Hour by Hour Weekend | March 2016

When Astleigh of Hill Collection announced last Friday that she was planning an Hour by Hour Weekend Linkup today, I knew I had to join in! We had a busy little weekend here in Maryland. It was equal parts productive, enjoyable, stressful, and tiring. Here's a peek at what we did.

*Warning: these are unedited photos from my phone. Ain't nobody got time for editing when your kid didn't fall asleep until 10 PM on Sunday).

Friday, March 11, 2016

1:45 PM - 4:40 PM >>  Max took his best nap yet in his new bed. Praise the good Lord!

4:00 PM >>  While Max napped, I worked on our family yearbook for 2015.

5:45 PM >>  Max and I enjoyed a snack on the deck and took in the lovely setting sun.

7:00 PM >>  We had a Mexican dinner out with Victor's parents and some friends. While we waited for our table, Max ran around among the fountain lights.

9:00 PM >>  A little late Curious George viewing before bedtime.

10:20 PM >>  Trimmed my nails. They were driving me crazy! I used to keep my nails long but now I can't bear having them much longer than my fingertips.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

7:40 AM >>  Max was up and ready to go for the day! I was able to squeeze my shower in before he woke up for the first time since he moved into his new room!

8:30 AM >>  I had my breakfast to go on my way to my hair appointment...it was time for the Carrie Underwood chop!

9:50 AM >>  4+ inches GONE!

10:20 AM >>  I came home to these boys working up a sweat in the basement.

11:00 AM >>  Max's new books arrived! We read all four of them immediately. He's really starting to understand what a baby is...thank goodness!

12:30 PM >>  After lunch, I folded Max's laundry. I make piles based on Max's drawers, then layer it all into his hamper to streamline the putting-away process. I'm pretty particular about how I fold and organize my laundry.

3:30 PM >>  This would be Max NOT napping. I spent an hour in his room waiting for him to fall asleep, then just left him in there. I gave up at 4 PM. It was a stressful couple of hours. Sometimes I can't help but feel like a failure when he has trouble falling asleep in his new room. It can be pretty discouraging when your kid was an excellent sleeper in his crib.

4:45 PM >>  A little Bingo dotter art.

6:00 PM >>  {Not pictured} Victor was outside staining Max's playset and sealing his wine racks all afternoon.

7:00 PM >>  {Not pictured} After a long, stressful day with Max not napping and not listening (boy, was he testing his limits), we went out for dinner since the last thing on my mind was deciding what to make. Truth time: I was so overwhelmed and upset that I broke down in tears when Victor asked me where I wanted to go. Sometimes this Mama gig can get the best of me, and feeling vulnerable makes me even more emotional. The good news is, after a few minutes of crying in the parking lot, we had a nice dinner and remainder of the evening.

8:55 PM >>  Max fell asleep within 5 minutes of me putting him in his bed (thank you, no nap!).

10:15 PM >>  I continued working on our family yearbook and finally finished it...after needing to add 22 extra pages to it! Can't wait for it to arrive!

11:20 PM >>  I got quite the hunger pang while we were watching Sirens on Netflix, so I had some Gorilla Munch Corn Puffs (similar to Kix), which we picked up at Trader Joe's on Friday.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

8:50 AM >>  Max woke up at 5:50 AM, so I went in to settle him back down and he immediately fell asleep again. Then he woke up again close to 8, but I waited a bit to go in to him. He simply crawled to the foot of his bed and passed out again until 9!

9:15 AM >>  Max played in our bathroom while I got ready for the day. This box of toys stays in our bathroom for when I can't get around before he wakes up.

10:30 AM >>  Breakfast is served!

11:40 AM >>  We went to Home Depot for a few things (Victor's parents happened to pull up there right when we did!). Max had a great time playing with all the doors.

12:55 PM >>  PB & J and apple slices with this ham!

2:15 PM >>  Waiting for Max to fall asleep. It took 45 minutes, but at least he napped...for 2 hours!

3:45 PM >>  After making lunch for Victor and I, cleaning up said lunch, switching over loads of laundry (I did so much laundry), and tidying up the kitchen, I indulged in one of my favorite childhood treats, a Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie.

4:30 PM >>  Awake and ready to play!

4:45 PM >>  Dancing in the basement with my babies while Daddy installed his wine racks.

7:30 PM >>  We had dinner at Victor's parents' house. Max colored while we watched videos.

9:00 PM >>  Late bathtime, but it was necessary since we skipped bath Saturday night.

9:10 PM >>  Reading Curious George with Grover before bed. It took Max 45 minutes to fall asleep again. Thank you, Daylight Savings Time.

10:30 PM >>  After changing into my PJs and making my overnight oats for Monday, I sat down with my heating pad to blog about our weekend!



I hope you had a lovely weekend with your loved ones! Here's to a new week! Thanks for hosting this linkup, Astleigh!

Oh hey, Friday! | Funny Things My Kid Says and Does

Happy Friday, lovelies! It's been quite the long, eventful week here with moving Max into his big boy room--it's quite the transition for all of us. I'm tired, a little stressed, and my brain is fried. So I'm going to let Max do the majority of the work for today's linkup post by sharing 5 of the funny things he's been saying and doing lately.

After spending 10 minutes "riding" his bike (meaning I pushed him around on it), he ran around the yard for an hour...still wearing his helmet.

1. "Me poo. Mama poo. Dada poo. Tee (Kenny, our dog) poo. Gaga (Grandma-my mom) poo. Ha (Holly, my sister) poo. Vovo (Victor's parents) poo." In an effort to make sure he's not ashamed of needing to poop, there was a time at diaper changes when I would tell him that it's okay to poop and that everybody poops, and we'd go through our family tree, saying that all his favorite people go number 2. And now, he goes through the entire family tree pretty much every time we say the word "poop."
2. Wipes his belly button with toilet paper. Blame this on me needing to pee with the door open all the time (motherhood means throwing privacy out the window). Now whenever he sees me go to the bathroom--or sees a roll of toilet paper unattended--he grabs a piece, says "Me pee," lifts up his shirt, and wipes his belly button.
3. "Uh oh! Do!" I have no idea what he's trying to say when he says this. He's been saying "do" a lot this past week, and I'm trying to use context clues to figure it out, but I'm still not 100% sure what he means. He'll say this if he drops something or if something doesn't happen the way he wants it to. And last night, he was running around in the backyard and fell to his knees, after which he shouted, "Uh oh, me do!" Perhaps he's trying to say "What did you/I do?" I have no clue.
4. If he doesn't want someone (or the dog) to follow us, he puts his hands up and says, "Hee" (here), which is his way of saying "Stay here." He says this every time we go upstairs for naptime or bedtime and the dog tries to follow us. We were at Costco this week and if people were following us too closely, he would say this to them. If people get in line behind us at Target, he says it.
5. Pumps his fists up and down alternately and sings, "Buh buh buh" over and over again anytime anyone mentions Bubble Guppies. This has become his new favorite show, and if you ask him if he wants to watch it, you darn better have one queued up or he's going to flip out. If you've never seen the intro, the guppies do a little dance as they sing the theme song, so I guess that's what he's trying to emulate. It's a cute show and somewhat educational, so I don't feel bad about letting him watch it. However, I'd like to request Verizon FIOS to make some new/different episodes available On Demand, please and thank you.

Even though this kid drives me mad sometimes, he's still the cutest stinkin' thing around. I might be pulling this post up when he refuses his nap again or throws another tantrum about nothing.

He's just too cool!

Linking up with
Karli at September Farm

Amy at The Farmer's Wife

Confessional Thursday | 3.10.16

Linking up today with Jess at The Newly for Confessional Thursday! If you're a blogger and have some juice to spill, link up!

I confess...

+  I just don't understand Snapchat...not that I've really tried to understand it (my sister explained it to me once, but...). It looks like a huge time-suck with all of it's goofy features. I'm sure it's fun to play around with, but I'm resisting the urge to jump on the bandwagon since Bloglovin' and Instagram take up enough of my time. Admittedly, though, I have a bit of FOMO with regard to this newer social media craze. Hopefully I can stay strong.

+  I'm seriously considering (and by seriously, I mean I have the salon's number queued up on my phone right now) chopping my hair off. While I like having it long, I'm beginning to loathe how long it takes to dry my hair in the morning. It takes flippin' forever since I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I have naturally curly hair, so if I'm going to blow it out straight, I'd like it to look decent. I always say I want to keep my hair long so I can "do stuff with it," but the only "stuff" I do is blow it out and leave it down or throw it in a messy bun. Shorter hair = less drying time. It think it's time to snip. I want Carrie Underwood's hair.

Here's my long hair looking particularly fab in Florida in January.

Carrie's adorbs hair via her Instagram

+  Speaking of Carrie Underwood, I can't make it through her Greatest Hits album without crying a handful of times. Girlfriend has some deep tunes...blame it on the "storytelling" side of country music. Here's a list of the songs that get the tears flowing: "Jesus Take the Wheel" (I used to belt this out in the car years ago and never cried. Perhaps my preggo hormones are getting the best of me); "Wasted;" "Something in the Water;" "The Girl You Think I Am" (this one's on her new album. As a gal who lost her father too soon, this song about wanting to make your daddy proud does me in every time); "Mama's Song" (I wanted to dance with my mom to this song at my wedding but considering the fact that I could only get a couple of lines into the song before crumbling into a sobbing mess, I thought better of it); "Temporary Home" (the old man telling his family, "I can see God's face" in his hospital bed--stick a fork in me, I'm done); "What I Never Knew I Always Wanted" (also from her new album. I can't imagine my life without my little ginger baby and his sister still cookin' in my tummy).

+  I bought my first pair of TOMS during a Zulily sale last month and I'm wondering why I didn't do it sooner. I LOVE them and wear them nearly every day (I can't find the ones I got on the website. Perhaps they were a Zulily exclusive). I also got Max a sweet pair of TOMS sneakers (similar), but they're still too big for him. I hope he grows into them before the summer or can still fit into them in the fall!

+  I'm constantly praying for patience in this new "big boy room" transition with Max. We're still in the first week and it feels so daunting and endless, even though each day is getting better. I'm never one to welcome change with open arms (self-proclaimed creature of habit over here), so this new arrangement is really taking its toll on me; our routines have been flipped upside down and I'm spending over an hour at naptime and bedtime helping Max wind down and fall asleep in his new room. When he slept in his crib, I read him a story and put him in there, and he'd fall asleep on his own and sleep for 2-3 hours/through the night; granted, it took a couple of weeks to get him not to cry/scream when I left his room. I'm praying that my good sleeper is still in there somewhere and just needs some time to get used to his new surroundings.

+  I'm peeved with our post office/postman...not sure who to place the blame on. Every day last week, we received mail for other addresses on our street--and not even junk mail--important-looking mail! I always write "delivered to wrong address" on the envelopes and throw them back in the mailbox, but I'm uneasy about it all. If we're regularly getting other people's mail, other people are likely getting ours. We never received a Valentine from Max's bestie last month, and my brother-in-law's wedding save-the-date was delivered to someone else (we know this because that someone kindly contacted his office to let them know about the error). It's been on my to-do list to call and complain, but I don't like confrontation so I'm avoiding that task.

+  One of my favorite things to do now that I'm a mom is swap cute/funny/weird anecdotes about what my kid does with my other mommy friends. It's so fun to hear what other kids Max's age are doing.

+  I still haven't made our 2015 family yearbook. I need to get on that. If you want to make a yearbook for your family, check out my post about last year's book.

+  The weather we're having this week just makes me want to SING! I actually said those words to my husband today as I was driving home from my doctor's appointment. It's been sunny and in the mid- to high-70s! Max and I are clocking in some serious outside time, and we're giving our grill a workout for dinner.

Until next time!

DIY Photo Board

I've been on the hunt for a photo board for baby girl's room. Max has one in his room, and I love showcasing photos of him with the important people in his life. It's an easily-swapped display for his room, and he loves naming all the special people in the photos. Finding Max's board was easy--it was mine in college and fit his color scheme perfectly; unfortunately, I haven't had much luck in finding the exact style I'm looking for to place in his sister's room. I've searched in stores and online and nothing is striking my fancy.

Max's board in his room. I bought this at Target years ago. Or maybe Walmart.

Naturally, I Googled how to DIY your own photo board, and after exploring a few different options, I settled on the procedure outlined below. This is super easy to whip up (I created mine during the first half of naptime on Monday), and it's so easy to customize. Plus, you likely have a good portion of the materials already at home!

DIY Photo Board

Materials:

• Art canvas with wooden frame in the size of your choice (I used 18x24 inch)
• Fabric of your choice. You want to have at least 6 inches of overlap around the edges of your canvas. I had this burlap lying around, so I used that.
• Quilt batting (again, allow for at least 6 inches of overlap around the canvas edge)
• Coordinating ribbon (I used 5/8 inch non-stretchy ribbon on a 10 yard spool and had plenty leftover)
• 5 decorative buttons
• A staple gun
• Scissors
• Needle and thread (depending on the type of button you choose, you may want to have coordinating thread color to match your fabric)

Directions:

1. Iron your fabric, if needed, then lie it right side down on your crafting surface. Then layer your quilt batting over it (you can use two layers of batting if you'd like to create a more cushion-y look, but I found that just one layer was fine). Last, lie your canvas, front side down, on top of your fabric and batting. 
   
2. Pulling the fabric/batting tightly around the back edge of the canvas, staple all around the edges of the canvas. The more staples, the better! I've found it's best to start in the middle and work your way to the edges.
   
   
   
   
3. The corners can be tricky. I just folded and stapled, folded and stapled some more, until the corners looked like the photo below. Check the front of the canvas to make sure it all looks nice. 
   
4. Trim off the excess fabric and batting on the back once everything is stapled.
5. Beginning in one corner--still on the back--of the canvas, staple the end of your ribbon a couple of times, then string it around the front of the canvas, diagonally across the front, and staple again on the back side of the opposite corner (for example, begin on the top left and end on the bottom right). Repeat with the other corners. You're basically making a big X on the canvas.
   
6. Continue stapling your ribbon on the back of the canvas and crossing the ribbon over the front to create the pattern below. You don't need to be exact; I eyeballed it, but you could measure the halfway points of each side if you want to. 
   
   
   
   
7. Now comes the most tedious part: sewing the buttons. The buttons will go where the ribbons overlap. Sew the button tightly into the fabric/batting/canvas. The middle button will be tricky due to the cross bar in the back, but it's manageable. 
   
8. Choose a length of ribbon to staple in the top corners of your board (on the back!), beginning in one corner and ending in the other, for hanging purposes.

Now all that's left is choosing your favorite photos to display in your pretty photo board! I love using these in kids' rooms because there's no need for magnets or thumbtacks--it's baby-proofed already!

Weekend + Monday Recap

I didn't mean to take last week off from blogging. It just sorta happened. It's mainly because I napped while Max napped every day last week and didn't have time to bust out some posts. I also didn't have any good ideas for what to share. But this week is different, so let's get this party started!

On Friday night, Victor, Max, and I, along with Victor's parents, headed to our local Sakura for some Japanese food. We go there pretty frequently (once every couple of months), and we love it every time. Max is still coming around to it, but his behavior gets better and better each time we go.

Max is into taking selfies now.

On Saturday, Victor had to do some work out of the house in the morning, so Max and I went to the grocery store to get some "doh" (donuts) to kill some time. 

He loved pushing his own cart.

During naptime, I put up some alphabet decals in Max's new room, and Victor and I installed his side rails on his bed. Then Victor and I headed to a friend's surprise birthday gathering at a really fun bar in northern Virginia and left Max with his Vovos. 

This bed is officially ready!

We all slept in until 9:30 on Sunday, and then we got to working on hanging decorations in Max's new room. Then we headed out for lunch and errands, which ended up taking close to 5 hours (Max "napped" by falling asleep in the car on the way to Home Depot and sleeping on our shoulders for about 30 minutes as we carried him through the store).

Max had so much fun sitting next to Daddy at lunch. And he ate his body weight in chips and guacamole.

On Monday, Max and I hit the grocery store and Michaels, then had a lunch date at Chick-fil-a. During his nap, I whipped up a photo board for his baby sister's room (tutorial later this week), then took a nap (I didn't nap at all this weekend, so I was overdue). After dinner, Victor and I made a key hook plaque since Max has taken to pulling down the "key bowl" we usually use and helping himself to our car keys (a dangerous activity considering we have remote start in our cars).

I am so happy with how this turned out!

Happy keys well out of Max's reach.

Since Max's new room was officially ready (and by ready, I mean fully childproofed), we attempted his first night in his big boy bed on Monday evening. I wish I could say it went swimmingly, but it was a complete disaster, so he spent another night in his old room/crib (after 3 hours of trying to get him to sleep in his new room). This is exactly why we got his room ready 2 months before his baby sister arrives...to give him time to adjust. We'll try again tomorrow, hopefully with fewer tears and kicks to Mommy's face. Wish us luck!

Hope you all had a great weekend!