Happy Birthday! Cap at 10 months

Happy Birthday! Cap at 6 Months

I guess it is becoming a habit, hopefully one that I am going to beat this new year, but Baby Cap's six month birthday was over a week ago but I missed it in the midst of my disconnect from the interwebs. So here we go:

 Dear Baby Cap, 

Happy Six month birthday, baby boy. You have grown so much in six month, it is crazy to me to think that you were born at 8 pounds and you are 17 already. You and I spent an hour the other day switching out your clothes again, packing up the 3-6 month sizes and busting out the 9 month sized clothing. We kept some of the old clothing in hopes that we will have at least one more sibling for you in the future. You are so curious about everything, as long as you can see me from where you are. You aren't crawling yet, or walking but you try. I am still leaning towards you learning how to walk and skipping crawling all together but we will see. The dogs and cat encourage you to try to crawl because you want to touch them all the time. Jack, our cat, is your greatest motivation. He does not really want you to touch him so he will lay right out of your reach while you giggle and wiggle to try and get him. 

The other night you woke up and stayed awake for an hour in the middle of the night and giggled ridiculously every time I whispered "kitty kitty kitty." No other words and not just talking. It was adorable. Things like that make me so insanely happy to have you in our lives. Brother and Sister love making you laugh and sometimes your silly little laugh throws us all into a fit of giggles.

We are really trying to get you on a loose schedule to give me time to keep up the house and to give Daddy and I some time together but I am not trying very hard and you aren't helping either! We almost have nap times down, but bedtime is a complete toss up whether is goes well or not. You are eating homemade blended foods at least three times a day and still nursing twice that many times. You are spending more time amusing yourself, at least in waves, so that makes it easier for me to do chores. Outside of that, you are pretty happy in your new high chair while I cook or hanging in our new sling while I fold laundry . 

Your eyes have stayed blue still I am pretty positive they will stay that way. Your hair has not really grown in any more, you still have cradle cap that I oil regularly and the tiniest birthmark on the back of your head that I love. You are so tall, at least to me. We already may have to take out the insert in the playpen because you are starting to pull yourself up and Daddy is worried that you will lean too far over the side. If we do take it out, I am so short that it will be so weird to try and lay you down to sleep but we will manage. 

You are growing so big and so fast that I am terrified that I might be missing it so I do spend so much time just staring at you or watching infomercials with you on my hip. Don't tell Daddy! We love you tons and are looking forward to your first steps, your first words and to see the new person that you will become!

Handmade Holidays: Five Months old!

While I know this may not be part of a "Handmade Holiday," I did make him and it is the holidays, so here ya go my Little Captain America: 

Dear Baby Boy,

Happy Birthday Steven! I know you actually turned 5 months last Wednesday but Momma has been super busy getting ready for the holidays. I am so happy that you came into our lives, however unexpected you were. You make me smile every morning and exhausted every night but I wouldn't change it for the world. You let us sleep for at least three hours every night before you wake up hungry, then you spend the rest of the night cuddled into my arms, keeping me warm when Daddy steals all the blankets. You used to wake up crying because you were unsure of life, now you wake up smiling and the first hour you are awake, nothing could make you angry. 

Almost every morning we wake up, you spend a little time in bed with Daddy while I take out the dogs and make coffee. Then Daddy gets ready for work while we make his lunch and we wave to him from the front window when he leaves. Then we have breakfast. You have oatmeal, strawberries, bananas, pears and/or applesauce while I have my coffee and yogurt. Then we fill the day with various chores, playing with the dogs, playing piano, practicing crawling, sewing and watching Doctor Who. You were taking a three hour nap everyday for a week but you seem to have given up on naps all together at this point. You will take two or three twenty minute sleeps, just long enough for me to use the bathroom or switch laundry, barely. 

I am astounded every day how big you have grown. Seventeen pounds already! Over twice your birth weight! You are eating tons of baby food, handmade by your loving momma, with no known allergies, high five! You like to help me sew but want to touch the needle, so you don't help too often. You might be starting to teeth since you put everything in you mouth now but I have thought that since you were 3 months old. You love eating paper and your socks. You like it when the dogs lick your feet and face and hands and legs and arms and hair. You laugh when I nibble on your baby fat neck and chubby little thighs. You prefer when Daddy changes your diaper because he made up the Diaper Song that I can never remember and when I try, it sounds lame with no rhythm at all. 

Thank you Steven, for helping me find a life that makes me the happiest, for being happy even though I have no idea what I am doing and for helping Daddy and I continue building our family together. We love you a googolplex!!!

- Momma

using our newly found arm muscles, but mostly getting angry at being on our belly!

Wearing a tux to Brother's winter concert!

the happiest baby and the best thing to wake up to every morning (sorry Hubby but it's true)

The Thankful Project: Day 3

Thank you again to Chasing Happy for hosting the Thankful Project. 

Today's topic is to discuss a place that you are thankful for. I was kind of unsure exactly what that even meant to me, so I took a bit longer to even come up with a list of places that I could be thankful for. 

As quiet and blah as it looks now, in the beginnings of winter, this I will miss.

When it comes down to it, as tumultuous as my childhood may have been, I think that the place that I am most thankful for is the backyard of my parents' house. This was, hands down, the place that spend the most time growing up. My father's somewhat extreme style of parenting during the summer, after my parents were divorced, was to send us outside at 830am, we were able to come inside to use the bathroom, to eat at noon, and then not until 6pm. We were left to, mostly, our own devices to amusement and to not injure ourselves. I can't imagine sending our kids outside now, unsupervised, for hours on end but my brother and I had no complaints at the time about it. 

Marley playing on a fallen tree during Hurricane Sandy, thankfully none fell
on the house, but we lost three trees.

Up until I was in middle school, my brother and I would pretend that we were Native Americans. We built teepees out of old sheets and giant branches that we pulled out of the surrounding woods, branches that were six to eight feet tall, all tied together with old clothesline and childish determination. We would collect acorns and chestnuts and poisonous red berries, pretending to eat them all. We would make bows and arrows out of yarn and shoe laces. We glued empty water bottles to the bottom of a piece of wood to make a raft to navigate the stream in our woods, treacherous as that stream was, we could have managed the two foot wide by six inches deep stream without the raft. Also, side note, Elmer's school glue is not water resistant, do not use it for rafts in the future. 

Then in sixth grade, I met one of my best friends, Ryn and we had history class together where we learned about Ancient Egypt and I read The Egypt Game.( I highly recommend that book, like insanely so, that and The Phantom Tollbooth) Then our native village turned into an ancient Egyptian palace. My little brother was a pharaoh, we made robes out of sheets, headdresses out of cardboard, memorized hieroglyphics, mummified a doll and buried her in my backyard under a dogwood tree, complete with turkey dinner and silver plated dishes. 
We fullfilled our Harry Potter fantasies by building a Hogwarts out of plastic milk crates and handmade wands and spellbooks. Under the pines trees we would relive all our favorite moments from the books and wonder why we never got a letter delivered by owl messenger. 
This was the yard that we had a pool in for a long time, that we were allowed to spend entire days in, until we were wrinkly and uncomfortable. A yard surrounded by woods that fed our imaginations, we created cities and towns, jurisdictions were separated for my brother and I, territorial boundaries that we were not allowed to cross, marked by swept up leaves and pricker bushes. 

As a mostly adult, I have our kids now play in the yard. We continue to have bonfires, whether they are legal fires or not, I am not sure still. James, the kids and I built a giant Wicker Man one year and lit him on fire. I picked flowers to weave in and out of the branches and we stared at the giant wooden man until he was ashes. My brother and I would try to keep a single fire going to weeks at a time, cooking hot dogs and waffles over the flame for our amusement. We had random gardens that never amounted for much food outside of the dozen or so tomatoes we would eat as soon as they ripened. We have always ate summer dinners outside, have hung hammocks between the trees to laze about. This is the first place that I ever "laid out" in the sun to actually try and tan. It was this yard that my brother was stung over two dozen times because bees hate him and he was a clumsy six year old. This was the yard that we had my two ever birthday parties in, one in first grade and one in sixth grade, were a girl stepped on a nail and it went through her foot in the woods. This is where we had my graduation party, where my grandmother parked her RV when my youngest brother, Colin, was born so she could spend time while my parents were in the hospital. This is where I kept my first ever pet rooster named Dani California and where he would chase Colin down because they were the same height. 

 This is the red maple that my brother and I would climb right before a thunderstorm to ride the storm winds in the branches before it started raining. And under these same branches, all lit up with holiday lights, is where I said yes to my wonderful and amazing Hubby when he asked me to marry him. 
So this yard, above all other places so far in my life, I am the most thankful for. 

I'm Back!!! (hopefully, barring Life)

     Hopefully, I can get back to somewhat regular posting, it's fun and relaxing and gives me something to feel responsible for on a daily basis that doesn't need a diaper change. I have been lax in posting because we have had a very busy past month or so, we:

     1. Wrapped up an in-law visit and the subsequent       recuperation that I needed. We visited the Statue of Liberty, FAO Schwartz, Central Park, Empire State Building, Times Square

2. We celebrated Griffin's 10th birthday with a day in NYC and a day at home playing video games!

3. Went to a cousin's wedding with baby and no Hubby but I did get a great LBD that was nursing friendly and hid my baby belly enough for me to feel comfortable. 

4. Steven learned how to laugh, sit up, have a relatively set bed time. He also enjoys baths, reveling in the idea that his feet come into the bath with him and that he can splash. He also had his first bottle!!!

5. We went apple picking with a great friend and her two girls, the youngest is only two weeks older then Steven so we were already planning the wedding!

6. Fall television started. While this is no excuse to avoid other responsibilities, it gives me something to watch while I am rocking the baby to sleep. I am watching, with the loyalty that I can spare: Walking Dead, Witches of East End, Bones, Castle, Sleepy Hollow, Dancing with the Stars, SHEILD, Supernatural, American Horror Story and Dracula. Most of these are watched during nursing or putting to sleep the baby...and it is way more tv then I have ever watched in my entire life. 
7. My best friend and I are planning a joint family Christmas dinner that we have been planning and preparing for and getting six separate households to agree to a time and place. 
8. To tie into Steven's accomplishments, I started pumping! It took me a solid day before I got the band of how the manual pump even worked and then I realized that I have never bottle-fed a child before and that I would, after three months with a baby, now have to learn a basic skill. We did it though, he ate and I almost felt insulted that he took the bottle so easily. 
9. Hubby and I have started looking at houses in a little bit more of a serious manner, although still deciding between Florida and Georgia, my money would still be to go to Texas!

10. Hubby and I finally are officially engaged!!!!!! After five years of the ups and downs of a relationship, he put a ring on it and I said most definitely yes! No date yet, but house first!

So a very busy month, but November is the start of my new year so posting will be on my new year's resolution list! 
Happy New Year and bring on the next adventures!

Monday Morning: Autumn Day!!!

      This past Thursday marked Steven's 8 week birthday. I am unsure exactly when you stop counting weeks and start counting the day as his birth anniversary, either way on Wednesday he will be two months by the calendar. So, Happy Two Months, Steven! I truly do not remember what life was like before you, and I mean that in the best possible way. My days are completely filled with spending time with you, while you nap I creepily stare at you, amazed by how wonderful you are. I was not sure that I was made for this job of being your Momma, but I can not imagine doing anything else with my life. I love looking at you and feeling how much I love and how much I love your Dadda. I love that you have a little attitude, that you know what you want and if we let you cry a little, you give us angry faces when we do pick you up, just to let us know that you are upset with us. I love how you are now starting to talk, we spend a couple hours every day just chit-chatting with each other. I am bent on making your first word "moon," since your Zodiac sign is Cancer so your ruling planet is the Moon. I love how much you love baths and getting your diaper changed. I love how much you smile, even when I am not sure if it is our of happiness or a gassy belly. I love how much your older siblings love you and want to take care of you. I love how you spend every night asleep in my arms, even if it has put our love life on hold a bit (we will make up for it when we retire *wink wink*). But I love how you are becoming your own little person with your own personality and how much our family has grown since Dadda and I first met five years ago. Thank you, Steven, for bringing me the joy of motherhood and absolute love each and every day.

Thrifting: Clothes and Books

     I did get to do a little thrift shopping this week, it tends to be a little more difficult since I only like to go when the Salvation has their half price day and the secondhand bookstore is open. Timing that with when Hubby has the day off can be a bit of a task, especially with the newborn in tow. It is so very odd when in one week, Steven was inside of me and I could drop anything to go out and the next day, we needs tons of accouterments to go anywhere. Anyways, my 16 year old twin cousins were spending the week and I convinced them to go shopping with me. Having another person in the back next to the baby relaxes some of my driving alone stress, I have driven alone with baby once since he was born and I told Hubby that I will not do it again unless it is an emergency or baby can talk. I just can not handle not knowing what is going on back there. 

     We piled up into the car after driving Hubbs to work and getting him there on time and then made the trek into the Salvation Army. Since it was Family day, the place was a little busy. I was hoping that Baby would sleep for most of that trip but instead he had me figure out how to walk and nurse only ten minutes into the trip and then need to be carried for the last ten minutes of the trip. I could literally spend hours in there if I have a sympathetic companion and a sleepy baby. 

I have talked before about how James and I are both on the geeky side and Doctor Who has become a fast favorite in our house, even with the two older kids. My younger brother also loves it and one of the visiting cousins as well, so we have spent a fair six hours straight watching the Doctor. We are still in limbo about attending NY Comic Con this year since I have a wedding (my first as an adult!) so we will have to see if we can organize that crazy weekend. But if we do go, we have talked about having matching costumes (because we are so those kinds of people) and what to do with baby and the older children if they want to dress up. On the off chance that I ever need the outfit, I figured that I would start looking for pieces for a female version of the Eleventh Doctor outfit. Matt Smith has a few different variations on the same outfit based around a tweed jacket, workboots and bowtie. With that in mind and after stalking Pinterest for other people's interpretation of a female Doctor, I have started picking up pieces. Now if only I can get Hubby to dress as a male version of Amy Pond (we honestly debated naming the baby Amelia after her, instead of the Impossible Girl we have Captain America). 

So I found a great light and soft tweed, woman's cut jacket in the right color, maybe a little too light, but I am a girl so it still needs to be feminine and adorable. I initially was going to go with a white oxford shirt, but I like the pink and the contrast that a red bowtie will have with it. The brown heeled oxfords are a maybe with the outfit, I am still on the lookout for boots, maybe an old pair of Doc Martens. But they are too cute and seem to be a relative staple for a trendy fall closet, so for $3 I was willing to risk it.

     Not that I have a little girl in these sizes but... The black and white houndstooth jacket may be too small for Eve, but it will not go bad and since I am packing up baby girl clothes now, if it doesn't fit, I can pack it up for that eventuality. The leopard print one was too cute. I have a friend with a baby girl only two weeks older than Steven and if she doesn't want it then it will go in the box as well. They were just too good of deals to pass on, especially knowing that no one else is thinking about winter jackets quite yet.

     Since I had the extra set of hands to carry the baby, we headed over to the bookstore. Since Baby decided that he needed to be fed while we were there, he cut short how many books I could legitimately look through but I still was able to grab a couple. I was able to grab two vintage hardcover copies of Shakespeare plays: As you like it and Troilus and Cressida, to help flesh out my insane Shakespeare hoarding fetish. I have also been obsessed with recollecting all of my favorite books from childhood. I picked up a copy of Amelia Bedelia, mostly to show her to Hubby who had never heard of her. Those books were the main reason that I did not want to use Amelia as a potential baby name, although it is still an option for future offspring. This trip I grabbed A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and the Gypsy Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Snyder also wrote the Egypt Game which dictated how I spent at least two summers of my life, dressing in old sheets, writing secret notes in hieroglyphs and mummifying dolls. I haven't read the Gypsy Game, but I assume that it is a similar story and that I will enjoy it equally. I also got The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting Projects, but after looking through it, it seems a little outdated and I have used easier tutorials from Ravelry and such. That one might go back to the store. I also got Good Things from Tag Sales and Flea Markets by Martha Stewart, which I am psyched about, Hubby hates her but I am fascinated by a billion dollar empire built around setting tables properly and spray painting old furniture. I love it. Lastly, I picked up 365 Things to Do and Make, it is a little young for the older kids and obviously too old for my youngest but he will grow into it. All in all, the book haul cost me $5. So I was an extensively happy camper!


     In even happier news, today was Steven's one month birthday (weeks wise, not by date) so last night we made cupcakes and ate them at midnight and wished him a happy birthday for all he cared about it. So far he has gained almost three pounds, weighing 11 pounds. He has his own schedule completely and loves sleeping with us in bed at night. He rarely spends time more then ten feet away from me. He is a messy eater but makes the best faces when he is hungry, unless its crying. Every night he gives us two hours of hellish crying and then sleeps for nine hours, waking up twice to eat and once for a diaper change. Everyday when we are cuddling, I am amazed by this little person and all the things that I wanted to get accomplished are nothing near as important as staring at him while he sleeps and making sure that I am there when his eyes open. I was reading to him tonight and as he fell asleep, I was in tears about all the nights that I have to look forward to, all the nights I will be able to hold him, all the books that we will read together. And in contrast, how few nights out of his life I have to hold him, that soon he will be too old for that, and then he will be too old to read to, too old to hug me, then he will be out of the house and on his own and one day he will have the same exact thoughts about his child and I hope he calls me to let me know that I did a good job. It is by far the most important thing that has ever happened in my life and I hope that I can be the mother that he needs as he grows. I sent a picture of him to Hubbs while he was at work just to thank him for giving me a beautiful baby. Happy One Month Birthday Steven!