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!