Archive for June, 2012

June 29th, 2012

hanging out

Recently I read a statistic that only 20% of moms are full-time SAHMs. This surprised me, but I think it is mostly because my Mom was a stay at home mom, so growing up I kind of assumed most people were the same as me. A dangerous thing to do. Regardless, I really love staying home with Ginny. I know a lot of people do better with the structure of work, or with the house of “adult” contact… but despite Ginny’s unwillingness to nap, we have a pretty good time together.

This is the pram I bought when I was pregnant. I love it! Ginny and I will go on walks in the morning some times, or in the afternoon with the neighbor lady behind our house, or sometimes just in the evening when B-man gets home from work. One of the best features of our neighborhood is that there are sidewalks every where, so each walk is a little different. We turn down new roads and walk until we hit a cul-de-sac, and then turn around a head home.

This move has definitely been a positive thing for B-man. He is only about 25 minutes from work, and zero of those minutes are spent just sitting in traffic. He has also worked from home with some frequency in the last few weeks – which has been  awesome in my opinion. I do tend to bother him a lot when he’s working, which may or may not annoy him… but then… if I didn’t annoy him I wouldn’t have cute pictures like this one!

And then lastly, our new house has a fire place.

And the explora-baby has been, well… she’s exploring. And then getting stuck on the hearth. She spends a lot of time climbing up and then kind of yelling at me, then she’ll scoot around and try to get down. I usually stay about a foot away. Close enough to catch her, but too far for her to grab. She’s gotta work these things out on her own. If she can get up, she can get down.

She knows how to get off of her big girl bed. She does a 20-point turn until her feet hang off of the mattress and then she scoots backwards. I guess there isn’t enough room to do this on the hearth, so instead she spend a lot of time looking at the floor, and possibly regretting climbing up there.

And then she gives me this look… with her hand on her hip (sassy already!) which kind of says “Just get me down from here you silly Mommy!”. To which I respond “nevaaaaar!”

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June 29th, 2012

a new normal

On Monday B-man took the day off and we spent the entire day emptying and cleaning out our apartment. It feels like the whole day was a blur. It was the most time I had spent there since our move to the new house.

good morning world

It is nice to be done with it I guess. To move on. To embrace the wonderful future.

A friend of mine from 9th grade is in the DC area this summer, and we have hung out three times now. She also has a little one just a few months older than Ginny. It’s kind of incredible how much older we seem, but when I’m with her I feel inexplicably younger.

I used to take Ginny in the shower with me. It hurts my back too much to bend down and use the baby bath, and then the kitchen sink in our apartment was getting a little too shallow… it also didn’t have a drain stopper, so I would put a small bowl and then a towel to seal in the water a little longer.

Our house as a very nice, deep, sink in the kitchen. On the mornings that Ginny gets a bath she can sit and play in there while I unload the dishwasher and make breakfast. It’s pretty idealic.

keys

So I said goodbye to my apartment, for good. If everything goes well… we will probably never live in an apartment again. I hadn’t thought about it that way before.

We are going to Maine for a week in July, so currently my house is abuzz with packing and laundry and unpacking (boxes) trying to find everything we need. And then of course we are also planning for Ginny’s birthday party!

I know I say this a lot, but it is crazy how quickly time goes by as you get older. I really was not prepared for that aspect of becoming an adult!

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June 27th, 2012

perfection

I lay in bed at night enjoying my “silence”. It typically consists of my sweet husband snoring very loudly, while my sweet baby scoots closer to me in my sleep. She started about 12 inches away and slowly she wiggled her warm little body up against mine.

Lately I have been keenly aware of how blessed I am, and I have been learning how to enjoy it. For the majority of my college years my response to ” how are you?” with some version of “fine”. But honestly – life is better than fine. It is amazing, fantastic, dare I say it…. perfect.

Of course, b-man busts out a louder than loud bulldozer snore and my baby wiggles and I freeze… hoping she’ll settle back into her sweet baby dreams.

In other news, things are coming together. Sort of. I felt like things were good and organized… then we cleaned out our apartment and now all of the left over random stuff is all over my house in placesnthey don’t go and I find it very overwhelming.

Cleaning the apartments was overwhelming. I criednlooking around the empty rooms. B-man pointed out where he dropped a bowl of spaghetti-o’s when we first moved in. Then I pointed out where Ginny first crawled as we sat where I bed used to be. I layed ddown for a moment with my head on his lap, eyes closed, trying to grasp onto the memories of that place we brought our baby home to.

People seem to find it strange – but I will miss my apartment. It was our home – and my baby’s first home.

Ive recently gotten to hang out with a friend of mine from when I lived in Georgia (in 2002). She is also married with a baby a few months older than Ginny and ot has been fun to rekindle that friendship!

And that is life right now. I find such sweet solice in my baby girl. I’m also enjoying every passing moment of my sweet, snoring, husband. So tell me – what brings you solice?

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June 18th, 2012

8 teeth

The last few days have been a blur. On Saturday my middle sister graduated. She is in the middle of the 5 of us kids, and it’s kind of a strange feeling. Growing up it was the three older girls, and the 2 little kids. So… all of the big girls have graduated high school and gone off the college. As a parent now I try to imagine how my own parents are feeling. Over half of their children are technically “adults”.

Sunday we did a little bit of sleeping in, but then we had to get up and take Ginny down to her Aunt Twila’s house. Every one else in B-man’s family was going on a kayaking trip! We drove about an hour north to Pascataway Creek and took advantage of a groupon all of us had purchased. I ended up going in a double Kayak with one of my sister-in-laws… and it was a lot fun. Probably  more fun than I would’ve had if I had been in a single kayak.

When we were on our way home from kayaking my Dad called me. We had invited every one over for Father’s Day dinner – and he and my two youngest siblings had gotten to our house early, found a door unlocked (oops!) and set off our alarm. The local police called and we were easily able to cancel the alarm. Glad to know it works!

Aaaand… our first house party was a success! I bought B-man a nice charcoal grill for Father’s Day, and we made grilled chicken sandwiches for all of our 15 guests. Then… we had chicken for dinner again tonight… and will probably have it again tomorrow! Thankfully there were only 2 chicken breasts left over or we would probably get sick of it.

Ginny is now 11 months old. She has, as mentioned above, 8 teeth, though two of them are still working their way in. She is also almost walking. She has taken some steps on her own, but seems to prefer crawling much more. I had kind of hoped she would be walking by her first birthday, so that she didn’t have to spend the entire time in some one’s arms/potentially being trampled, but we’ll see. Still have a month to go. There are a lot of clothes that are almost her size, but I haven’t put her in them because they would make crawling really difficult (most dresses), so that is another reason it would be great if she started walking… she won’t be in size 9-12 months forever!

And that about covers everything. We are still unpacking, still decorating, and still just putting along!

Just enjoying the summer weather!

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June 10th, 2012

forward motion

I’m supposed to be cleaning the cupboards and laying down that non-skid stuff… but instead I just captured a video of some of Ginny’s first steps and I’m busy spamming the internet with it. It is really awesome to be able to share these  milestones with my extended – far away – family!

 

It is really incredible how much she has grown and changed in the last year. She’ll be 1 in about a month! I almost feel like I’ve missed all of it! I see Mom’s with little newborns and feel like that’s how I look, but when they look at me they see a grown squiggling (yes, that’s a word), little kiddo… partially blamed on the tons of hair. When will my brain ever catch up?

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