Five Months Old

 The last month literally flew by.  I feel like I just posted about how Isla was four months old.  (Do I say this every month?  I mean it this time.)  My baby is almost half a year old, which means I have work to do on a birthday party.  My priorities are in line I promise.

• You rolled over, last night.  No one saw you, so it is kind of like the tree in the forest thing, but when daddy went to get you out of your crib this morning you were on your belly. (confession: I wrote this last week but didn't take the photos until yesterday. You actually rolled from your back to stomach yesterday and then back over from your stomach to back.)
• You desperately want to move.  You have been pushing with your legs while lying on your back to try to get where you want to go.  Gulp, this could get interesting.
• You still want to sit up all the time.  Your are NOT happy on your stomach.  You want to be held sitting up a lot too, still my fault.
• You are still a giggling, smiling, cooing sweet bundle of joy.  I love snuggling you even when you grab my hair and yank as hard as your little baby fist can yank.
• You have a bunch of adorable long sleeved and pants 3-6 month clothes that you probably won't ever get to wear.  It is the mid 80's in March, not normal.
• You still aren't quite into your 3-6 month clothes but I am trying to put them on you anyway because they are so darn cute and I want you to be able to wear them.  I may not get what I want.
• Your brother still loves you, even if he tells me to put you down sometimes.  He actually tried to sneak into your crib and sleep with you.  I think sharing a bed will have to wait until you are a bit older.
• You are a captive audience right now when we read books.  I think it is because you want to eat them.
• You are doing well eating your cereal and you have even eaten some baby food fruits.  I need to feed you some veggies so you have a ghost of a chance to eat them, unlike your brother.  I swear greens are good!

One month, two months, three months, four months

five months

I love you sweet baby girl! I am so thankful for each and every day I have with you even if they seem to be flying by.

Swimming on Spring Break

This week was spring break for the schools here in Murfreesboro.  Since it was spring break our sitter was on vacation so we got to spend some extra days off with the kids!  Tracy, my sister-in-law, kept them for a couple of days and Steve and I split kid duty the other days.  I actually really enjoyed having an extra day off with them.  It felt kind of like I had a spring break too.  (Yep, grown up spring break is one day.)  On my extra day we went to the indoor pool at Patterson Park, the gym where I work out.

This was little Isla's first time in a swimsuit and in the water.  I think she is my water baby, she loved sitting by the pool.  Since Cian has become one the Avengers, he is a lot more brave.  Last summer he wasn't too keep on getting in the water or going down any slides.  He went right in and wanted to go down the little slide.  He did it a few times, until I got my camera out and then he didn't want to do it again.  He really wanted to go down the big slide but he wasn't tall enough.  I told him after swim lessons he could tackle the
Goliath.

We met my friend Jennifer and her kids. Her son Dillon is afraid of me, no joke.  I can understand why, the crazy moppy curly hair can be a little Medusaesque.  He gets really shy and doesn't want to let go of his mom around me.  I think I might need to bribe him with Little Debbies.  Cian loved swimming with her daughter Bayleigh (who is 10) and kept looking for her when she was going down the big ole slide.

The slide Cian went down 

That is Isla's finger in the way

Look at that cutie patootie in her swim suit

This is the "really, another photo" face

b

 Àfter the pool we put a blanket down in the front yard and and had some lounge time. Well, Cian ran around and played and Isla and I had lounge time.

I see a lot more swim days in our future and I can.not.wait for May when the outdoor pool opens!  Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

Reading

Be still my heart, Cian is reading to Isla.

And holding hands!  Love.

Little Dream House: Cian's Room

Bedding: Pottery Barn (thanks Megan!), Chinese lanterns: World Market, Rug and window treatments: thifted

 Moving on in our little dream house, we will visit Cian's room.  This room is rumored to have many ghosts, bad guys and even a bad elephant, though I am told the elephant was just "pretender" to be a bad elephant.  Cian's room transitioned well from baby boy room to big boy toddler room.

Frames: Hobby Lobby, wall clings: Uppercase Living, toy bin: Target

 I would love to say that I picked the jungle theme just for my little monkey but I picked it because we got a used jungle bedding set at a really good price. Therefore, jungle fever hits the George home.  We painted Cian's room with stripes, the first time we had attempted stripes and I loved the way it turned out!  I spent a lot of time looking for just the right things to go on his walls.  It took me three years to put photos into the frames.  No joke.

When we got him a big boy bed we needed some big boy bedding and luckily my friend Megan had just redone her boy's room.  We got some pretty sweet bedding from her and it matched Cian's room perfectly!!

 The bed, ah the bed.  I looked forever to find the perfect bed for Cian.  I finally found

 a bed one afternoon when I was out shopping with Cian.  We bought it and went to load it into the car.  Alas, it would not fit with the seat up and a carseat in the back.  What did I do you ask?  Well I put Cian's seat in the front and drove home with the bed in the back, at two miles an hour.  You think I'm kidding...

The other thing about the bed is that Cian doesn't like it.  He will tell you, "I don't like my bed," in this nasaly Cian voice.  Then he will come up with all kinds of reasons.  The elephant below is the bad one.  Or at least he pretends to be bad.

One does not simply walk into Mordor and one can not have too many clone trooper masks.

This is a small  part of Cian's collection of "little toys" or Legos.  Inside that Star Wars lunchbox are a ton of little Lego people.  That is Cian's "tool box" and he had a point where those things were all he would talk about and play with.

Why is this room a little dream room?  It has been a tent and a fort.  It is where I tuck my little guy in at night and we say prayers and sing "homeback" (Golden Slumbers).  It is where we have ready many books and practiced counting and ABCs. It is the home to many toys and many hours of playing with toys.  I wonder if these guys come alive when we aren't there?  It is the room where fears are calmed and hugs and kisses are in abundance.  It is the room where I lay my first baby down in his crib and nursed him in the middle of the night.  It is the first room we decorated for the baby that would make me a mother and capture my heart with his first little breath.

Get It Together

Some nights I feel like I have it together.  Most nights, I feel like I am scrambling to get all the things I need to finished before bedtime.  Last night I gave myself the " there is no way you actually did all that stuff" mom award.  These nights do not happen often in this house so when they do I take note.

We got home a little early from the gym because Isla was over it.  She did not want to sit through my aerobics class anymore.  When we got home I fed her and then left her in the highchair while I started dinner. Well she was screaming and Cian was whining and screaming and I thought the night could not get any worse. Steve was also working late so there wasn't anyone to deflect the screams to.  I desperately needed to go to the grocery store but we had a few things in the kitchen. I looked on Kraft.com and found a recipe that I had all the ingredients for!  If you know me, this is amazing. I am not a good cook and I have to make a list at the grocery store with meals for the next two weeks or I am completely lost.

I started cooking but I still had two screaming kids that were not letting me get too far.  I strapped Isla to my chest with the moby wrap and that calmed her down.  One down.  Now I had to figure out a way to keep that sweet little devil angel occupied while I got dinner ready.  Let me tell you, I could not cook fast enough. Cian screamed for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich the entire time I fed Isla and while I was prepping for cooking.  I told him we were having chicken as the chicken was defrosting and every time the microwave would go off he would scream that it was ready and go into hysterics again.  We have an alphabet toy on the fridge that sings and says the sounds of each letter, so I started asking Cian to find letters for me and then put them in the toy to make sure it was the right one.  He LOVED this game.  He played it the entire time I cooked.  Educational and it kept him occupied. Score!

I finished our dinner, chicken and brown rice with stewed tomatoes topped with fresh tomatoes and cilantro, and made a plate for Cian.  He is probably one of the pickiest kids known to man so I really didn't expect him to eat any of it. Well he loooved the rice with the stewed tomatoes.  Score again!  He did spit out the chicken and pretend he was gagging but you can't win them all.

I got him fed and in the bathtub by the time Steve got home.  Never mind that it was almost 9:00 and I still hadn't finished my dinner, the war was won.  Isla stayed glued to me the entire night, yeah she is one spoiled baby.

Yesterday's mom is the mom I strive to be every night.  The mom that can whip up dinner while playing/teaching a three year old and snuggling an infant.  I am not always that mom, nor do I think it is possible to always be that mom, but at least I know she is there, even if she only comes out once in a blue moon.

Sweet Babes

Little Dream House: The Bathroom

Our house is a two bedroom one bath house.  This works right now because there are just two of us getting ready and truthfully one of us doesn't shower that often.  I won't tell you which one.

 When we moved in the bathroom was one of the rooms I wanted to redo the most.  It took about three years to do it.  It had this horribly outdated purple wallpaper with a floral border.  It was pretty amazingly 80's.  It had to go.  We went with a gray color and this shower curtain (from Target of course) with a pop of green.  The curtain does have a bloodstain from when Cian busted his head open.

 The pedestal sink was already there and I really like it.  We added the toilet when the other one broke.  The little blue toilet was added also.  As you can see we have plenty of reading material next to the potty...

There is a downfall to our bathroom, we have a dragon problem.  This Hungarian Horntail just keeps showing up!

What makes it my dream bathroom: The bathroom had a lot of firsts. Cian took his first bath and was potty trained in here.  I spent many hours sitting next to that little blue potty waiting on something to happen.  We had a pee-pee chart and then a poo-poo chart that Cian put stickers on when he did his business.  As I  mentioned, there is blood on the shower curtain from when he busted his little head.  My kids saw themselves for the first time in this mirror and Cian still loves to look at his little self while brushing his teeth.  This bathroom is not a private place because there is not a moment when someone is not busting in the door, (by someone I mean that Hungarian Horntail up there) but I wouldn't change it for the world.

Creative Discovery Museum

A few weeks ago we went to Chattanooga and went to the Creative Discovery Museum.  This is like the Discovery Center in Murfreesboro but on steroids.  I think they are actually in the same family.

We got there and there was this huge ship playground built into the wall.  The water play was all around it and Cian and Grumpa had a great time pulling the levers (can't help it, I'm a born lever puller) and making the water spray.  Yes, Yellow Submarine reference was needed.

On this ship, they had a spot where you could be the captain.  Cian didn't man his post very long and we crashed into an iceberg.

There were so many stations but we went to the "art" area next.  They had this chalk that was safe for them to "piant" their faces with.  Cian applied some Indian war paint and was ready for battle with any bratty two year old that might come our way.

Cian and Grumpa learned how to play the harp.  It was like angels singing from heaven...Uhh, fallen angels?

In this section there was a huge sand pit that kids could sit in and dig for fossils.  Cian seemed really excited about getting in it so we took his shoes off and he ran over.  The excitement faded when his feet hit that gritty sand.  He seemed unsure that he could walk on it and he just sat on the side putting his fee on it.  He kept standing up like he was going to try again but decided against it.  I wonder what the beach will be like this summer?

We went upstairs and the had more pulleys and levers on the roof.  We put Cian in this swing and I went over to pull him up.  This thing was harder than it looked, I felt like I was pulling an 80lb kid up!  My parents were laughing at me until they gave it a try.  It was rigged so you couldn't just let it go and send them flying down.

Isla was enjoying the entire thing from my Moby wrap.  When she wasn't napping this is how she looked.

They had an exhibit called "Children of Hangzhou: Connecting with China" and there was this theater with some costumes.  Naturally Cian had to put one of the hats on and Grumpa had to do it with him.  The two put on quite the show, I think we have some thespians on our hands.  Cian was walking around singing "Welcome to the dance show" over and over.  That was the only line in the song and consequently the play.

When we saw these bee things I knew Cian had to wear one, whether he wanted to or not.  He did want to wear the "buzzle beezle" costume. There was a worker, drone and queen bee.  He chose to be the queen bee.  This was him flying like a bee.

We had a really fun time!  I am kind of glad our museum isn't this big because I don't think I could hang with the Creative Discovery Museum on a regular basis. I was ready for a nap!  Well, come to think of it most Monday's after the Discovery Center I am ready for a nap too...

Little Dream House: The Living Room

Welcome back to my little dream house.  Today is the living room.  The walls were already painted green when we moved in and so was the ceiling!  In this case pea green is a good thing.

The TV stand that Steve so desperately wants to replace is actually an old color tv.  It was my dad's growing up and was one of the first color tvs in Chattanooga.  (They won it, we aren't that privileged.)  It is now housing many cords, some remotes to game consoles and a video camera.  The coffee table belonged to Steve's family friend Jeff who passed away when we were in college.  I used to tell him how much I liked it when we went to his apartment.  The end table was my grandparents as well.

 

Our couches were Bill and Karen's.  They normally have sheets draped over the slip covers to keep the pounds of dog hair off the couch. I do realize the slipcovers are wrinkly.  Ironing them didn't make the to do list.  The table in the corner belonged to Steve's great aunt.

 

This canvas is my favorite thing about the room.  Cian was about 18 months old when we had these photos made and I absolutely love having this on our walls.  I hope one day there will be room for it in Cian's house.  (And I hope one day we have another one, be ready Chris and Adrienne Scott.)

Here is Steve's favorite part of the entire room, the playstation and the x-box.  That's our room, it is a mish-mash of furniture that came from both our families and it is nice to have a bit of those not with us in our living room all the time!

Well, thanks for stopping by and stay classy San Diego.

Wardrobe Wednesday

So this taking pictures of your clothes thing is hard.  Mainly because I always forget on the days I have on cute clothes or Steve is not here to take a photo of me before I have changed into my pajamas.  Yes, I do that right after I get home from work.  Those days I try to take my photo but this is the result:

I look like a high school kid taking a photo with my webcam.  All that is missing is a peace sign and some duck lips.  You can also see my child and a messy room in the background if you look close enough.

Well, I finally remembered to have Steve take a photo!  Here is our family wardrobe this week:

Dress: Target, Leggings: Baby Gap, shoe socks

He picked out his own outfit.  Shirt: Old Navy, Button  Up Shirt:thrift, Pants: thrift

Shirt: Express, Shrug: JC Penney, Pants: I have had them since college, shoes: Target

This is another one of those outfits that I have had forever and have just been putting together hoping it looks hip.  I might totally look like a mom in mom jeans.  I have been adding belts to everything lately.  I am so two years ago.  The belt I have on was actually to a pair of pants I used to be able to wear at my hips.  It has since become a high waist belt.