January 2012
25 posts
1 tag
Baby Babble
Here’s what I’m talking about on Baby’s First Year this week:
1. How important is a father’s role in childbirth? Did your own partner help or hinder your labor? Mom’s weighed in with their personal experiences here.
2. I’ve shared before my struggle with losing too much weight since Arlo was born. I went to the doctor this week and learned I weigh 116 pounds...
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Songs to be Alive To.
Morningbird by Forest Sun.
...
Songs to be Alive to.
Sweetness by Pearl and The...
A Brief But Worthy Moment.
The very best thing about work from home days is that instead of taking a break by walking down the hall to grab a snack from the break room, I get to take a break by laying in the grass with my eight month old and husband.
They’re only small moments in my day, but a welcome respite from hour long conference calls and writing email after email. Nothing relieves the stress of a busy work...
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The Rundown: 8 months & 2 years
(Arlo fresh from a bath & Everly having just been caught attempting to give her balloon puppy a “baf”.)
Stats:
Everly: You are riding that 25 percentile curve all the way through your second year of life. At your 2 year check up, you were 24 lbs 8 ounces and 34 3/4 inches tall. You’ve got a closet full of size 5 shoes and you’ve got a serious opinion...
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I Forgot to Post This Last Week...
Look how cute Mylah and Everly were in the invite we sent out before their party. My favorite is the second shot where we asked them how many fingers was “2”. Such sweet munchkins!
Love,
M
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A little Something Something...
It’s fun to online window shop, isn’t it? I think I currently have 10 or more “virtual” shopping carts loaded down with things I wish I could buy. Sometimes it feels really therapeutic to fill them up and then close out the screen - all the fun of shopping without the buyers remorse! But sometimes I happen upon a good deal that’s hard to pass up if the price is right...
A Progression of Dear Baby Headers.
It’s kind of fun to see them all lined up next to one another. One of these days, when I get my act together, I’m determined to give this entire blog a facelift- but in the meantime, a fresh new header will cure my itch. A special thank you to Jess of I Rock So What for designing this for me!
Love,
M
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Letters to Arlo.
Dear Arlo,
I was reading a beautiful story by another blogger last week when I was stopped abruptly by these words:
“God makes children so specifically for us, each of them.” ~Arianna Segerman
It called on me to sit down and write this to you. Before you were born, I carried some assumptions about parenting. For one, that going through it once already meant I knew what I was...
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Songs to be Alive to.
Sort Of by Ingrid...
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Songs to be Alive to.
Skeletons by Yeah Yeah...
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Mylah & Everly's Down on the Farm 2nd Birthday...
Two weeks ago, I sent my best friend an email asking if we could push the girl’s joint birthday party to January 15th. We’d originally planned it for the 8th (right in between both of their birthdays) but since I couldn’t get my act together, I’d done nothing to plan for it, including the basics, like, you know… inviting people.
“I have a barn shaped cat house...
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Baby Babble.
I’ve found it really challenging to juggle both Dear Baby and my blogging at Babble these past few months. I do the large bulk of my writing and photo editing in the late hours after my children have gone to bed and it’s become increasingly challenging to do write and edit for both. The thing I hate most about not being able to get it all done is that I WANT to, so badly. I love...
Music to be alive to.
Several of you have asked...
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Toddler Tools: 3 Simple ways to turn No! into Yes!
I am always hungry for smart tips and advice from other moms on things that work to make their daily life run a little more smoothly. With that in mind, I wanted to share 3 inexpensive items that have been helping us avoid major battles at meals, bath time and bed time lately.
1.DINNER TIME: The funny face plate!
Remember those magnetic wooly face toys from our childhood? This plate is like...
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A Few Friday Links
A Rainbow of albums in our record collection
What a fun weekend we have ahead of us! We’re throwing a small little birthday party for Everly & her best buddy, Mylah West this Sunday. I think elaborate birthdays are inspiring and beautiful, but pulling one off last year for Everly’s 1st was SERIOUS work. I’ve vowed to keep all birthday parties (except the big ones - 1, 13,...
To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega
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A Birthday.
I set my alarm for 6:45am. Plenty of time to wake up Everly early so that she could see the decorations that Brent and I had hung for her late the night before. Instead, at 6:15am, I heard the thump thump of little feet down the hallway and saw her tiny frame, wrapped in fuzzy red pajamas standing at my bedside. “I see sumfin’” she said, pointing out the door....
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Letters to Everly.
(A blurry account of Everly’s first carousel ride. She spent most of it crying out for mama and saying “all done!”)
Everly Veda,
My darling little two year old. Happy happy birthday to you!
I realize now why mamas everywhere on their children’s birthdays say reminiscing things like “On this day X number of years ago, I was bringing you into the...
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Christmas.
Do I get the award for latest Christmas recap ever? I think YES!
This one goes down as the Christmas that snuck up on us. The one where we pulled a tiny tree and the children’s stockings out of cardboard boxes the night before Santa came. The one where my dad and step mom brought coffee over on Christmas morning and had to bring coffee mugs too because we didn’t...
December 2011
20 posts
oh.hello.
When I have big chunks of time off like I do now for the holidays, I find it incredibly hard to blog. Blogging is part of my routine, and eleven straight days with my family with no agenda or place to be is certainly not part of my typical day in/day out. So as much as I love this blog, finding the motivation to sit down at my computer is pretty much non existent- Especially considering there are...
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Have you ever owned a dress so pretty it deserved its own party? A dress with the perfect amount of sparkle, lace, and dainty details that it suddenly has you itching to throw together an invite, hang some garland from the ceiling and whip up your famous white bean dip? When this beautiful little frock by designer Corey Lynn Calter arrived on my door, it was all I could do not to call...
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Dear Lovely Home,
Tomorrow you become ours. Despite having visited you countless times in the past months (sitting in your driveway, peeking in your windows, taking in the lovely afternoon light from your kitchen window), this time when we turn the key in your door, it will be different. Tomorrow we start a new adventure in living a good life together.
A year ago, we wondered if...
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2011 in Review. Another Year Lived in Love.
They say, the older you get, the faster the years fly by. In my experience, for every child you have, go ahead and double that rate of speed. I’m telling you now, just yesterday it was May and I was just delivering my baby boy. And two weeks ago, my daughter was just a wobbly walking, barely speaking little toddler-baby hybrid. Here’s a look back at my favorite moments from the past 12...
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Minted Giveaway Winner
In Christmas card update news, they were waiting for me when I got home Friday evening. I have since stuffed them all and sealed them with our new home address on the front. Actually addressing them, buying stamps and mailing is likely to happen sometime between now and January 2nd. Baby steps.
So on to the winner of the Minted card giveaway - Congrats to Anna, a...
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Packing a Life & a Pretend Tree.
We are living in a state of moving purgatory. We have less than a week until we become official home owners and get the key to our new place and with two small children underfoot, we’ve slowly been packing away the contents of our lives in a mobile storage container parked in front of our home. Brent and I have become expert movers. In the course of our 4 year marriage, this will...
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Work Clothes/Play Clothes
We’re in the midst of packing up our house in preparation for our move and just this weekend I discovered my big box of winter clothes stashed in the attic. Our current closets are so tiny that I always have to swap out the seasons. It’s always so much fun to dig through and find things I’ve forgotten I had. I sent them all to storage as it didn’t make sense to start...
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Santaphobia & Other Holiday Merriment
Fact: The official name of having a fear of Santa Clause is Santaphobia. (I swear, look it up!) Any of you who have been reading this blog for awhile might remember last year’s christmas photo:
It was by all accounts, a rather traumatic experience for our daughter. I know this sounds totally horrible, but I still have this photo of Everly on my desk at work and it gives me a chuckle. I...
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The Rundown: 6 Months & 22 Months
(This is terribly late and Everly is already 23 months old - but better late than never)
Stats: Ahhh! My peanut children!
Everly: you weigh 24 pounds and are still comfortably in 18 month clothing. Your little feet are finally creeping towards a size 5 shoe. I used to worry about how small you are, but you are eating well and are very active. There are tiny women on both sides of your...
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Francesca's Collections Winner & Other Neat...
Yeah, so…. I should have pulled a winner for the Francesca’s Collections giveaway over a week ago, but here I am just getting around to it (this is awkward). I’m sorry you guys, sometimes I just drop the ball on these things. I threw all the entries into random.org and the winner is (bum bum bummmmm!)
Jilly who wrote:
“I need new clothes SO bad! I find myself buying my 9...
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Something Awesome: Philanthropic Stocking Stuffers
There is a little company over on my sponsors tab that has quietly been doing amazing, life-changing things in the world. Barley & Birch started off as an organic, environmentally-friendly children’s clothing line (my kids live in their comfy tees & onesies!) I love that they are a completely carbon-neutral company with the most earth friendly options utilized in the production of...
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November 2011
16 posts
7 tags
2 tags
Greatest Earthly Blessing.
I’ve been anticipating this for months- Our first family photos as a foursome. Brent, myself, our children (plural - TWO OF THEM!) It’s been well over a year since our last family photo shoot when I was secretly pregnant with Arlo but hadn’t uttered a word about it to anyone. And now, here we are with that chubby baby from last year’s photos replaced with a vivacious...
Work Clothes/ Play Clothes
Collecting 5 outfits for this feature is proving harder than I thought- most week days I’m running out the door to get to the office on time and daylight savings has made it so that it’s too dark to take photos when I come home. Most weekends, I’ve got the camera pointed on my family and I forget to snap a shot of myself, so it took me almost a month to collect these 5 shots....