10 Months!

So my child turned 10 months several days ago, or maybe weeks...I'm not really sure...but I'm just now sitting down to blog about it.  In the 30 something culture (yes, I'm a part of that.  I know.  It's like I'm the mom now or something) to fall behind on blogging is a ghastly FAUX PAS!  QUELLE horreure!!  Because gosh darn it, if our children lead undocumented lives or our houses aren't photo-ready with every surface smothered in a good dosing of chalkboard paint then what kind of country are we LIVING IN?!

Well lemme fail ya one more time.  I have no idea how long my child is, and only a pretty good guess of how much he weighs.  And I took good photos of him in our typical chair but I'm pretty comfortable here on the couch with my phone and feel it's fairly important I stay put.  So here go some pretty Pinterest-unworthy stats:

At 10 Months Jonah...

-weighs a lot...maybe 24 or 25 pounds

-is really tall...seriously about half my height when standing

-has hair living in survival mode

-has 4.5 teeth.  None are gold (shoot!)

-still has pudgy wudgy squeezable rolls everywhere

-is looking older and more toddlerish

-is into everything...climbing the stairs, pulling up and walking along the couch, discovers things we did not know could be interesting or dangerous (yesterday he ate some crusted dish detergent from inside the dish washer door...I just told him he has one free pass if I ever need to wash his mouth out with soap...)

-eats anything available or offered and prefers to hold and bite from the whole Megillah, not torn up baby bites.  I have been photographing his meals and aspire one day to do a post on this stage of eating.  We're in between purées and 'real' table foods and it's been a little tricky to navigate.  Hopefully the meals we've come up with will help someone else too!  Look for that post soon.

Back to Jonah (ha - I'm proofing this post and I just caught that we never really left Jonah did we?  So those are the categories of my mind...Jonah and Jonah).  He...

-says Mama a lot but Howard doesn't think so.  I'm not really sure how we line up on deep and complex theological issues but we can't seem to see eye to eye on this FACT.

-also chimes in with "plah blah" for "problem" when we sing "Ol' Jo Short," he goes "Ah ah ah" in a high pitched voice when we ask what a duck says, anytime someone says "show me" he flexes his muscles (even if he person said "show me how you wave buh-bye"), and he loves to clap 

-gives me the best wet slobbery kisses and when we have a family hug and Howard pats me on the back, Jonah starts patting me too.  

-LOVES watching little boys play.  He goes into some sort of trance / study mode and everything around him goes quiet and gets zoned out as he focuses all his learning on how exactly you run from one spot to the next or plan to shoot a water gun, or throw a football, or debate the score of water basketball (he logs most of his observation hours at the pool).

-thinks it's hilarious when I speak French, so that's going great

-turns the pages of his books and loves to sit and read alone or with us. His favorites are Pat the Bunny, Baby's First Photo Bible, Chicka Chicka ABC, Skip's Big Day, In My Nest, Jamberry, and Brown Bear Brown Bear.  We work in others, but these we are sure to read multiple times every day.  He also likes magazines and newspapers.

-naps 30 minutes in the morning and, with help, a little over an hour in the afternoon.   I am beyond exhausted and am learning how to live and function in society as a crazy person.

-uses his left arm to tell us where he wants to go. Opa is the best person at indulging Jonah's requests.  They just walk around Opa's property and wherever Jonah points (well, he's not pointing...it's more of a bear claw kind of point... )that's where they go.  This goes on for at least a half hour at a time and only stops when someone interrupts them.

-has a favorite spot...the duck creek

-loves getting out and running errands and being on the go.  He tilts his head and smiles at strangers.

-plays hard and cracks up when we chase or tickle him

-initiates peek-a-boo with doors or furniture 

-drinks from a sippy cup with a thick straw

-knows prime numbers and PEMDAS

-is calmed when we sing "Amazing Grace"

-adores our cat, Cotton (who is so patient and sweet with him)

Jonah, I love how jovial you are.  You are so comfortable with yourself and just chuckle and shake your big fat belly all day long.  I think you'd make a great Santa Claus someday.  I so appreciate how rarely you cry, and when you do - like today when you were teething or when you fell and busted your lip a little, it really rattles me. You are changing so much and we hardly recognize you compared to the little, tiny, fragile thing we brought home from the hospital not that long ago (seriously - what 40 weeks ago?!).

(Photo by Nikki Peterson / nikkipetersonphotography.com)

Jonah, if you gain nothing else from this post tonight as you check your blogs from your crib before you sleep, know this:

I love you because you are my child. I love you because you are your Papa's child.  I love you because you are God's child.  And I really love who you are.  I mean you are so fun to be around and you already display so many personality traits I wish I had!!  You are even-keeled, alert and interested in people, jolly, and in general simply an old soul.  It is such a priveledge to be your mama.  I used to think it wasn't that important what you DO when you grow up but moreso who you'll BE.  Well, I have to say.  I'm so excited to see what you do.  I guess that's how wonderfully you've got the BE part nailed down.

Please don't change too much.  You can either make me eat my words or enable me to be really annoying because I'm so proud of you.

I don't want to eat these words.  I want to be annoying.  Thank you, son.

Happy 4th!

We've been busy bees around here!  We are full into summer and are loving making the most of it!  Howard has been super busy lately so Jonah and I are finding lots of ways to knock things off our summer bucket list.

We picked peaches in Fredericksburg yesterday and shopped and had lunch at the Peach Tree afterward.  Jonah was SO good and even made delightful luncheon conversation with me at the table.  All the old people in Peach Tree thought he was an absolute dear.  I was so proud of my chubby little date!

Later that day we decorated his stroller for the neighborhood bike parade!

I may not be a pageant mom but I'm definitely a parade mom because I got really into this.

Jonah was not so into the party blowers.

(See the box in the background?!  Yeah. That's because we don't have a SHIPPING ROOM!)

With his bad haircut he's already stressed.  Anything could put him over the edge right now.

We had a blast at the parade!

Jonah didn't win any prizes but he clapped for everyone who did, which made me one very proud mama.  (Even though he probably thought we were all clapping for him.  Eh.  Minor detail.)

In other news, I have started school year shopping and this came for Jonah yesterday.  Sigh.  It just melted me and Howard.  Jonah will be going to preschool two days a week next year, so I decided to move him from a diaper bag to a little backpack and lunch pail.  So little and so precious!  I almost included this with his birthday presents from us, but ultimately landed in a place of respect for Back to School and the celebration it should be all on its own.  August 28 will be just Jonah and no school supplies.  I feel we dodged a bullet there.  #momsave

I have also started Christmas shopping, a project I call Christmas in July and one that I've never done before but I hope will become an annual event.  The fall semester is SO SO SO busy and even without a baby it is very stressful to wind up the semester and do Christmas at the same time. I want to be able to focus on hot chocolate and Christmas movies and pajamas and Santa, not shopping and stressing and planning and budgeting.  So, I'm taking the time I have now in July to get it DONE!!

I've designated a shelf in our closet for just this project and my goal is to have it stocked with wrapped Christmas gifts for everyone on my list, including white elephant stuff!  The only thing I won't do now are cookie jars.  Call me OCD but I can already feel the stress lifting.  I am so excited to have this done!  Plus, by December I'll probably forget what I bought everyone so it will make it even more fun!  I've enjoyed having the time to pick out gifts (and the time to make returns and adjustments when they don't work!). 

Lastly,  Jesus was actually born in July.  I've always wanted to celebrate his real birth month and don't always feel the spirit of it in December when it's so forced and not even correct.  This has been such a fun way for me to incorporate an accurate celebration of it into our year!!

Next week I'll update you on the saga that is our dining room table.  For now, I'll say that the outpouring of community support on Facebook has been touching.  Who knew our table was so loved???!!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!::;;)))))))

Happy 4th y'all.  I also hope all you non-Texans can find a pleasant way to spend the day...

Sweet sweet weekend

I'm stuck in bed with the sweetest little baby, so as long as I can't check anything did my list (which is now recorded in my new amazing awesome totally incredible Erin Condren life planner)....

I might as well blog about our wonderful weekend.  

But first, let's admire my planner!!  Oh I love it.  I'm on a huge paper book, paper planner, anti-phone-for-everything kick.  And Howard finally upgraded from his 3G iPhone yesterday.  WHO are we?!

I'm in love with that purse.  WALMART people.  Mom got a couple too:

So affordable and so cute and no guilt if your baby chews on it like a puppy dog.

There is guilt, however, if you spill nail polish remover on your wooden dining room table.  Just thought I'd let you know.  If sharing that saves the life of even just one table out there, it was worth it.

So Mom flew in on Friday for the Matisse exhibit here in San Antonio!  

It was so fun!  We looked at some of his bright, fun work and then headed over to La Frite for a delicious meal and great atmosphere.  What could be better than a French infused night in the town with your mama?!

On Saturday we went to the Botanical Gardens for a Matisse watercolor class.  I'd never been to the Gardens and was shocked by what a neat place it is.  

I got the time wrong on the class and we were late, but we still got to learn so much about watercolor and make a lot of progress on our replica of Purple Robe.

Except we lacked the supplies to make the purple.  (Apparently you can't get that bright purple color from primaries...who knew?!  I've been lied to my entire life!!)

We played with Jonah and grilled delicious HEB premade burgers (which we've decided are better than Longhorn's) and finished the day with a Downton Abbey episode.  Because Howard and I just discovered it's on Netflix and now we can't get anything productive accomplished.  We are DA addicts!

Sunday Howard taught church class and Jonah did great in the nursery!  I'm excited that he's ready to try staying there for big service too!

We ate at Magnolia Pancake Haus where Jonah had his first pancake - a blueberry one.  He wasn't overly impressed.  Probably because it didn't have Nutella.

We always love Mom's visits and I was especially sad this morning when I woke up after being up a lot of the night with Jonah and there was no Nonni to take him and let me go back to sleep.

I keep asking her to move in with us.

I should probably talk to Howard first...

You're Reading Your Nightly Blog

So here's the thing.  When you try to be a productive person and get up early in the morning, you're super tired at night.  I know.  Mind boggling information you came on over for tonight.

Thus I've concluded I only have so many hours of productivity each day.  I can have them early or late but I don't think I can create more.  (This makes me think of my precious austistic 4th grade student in my first year of teaching who stood up during a lesson one day and yelled at the clock, "TIME IS ALWAYS AGAINST US!!!!!"

HA!  That has made me laugh for 7 years now.  I can't believe that first little group of kids I taught will be made up of seniors this year!  I hope they've had better teachers than I since our 4th grade language arts class because during my last closet cleaning session (it's a big project), I found these end-of-year thank you notes from them indicating I grossly failed those precious souls in my role:

Sigh.  

Good night friends.  I wish you every effectiveness at the work of your hands.  

Again, sigh.

Come Covet With Me

Have you seen this month's issue of Southern Living?  GAHHHHHH.  I die. LOOK at this house:

I mean seriously.  That has Howard and Hillary written all over it.  I cried when I saw the picture.  Not murdering is really easy.  Just don't kill someone.  Easy.  Done.  I don't kill someone every single day.  But coveting thy neighbor's house overlooking the Arkansas River?!  (Which would maybe not make it my neighbor's, right?)  Suffice it to say, I make it pretty easy on Screwtape.

But it's fun to dream.  If I were custom building a house right now (not as I call 'pretend building' like the one we're in), I would totally add my new, Incredibly Awesome Fantastic Idea room.  It was born from this current hallway state of being in my home:

Are you ready for the the IAFI room reveal?!

A SHIPPING AND RECEIVING ROOM.

I'm just gonna let that sink in a moment.

It would be a small room with shelves, recycling canisters, scissors, tape, built in slots for storing broken down boxes, and storage for other mailing supplies, and it would have a special kind of exterior door that features a one-way mail slot that can handle large package drop offs...maybe even just a key pad code or a video surveillance and electronic signature feature.  I'm not sure.  I haven't worked out the details.

BUT it would keep packages that are dropped off when you're not home from sitting exposed on the front porch, it would consolidate boxes to one room until you could get to opening them (nobody likes the look of boxes in a living room), and it would make disposal of the box and packing supplies easy and close.  PLUS it would provide storage for outgoing supplies for returns, online sale of auctioned items, and what have you.  

I'm obsessed and can see the whole thing in my head (if Howard's reading he's thinking, "No, you can see it in your mind.").

Well, the nightly Office episode has geared up so I'll leave you with this little duck and cat caller:

Silly precious boy. :-)

Swap!

I had every intention (I feel like I've said that a lot lately) of getting up at 4:00 this morning to have two hours of a quiet house, hot coffee, devotional time, and maybe even a shower for 2014, but we were up a lot last night with Jonah, so he was my alarm at 6:00 this morning.

We've been nap training.  We're on day 4 and it's going really well, thanks to our amazing nanny who came over on Friday to show me what to do.  But I guess last night Jonah needed to see if the boundaries still apply when the sun's not up.  Turns out, they do.  And it turns out this may be the explanation of my store list on my phone notes section entitled "HEB" (our grocery store here in south Texas) and why it reads as follows: wine.

So, after a typical day of thinking, "Hey!  I got this!" and subsequently remembering at 11:57 that I have a dentist appointment at noon and realizing I'm in the Wal-Mart parking lot (not near the dentist) where I just shopped for CLOTHES for MYSELF (are you sensing the horror here?) and also realizing that I have my precious son with me who charmed everyone in Wal-Mart with his smile but still doesn't go to the dentist and who needed to be dropped off at home in 1.5 minutes and the man coming to pick up all the clothes from a swap we had over the weekend is at our front door and no one's there...after all that...I'm sitting down to blog.  It was the lip gloss.  Any time I apply lip gloss I think I have it sooooo together.  Gloss cometh before a fall. 

Well.  Let's get to it already.  On Saturday morning I hosted a clothing and home goods swap!  I emailed my MOPS group earlier in the week and told them to clean out their closets and bring everything over.  Anything left I'd load up and donate to our local battered women's shelter (which apparently will be tomorrow.  See above.).

Here's everything of mine laid out.  Is that a ton or what?  It's all stuff that's too small now and even if I were to lose all the weight next week, it's just either been worn too much and I'm sick of it, or it's just too old.  Plus, all of my pants suddenly went out of style!  Like poof!  Pants have to be tapered now or you look like you're from the, well, week before this one!! 

 Starting with the basket next to the brown chair...here are some 'shopping bags' for clothing selections.

 The left two chairs against the bar had pajamas, sweats, tees, and exercise clothes.

 The front side of the table was divided into tanks, short sleeve, and long sleeve.  Underneath were shoes.

 

Two chairs behind the table had bags, purses, accessories, and dresses.

 A card table against the wall showcased the home goods, and two chairs to the right of it held jackets and coats.  (At this point in reading my mom is zooming in on pics to see what I'm getting rid of and beginning to worry about all of it.)

 I decided to keep this little chunk of a find...

I don't have a pic, but I also made the downstairs bath available as a fitting room, and moved our full length mirror down next to it.  It worked great for people to try on and decide what they liked!

All in all it was a lot of fun and much more comfortable than a garage sale.  It was shorter (9am - noon come and go), indoors, I knew who was here, and we had coffee and donut holes.  You just can't beat coffee and good friends!  And the best part is not only do we have cleaner and more efficient closets now, but we got to give to a great cause too.  So get to swapping!  You can swap with anything!  Baby clothes, furniture, recipes, services, meals, you name it!

By the way, if I die in Wal-Mart, please drag my body to Nordstrom.

Five on Friday Plus a Bonus Rant

I'm on the computer because I was going to be a responsible citizen and read some news.  Well, after I plowed through a few articles from the Left saying news on the Right is imbalanced, and then some articles from the Right saying news on the Left is imbalanced, I made it to some actual current events.

And then I lost it.

No, not because of the events (though they are harder to stomach than words can communicate)...

but because of the grammar!!

I've had it.  It's one thing when you're texting and autocorrect chimes in the conversation, but it's quite another when a business, a news source, a public sign, or a CHILDREN'S BOOK uses glaringly incorrect grammar.

That's right.  In one of the board books we checked out from the library it says "its" when it should say "it's."  Oh.  I cannot even.  I mean it's a CHILDREN'S BOOK for LEARNING.  How does this even happen?  It has about 4 pages.  And it still has an editor!  Head. Exploding. Need. Duct. Tape.

I won't tell you the name of the book.  I'll just say it features a famous prehistoric creature whose mom might have been red and whose dad might have been blue.  And all I can say to him is ARGH!

Alright.  I'm finished with my grammar rant now.  Just please be safe out there and use YOU'RE and IT's and YOUR and ITS responsibly, folks.  Sigh.  We're not even talking affect vs. effect or the fact that I heard a radio news anchor report repeatedly about a 'valedvictorian,' or how people everywhere are putting "!?!?" at the end of sentences like "I'm heading to the pool."  When it reads as "I'm heading to the pool!?!?" am I supposed to infer that this person is unsure of where he or she is heading?  Is he or she scared about the situation?  Is he or she wondering if I'd like to join?  I just don't know.  I just. don't. know.  Our society is unraveling and I think I'm probably about 93. 

OK, moving on.  Here are some more items on my mind this week. 

1.  Younique.

I read about this on Mix and Match Mama's blog.  This looks like an awesome product if you're wanting longer lashes.  That's YOU'RE as in YOU ARE.  I definitely feel like Ross from Friends right now. We can definitely be friends if you get that reference.  PIVOT!

Click HERE to order. 

2.  I'm watching my day-old Tonight Show episode and Jimmy's in Florida featuring the band FUN.  And to be clear (and grammatically honoring) FUN. is spelled in all caps and always contains a period after the 'N.'  Normally I tune out the music portion of late night shows, because BAD.  But this band has a fantastic sound and kept my attention.  They could be the real deal.  Watch their performance of "Harsh Lights" by clicking HERE.  The lyrics are on the juvenile side unless you read far more into them than was probably intended (or unless you're younger than 93), but again - they have a great sound. 

 

I wonder if this band knew just because they were on with Jimmy Fallon didn't mean that they had to actually wear tight pants.

3.  In my last post I mentioned the manned mission to Mars and how personality type plays into it.  Here's the article my Dad was referencing:  Why Extroverts Could Cause Problems on a Mission to Mars.

4.  My throat feels sore after I talk a lot on Facebook.  Is that a thing?

5.  Is it just me, or do any other moms out there think of the Dirty Dancing line "Nobody puts baby in a corner" at least once a day?  It's become so annoying I try to avoid corners.  CLEARLY for SEVERAL reasons I have been in the house without a fellow adult for far too much time.

And what would be a blog post without some Jonah?

The kid has informed me that he would like to be 'all finished' with baby food.  He ate half my sandwich at lunch today.  HALF.  It was a raspberry chipotle grilled cheese with ham.  I cut the crust off and the first thing he went for was the crust.  I  was surprised and just loved that I was shown up in that moment.  He's his own person, and apparently, he likes the crust.  

And he doesn't even like torn or chopped up bites.  He just wants the whole experience.

It's a little scarier at dinner time now.

Jonah and I spent the afternoon reading and playing in a tent, respectively...

and then he decided that crust was just the beginning of his desires and aspirations...

and as gracefully as he came to this humble home in Texas, he exited into the sunset, hair blowing in the slight hint of a breeze, pacifier smacking steadily in the humid blanket of air around him, not to return again for a heavily long time.

(Which turned out to be about 10 seconds later, before that first concrete step.)

(Yes, I know that was a hypocritical fragment above that started with 'Which,' but there are exceptions for casual conversational blogging, right!?!?!?!!?? ; )