Looking backward and forward

So it is customary this time of year for us to write a post looking back at the previous year and also to set some goals for the new year. Despite our lack of regular blogging this year (well, since March at least), we figured we owe this post to our future selves, at least!

First, let's look back.
We laid out our goals for 2013 in this post last January.  Basically, we accomplished half our goals for the year, which is actually on par with what we typically accomplish.  Inside, we finished the library and nursery (well, sort of...I've not done that mural I dreamed of), but the pool table is still on craigslist and in our family room..  We also didn't do anything in the living room, but we take on a few projects in our kitchen (talked about in this post; I really need to update y'all on that!).  Outside, we had our new deck built and we finished our new mailbox.  The shed is still in the way out back, and the planting beds out front are woefully neglected.
Our word for 2013 was "patience" and we think we lived that one fairly well.  First, we were very patient about letting our little girl arrive in her own time (despite our OB's best efforts to convince us otherwise).  And well, J has earned at least a thousand sainthood points due to his patience this year.  Patience is tough when you're a little sleep deprived, and our word was a good reminder to us throughout 2013 to exercise patience with each other.

Now, let's look at 2014.
Around the house, we plan to finish last year's projects and hang some family pictures (something we've not done since hanging our wedding pictures back in 2009).
Personally, J wants to make fitness a priority, and I'd like to wear shorts this year (Sounds silly, right?  I didn't wear shorts last year, and am fairly certain I didn't wear any in 2012 either.  So this goal is really about fitness and body image issues, but that's hard to say concisely).
Our word is perspective.  I had some great notes about that, but it seems Kate just deleted them while playing with my phone.  There's probably something telling in that...

Nine Months

Nine months--both the shortest and longest period of my life!  On the one hand, March seems like years ago.  On the other hand, this time has gone by so quickly that parts of it are a blur, almost as if they passed by in my sleep and all that remains is a sweet dream memory.

This month's picture of Kate is not the most technically perfect (even by iPhone picture standards), but it does capture Kate exactly as she was in her ninth month--

Standing!  (and very excited about that fact)  Kate is a great stander.  She didn't learn how to stand this month, but she has been working to perfect it.  She pulls up on everything--furniture, strangers' legs, walls, she stands herself up in the middle of the room by herself--a sign of great core strength, we've been told, she even stands (with some success) on soft surfaces like our bed and the couch.  While she doesn't stand for long periods of time, she has started to perfect what we call the 'baby squat'.  After standing for a few moments, she will drop down to a squat or crouch for a second, then stand back up. It's insanely cute, and I am sure that our unencumbered enthusiasm each time she performs this skill explains her own enthusiasm for practicing it.

Kate continues to grow along her own curve, adding almost another pound this month (she is nearly 19 pounds now) and measures 28 inches tall.  She uses the words mama and dada (sometimes with intention) and babbles a great deal, too.   She is learning to ring handbells, and still enjoys her weekly music class (though we missed a couple weeks due to Thanksgiving and mama's work schedule).  Here is Kate in her nine-month progression (months one through four on the left and five through eight on the right).

Eight Months

Our precious baby girl is eight months old today--how on earth did that happen??  Kate is such an active, curious child, and we are so incredibly blessed to have front row seats to her discovery of the world around her!

Kate gained another pound this month and is right on track.  Still no "official" numbers as we graduated to a three-month check-up.  We did have a quick doctor's visit at the end of the month to confirm that her mama and daddy are paranoid first time parents.  All is well; we are.

After the major movement milestones of last month, Kate's motor skill development slowed this month.  Her biggest efforts in this area were put into finding her balance.  She stands independently for about 3 seconds (sometimes up to five; more often more like 1.5) every day.  We started music class one day a week last month, and late this month, she met two goals as a result: first, she played with the jingle bells briefly before chewing on them (typically, this is all she does) and second, she clapped on her own one night.  We clap a lot with Kate, both in and out of class, so it was very exciting to see her clap on her own while we applauded something she did.  

In place of rapid movement developmental changes this month, Kate has devoted her developmental efforts to verbal skills.  She says mama and baba regularly, though I don't think she has said either with intention.  Also, she has learned and uses correctly the sign for milk.  Her face has become so expressive, and I almost can't wait to hear a little about the thoughts going on in that little head.  As you can see in the progression picture below, she is eager to tell us all about it!

The other big milestone this month is societal, rather than developmental. Kate was baptized in the Episcopal Church this month.  She did great, and we were so happy to share the experience with family and friends (and friends who have become family)!

So that's our eight-month-old!  We certainly have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!

Getting crafty with pumpkins

So y'all know we love a good trip to the pumpkin patch (see these posts from 2008, 2009, and 2011...how did I not blog about the 2010 trip? and how did I miss the pumpkin patch altogether in 2012??).  Anyhow, this year brought an extra special opportunity--Miss Kate's first trip to the pumpkin patch!  The places we've visited previously sort of specialize in more grown-up fun (corn mazes, etc), and I knew this year was really more of a photo-op kind of trip, so we chose the patch that I see most often in pictures on Facebook--Boyd's Orchards over in Woodford County.

From a picture taking/fall foods purchasing standpoint, it did not disappoint.

(Yes, that's a butternut squash in our cart.  It turned into a most delicious butternut squash soup later that day.) Honestly, from a 'fun to be had' standpoint, I wasn't particularly impressed.  The play area had a ton of fun looking things to do (huge slides, swings, and hay pyramids), but they charge $10 per kid and $7 per adult to get in and the adults can't even take part in the sliding fun.  Obviously we didn't pay $25 to watch other people's children play, but I'm not certain we would be up for spending that much when Kate is old enough to play there herself.

It might be worth going back for the pictures, though.

And the yummy fall food.  We ended up buying three pumpkins--one large one for the front porch and two small pie pumpkins that serve as the subject of today's post (I'm getting to that)--as well as the butternut squash and a small gourd that Kate took a liking to.  Oh, and a half dozen pumpkin donuts and a half dozen apple cider donuts.  Mmmmmm....

So anyhow, back to that craft I mentioned. We aren't typically pumpkin carvers around the MP, but I felt like we should have pictures of some sort of pumpkin related thing for Kate's first Halloween.  After a quick google search, it became clear that knives and babies don't really mix, but that water-based craft paint and babies totally do.  So I grabbed a bottle of black craft paint from my craft room, prepped one of the pie pumpkins with a contact paper stencil and let Little Miss go to town.  Dear Lord, it was a mess.  I spent more time in the bathtub cleaning her up than she spent "painting".

At least the picture turned out well, right?  Also, on the right, you'll see the pumpkin that I had a little fun with after Kate went down for her nap.  (We did buy two pumpkins, after all.)  These pumpkins will be sitting out looking seasonably festive for a couple weeks then we'll wash them down, roast them up, and enjoy some pumpkin pie!

Oh, and a little bonus craftiness--after picking out Kate's outfit for the day, I decided she looked like a little boy.  So I grabbed some purple tulle and black ribbon from the craft room and folded/stitched it together with a couple buttons to make a cute little "girl" hair bow.  Kate did a great job keeping it on her head!

Seven Months

Kate is seven months old today! She is (unofficially) 27.5" long and 17 pounds. 

You'll note she is standing up in this picture.  I didn't do that.  Our little nugget is particularly mobile, now able to roll, sit herself upright, crawl and pull herself to standing (it was a busy month in terms of movement milestones!).  She is working on cruising--stepping sideways while holding onto furniture or the side of her pack n play.  

Kate likes to babble and is quite conversational.  She also loves eating and is quite the social eater! She is a very curious child, which seems to have something to do with both her early mobility and interest in eating.  She is still exclusively breast fed for nutrition--food is just for fun (and to ease teething pain which we have faced a fair bit of--Kate's first two teeth popped through her lower gums this month!). 

We still love her cloth diapers, too, though adding solid food to her diet has certainly made them more interesting.

Kate's favorite toys still include Sophie the giraffe, Lambie the Lord's Prayer lamb, and Murray the sock monkey. She also likes her collection of board books which she particularly enjoys gnawing on and a set of magnets that we call her chemistry set after Fr. Johnnie stayed with her one day and taught her how to make molecules with them!

Here is our progression picture--months one through three are on top and four through six are on the bottom.

Lipstick on a pig...

Back at the end of July I decided I couldn't live with our kitchen any longer. I'm not entirely sure what changed, but I think the breaking point was the day that the sprayer broke for the third time in less than a year, the drainpipes completely gave up draining any water into the sewer in favor of our lower cabinets, and the second piece of peel and stick tile cracked, broke free of the un-primed sub floor and revealed yet another issue with our long suffering kitchen.

Whatever it was, I cracked. I actually threatened J that if one more thing in the kitchen broke I was going to light a match, throw it over my shoulder, and walk away. (Not really. The bathroom we spent nearly a year remodeling is next to the kitchen and apparently it's poor form to run out of your burning house not with your dreamed-of, prayed-for, and much-loved baby but with your dreamed-of, prayed-for, and much-loved bathroom vanity in your arms.)

So I started dreaming and sketching, imagining the kitchen I would love instead of the kitchen I live with. Believe me, it is fabulous!  It is also, if my initial calculations are even close to correct, fabulously expensive.  Even pared down, that kitchen is outside our budget. Rather than mope about the kitchen we can't afford I sat down an made a list of the five things I like well enough about our kitchen and the five things I couldn't stand.  The list of the things I like got me out of the kitchen doldrums. The list of things I hated helped create a budget-friendly remodel I've taken to calling the "lipstick on a pig" plan.

The what?!?

You know the saying that you can put lipstick on a pig, but that it is still a pig?  Well, in our case, we are applying some pretty finishes on our least favorite parts of our pig of a kitchen. At the end of the day, it will still be a pig, a kitchen we dream of replacing. But it will be a pig we can live with for a few more years.

So what's the plan?  I started with a list of five things I couldn't live with:

The back door looks awful.  Zep used to scratch at it, and his nails did a number on the soft wood.
The sink drains into the base cabinet.  That's a problem.  And the faucet sprayer keeps breaking.
I strongly dislike the four-inch ceramic tile counter.  And I hate the grout lines in between those tiles.  Seriously.  No one should ever use tile for a kitchen counter, as there's no way to keep the grout clean.  Ever.  Even if you are great about cleaning it every day.  Which we aren't.
The cabinets.  Ugh.  The doors are weird off-white laminate. Trimmed in yellowing oak.  Which matches the cabinet frames, but little else.
The peel & stick tile is not my favorite to start with.  The fact that it's cracking and popping off makes it worse.  The thought of our baby crawling on the floor makes my skin crawl.  (The thought of our baby crawling period makes my skin crawl, but apparently that's going to happen whether I like it or not.)

...and using that list of problems, I created my lipstick solution:

Skim coat the hideous ceramic tile counters with concrete and seal
Replace the back-splash which, also made of that four inch ceramic tile, won't match the new counter
Fill the scratched up back door with wood filler, sand and paint
Fix the faulty plumbing under the sink
Prime and paint those awful laminated cabinet doors (and frames)
Replace the cracked peel & stick laminate floor

That's the plan.  Stay tuned for progress updates!

Six months!

Our little nugget is six months old.  Half a year!  How on earth did that happen?  It's not just the sleep-deprivation, I'm sure, that makes this time feel as though it passed in the blink of an eye.

We will get 'official' numbers at Tuesday's doctor's appointment, but Miss Kate has unofficially reached her goal milestone for weight (twice her birth weight) and loves playing with solid food which we started introducing a couple weeks ago.  J and I are using a method called Baby-Led Weaning, which is really more about baby self-feeding rather than any kind of weaning.  For now and the foreseeable future, Kate will continue to receive the majority of her nutrients through breast milk.  The motto we've adopted is that food is for fun until baby is one.  In other words, we give Kate what we're eating, or even order her own plate of food at restaurants.  She plays with the food, figuring out how to feed herself and if anything goes down, that's great.  If not, it's no big deal--she still relies on mama for her nutrition and I'm okay with that.  At some point we'll introduce utensils and let her figure those out, too.

I'm almost surprised to report that Kate is a scooter, but not yet a crawler.  She has been on the verge of crawling for two weeks now, slowly figuring out the different parts of crawling, but not having put those parts together.  I don't suspect we will make it another month without reaching that milestone.  She does roll over almost immediately when laid on her back, which led to a rather interesting photo-shoot this month.  In fact, the big picture below happened right after I laid her on her back for our standard photo.  There were no back pictures to be had this month.  Every shot I tried resulted in her rolling over before I could sit down to snap the picture.  In fact, many of the pictures were taken much closer as I was afraid she would tumble off her chair with me just out of reach.

Join us in celebrating six sweet months!