Blogmas Vol. 2

On the 2nd day of Blogmas my true love gave to me...

A THANKSGIVING REACAP!  

Because nothing says Christmas fun like going back in time?!? :/

We had a pretty jam packed Thanksgiving weekend this year. 

We spent Thanksgiving day watching the parade and snuggling and then eating amongst the chaos of 24 people at the In-Laws.  It was kids and adults and food and yelling and meltdowns and laughing and signing.  Basically all of your important holiday moments.

Cheesy Turkey ;)

Sweet Auntie

Serious discussion about fabulous family photos of yore

Gobble till you Wobble! (you know we did!)

The next day my (not so) baby bro came to town and we hung around the house and ate burritos for lunch (as one does on a major eating holiday?) We watched a terrible movie (Focus - sorry will smith...not so much) and then cooked Thanksgiving part 2. And it was a Thanksgiving miracle in that all of the food turned out delicious and we didn't set the smoke alarms off once! (unlike when my mom was visiting and we set them off twice...mmm...) And seeing as the only full turkey I've ever cooked was in a residence hall oven, the fact that this one was edible really was pretty miraculous.  We feasted on turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing and green bean casserole.  And then we capped it off with brownies and ice cream...because pie isn't all it's cracked up to be ;)

 

Thanksgiving dinner complete with "fire"

The traditional self timer photo!

The following day we headed back to the inlaws for family photo palooza. 10 kids 10 adults 1 photographer 1 assistant and only a handful of meltdowns.  We followed that up with a birthday dinner for mother in law where we ate a lot and sang too loud.

 Photo out-takes

 

Birthday singing is very serious in this family (and sometimes rather loud...even in public!)

So recap:

Eating, eating, tv, eating, photos, eating eating eating...

In all cheesiness though it was a lovely holiday filled with all of my favorite things - food and family.  And this year I am feeling acutely aware of the abundance I am lucky to live with and in. I am safe. I am fed. I am clothed. I am warm. And on top of those most basic luxuries I also am loved. I am a MOTHER (WHAT THE WHAT???). I have an amazing partner in life. I have a family who loves me and makes me laugh. I have a stable job that I truly enjoy. I have access to health care and education. I have many things I have worked very hard for but I also have many things I was granted just by luck of the draw or by privilege and that has definitely not gone unnoticed. 

 

And on top of all of that I am thankful for you, dear friends, out there in the world, loving me and witnessing this life story of mine - thank you for letting me be part of your lives and for being part of my history as well!

 

XOXOXO

Be Brave! Be Generous!  

 

Happy Blogmas!

First Annual Blogmas! Vol. 1

I am the first to admit I have a little bit of a problem with Christmas - as in I can't get enough.  I love the decorations, the sparkles, the songs, the fact that people use it as a time to try to be kinder and better and more joyful (things I know we should be working on all year long, but hey I will take what I can get...) I mean I may or may not have been listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Much to my shame we don't have a tree yet, but that's another story for another time.

So...in honor of one of my most favoritist times of year and in an attempt to get some more nonsense up in the blog-o-sphere I've decided that this year will be the first annual BLOGMAS!

That's right my friends - 25 days of blogging from yours truly.  Which is going to push me out of my comfort zone on many a level.  But what better way to spend Advent, a time of waiting and contemplation, then out here in the interwebs blabbing to all you fine folks?!

There will definitely be some Christmas related posts I'm sure, but if there are any topics you are dying to hear my opinion about let me know!  Otherwise you can expect a lot of rambling and pictures of my kid (what else is new?!)

 

So Happy Blogmas my friends!

 

 

And to get us started...a picture of my two favs!

 

Dear Internets: A Catch-up!

Dear Internets,

I'm so sorry I've been willfully neglecting you as of late. As it turns out all I want to do is smush my baby cheeks. And some times (insanely) think about having another baby's cheeks to smush.

But not to worry my internet friends.  I have been dutifully stalking you and your smushy babies as well. And I love every minute of it.  And every time I read another cutie baby blog (or just great life blog) I think to myself - I should write too!  I have thoughts!  I have things to say!

And then instead - I smush baby cheeks instead!  And you know what, sorrynotsorry!

Life is so full these days.  It is exhaustingly beautiful.  It is too much and not enough all at the same time.  I don't even know how to catch up so I'm just going to write a few things, throw in some pictures and try to get going again on here.  Because really I miss the record of our lives. And I miss the outlet.  It is one of my few creative places. And one of the only adult things I have left to hang on to these days!

September and October went away with the blink of an eye.  We took baby girl up to the Apple orchards twice and it was awesome.  Apple fritters and tchotchkes galore.  She's such a good baby, I can't even talk about it.

We had no intention of dressing her up for Halloween (because really, she was 8 months old and goes to bed at 6:30pm...I know...shut up) but we caved at the end and she was the most fearsome pirate you ever did see.  We also dragged her out to the pumpkin patch which was hilarious and fun. And then we decorated those pumpkins and let baby girl smush all that goo around (how bad is it if your kid eats raw pumpkin?!) and it was glorious. SP and I watched Hocus Pocus and passed out candy until we actually ran out (2 costco bags!) 

We spontaneously decided to take SP's birthday off of work early November.  We had a nice lunch out together just the two of us.  Unfortunately both of SP's grandparents passed away the weekend prior to her birthday so it was a bit of a somber day but it was good to have some time at home and some time together.  The next weekend was a double funeral for the couple. So we packed up the car and drove to utah with our 9mo old in tow.  It was an incredibly touching and heartbreaking service.  They were salt of the earth people who demonstrated unconditional love in a special way. They loved me from the start - which you can imagine was a challenge their coming from a mormon background and my being a lesbian and all... But it was nothing but love from them from the start. And for that, for giving me my wife, and for giving our baby her middle name I will always be grateful.

And on Monday after that excursion my parents came in to town!  I have to say it was a perfectly timed (albeit busy) distraction.  They've loved up on their grandbaby.  My brother spontaneously joined us as well so it was a full house of hugs and mall walking and taking the baby to the park for the first time!

And we also took mom back to the Apple Orchards! (3rd time for Baby Girl in less than a year!)

And speaking of baby girl - She is 9 months old as of 11/11!  She's growing like a weed. And I'm not going to lie she's the sweetest thing there ever was. She's smiley and squishy and crawl/scooting all over the place. She's also doing this stand on her knees thing all the time and trying to pull herself up thing. She wants to touch everything. And loves to EAT. Unfortunately her moms are real scared about giving her big chunks of food (choking is like a REAL fear for me!) But slowly but surely she is working her way through everything. And most definitely would prefer to eat what we eat and not baby food. (in fact she cries until we let her try it typically...) This morning she sat under my chair and stared at me while I ate breakfast...It's cute when it's not creeping me out!

SP and I are doing well.  Although I'm not going to lie...we are tired. And I don't know about her but I know I miss having adult time...My January birthday vacation can't come soon enough!  But we are a good team - taking turns with the kiddo and the crazy fur baby (who seriously has not slowed down at all...ugh) The tired makes it hard to do other things, but we still make time for each other whenever we can fit in a moment!

So that's that for now.  Hope you are all well my friends, I miss you!

XOXO
Sarah

 

Dear Baby Girl - Vol. 2

Dear Baby Girl,

It's been awhile since I wrote to you - sorry about that.  It turns out that you take up A LOT of my time.  And yet there is never enough.  There is never enough time to snuggle you, or play with you or hold you.  I don't even mind changing your diapers all the time because it's another few mins we get to hang out.  And you always laugh as you wiggle around and try to eat your feet.

You're almost 7 months now sweet heart and I can't believe it.  You are one big baby girl - 17lbs 5oz at your last check up and your'e in the 98th percentile for height - you are going to be one tall chica! You're eating up a storm these days. Although every time we introduce a new food you definitely think we're trying to poison you. I know mashed peas taste like crap baby but apparently this is the kind of stuff we're supposed to expose you to. The faces you make when you try something new are the absolute best, most hysterical things I've ever seen. I especially like when you pretend like you're gagging. You've decided some food isn't poisonous though - sweet potatoes and carrots seem to be on the acceptable list.  Banana is borderline.  Peas are definitely a no-go.  You'd really prefer to feed yourself and I think you don't like mashed foods so we are toying with the idea of "baby led-weaning." Mama however is really terrified of you choking...so we'll see how that progresses. 

You've also most definitely found your voice these days.  Mom calls you a baby pterodactyl. I love to hear your babbling and shrieking,  You only say mamamama when you are mad so I'm not so sure we can count it as your first word.  Sometimes you scream so loud that the poor dog cowers or cries.  When you wake up in the morning or after a nap you just babble away until someone comes to get you.  Most of the time you are a very low key baby (things you should never type out 101).  You play by yourself, you let us snuggle you up, and you are smiling like a big old cheese ball these days.

Lucky for you Grandma and Grandpa came to visit for a week recently.  Youre Uncle also came to play with you.  You were the center of attention for 1 whole week and you ate it up.  You loved reading books with grandpa and cheesin at grandma.  And you love to pull uncle's hair and grab his nose and feel his beard.  And they all seem pretty smitten with you too.  Although grandma and grandpa keep telling us how lucky we are that you're so good natured...I don't know, I think we can take some credit for that can't we?! ;)

I love you so much baby girl, I can't even believe it.  How can my heart possibly take any more? Every day is a new and beautiful discovery for you.  The smallest things are funny or interesting to you - thank you for giving us that window into this wondrous world we live in.  Your mom and I, we just can't believe we are lucky enough that you chose us to be your parents.  Thanks for making us an even more beautiful family!

Love,
Mama

Grandpa and Grandma and Baby Bean!

The Parenting Time Suck

Oh my god you guys (gals, peoples...)

This parenting thing is hard and it's sucking all of the blogging life right out of me and I've become one of those dreaded once a monthers - ugh.

That being said, we've hit such a sweet spot with baby girl these days. She's solid and hilarious and much more a baby and much less a blob that we cart around with us. She loves the exersaucer, she loves laughing at the dog, she loves pulling hair and most of all she loves to EAT!  She's been on rice cereal since about 4 months and is going strong. We haven't given her anything else because we are the laziest parents in the world and we just haven't gotten around to it. Except for that one time we fed her guacamole and she wasn't opposed - I know I'm sure it was a major no no because it had all these flavors and citrus and stuff - whatever judge me. You know what I fed her smushed up pear from pear pie too so there's that.

In other news she cut two teeth on the bottom. Luckily she appears not to be the super whiny type. We had one really off day (no sleeping, no eating, lots of fussy) and then it was over. Did I just jinx the hell out of myself or what?!

Most of the time she's so damn cute I can't even stand it. Except, tell me experienced parents, is this kid EVER going to grow some hair. For awhile we were calling her baby trump because she had this awesome flop over thing going on. Now we can't speak that name so mostly I just call her tooty pants - but that has more to do with the other end of her. 

Its pretty run of the mill over here, most days we get up, love on her, get ready for work send her to day care, pick her up, get home, love on her, feed her for the 99 millionth time and then she goes to bed. And then SP and I collapse onto the couch and don't get up until we go to bed. Sometimes I sleep on the couch then wake up and go to bed. I don't think anybody explained how much of a time suck these tiny creatures are...I volunteered for this right? RIGHT?! ;)

But really people, how do you have any hobbies once you have kids please explain this to me. I've finally resurrected book club and reading for fun.  I FINALLY finished one fun book - I've probably been reading it for 10 months now... And at least I "see" my friends at book club every couple of weeks.  But other than that man...not much. And we've seriously become those parents who weigh whether an activity is really worth disrupting bed time for. Like go out to eat and push bed time back and risk baby implosion or maybe just get take out and stay home and put the baby down and collapse on the couch. Sadly (or happily?!) it is often the latter...

We did manage a trip to the "Pear fair" which was this teensy tiny festival all about pears. And it was the most awesome 1 block parade I've ever seen. We at ALL the pear things (pear and proscuitto pizza, pear salsa, pear sausage, pear pie, pear ice cream...), looked at the biggest pear (2.12lbs in case you are wondering) and generally soaked in the small town charm. And then we all went home and fell asleep. (seriously though we did)

 

The grandparents are coming to visit at the end of August so that should be fun stuff and we've fit in a few friends here and there so I suppose we can be proud of that. We've also lost our minds and decided to try to do some updates on our house - because why wouldn't you want to rip your floors out when you have a 6 month old?! 

We're all riding the crazy train over here my friends!

Over and Out

Conductor Sarah

A Big Ol' Slice of Life

I have so many things to catch up on that I'm going to revert to one of those dreaded bullet point blogs in hopes of getting myself caught up so that I can start doing the real deal in depth important (HA) blogs again soon (for my crappy memory's sake if nothing else)

So now in essentially no order here's what's been going on around here...

- Baby girl turned 4 months old and had her 4 month old check up appointment. She is in the 98th percentile for height and the 61st percentile for weight (although I don't know how that's possible because she's got some serious thigh rolls going). She's also in the 98th percentile for head size... big noggin big brains?!  We hope so!  The doc says its nothing to worry about at the moment - usually it's familial (yeah we're talking about you SP!)

- We already marked one thing off our summer bucket list (the list I made but haven't had a chance to post yet...coming soon even if we are a third of the way through the summer already) and took Baby girl swimming at the lake. It was amazing. I miss being by the ocean desperately (10 years later and I still actively miss it all the time) so SP took me to the next closest body of water - a lake -  and it was AMAZING.  It was super warm, because in case you hadn't noticed we're having some kind of crazy drought here in California.

- We also got baby girl in her first pool...she wasn't a huge fan, but it got better with time (might have been a touch too cold...sorry baby girl!)

- SP and I braved 5hr flights with Baby Girl to go to New York and celebrate my grandmother's life. She passed away this past winter but we waited until her birthday in June to celebrate the feisty and amazing spirit she was. It was a wonderful trip and I'm so glad to have been able to spend the time and have Baby Girl meet some of the extended family.  It was sad to say goodbye but it was amazing to see the legacy my grandmother created and the colorful life she lead.

- We got the go ahead to get baby girl started on rice cereal. She is a really really good eater and was definitely a fan of the food (although she couldn't seem to get enough in fast enough for her taste) We haven't had a chance to make it consistent at this point (with the traveling and what not) our plan is to get moving onto other food soon as well. 4.5 months seems early to me but the doc quickly pointed out that she's still getting most of her nutrition from milk, this is just to get her used to eating. And apparently there is some evidence showing that earlier "eating" develops better eating habits (which we are all for!)

 - In other eating news, I've been toying with the idea of going vegan at home. And am slowly moving us that direction. What exactly does that mean you ask...well basically you eat vegan when you eat at home but may choose to eat animal products when eating at others homes or eating out. It's mostly for health and environmental reasons. Its getting harder and harder to deny that eating less animal products seems to be better for your health. So I'll keep you posted about our vegan eating at home...

- At the beginning of June I celebrated my 2 year anniversary at my current job. I still truly love it.  I love my students. I adore the people I work with. Its flexible, fulfilling but also not so much that I feel like I'm drowning. Its still a surprise that one can feel this good at work...

- We also celebrated one of my closest friend's 30th birthdays. We've known each other almost 20 years and it was pretty incredible to celebrate having spent those decades together. We've seen each other through graduations, losing family, losing girlfriends, getting married, having babies - 2 decades of life witnessed together. How lucky am I?

- And to round  out the friend love - one of my other best friends came into town to visit. Baby girl got to meet one of her beautiful Aunties. Another fabulous woman who has witnessed a good 2 decades of my life. The problem however is that it made me miss her even more. Thank goodness for skype and email and airplanes.

- Oh right, and of course, marriage equality passed in the US. But I am still having a hard time celebrating when there is an absolute civil rights crisis occurring for our black brothers and sisters. More to come on this, much much more.

So that's the haps my people. I hope all is well in your corners of the world.  "See" you soon!

Besos,

Sarah