Dresses!

I wore a dress every day in Dallas, for ease of packing mostly. It was fun! I did fail to take a picture for two. Boo, I know.

And my kids were flipping their sh!t when I realized that I didn't put my accessories on before taking pics of my dress that I wore to the wedding, so un-accessorized is all I have!

And, since I failed at pictures while out of town, here's an extra of a dress I wore out on girls' night to see Water for Elephants. Hey, it's getting hot here and I don't get out too much, so over dressed for girls' night is a-okay with me ;)

{please excuse the bit of bra showing; I hate when I forget to button back up after a nursing break. Luckily I did notice before leaving!}

PS: I thought Water for Elephants was good show! I loved the costumes especially.

Easter Bunny Pusher

This is the first year I've really done Easter at all. I almost didn't, since we were in Dallas on Easter. But, I stopped at Target, bought candy on sale and filled up a bucket while Emberly was at daycare and let her know that I *found* it because the Easter Bunny had hidden it in our home while we were gone. I thought about getting neat stuff for the bucket besides candy, but, Emberly doesn't even drink juice, I'm sure a seasonal sugar high will be just fine. I know all I really want is the candy. Thus, this year, the Easter Bunny was our sugar pusher :D




Maybe next year I'll even muster up the motivation for egg dying and a hunt!

oh. em. gee.

My toe is still kinda swollen and tender, but in general doesn't really hurt. So I tried putting on my sneaker. Felt fine. So I then decided to run. Yippee! I could feel it, in there, threatening to hurt really bad if I stepped wrong. But 6+ weeks sans running has been more than enough.
Especially when you consider how I ate while I was in Dallas.
My favorite: Babes. I don't know why it's called "Babes," but I'm going to go ahead and say it's after the pig, in the movie "Babe," cuz I ate like a little piggy there.

{my hungry little man, always thinking he's about to be fed}

{idk why they had a creepy dummy in the lobby, but I convinced my little scaredy-cat to take a picture "next" to him}

Since messing my toe up, I've been doing the 30 Day Shred level 1 workout that is free onDemand. I've been using 10lb dumbbells to keep it challenging, and I lost something like 6-7lbs just doing that in the absence of running. And being that I haven't ran in 6+wks, I could really FEEL the difference. My running tank did not ride up, as I have no little gut that I'm stretching it over. My legs seemed to glide as my thighs hardly touch each other anymore. I'm light and free. Yay running.

Happy Birthday!

Four years ago today, my mom was telling me to "stop it" because I woke up having contractions on my due date and she would not be flying in until the next day, because, you know, 1st babies never come on time.
In the same day, she can look just like my little baby AND like a teenager. Four years have flown by and birthdays don't let me forget!

Do the Opposite

Before I met Damon, I dressed how I wanted, did my makeup how I wanted, everything how I wanted. I still do, but sometimes now Damon will give me pause. I have to look in the mirror one more time and remember that really, no one cares! Throughout the years, I've also learned that if Damon thinks something is questionable, then I should definitely do it.
Remember the red lipstick? He thought I looked weird. I got lots of compliments. He'll argue that it's because strangers aren't used to seeing me how I "normally" look. Whatevs. LOL
Yesterday, I didn't know what to do with my hair for the wedding. My stylist gets my hair so bone straight with her fancy flat iron that unless I wash it and start over, it's not going to do anything else. I had the ingenious idea to google how to do a herringbone (aka fishtail) braid. After watching a talkative teen do it on youtube (wonderfully simple), I put one in my hair. Love it. But, my very straight, freshly trimmed hair would only cooperate so much and blunt ends started popping out of the braid. So it was kind of messy. However, dealing with a fussy baby, a preschooler who was supposed to be a flower girl but her hair appt had fallen through, and the fact that I really didn't have any options, I thought it was fine and was over it anyway. Damon was looking at me sideways. I should have known then it was perfect! I got several compliments on my braid. And I wasn't sweating like a stuck pig or dealing with falling curls in the Texas humidity.

Oh, and for those wondering, Emberly was a very lady like flower girl, and no f-bombs were dropped. :D

Maybe Today

The other day I was talking with my mom when an SUV came gliding into my lane, almost swiping my front quarter. I guess they thought that if they put their signal on, there'd *magically* be space for them. A few choice words spilled out, f-bomb amongst them. Knowing Emberly was in the back seat, my mom asks me has she said that yet. It's not one the words that slips usually, so I told her "No, not yet." And after a moment of thought, "Maybe at the wedding. That'd be a good time for her say that."
So, that's today. We'll see if she wriggles some profanity in to her dialogue at the wedding. I'll keep you posted.

Week of April 17th

I have nothing exceptional to say... Just some pics of a couple outfits from this week! More exciting Dallas dresses post next week!

Hello Dallas

We made it. It was Damon's first time traveling with both kiddos, though at least we were both there to help each other!

We tried to eat some seafood when we got here, but Bauer vetoed that. He was exhausted.

My darling babies love the suite!

Go Moms!

The husband and I went out delightfully late with my best friend and her husband (and another couple) last night. We haven't been to a club together in forever! As such, I really had a hard time picking out something to wear. I bit the bullet and exposed my midriff. And I actually felt comfortable in it! The bff has also been busting her butt to lose baby weight and then some and she looked pretty fabulous!

Where babies come from

This morning, a friend sent me a picture of her baby, coming home from the hospital. Said baby is 10mo old now, so when Emberly checked out the picture, she was confused. I tried to clarify that the picture was back when baby was coming home from the hospital. This further perplexed and worried her. "Why!?!" she asks. And it dawned on me, Emberly doesn't know the majority of American's have babies in hospitals. She knows she was born at home and she saw her brother be born at home. To her, hospitals are for the injured and ill. I smiled inside at her lack of frame of reference for that experience. I hope it's a bigger trend than just my house.

Copy-cat

Remember the ad that inspired my post the other day? I put Emberly in a ruffled top and forced her to tuck just part of it, assuring her it was just for the picture :D

{when will we finally be over the weird no-lips fake smile, for good?!?}
Right now in the women's section of J. Crew's site, they have an adorable outfit in "looks we love" with a pair of mens trousers rolled up and cinched up around the waist(IDK how to copy a picture out of flash to show you, sorry). I thought that my too big shorts from when I was pregnant last summer would be perfect, but I didn't get the same perfect paper-bag effect. Maybe I'll try with Damon's trousers, but I feel like those will be way too big...

Shrinking!

Just in case anyone thought I was getting lazy, I'm still shredding and I'm still shrinking! Progress pics:


I'm below pre-pregnancy weight, 3lbs away from the lightest I've been since having any babies, and 7lbs from goal. And definitely the fittest I've ever been!

It's still worth it

When babies start to get cumbersome and mobile, nursing stops being flowers and rainbows. They're distracted by every little noise. They have to know what's going on, but don't want to release your nipple to find out. And even if they do, the constant pop-off, pop-on, pop-off is aggravating too. The acrobatics and fidgeting. What used to be the most relaxing, laying in bed nursing, makes me grit my teeth now. He launches himself off of my thighs or kicks my stomach. He also likes to pull my lip and scratch at my face.
BUT, it's all worth it for moments like these, his handsome little snuggle face, falling asleep with his nursies:

Living Dolls

Number 1 reason I had kids: to dress them up. Just kidding. The first reason is so we could train them to be prodigal athletes that buy us everything we want need in our old age. But dressing them is a close second.
When I see ads like this,

I imagine my daughter romping around, styled so adorably. But really, most real kids don't want their shirts in a half tuck. Real kids don't want too-loose pants cinched with a belt for a paper-bag waist. Real kids don't like their hems rolled up decoratively.
I mean, check out my daughter's hand here, tense with itch to un-tuck her shirt. Her face taut with impatience for humoring me. I could barely get the picture taken in time.

Maybe, instead of going through labor, I should have hung onto my kid sister doll. LOL. Really though, Emberly is a good sport and actually has a budding fashion sense of her own.

Maxi-schmaxi

I like the idea of the maxi silhouette. Unfortunately, the 5 foot, eleven inches tall woman is not who they usually have in mind. Most maxis hit me slightly below mid-calf. Disappointing.
Speaking of disappointing, my cleavage was glorious in this dress yester-year. My regular chest is but a sad shadow of my pregnancy and early-nursing-days chesticles. So much so that this scarf seemed like a good idea to belt in with the denim vest.

[blur courtesy of the fact that my "lunch" was more of a snack and so after my shred I couldn't hold my hand steady]

Toys

The consensus amongst organizational blogs seems to be that toy boxes/chests are the anti-organization for toys. Just a quick-fix place to stuff it all.
But, I'm not a container-and-label happy type of girl. It's too sterile, too... anal. LOL. But I do like fabric bins. I do like to recycle. So fabric bins line the shelving of the kids' closet. Former pretzel nugget canisters are perfect housing for doll clothing and small parts. Baskets are cool too. And then those can go in the bigger box. And wouldn't you know, kids like it when things have a defined place to go?
Also surprising to me: I asked Emberly if she thought it was sad that some kids don't have many toys. She did think that was sad. I asked her if she would like to give some of hers to those kids. She very much wanted to! We went through her bins and she volunteered a good half of her dolls and stuffed animals. That's awesome. And much better than my original plan of sneaking it out to donate while she's at daycare :D

Making do

I've been saving pages out of West Elm catalogs for inspiration when we get to furnish/decorate our bedroom. It's probably not happening any time soon. So, part of making do with the hodge-podge conglomeration of furniture pre-dating our marriage is keeping it neat and clean. I hope it lasts.



See, even clean this stuff is pretty unattractive. I've thought about painting it to make it look less dated. I *do* consider myself pretty DIY crafty, just more with cooking and sewing- not so much with furniture...

For Love

We love dancing. We love cupcakes. We love puffy clouds on breezy days. We love each other.