Mornings

I am generally not a morning person. An overall, happy, optimistic person? Yes. Just not during the first 25-30 minutes when the world so rudely rips me out of sleep and the comfort of my bed. Seriously, it's bad. On a good morning I tend to hit snooze 4 or 5 times, grumble and moan and glower at anyone who crosses my path. (This exclude L of course. Baby is always safe from mama's moods. And, he tends to sleep in until my crankiness has worn off. Smart baby.) On a bad morning? Watch out. On bad mornings snoozes get hit about 8 times, before I finally drag myself out of bed, muttering and cursing whoevers bright idea it was to ever start work days at 7:45 A.M. S knows not to talk to me first thing in the morning, yet he seems to take great enjoyment in trying to engage me in conversations when I'm at my worst.

And my "non-morning-person-ness" gets way worse when winter rolls around. I don't so much mind waking up at 6 am when the birds are chirping and the sun is already out and warming the day up. And I don't mind as much when I get up on my own. By no means am I the type of person who sleeps until 11.... that was me back in college. (Ok, college was more like 2 P.M. some days, but I digress). Left to my own accord I usually wake up with L right around 6:30, maybe 7. And then I'm fine. Maybe a little groggy, but not cranky. Ready to start the day. No, it's being woken up by an alarm, when it's so dark outside that it looks like it's the middle of the night that gets me and turns me into a bed headed grouch. And now that fall and winter are upon us (Even though it is still 90+ degrees in phoenix) the days have gotten shorter and the night cooler, and me? Meaner, at the 6 AM hour. Working the second job at night isn't helping either, because by the time I get home, wind down and get ready for bed it's pretty late, thus making the early morning hour come even quicker.

And I'm not a hater of fall or winter. I love the season changes, and I can't wait until we live some place where leaves actually change color and snow falls. I just would like to toss my alarm clock out the window so I can truly enjoy that fall/winter feeling of waking up when it is cold outside and getting to snuggle down deep in the warm covers. Anyone else with me here, or am I alone in these feelings? Perhaps the solution is to simply talk to my work and explain to them that it would benefit everyone involved if instead of having to get there by 7:45 I could simply show up as soon as I had woken up and gotten ready for the day, thus bypassing the whole "I hate the world and I hate my job and I hate everything that is making me get out of the bed right now" mentality. And, truthfully, I think L would like to sleep a little later too. He has a certain air of crankiness when I have to wake him up every morning to get ready for daycare. I guess he gets it from me. Sigh.

Anyway, on a brighter note, and not at all related to mornings, here are some things that we are loving in our life right now:

My little Picasso

A little of this:

 And this:

Equals=

 And on very messy, but happy, baby:

And a messy, but happy, mommy:

I'm pretty sure this piece will be in a museum someday. He's very talented, isn't he?

Shopping for Halloween costumes

People in Baby's-R-Us gave us some funny looks as we put him in costumes and let him run around, but he looked so cute, we couldn't help it!

You will have to wait until Halloween to see if he went for the monkey or the lion costume.

Family Day Out


We hit our local farmers market this past Saturday, but L was much more interested in playing on the outskirts, in the rocks, and it was crowded and busy so I was too busy keeping an eye on him to get any good pictures of him inside the market.

 And after we walked around for a bit, we decided to hit BJ's for lunch. Great home brews and great appetizers, if you have never been there. L loved it because we let him munch on french fries after he finished his graham crackers.

Yummy spinach dip:

And, hello? Chocolate beer? Yum!

 Soccer Season

S and I play on an open soccer team together every fall and spring. (I think I have mentioned this before) The last two seasons I have been either pregnant, or just had a baby. I played the last few games last season when L was a little older, so I'm super excited to "hopefully" get to play the whole season this time!

(Yes, I am sweaty and gross with no makeup in this picture. Don't judge.)

So even though I am a perpetual crank when my alarm goes off, life is good!

 

Stroller giveaway

Ok, I am totally the kind of persons that enters giveaways of any and every kind, whenever possible. Call in and do a survey for paradise bakery to win $2000? I'm all over it. Enter to win $5000 at home depot? Absolutely. Free cheeseburger at McDonald's if you play their monopoly game? Bring it on.

I don't even usually care what the prize is. I will enter to win gift cards to stores I don't shop at, free food for a year at restaurants I don't eat at that often, prizes from retailers where I don't usually go. I don't care, I just want to win. And guess what? I never, ever, never do. I mean ever. I never even win the little prizes on scratchers or lottery tickets (although I still hold out strong belief that one day I will be featured on the Today Show as one of those lucky people who won 251 million.) I never win raffles, even when there are ten million prizes and hardly any entries.

With that being said, because I enter contests rather obsessively, and never win, I usually tend to keep it to myself. My husband is the only one who is privy to my constant losing streak. He is the one that  I assure, over and over again that "this is it! I can feel it! This is the time we are going to win ______ (enter prize of your choice here)" . And then he is the one that gets to witness my disappointment as once again, I did not win. He gets to hear my mutterings of "stupid, rigged contests. No one ever wins. they just draw you in to knock you down. I am NEVER  entering another stupid contest again."  (Until next time of course!)

And so the cycle continues, as one of my other blogger friends (and real life friends!) posted about this awesome giveaway on her blog. (check her blog out here, it's fabulous!) Anyway, she follows another blog called natualmommie.com, who, in additional to also having a fabulous blog, does contest and giveaways quite a bit, and according to my friend she has actually won a few of them. (Thus instilling in me confidence that I have shot!)

So, here is the giveaway: she is giving away a Britax B-Ready stroller. I have wanted this stroller forever. It's like the Cadillac of strollers, the rolls Royce, the Nissan Armada (Ok, some of you may not think the Armada fits in this category, but I really love those cars) It has about a million (or 14) different positions you can put your child in it, and it can hold one or two children. I love the britax brand, plus, it's just cool looking. And seeing as how we are looking to add to our family sometime soon, I would love a stroller that can transition from one baby to two.

I want this stroller so bad. And I can feel it in my bones "This time I'm going to win. this is my time." No, really, this is it. That stroller is mine.

But, on the off chance history repeats itself and once again I find myself a loser in the game of all things giveaway related, I would love for one of my readers (I do have at least a couple readers, right?) to win. So click here to enter to win, and take a moment to check out the whole blog too.

And seriously, wish me luck, ok? :)

Fall Break

One of the perks to working at a school is undeniably the breaks. We get fall break, Christmas break, springs break and summer break...... and, for me at least, they are paid. We are just finishing up fall break right now, and I have been soaking in all the time I can with L. I know I have said this a million times, but these breaks always just really put into perspective how much I want to stay home. And I did work a few shift at the restaurant this week, and it was fine, I still felt more or less like a stay at home mama. I really hope we can eventually (sooner then later) make this shift to me staying home, and if we need the extra money just working a few nights a week serving. I had such a blast with my little man this week, and here are just a few of the things we have been up to lately:

Lazy (and cooler) mornings:

L and I had breakfast on our porch almost every morning this week. The temperature have dropped enough for it be beautiful first thing in the morning, so I set up L's high chair out back and while he enjoyed juice, cheerios, and graham crackers, I spent the time with a good book and coffee. I love being able to really enjoy our mornings and laze around in our pajamas as we get ready for the day.

Trips to the park:

After our lazy mornings we walked down to our local park, where L mastered going down a slide by himself. I don't have too many pictures of our adventures at the park, in part because I kept forgetting to charge my camera, but also because when you are chasing a very active 1 year old around by yourself you don't have as many opportunities to set up photo ops.

Baking Cookies:

(We added cream cheese icing to these....)

In the spirit of trying to get into the fall season, which is not always easy to do when it is still hitting 100+ degrees outside, L and a baked pumpkin spice cookies!

Story Time:

Ok, again, no pics of this due to the lack of charging, but L and I hit up the libraries toddler story time one morning and he LOVED it. There were so many little kids running around and we sang songs and danced and played with toys. This was another situation that made me realize that I could stay at home with him and he could still get a lot of the "kid on kid" interaction that he is getting at daycare. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but you can take my work for it, it was cute and we had fun!

The Children's Museum:

 (This was actually REALLY high up... I was a little nervous, but L had no fear!)

 (That kid in back of us? Kept running over my foot trying to get past us)

S took Friday off so we could spend the whole day together as a family and we decided to take L to the Phoenix Children's Museum, some place we had never been before. I think I had almost as much fun as L did. We only spent about 2 hours their before L started getting tired and a little cranky, but we managed to visit every room and I think L got to play with everything at least once.

Date Night (afternoon):

After the Children's Museum S and I took a rare opportunity to drop L off at our friend Erin's house and grab lunch, some beers and a movie, all on our own. Don't get me wrong, I love spending every second of every day with L, and S and I both missed him and were so ready to go get him once the movie was over, but it is so rare that we get off on our own now, and I think it is really important to make sure you make time for your marriage as well as your children. So we did, we had fun and had grownup conversation and ate a leisurely lunch without having to tend to juice cups and baby snacks, and then we rushed home to pick up our little man.

It was an amazing break, and I am sad that it is over and am not ready to return to work tomorrow. But, we do what we have to do, and at least I have tons of great memories from this week to tide me over until my next break!

Happy Sunday everyone, have a great week!

Updates

I am a lazy, lazy writer lately. I know it, and I hate it. Sometimes I lay in bed at night, thinking about all the thoughts that I want to put to paper (screen?), but it lately it just doesn't seem to happen.

We've had some changes in our life lately, the most significant and recent being that I have picked up a second job. I know I have mentioned in previous posts how lucky I am to be able to hold a part time job (Mon-Thurs, half days) and still have so much time at home with L. This is still true, to a point. We were "living" just fine on one and a half salary, even though money was very tight. But, we soon realized two things: first, we weren't living the way we really wanted to. Suddenly all of our old dreams, big and small, we put on an indefinite hold. We now longer had the extra cash to go out to dinner, or to take Landon to play places or the zoo. If we saw a home accent piece, or piece of furniture, or a even just a nice bottle of wine, we really couldn't afford it. It was causing stress and tension that neither myself nor S wanted to bring into our marriage, or into L's home life. The second thing we realize was, that although we were making it paycheck to paycheck,  we were barely able to put any money into savings. We would like to add to our family, sooner rather then later, and the way that we made it work last time, with four months of unpaid maternity leave, was that we had been able to put a rather significant amount into savings to supplement my salary.

So, with all that being said, I have gone back to my old college roots of waitressing. We debated the pro's and con's of my just going back to my first job full time, but the problem was That we would have to basically double our daycare costs, thus not really bringing in very much extra money, and taking a way a lot of mommy and L time. By my picking up a few dinner shifts a week, we were able to bring in much needed extra money, and still not take away my being home with L. Now I work at the school in the morning, I have L in the afternoon, and as soon as S comes home I head to the restaurant.

It's not the most ideal situation, and I hate being away from my family at night, but it is a blessing to our family to have the extra one right now, and I just keep looking at the bigger picture, which is this is the best way to get L the sibling I want for him! :)

For now I am going to claim this as my excuse for being a lazy writer, but I promise to be better. Honest, I do.

In happier news, S and I play on a soccer league together (not sure if I have mentioned this before?) and our season started today. It was a little intimidating, because the other girl that played on the team is pregnant, so I am officially the only girl now. (Maybe this make me a badass?) But I love the rush of a good and competitive game, and I also love that this is a passion S and I share and can do together.

I don't have any pictures of our soccer game, because it's hard to get many shots when you are running up and down the field for an hour and a half. S had a great time on the sidelines though, our friend Erin was kind enough to watch him and he spent the whole time running circles around her!

I do however, have a few cute pictures of our Sunday morning routine of going to the park and playing and feeding the ducks. This is one of my favorite family time activities that we do, and now that the scorching heat of summer is finally fading a little bit we are able to resume our park dates.

So, until next time my friends. I promise to be back sooner with more pictures of my little man and more uplifting updates!