One Year Ago Today

I love posts like this. They are my absolute favorite because they show just how far I have come as an individual and how much our family has changed!

This day last year I posted about being brave. I'm so thankful that I've gone from being that scared shit-less mother of 2 from that day to the now harried mother of 3.

I laughed at myself this morning reading back over that old post because I really though I was soo awesome because I put big girl panties on and bought a package of diapers and a couple of onesies. My how times have changed. And, for someone who doesn't particularly like change all that much I'm grateful for this kind. I'm not the terrified mother I was in  2011 and I'm not the grieving mother of 2010.

Speaking of change....





Both of these pictures are almost from exactly a year ago. August 22nd to be exact. :)

Here is my sweet "baby" from yesterday...

::Swoon::

And just because I feel like I've done nothing but blog about our littlest lately, here are my older boys from yesterday. 

I feel like they both grew a foot over the summer. They are both soo handsome if I do say so myself! :)

Change. It's not necessarily a bad thing. 

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!

Griffin and Sissy

Now that Griffin is an older baby he is of course much more animated. His smiles, his laughs, his cries, they all seem to distinctly mean something.

I had gotten Griffin up from his nap yesterday afternoon and we were sitting together in the rocking chair. It was incredibly noisy downstairs and I wanted just one quiet minute with just him. We were doing our rocking thing when he craned his neck back around towards his crib and just smiled and giggle SO big! I instinctively looked over to see what he was looking at. There was nothing there of course.

Or was there?

The first thing that popped out of my mouth without even thinking about it was "Was Sissy playing with you?". At first I kind of shook my own head at myself. Seriously? What was I thinking?

The more that Griffin and I sat there together the more it made sense. Of course Caroline (or as I now like to call her around the boys, Sissy) was there. To me, she's not that tiny baby at the hospital anymore. She's as old as she should be now. What almost 2 year old little girl isn't just in love with baby dolls? And honestly, Griffin is the cutest baby doll around y'all! Sissy is most certainly there with Griffin.

She is playing with him, entertaining him, soothing him.

This is my beautiful niece Alice. She is my younger brother's oldest daughter. I LOVE how much she looks like Winston and I as children. It is she that I picture when I think of Caroline. I think they would have looked a lot alike. Incidentally and wonderfully, I am about 10 weeks pregnant with Caroline in this picture. :)

 I get such an enormous amount of comfort picturing my Caroline looking as sweet and precious as Alice does visible only Griffin.  

Let Sleeping Babies Lie

Or get them up if it's time for their nap to be over! :)

I just LOVE me some sleeping baby pictures. I just hate that it usually wakes them up in the process. For the most part I don't wake Griffin unless it's absolutely necessary. I figure if he's sleeping for a pretty long time then it's something that his little body really needed! But, for the record, he had already been asleep going on 3 hours and that was just a morning nap. I still wanted him to take an afternoon one too so it was for sure time to get up!

Oh I just am in love with his little lips (and the slightly crazy sleep hair)!

By the time that the second flash went off he rolled right over and was awake and ready to get up!

(And don't you just LOVE how well my breathable bumpers are working?! They sure are "breathable" when he's mashed them all down the sides of the mattress....) I figure when he turns a year I'll put the "pretty" ones back in there.

Now there's my sweet smiley boy! 

Only In A Boy House...

do you have to wash shoes off after a great weekend like this :). Odd maybe, but I'm just thankful that 

a. we had a great weekend

b. it's summertime and we can wash shoes off like this

What's a boy momma to do in winter when they have to wear athletic shoes? HA!

Oh and nakey Griffin says "Good Morning" !

P.S.  please take notice of the wall behind Griffin, no more yellow flowered wall paper! (err, except for at the bottom where I haven't finished yet....) What do you think?

What Do You Think?

So ladies (and err gentlemen?), what do you think? :)

Wonderful right! This whole new blog look is just a breath of fresh air to me. It's like a wonderful spring cleaning for the blog but in August. HA! I had just been having the "too much clutter" feeling both in real life (aka my house) and on my blog. I knew that it was time for a change.

Franchesca over at Small Bird Studios did it for me. I am simply in LOVE. She wonderfully answered each of my 1000 emails (swear to God that I probably sent that many...) and we ended up with the bit of joy that you are looking at now. :)

It's funny, I started with one thing in mind but once we got going I ended up with something completely different! I would have never have guessed in a million years that I would have picked gray and yellow for a blog look but once I got poking around all those wonderful Etsy digital shops, well one thing led to another and here we are!

I seriously couldn't be more proud right now. I almost have that feeling you get when you are holding your brand new baby in you arms and showing him or her off for the first time.

I write this blog partly for myself and the outlet that it gives me but also as a gift for my husband and children. I want them to be able to look back at this endeavor that I've committed years to and think to themselves "This is how much she loved us." If my blog can be down right gorgeous to go along with all the stories I publish well then that's all the better. It's my way of prettily wrapping my gift to them. :)

I love you Bobby, Graham, Grady, and Griffin! This is for you!

Cha... Cha...Changes!

They are soon coming! I'm so excited that I can hardly wait! 

Stay tuned for a bit of fun! 

(No, I'm not having another baby :)

The Eyesore From The Liberace House Of Crap

Do you remember this old "Friends" episode? 

(I seriously have no idea why I constantly have to blog about TV shows. Wait, I do know. I watch a lot of TV :)

So you know how I've been saying that Bobby and I are working on our kitchen? We decided to get a little cheap  economical and re-purpose the knobs and pulls that were already on all the drawers and doors on our cabinets. I had found a canister of silver spray paint in our garage (that had, ahem, been leftover from the gentleman who lived here previously).

Bobby was a total sweetheart and soaked all 900 of our nasty GOLD knobs in CLR for a while before scouring them with steel wool and then spraying them with said spray paint. 

I went outside when he was done to give them a look over. In the bright sunlight they looked a little dazzling to me. I figured that this was simply an effect of the sunlight shining down upon our refurbished knobs. 

These pictures don't do the knobs justice at all but my exact words to Bobby were,

"Is that glitter?"

Pretty much NOT the look I was going for in my kitchen. :) 

It's great incentive though to start saving up for new knobs! 

Why I Love That Show "Hoarders"

Do y'all ever watch that bit of insanity called "Hoarders"?

I couldn't help myself last night and watched an episode. It's seriously the best train wreak on TV right now (aside from that Honey Boo Boo show). Graham and Grady just happened to walk back in the house while I was watching and I decided to educate them on just why their Momma makes them crazy asking them to pick their crap up. :)

It seriously must have made an impression on this one ...

because I walked into my kitchen this afternoon to find this...

My child decided that he needed to use a coaster for his sippy cup. This is hilarious to me for 2 reasons. 

a.) We have no surfaces left in our house that are "coaster-worthy". Anything that used to be nice enough to require a coaster has now been destroyed by the boys.

b.) Check out the awful state of my kitchen table. Does that even look "coaster-worthy" to you?? ;)

Later he told me that he wanted to pick up his toys so "our house wouldn't look like the one on TV last night". 

We will be watching an episode of "Hoarders" every.single.day. from here on out. 

Griffin's First (Unexpected) Haircut

So Griffin just received his very first haircut ever. 

::Sigh::

It was by me. In my kitchen. As I cut gum out. Of a 10 month old's hair.

::Sigh::

I went to grab him from the living room floor for his afternoon nap and I saw what I originally thought to be a puff leftover from his lunch. How funny I thought, to have migrated all the way up there. I gently started to pull it out and that's when I got a wiff of its minty-freshness. 

I immediately looked at Graham because I knew he had gum in his mouth earlier. When questioned he said that he had "left it on the table". I was about 100% sure Griffin would not have been able to reach it. Graham was still in trouble though.

I next asked Grady about the gum in his little brother's hair. Are you super shocked that he couldn't give me a strait answer with a strait face? 

Look at all that beautiful blonde hair that I had to cut! I know that last picture is not spectacular but it's the best I could get. 

I guess his sweetness from this morning (see previous post) had to counter-act with something. 

God help me as they get older!

I Caught Him...

Reading

In

His

Room

Quietly! 

Organization, Irritating Lamps, A New Tooth, A Wedding Dress, A Cute Baby, And Some Kitchen Progress

First off, a big thank you to all 5 of my readers who still stop by to see if I've blogged anything recently :). This summer has been long but good and it's been a really big challenge to keep up with everything going on! 

As my title indicates, about 47 things happened to me this week :). I wish that my pictures would have uploaded in the same order as whats listed in the blog post title. Ah well. Frankly both you and I know that you're lucky to even be reading a blog post at all! HA! 

Smile dammit!

For starters, my bestie, Amy, picked out a wedding dress!!! EEEKKK! I was so excited to be there with her that day! We had a great time looking at them all and were even more excited when she picked the one above! Isn't it just gorgeous!

Next, this cutie patotie cut another tooth (finally). Can you see it right there on top poking through? I can't hardly wait until more come in! I really feel like you get a true sense of what your child will look like once they are less "gummy" :).

This week I also followed through will some Pinterest organization. I would share a link with where I found this but I'm pretty sure that this little trick is so well known now that it's almost common sense.... (plus like I said before, we're all lucky that I'm blogging to begin with and tracking down that random link would just take too much time...). Oh and yes, that is the closet that I just got done cleaning out and it's already starting to look like crap again. I do have to say though, that after I took this picture I was promptly embarrassed at the state of said closet and re-cleaned it out again. It is back to looking good in case anyone was worried... 

This is a little bookcase that I added to Grady's bedroom. It doesn't look like much but considering that I hauled it (broken) out of our garage and hefted it all the way to the back yard and then spray painted it and then humped it all the way upstairs and then filled it with toys found on the floor I think it's pretty freakin' awesome! :)

Here is where I need your help. I recently added two itty bitty little lamps to "warm up" a couple of spaces. I really love how they add a nice glow to each room (kitchen and bathroom if you couldn't tell). My problem is the ding-dang cords! I have tried to strategically place picture frames in front of them, tie up the bit of extra etc. but the bulk of the cords still show. Should I add some greenery to the area too to also try and "camouflage" those ugly cords? What do you do with your cords?

And just because my baby is ridiculously cute, here he is the other morning after he woke up covered waist to toes in POO. Thank goodness he was wearing footed pajamas. They contained most of it. Lets just say that my washing machine burst into tears when it saw what I put into it to wash the other day.... Griffin thought the whole episode was hilarious!

And finally here are some more pictures of my poor kitchen. It is still undergoing it tiny renovation. Primer has been applied to part of the cabinets. There are still tons more to do before I paint them all black. Also most of the kitchen walls have been textured. It's hard to tell from these pictures, but I have sprayed texture over almost all of the nasty yellow wallpaper. A tad bit remains to be done around some tricky window areas. It's been taking much much longer than I had hoped. I can really only work when the kids are out of the house (which is never as I am almost always with them :) or during nap times (which never seem to last long enough).

Hope you enjoyed our weekly catch-up post! 

Happy 10 Months Griffin!

Happy 10 Months to my sweet boy! I can't believe that he's now been here longer than when I was carrying him. This simple fact just blows my mind. His pregnancy just felt soo long and the past 10 months have flown by ridiculously fast.

Here he is enjoying "swimming lessons". :)

Griffin you are :

• weighing in around 25 pounds I would guess. The last time you were weighed at the doctor you were 24 and that was last month.

• still wearing size 3 diapers.

• wearing 18 month clothing but it's really tight on you. I need to pull out the 24 month stuff already. :(

• I almost missed pulling out the 18 month clothes because I was pretty sure you wouldn't be ready for it yet! I was soo wrong. You blasted through them so quickly. They seemed to fit well one day and then they were too small the next!

• saying "Momma", "Dada", "Buba", and something that sounds similar to "Yay!" when you clap your hands!

• clapping your hands when we ask you to (see above statement :). It was just so monumentally fun to see you do it that I felt it needed it's own bullet point!

• can blow raspberries with the best of them :).

• eating almost anything. You love fruit and yogurt the best. Oh and anything that you can feed yourself. :) Mostly just puffs and freeze dried yogurt.

• You still take 2 naps a day on average of about 2 hours each. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

• If we are at home you start to rub your eyes (which means you're sleepy) around 6:30.  You are usually laying down for bed about 7 pm. You have been doing much better with nighttime sleeping and will sleep until 5 or 6 am. 

• still a smiley baby! It's your favorite thing to do! I love this about you. I can tell that you will have a funny and sweet personality when you get older.

• starting to get some teeth! You have had the two on bottom for a long time now (almost 4 months) and are just now starting to get your two top ones. Only one day were you really really fussy and when I went to check your gums, sure enough, one on top had busted it way through!  I can't wait to see what you will look like when more come in!

• getting some new friends! Your very first friend came over to the house the other day for a play date and you had a great time!

• Your new friend Brody is bout a month and a half younger than you but was already crawling circles around you :).

• Speaking of crawling, you aren't yet :/. You seriously could care less. You do a lot of other things "on track" for your age so I'm not too worried yet. I'll give you another month before I maybe call the doctor to ask...

• just about ready for your first haircut. I give this a month too before I make the call for your first appointment. It's hanging all crazy by your ears and driving me nuts. 

• in love with your bath! When you see me turn the water on in your tub you get soo excited!! You will kick and spash in there until you wear yourself completely out. 

I think that that is about it for Mr. Griffin. We are still in such an awe-struck honeymoon time with him. I still can't believe that he's here safe and sound and mine to keep forever. 

Love you sweet boy!!