Fedoras...

... are the cutest thing ever.

Especially with bare feet and cargos:

And excuse the tired momma...

three words can explain:

Sunday Night Wedding

Starting a new weekly series - Tour Tuesdays (coming up first - the long awaited REDONE BATHROOM!)

Random Blather for $100,000

Get ready... diarrhea of the mind starting in 3... 2... 1...


So last week we took a step towards baby-proofing (we've already started putting door-knob thingies on, as well as the outlet covers)

Door-Knob thingies:

Anyways - so the next step (pun intended!) was to get our steps covered...

My mom told me the first thing she taught us kids when we started to scoot & move was to get up and down stairs by ourselves... (yet, somehow I still fell down them three times. once in a roller-walker.  #parentingGoneWrong) 


This also benefits us just as much as it's for Ben's safety - E has fallen down the last step about 9 million times, and I laugh each time his sock-feet come out from under him... especially after I've recently dust-mopped the hardwood floors.... lol








                                                                    ***

I was driving to work yesterday, trying to catch the weather forecast after hearing a rumor of snow Tuesday night...

I caught it just in time to hear the jingle: "NewYorkCity Weatherrrrrr"

"brought to you by THE CAYMAN ISLANDS."

yea.

just who I want to hear is sponsoring the winter weather forecast - a tropical island.

***

 

Got my first Birch Box in the mail the other day!

I'm loving this little box of goodies, with everything from lip/cheek color, to SuperGoop skin serum (SPF30!) to fresh organic whole-leaf tea!

 (mmm and the Godiva chocolate... you get an edible treat in each box!)

 

***

 

 

We went to a first-birthday party last Saturday NIGHT (the party was 4pm - 9pm.) Who does that for a FIRST birthday party?! The ghetto people I work with... and when I say ghetto I mean - there was Alize, Ciroc and Hennessy served while the DJ blared Gangsta's Paradise.

 



A cute moment - Ben met a friend (a daughter of my coworker) who proceeded to steal his pacifier right out of his mouth.... she's lucky she's cute ;)

 

***

I'm temping/charting again.  And to be honest,  I'm not sure I know what the hell I'm doing/what's going on...
temps are all OVER the place (it doesn't help that I started CD20...  I mean, I kept meaning to start and then kept forgetting... I figured it'd be ok since I hadn't O'd before CD19 in like, 2 years...

Well just like last month, I've got some insaaaaane EWCM.  Even more now than last month (and that was ALOT of stretchiness...)

So much now that I was checking CP and CM in the bathroom (at work... ugh.  don't worry, hand-washing beforeANDafter is VERY thorough...)
anyway - so after peeing, I wash hands and then do The Check, then at least wipe my hands dry so I can pull up pants and then wash my hands again after.

Setting:  Work Bathroom
Scene: Kate is standing with pants pulled down, having just done The Check, only to discover copious (and I mean COPIOUS) amounts of EWCM.

Kate: Ok, let's get a paper towel and let's wipe this off - crap, get OFF  *shakes hand*
GET OFF you stupid EWC-OH CRAP!
Kate accidentally flings a glob of EWCM onto the bathroom wall...

/\ TRUE STORY /\
hangs head...

You're (hopefully) both laughing at the imagery from above, and

gagging at the imagery from below

(speaking of mucus...)

mmmmmm.....

Eight@Eight

1.  At night, as he finishes his bottle in the darkened nursery, his hand reaches up to my mouth as I sing to him... I melt every time.

2. He loves to be let go while standing, and swooped up as he starts to topple... it cracks him up!
(and speaking of standing - he's on his own now with his little walker:

3. When the dogs lick his face, he (ew ew ew) opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out.... BLECH

4. He HATES HATES HATES pureed turkey.  Like, despises it with a passion:

5. He's now taken 3 major hits:
Mommy accidentally clawed his face when he was falling over (omg I almost cried...)
Daddy wasn't quick enough and he knocked his noggin on the hardwood floor...
Daddy (again - ha!) accidentally "punched" him in the eye when the doggies were going CRAZY on their leashes...

*ok so here it looks a little worse than it is, due to the just-woke-up thing going on...

 6. I found the cutest old-man hat, and I am such an Attention Whore when we go to the store with it...

7. He's scooting (as of last Wednesday!)... there's nothing cuter than a scooting baby tush...

8. He does this thing with his mouth, kind of like a fishy-mouth thing, and it's REALLY hard to describe, so here:

I'll take Acronyms for $100, Alex...

So, like, you know, like - if you're TTC or TTGP (or even TTCAL) you use a BBT and maybe some OPK's, and you check your CM.  Is it EWCM?? 
Then it's time to BD, either ED or EOD, during your FW!
And then it's DPO until you can take a HPT - go POAS! and serious FX that you get your BFP!

ya dig?



Wow.  I didn't realize this was all so mysteriously coded and complicated until I just said /\ THAT /\.

So here we are, on post-partum cycle#3.  And I'm trying to somewhat chart again, because - to be honest, I have no clue what's going on with my body right now.

Am I ovulating? 

I thought, yes - last cycle was WHOA* on the CM around CD17 (my previously "typical" O-time...) (*Whoa = I'd never seen such beautiful EWCM... )

but then AF didn't come until 19 days later, so obviously I didn't O when I thought I did..  (a - HPT a few days before AF arrived helped to confirmed this... although, I have some CP suspicions, what with a week of nausea and a constant slight headache, both symptoms from my previous two BFPs... but I digress.)

Another reason to chart and try to pinpoint O - so I know when to expect AF! I felt like a pre-teen again, running to the bathroom thinking, oh crap - did I just bleed all over my pants? am I even due for AF?? Should I have packed extra tampons besides the one I have in my purse?!

So I got out the trusty BBT (ok confession - I can't find the TTC ones, sooooooo I'm using the digi that came with a bathroom kit for Ben....)
And set my alarm for 6.
And got a temp of 98.6 yesterday (a previously "typical" post-O temp)
and then got a temp of 96 something today....

Obviously this will need some work to get back into the whole doing-it-correctly-thing...


And then there's one more acronym, one that I'm not even really talking about until at least after July when Ben is a year old....

T (trying)
F (for)
A
S (sibling)

*gulp*

Moving On Up!

Exciting news - I just subscribed to Birc.hBox - let's see how many samples I can add to my horde of itsy bitsy Cl.inique perfumes and Mary.Kay lip-glosses! (*most of these are probably over 5 years old... time to refresh the sample stash!)

Also - I know I just only briefly touched on this in a past post,

 but I got a mom-mobile... 

This sweet ride is all-mine, all-the-time...

 

We go pre-owned for all our cars, so for $thousands$ less, you get an extra year or two of mileage... My Kia sorento is kickass.  Third-row seating (which REALLY came in handy last Girls Night when we were ALL SEVEN able to fit in one car and not have to fight for multiple parking spots amidst the ginormous snow banks that are all over, but are slowly melting and fading to a distant memory... Can you tell I'm ready for spring?!)

Anyways - between our two cars trucks, we're able to seat FIFTEEN!

 

So, it's Friday at 5:17pm and I'm sitting at work still, solely for the purpose of finishing this blog post and then I'm running off to tour a daycare... (AGH! more on that later...)

 

I just gotta say - I look forward to weekends for a totally different reason than one year ago! Forget sleeping in Saturdays and Sundays - I'm still up at the ass-crack of dawn, but I get aallllll day to play with this guy:

Accidentally Awesome

So you know that book that I accidentally stole?

Very ironically titled The Book Thief?
yea, that one...

so I devoured it, and it's made it to the list of Top Favorite Books (this list is a revolving length that books may fall off of or get bumped from...)

It is set in WWII Munich, Germany - and is narrated by Death.

Intrigued yet?

It follows a little girl whose sick mother "gives her up" to a set of "foster parents" (note all the quotes because I'm not sure how else to phrase it...)

These foster parents, whose son is off fighting in Russia for the Germans, also foster someone else - a Jew, hidden in their basement...

(ok so I just looked up a book description on Wiki.P - much more succinct (and probably more accurate)):
Liesel Meminger is a girl who lives in Nazi Germany. The Nazis force Liesel's mother to give up her children, and her brother dies on the trip to deliver them to their foster parents. At his funeral, she picks up "The Gravedigger's Handbook". When she arrives at her new foster home, on Himmel (Heaven) Street in Molching, Germany, Liesel forms a fast relationship with her foster father, Hans Hubermann, which helps her adapt.

(The book summary was written very amateur-ly, so I'm taking over here:)
When Liesel begins to wet the bed, her adoptive father discovers her stolen book, her only possession, and begins to teach her to read.  When her adoptive parents offer refuge and a hiding place for a young Jewish man, Liesel begins to steal other books - from a Nazi administrator's home, from a book burning in town - to read to him...

I love love loved this book; the POV from death was so interesting and unique... E's adopted 16-year-old sister requests books to read from time-to-time, and while my library doesn't have much that is age appropriate (50 Shades of Grey - HELLO!) I thought this book would be a great experience for her to read (and I'm anxiously awaiting the verdict once she finishes!)


And I'm always looking for books to steal (download!) - any recommendations??

Seven@Seven

1. He loves to double-fist, and by that I mean two rattles, two hands = lots of fun.  If he had four hands, he'd find four rattles, and rock. the EFF. out.

2. He still gets the hiccups very frequently - I love that it reminds me of his in-utero daily (sometimes TWICE daily) bouts of hiccups that would rock my belly...

3. Kid stands.  All over.  Holding me, holding Grandma, holding the dogs... (that last one makes things a little precarious...) E's cousin has predicted we will have a walker before 12 months.. (And not the Walkers that nom on brains every Sunday night on our favorite show...)

4. The boy thinks sneezing is the funniest thing since AFV! (Not a 90's child? that's America's Funniest Home Videos...)

5. My favorite time: family mornings with bed-head galore...

6. This boy loves his doggies, and I can just picture him discovering how much they'll love HIM when he starts throwing food from the highchair...

*blurry - it's a picture from the babysitter... I request demand them hourly...

7. When we pour water over his head in the bath, and it trickles down his face, he does this little baby-gasp and holds his breath... it's the cutest thing ever.  Well, that and wet baby lashes...
*Note to self: MUST photograph at next bath!

7 Months

Oh lord, I give up on this blogging-mom thing... sheesh.

We hit seven months (umm... so like, a few weeks ago?)

He's standing (not quite on his own)...

 

He likes to model in his free time (ha!)

oh HAI mom!

 

He loves to sleep on his tummy (which was scary the first night for me!)

We went to Seaside Heights for the day one weekend to watch Daddy freeze his ass off take part of the 2014 Polar Plunge!
And afterwards, we went shopping at our favorite shore-town department store - extra 25% off!!
(Daddy took this hat out of our cart - which I didn't realize til we got home... boooo, no $3 hat from the Jersey Shore....)

We also went rock climbing recently - even Ben!

He's got a grip like a monkey - he was nearly holding himself up!

 

He loves to visit me at work (well, I think the people at work love it more, technically...)

 

We aren't crawling yet - but "humping," what daddy calls his rocking... so it's really funny hearing "Stop humping Daddy..."
I usually hear that for the dogs...

And so much more - thank god I've got it all jotted down on my calendar at home, I've forgotten my name and what month it is...

and I was recently away from my baby, for more than one night, for the first time... *SOB*
While it was great to get away (and lay in bed, doing nothing, until 11am!), it was even better to get home to this dude...

 

I've decided for Lent to really get to it on the BuggyListItem of LosingWeight+MudRunTraining - instead of giving up something for the 40 days, I'm committing myself to adding a DAILY workout, no excuses.

Even if it's just some sit-ups and pushups in the morning before getting ready for work... Because, let's be honest - it's quite motivating to see the weight down to XX0.5 - just a few (5.5lb to be exact) away from my seriously-ideal goal!!

 

So with that, a peek at some 1st-birthday-party-planning (brainstorming now = lots of time to gather the "PERFECT" favors, decorations, outfit(s?!) etc) don't judge:

next week on MTV CRIBS:

*mtv cribs..

GET IT?!

=)