We Have A Walker & Other Adventures in Motherhood

...and a few funny moments in motherhood lately:

1. McCord has figured out how to start the CD player that is attached to his crib (looks kind of like this one).  He takes the liberty to start his CD player when he's ready to get up in the morning or from a nap.  He doesn't do this all the time, but the majority of the mornings this past week, Bo and I've woken up to "Who built the ark? Noah! Noah! Who built the ark? Brother Noah built the ark!"  We look at the video monitor, and there's Monkey, hanging onto the railing of his crib, bouncing along to the lyrics. 

2. The other day, McCord woke up from a nap after being asleep for only 1 hour.  Instead of listening to his CD, he started fussing.  I looked at the monitor, and he was in his usual standing position, ready to be picked up.  I decided to let him cry it out for a while so he'd go back to sleep as is our usual practice when he wakes up early.  This proved unsecessful.  When I went in to have a serious conversation with a one-year-old about how much Mama needs you to take a nap, so she can shower, do the laundry, vaccume the upstairs  the benefits of sleep, I noticed that he'd taken off his pajama pants and thrown them overboard.  He also had taken off his diaper and it was laying abandoned in his crib.  Even though McCord isn't saying any words now, I'm pretty sure his look meant, he had a dirty diaper during his nap, and where was I when he needed me?!!!  Let's hope we don't make a habit out of this. 

A Playdate and Hardwood Floors

Earlier this week, we were so thrilled to have some of McCord's friends over to play.  We tried our best to grab a shot of all four of them together: McCord, Taylor, Delaney, and Riley.  They are all about the same age and just had the best time bumping around together.  Thank you all so much for coming over to play in our new house.  We look forward to many more playdates! 

Here's a picture we took of the playroom before we put in the hardwood floors.  The carpet was really damaged by the previous resident and it had a terrible pet odor that we just couldn't get rid of, so we are so relieved to have clean hardwoods now. 

BEFORE

Walls are painted Benjamin Moore's Gray Horse.  I found the credenza table on the left at a thrift store for $30 and painted it navy to match the fabric on the ottoman I slipcovered.  This room was added onto our 1940s house in the 90s (and it shows!).  We plan to rip out the crown molding and replace the large window to make it look a little more consistent with the age of the house.   More info on the gigantic chicken beanbag here.

Not quite an AFTER shot, but an In Progress picture



I'm looking forward to making some pillows out of this fabric to add some whimsy to the room.

Do you remember this lamp of my grandmother's?  I blogged about the before and after here.  There's a great tutorial on how to recover lampshades at Isabella and Max Rooms.  Janelle does a great job of writing tutorials, and this one doesn't disappoint.  One of my blog readers told me about the oil rubbed bronze spray paint made by Rustolium, so I re-sprayed the base and I'm liking the lamp much better now.  (Just FYI, if you haven't used this spray paint before, you'll love it - the coverage goes on great, and I've since used it to spray down an old brassy overhead light fixture I picked up at the Habitat Restore and I want to use it on our outdated kitchen knobs - will blog about those topics soon.)

Birthday Pics and A Few Others

I just got my camera back and wanted to include a few of these birthday pictures for my memory. 



My mother-in-law put together this thoughtful grouping of McCord photos.



I made McCord's birthday cake, and come to think of it, that might be why he wasn't too interested in eating it.  Perhaps something went wrong?!  There are two layers inside: strawberry (red) and vanilla (blue).  The candles came from Target.



McCord's cousins Emily and Kyle helped me decorate the cupcakes in our red, white, and blue theme.



And here's the birthday boy with his daddy pre-celebration, wondering what all the fuss is about!

And we've been playing with finger paint. 

My parents kept my sister's kids while she and her husband were out of town for a couple of days.  So McCord and I went to see Aiya and Doe Doe and his cousins Bayer and Calla.  The idea was for me to help my parents out, but instead, I may have caused more trouble.  We took all the kids outside, stripped them down, rolled out some brown packing paper on the sidewalk, and let them play with finger paint.  Bayer and Calla were over-the-top excited; McCord was not too sure how he felt about it, but that didn't keep him from getting messy. 

Bo and I are so thankful that my in-laws came to visit us this weekend.  Bo's dad brought the pressure washer and his mom brought lots and lots of food to stock our fridge.  She also washed the windows after the men did the pressure washing.  We are so thankful to have parents who have been so willing to help us make our new house feel like home. 

Today marks 1 month that we've been in our new house and every day that goes by, we love it more and more and look forward to making many family memories here. 

 

A Few Random Things

ONE --We celebrated McCord's birthday this past weekend with family at my in-laws house.  What a great day to be one year old!  It was a red, white and blue birthday party and everyone dressed accordingly.  McCord loved watching his cousins jump into the pool from the diving board, and he enjoyed splashing around the shallow end.  I left my camera at the party, but here are a few shots my mother-in-law sent us. 

A great snapshot of McCord and my Dad ("Doe Doe") goofing off by the pool.

A great photo of my sister and my mom (otherwise known as "Aiya")

McCord wasn't too sure what to do with the birthday cake, so he tried a little bit of icing, and then he decided I should try it too.  He stuck his finger in it and then put it in my mouth!



But he LOVED the homemade strawberry icecream that Gee Gee made!



This is a needlepoint sampler that my mom made for McCord with his name and birthday on it.  It is truly a labor of love.  I remember her working on it right after McCord was born.  She'd bring it with her whenever she came to visit, and we were able to view the progress.  Now here it is complete and ready to make a special wall hanging for McCord's new room.

Thank you Papa and Gee Gee for letting us celebrate at your house!

 The older I get, the more I realize how special it is to be able to have our family together.  In this case, it was special 2 times over, because we had both sides of our families together to celebrate Mc's 1st birthday - 4 grandparents, aunts and uncles, and 4 cousins!  It was such a gift for us to spend that time with them. 

TWO -- We closed on our new house yesterday, so we are no longer renters, but home owners!  We plan on celebrating by ripping out the carpet in the playroom on Monday.  The hardwood floors will be delivered today so they can get acclimated to our house before the installation.  Here's a before picture of the playroom.  Once this is complete, we'll be installing a new exterior door and completely gutting both of the bathrooms, insulating the attic and installing a fence.  We can't wait!

THREE -- My dad is coming up today to help us with lots of homeowner repair stuff like hanging a smoke detector, blinds, drapery rods, and McCord's swing.  Exciting stuff, right?  We're just glad to get on his calendar because he's been pretty busy lately writing articles for the local newspaper.  Here's his first article and the one published most recently about "beaver fever." And when he's not hanging drapery rods and writing articles, he makes grills out of old tires.  Here's a video my mom shot in their backyard of his contraption. 



FOUR -- Last, and certainly not least.  Thank you so much to those of you who read the last post and commented on the photoshoot.  You are all a thoughtful bunch of readers and we're humbled by all of your comments.  We are able to order an extra 5 x 7 because of the number of comments we got, and that helps tremendously when you're a sentimental mama like me who wants to order every photo taken of her child (will that make him stop growing up so fast?!!! ).  Many, many thanks!

The Photoshoot & A Favor, Please...

Saturday was a really fun day. 

We had Nicole Rogers Photography out to take a few pictures of our family in our new house.  Oh, how fun it is to be one year old!  We loved watching McCord flirt with Nicole as she captured his smirky little smile on camera.  Here's a link to the sneak peek she shared with us this a.m.

And, we need your help, fellow blog readers.  We are trying to get as many comments on Nicole's blog post featuring Mc's photo shoot as possible.  Now, don't be shy.  Even if you've never posted on this blog, we'd love, love, love it if you'd post a simple comment on Nicole's blog.  If we get a certain amount, she'll allow us to get a free print.  That would help us out tremendously!

Happy 4th of July

: : a post by McCord : :

A year ago today was my due date, but I surprised everyone and was delivered 3 days earlier.  Look how much I've grown since my first July 4th!

This year, I've done all sorts of fun things to celebrate the holiday. 

I've played with my favorite toy of all time - the Dyson.

I also had my one year photo shoot with Nicole Rogers (more on that later!).  Mama says that I flirted with her the whole time!

I mowed the lawn and never took my eyes off of Daddy the whole time - you can see him just outside of the fence doing something very-manly-and-cool-with-a-really-big-tool-that-makes-a-lot-of-noise.  Isn't he impressive?!

 And here I am helping Daddy fix the weed eater.  Just in case you ever have to fix a weed eater, it really helps if you get your booty in it like I'm demonstrating here.

 ...and this morning I got my first taste of orange cinnamon rolls.  I almost ate everything off of Daddy's plate!

And speaking of food, our neighbors knocked on our door this morning to tell us that they are leaving town and would like for us to pick their garden while they are gone.  Here's our first bag of fresh veggies. 

Hope you have a happy 4th of July!

Love, McCord

1 year old

Peanut Butter Toes

Those last few months when our house was on the market were tricky.  How to keep it clean with a crawling, sticky, dirty little boy who likes to leave piles of chaos everywhere?!  I found myself constantly cleaning up and cringing when Mc would pull things out of the kitchen cabinets and leave them strewn across the downstairs (or splash in the dog bowl, or pull all of the records and CDs off of the shelf, or ..., or... or......).  And that's not the kind of mom I want to be.  Instead, I want to encourage his curiosity and let him explore, play, learn, and discover.  So a couple of weeks ago, we went outside and played with peanut butter.  Our intention was to make one of those bird feeders you probably made as a kid - you know the kind, with a pine cone, peanut butter, and bird seed - and we eventually got our mission accomplished, but it was the playing with peanut butter that McCord enjoyed so much and what made me feel like I restored my sense of motherhood.

Our birds like Peter Pan peanut butter.
We found this pine cone a couple of months ago when we vacationed at Mansfield Plantation.

Here we are getting excited about peanut butter - Rocky of course wanted to be a part of this project!

And how peanut butter ended up on his toes, I'll never know!

We hung the feeder right outside our kitchen window.

 It took our birds about 2 weeks to find it, but when they discovered it, the feeder became quite the hangout.  We learned that the little birds preferred it over the regular feeder.  We had Carolina Chickadees, Tit mouses, and Wrens.  What a joy it was to watch these birds.  McCord - as busy as this little guy is - would immediately quiet down and get real still when watching the birds.  He enjoyed watching so much, I would pull his highchair in front of the window so he could sit and watch while he ate. 

Update on our house:

We've been packing!  The official move date is IN TWO DAYS.  The washer, dryer, and fridge are coming tomorrow, and we've already had Terminix and a maid out.  Bo's been taking loads of boxes to the house every night. The painters came yesterday and did the first coat of paint on the walls, and I can't wait to show you the before and afters.  Pictures soon, promise!

McCord is 11 months old!

Dear McCord,

Today you are 11 months old, and your Daddy and I are madly in love with you. 

We are so amazed at how much you've learned this month.  You've amended your crawling style using your left knee to support your weight and you kick the other leg out to the side to push and guide - it's sort of like your rudder.  We think you made this adjustment to protect one of your knees from the hardwood floor.  It's a little awkward, but it works for you and I adore your ingenuity! 

You're pretty good at pulling up now, and you practice this new skill when I'm unloading the dishwasher and folding clothes from the dryer.  When you hear me open up the dishwasher or dryer, you come scooting my way (quickly with that rudder of yours!) to practice your new trick. 

Here are some things you've done recently that we don't want to forget:

• You reach out from the stroller to hold your Daddy's hand when we walk around the block
• I'll never forget one time when you were nursing, you stopped, looked up at me, and leaned in to kiss me on the lips, then went back to eating.  Melt my heart!
• When I brush your hair at night, you like to take the brush from me and brush my hair.
• You've also learned how to pick up two things with one hand!  It was quite a revelation for you when you discovered this and Aiya and I enjoyed watching that light go off in your head.  Now you do it all the time. 

This month we went to feed the ducks...



...and learned that those geese are quite bossy!  We were completely outnumbered - I had to hold you the whole time because I was afraid they were going to run away with you!

• You are on the go!  Your favorite thing right now is to explore all the corners of our house.  You know how to open a cracked door, and it's not unusual to find you contentedly sitting on the floor of the pantry playing with all kinds of items Daddy and I didn't even know we had.  Same goes for my closet!
• You've also discovered all of the door stops in the house and you love to pull the white cap off of each one!
• Most recently, you and Daddy devised a little game with your paci.  He pretends like he's going to put it in his mouth and you take it out of yours and try to fit it in his mouth.  This makes Daddy roar with laughter!  You are quite a funny little fellow.

This is an especially sentimental month for us - this 11th month of your life - because it's the last month we'll be living on Surrey Lane.  The day we brought you home from the hospital, I cried when we turned onto Surrey Lane, because I just knew that we would have so many wonderful memories in this place.  We couldn't wait to get you home.  I still remember walking you through each room and telling you all about the house and how we used each room.  I was so proud to show you your nursery - by far my favorite room in the house - because we assembled it especially for you.  We are so thankful for you and for the ways that you've enriched our life here and forever. 

Here you are standing next to your maple on your 11 month birthday.  My how you and the maple have grown!

McCord, Monkey, Baby, we love you like crazy.