Three Months!

So...welcome to our baby blog!  I promise, there's more going on around here than twiddling our thumbs until the ninth of every month so we can take a new picture.  Maybe someday I'll even get around to writing it all up!  Without further ado...

If I thought the weeks between Month One and Month Two passed quickly, I had no idea how quickly the time would pass as we moved to Month Three.  I suspect it will only move more and more quickly now.  Miss Kate is (according to our not terribly accurate method of measuring) about 25 inches long and (according to our slightly more accurate method of measuring) weighs about 12.5 pounds.  She's become quite talkative, and rolled from both front to back and back to front this month.  She'd only done this one time each until this weekend, when she performed both tricks a few more times for my parents. She also enjoys pushing up with her hands so she can look around better and occasionally standing with balance support from J or me.

For comparison, here is a side-by-side of our sweet girl--

Two Months

It is hard to believe that I'm posting Kate's two month picture, as it seems like I posted her one month picture just last week!  Without further ado, I present our Miss Kate, who celebrates her two month birthday today!

Miss Kate is now 23 inches long and a couple ounces shy of eleven pounds.  She likes to coo and smile at us, and she is quite determined to stand up on her own!  It is so fun to watch her turn her attention when she hears J's voice--she is certainly Daddy's girl!  Luckily, she seems to like her Mama, too.

For comparison, here is a side-by-side from last month with today!

A much longed for addition...

Yes, it's been nearly a month again, and once again I've had several posts in mind but have failed to actually type them up.  I'll continue to think about them and might even get some written and posted!

Anyhow, on to the much longed for addition I mentioned in the title.  No, I don't mean Kate this time.  I mean this addition:

Remember when J and I painted our deck and had a miserable time with it?  Well, the following year, when we should have repainted it (apparently once you've made the horrible choice to paint your deck (thanks, PO), you have to do so every year to keep it looking nice), we decided not to.  Quite frankly, I don't remember why.  Maybe because I was in the middle of a career crisis?  Or because the bathroom remodel was too time-consuming?  Whatever the reason, by 2011 we realized that a new deck (one that we wouldn't paint) was needed.  That April, we started sketching ideas and talking about what we had in mind.  Those discussions and sketches continued for months. I had folks out periodically to give us a quote, but I was never happy with the number (or the service, for that matter).

Last fall, when we had the gutters done, I asked the contractor for yet another quote.  We discussed what I had in mind and he said he'd give me a call.  Well, he didn't.  I didn't mind, as we had other things on our minds, but as spring (and the baby) rolled around, we realized that we couldn't put a little one out on the old, splintered deck to learn to crawl and walk.  I started asking around for recommendations and came across Deckadent Designs, a local company who built a deck for some friends of ours.  After nearly two years of waiting, these guys gave me a decent quote and could start quickly.  (By "decent" I mean I completely choked, but acknowledged that in the years of dreaming my plans had grown grander and the quote still came in less than some of our earlier quotes.)

So now, two years after we first discussed rebuilding the deck, we're enjoying this new addition to our home.  The addition prompted J to power wash and seal the fence and me to repaint the entry to the basement.  There are still things to do to the exterior of the house (move/paint/destroy? the storage building and finish the other planting bed out front to name two), but we are feeling pretty good about our progress on the house.

P.S.  I really need to write a complete deck building post, complete with pictures and the obligatory "PO's crazy contributions to the old deck" story.

Introducing...

Yes, it has been entirely too long since we updated here.  I thought we were only a month off, but it turns out that it's been nearly two months.  I blame the first three weeks off on the rush of work and volunteer obligations I wanted to finish before taking off on maternity leave.  I blame the last month on this little one.  I'm sure you'll agree she is worth the absence.

J and I are thrilled to introduce Kate to you all!  She was born Saturday, March 9 after a blessedly short and easy labor and delivery experience.  We suspect that 'short and easy' part was due in large part to our childbirth course, Hypnobabies.  The course focused on relaxation and visualization, and we highly recommend it to prospective parents, particularly those hoping to go med-free.  While our short labor after arriving at the hospital didn't leave us with much opportunity to put our lessons into practice there, I am confident that our preparation was key in getting us to the hospital after a pretty easy (and also short) laboring time at home.

The last month has been quite an adjustment for us, but honestly, we are very aware how easy a baby Miss Kate is.  She sleeps well (and often!), has a sweet temperament when awake,  and seems to be hitting all of her developmental milestones right on schedule.  We are certainly blessed!

If you're interested in the chair above, you can read more about it in this Furnishing Friday post. The chair now lives in her nursery.  I'm planning to take a picture of Kate each month (ideally on the 9th, but we'll see how that goes)  in this chair to document her growth.

We've managed to knock out a few projects around the MP, too, and I promise to take pictures and get those posted sometime (hopefully soon!).

Saturday smells like... A DAR Meeting

At our DAR Chapter meetings we usually have snacks or a light lunch to enjoy while socializing after the meeting.  We are broken into groups to provide the snacks and each group decides how to best break down the workload.  I'm in charge of February and decided (a few years ago actually) that my group's workload would be best broken down by putting J in charge and letting the ladies put out trays of his yummy food while taking all the credit.  Or something like that.  Anyhow, it works, and the ladies of my chapter seem to be big fans of this plan.  Today is our chapter meeting, and J started prepping food last night!

We're having our usual standby's: roasted pork loin crostinis, salmon-dill crostinis, bacon-tomato cups, brie kisses, veggies and something sweet.  While he prepped the pork loin and the filling for the bacon-tomato cups last night, I only managed to grab a picture of the pork loin.  Feast your eyes:

Seriously, I wish you could actually smell the yumminess here!  Also, since J gave up meat for lent, I *had* to sample everything to be sure it wasn't poison.  It wasn't. I may have tried a few pieces to be sure.  I'll try to take pictures of the spread today to come back and share!

Full Term!

Every week for the past 33 or so I've taken a picture to map the little one's progress.  While I've not been sharing them online, I thought today's might be a good one.  Why?  Because today is the important 37 week milestone!  Now, I could totally get into a lengthy conversation about how that isn't technically right, but it doesn't matter. As far as the doctor's office is concerned, the parasite is 37 weeks 'old' today and has reached Full Term!  That means that, while we'd prefer she 'bake' at least another two weeks if not three or four, she could arrive at any moment and not be considered a preemie. 

For those of you who celebrate these things, today is also Ash Wednesday.  You might remember that last year, I gave up sweets and added steps every day to my walking regemin.  This year, neither of those seem practical (well, giving up sweets might be practical, but no one is going to hold a pregnant lady to that).  Instead, I've decided to strongly limit my facebook time and to be more intentional with the time saved through that.  Will that mean more blogging here?  I expect so.  I expect (and hope) that it also means more time reading books, more time devoted to keeping up my commitments, and in a few weeks, more time devoted to staring at a sweet little face.  I'll try to share that with y'all, too!

P.S.  J is giving up meat and cokes.  Pray for us both! :)

Camp-out Cake

It's been a while since I made a cake, but this weekend offered a perfect opportunity!  That's right, the Superkid had another birthday, which meant Mrs. Jeanonathon (What? You didn't know J and I have a celebrity name?  Well, to this kid, we must be a super-couple!  Or just have really long, confusing names...) had a cake to decorate!  (See previous cakes for his sixth birthday here and fifth birthday here)

The Kid loves to camp, and a February birthday doesn't really lend itself to a backyard camp-out that he might have preferred.  Luckily, his momma put together an amazing indoor camp-out complete with s'mores in the fireplace and a tent set up in the family room for a sleepover!  Last week, he showed me a drawing of what he had in mind for his cake, which included a red tent, trees, and the family car (which is typically parked next to the tent when they go camping), so I took that as my order!

As you can see, I only managed part of the order.  See, if you clicked back to the sixth birthday cake, you know that I sometimes bake too much cake to meet the vision.  I'd promised Becky I would reign it in this time and not send all of the guests home with their own month supply of birthday cake.  I found a great formula online for the size of cake you should bake (area of the cake divided by area of the slice equals the number of people served), and it turns out, you don't really need nearly as much cake as you'd think! Unfortunately, a smaller cake meant less room for trees and cars, so I focused on the tent and a smaller forest.

I feel sort of iffy about the tent; I rolled the fondant too thin, and could have put more thought into the rolls at the end.  The trees, on the other hand, turned out better than I'd expected.  Both the trunks and the treetops are a mix of fondant and gumpaste, held together on bamboo skewers.  These aren't typically a great combo for kids, except for the kids at this party.  I glanced over at one point to see them eating the trees like lollipops.  Apparently they tasted a little like bubblegum?

The best part?  All of the guests at the party got a slice after presents were opened, and there was just enough for the Kid, his family, and his sleepover pal to have a piece for breakfast.  Once the party was officially over, so was the cake.  I'll be using that formula again!