing. The problem is what the heck in my diet is causing such pains?! The most obvious seems milk and milk products (whey, lactose, etc) but can I just say how OBSESSED I am with anything cream? I mean, this is going to be a very hard breakup for me. I just in the research stage and figuring out where to shop and what to buy. I can't go until Wednesday and even then I'm not sure I'll be ready. Hopefully over the next few weeks I will be slowly transitioning into a dairy-free lifestyle. I'm going to do a 10 day challenge without it and try to reintroduce a few things on the 11th-14th days to see how they affect me. I'll be journaling about the entire experience here.

Today? Well today I have the day off with my one and only so we're going to head downtown with the wee one and play at the splash pad. Our THREE YEAR anniversary is on Monday--wow!

Random Photos

Just for fun, here are some very random photos, some of which Logan took himself.

New Home Tour: Kitchen & Bathroom

It's taken a few days but I finally snapped a few photos of these two rooms. I love our kitchen. I've always wanted a kitchen sink that looked out into the back yard so that I could keep an eye on our babe playing. He is OBSESSED with being "ou-tah" and since the entire yard is fenced and safe I am okay with letting him play while I do some dishes.



Ahh, dishes. We don't have a dishwasher. GASP! I know. I swore up and down we'd never ever live in a home without a dishwasher and lo and behold the yard won me over. Actually, funny story. I had no idea that there was no dishwasher until the day we moved in. B actually said "hey, s, you know there's no dishwasher, right?" and I was like "omg-how could I not have noticed?!" At that point it was too late. We'd already signed our lease and honestly, it's fine. I got the big deep bathtub and the large fenced yard my heart has longed for and for that I am okay with washing dishes 96 times a day, give or take.



Our stackable HE laundry is in the corner of the kitchen and it works out nicely. Now, I know you're noticing the open cabinets. There are covers of a sort and they slide and they stick and after doing lots of sliding and sticking for the first few days I nearly ripped them out. Actually I did rip them out, gently. I actually like the open look and this is not the final look we're going for. I want to get some pretty wallpaper to line the bottoms and paint the back some fun color. This will all have to wait.



Also, the blue antique cabinet needs new shelving in it and once we get that then all the food will go there acting as our pantry. All of our appliances work great and I've enjoyed cooking meals, that is, when I'm actually home to cook. The only other downside is the lack of counter space, something which was a deal breaker when we were house hunting. The good thing is that the total space is actually more than what we had at the apartment and I feel like it works out fine.

This is our tiny bathroom. Small, but it just happens to be the most updated part of the entire 66 year old house. Lovely tile outlines the inside of the shower and half of the walls around the room. I've always wanted a pedestal sink, but with such a cute sink you get very little storage. We've had these metal storage units since we first got married and they've worked out great everywhere we've lived.

See that window? Yeah, next to the deep tub it's my most favorite part of the bathroom. It's been open since the day we moved in a month ago and I love being able to look outside (into our yard-not at neighbors!). I also love our original medicine cabinet mirror which has a small dent in it.

Next up: Logan's room! :)

New Home Reveal: The Living Room

Our living room has finally taken the shape and desire that we have been hoping for and I am very excited to share this special room with everyone. Over the years we have collected pictures and mementos, things which I was no sure how I was going to fit into the small space of our 1000 square foot home. Then I discovered Pinterest and with that learned that the new, fun, hip, designer thing to do is a wall photo collage. I showed B a few of the collages I had found on Pinterest and he was totally into it. So a few nights ago after Logan went to bed we poured some wine, turned up The Strokes and began putting our wall together. Our house has a bit of an odd shape, one which is rather difficult to fill certain spaces and I am positive that without this awesome idea this wall would be super boring.

This room is our be-all room. We are in this room 98% of our day and I really wanted it to be something that was comfortable. I am not crazy about the TV on the coffee table but we have to work with what we have for now. Also, the curtains came with the house and we have every intention of personalizing those as well. Our landlord as given us free-rain on what we chose to do as far as decorating and painting goes. Since the collage wall is up I have no plans on painting it, although I do have plans of painting a few of the brown frames random colors to make them pop more.

Our couch is our newest addition, one of our biggest purchases since we married almost 3 years ago. We had lived on college and hand-me-down furniture since then and could not way to literally put our feet up. The couch is a chocolate brown microfiber which is super easy to clean (my biggest concern), comfortable AND reclines on both ends. We love it.

There are some quirky things about the house especially being that it is 66 years old. The first day we were here I pulled the metal latch on the window up to open it and it broke off in my hands. The screen on the back door has nearly come all the way off due to high traffic from the dogs and Logan. If the big door is open then Logan will throw toys inside or outside. Silly man! There are a few cracks in the ceiling from water damage and we are really hoping that once winter hits that there won't be any roofing issues. So far with all the rain we have had that has not been an issue. The carpet is super old and at the seems, like where it meets the kitchen linoleum you can feel the staples. That is annoying. The one and only light fixture in this room is inside the ceiling and was so dim that B put in a better energy efficient bulb and even still we need lamps.

I love that I can open the windows on both ends of the house and feel a wonderful cross breeze, especially in the mornings. We don't have AC so it's super important to keep things as cool as possible.

Next up: the kitchen and bathroom! Stay tuned. :)

My Most Favorite Poet

To fulfill an elective writing minor credit I took Creative Writing in the last semester of college. I knew anything with creative in the title would suit me and that I'd have no problem applying myself. This was also the same semester in which B and I first started dating which could only mean one thing: my puppy-love, star-gazed, emotional cup was overflowing and that my writing would have a very pointed subject: Love.

My instructor was awesome. She encouraged writing workshops and gave us wonderful prompts to get our juices flowing. Sometimes that was all I needed to write about something I just could not get down on paper. As part of my final project I had to compile a number of poems written by different poets on the subject of my choice while also integrating a few pieces I'd written over the course of the semester. Obviously, the subject was Love and it was not hard to find poems about love. However, it was hard to find good poems about love that were not gag-me material.

E.E. Cummings quickly became my go-to poet. The poem I included in my compilation was i carry your heart in mine.



(click for source)

That is only part of the poem but doesn't that one little part just make your heart melt? Doesn't it make you instantly think of the person(s) whose heart you carry? Mine are B and Logan, obviously. But even more for Logan as he grows older and develops into a little person.

Before Logan and before our marriage B and I committed to writing our own wedding vows. E.E. Cummings was my go-to inspiration. I knew it might have been a little cliche so I tried to find a poem or verse that was not so well-known, that spoke even more to me about the love I felt for B and that is when I found Since Feeling is First:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

And there you have it friends. The opening of my wedding vows to B read: "When e.e. cummings said 'we are for each other' he had you and me in mind..." And since then this simple yet deep phrase has shaped our love and the meaning in our marriage and family. That is how this blog name was born and once more for my birthday (in just a few weeks!) I will be inking this on the inside of my foot. I've always wanted a tattoo but never wanted to get something that did not have enough meaning to want forever. Now I have it. I found that one thing that will always be etched into my heart and remind me how much I love my family, through all the highs and loves, goods and bads.

If you have a tat, what does it mean to you?