Desiree's Daydreams

This girl's gotta fly: Andrea's second birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 10:28:00 +0000

I swear, it's been so long that coming back here feels like a celebration, and what better way to celebrate a blog post than writing about a birthday!

This little angel face turned two on February 7th.

My doll baby!

When I was planning her birthday, I originally thought I would go with a Wall-E theme, because at the time, she was watching that movie at least twice a day. But as her birthday drew closer, she became obsessed with Paw Patrol and it only seemed right to have a Paw Patrol birthday party.

As usual, Drew didn't want me to go overboard, and instead of completely disregarding his request, I tried. I really did! I had the party on a Friday morning; I didn't even call it a birthday party, I told everyone it would be a playdate with cupcakes. That's it!

However, I won't do that again because even though the party was great, it was indeed a birthday party and everyone should have been there. Sofia was at school, Drew was at work, my mom wasn't there; it truly was a playdate and that wasn't right. My only concession was that the party wasn't on her actual birth Now, I will say that it turned out well and I was happy to make the morning just about Andrea.

Even with a pared-down party, I still had to have my birthday party elements. I really love getting birthday shirts for the girls so I had to have one for Andrea. I plan on taking all the shirts and making a quilt for both the girls, maybe for their 18th birthdays? Although, just thinking about them being 18 makes me black out because I can't take it.

I loved how it turned out!

The party was on a Friday morning, so instead of trying to come up with dog-themed food, I went with a brunch theme. Brunch parties are so easy and you can't go wrong with breakfast food. I make sausage egg and cheese egg cups, I had a plate with blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and grapes, cupcakes of course, blueberry muffins and juice boxes for the kids and mimosas for the moms. It came together quickly and easily and I was really pleased.

I'd planned to get a large piece of white fabric and make a potato stamper of some paw prints and use that to cover the island but I ran out of time. Plus, if I'd stamped the fabric I wouldn't be able to use it for other occasions so we're going to call it a happy accident instead of procrastination.

I cut little holes in the fabric to gather it up and I can change the ribbon for

different occasions.

It was a simple spread but it turned out perfectly.

I strung a simple banner across the mantle and that was it for

decorations. See! I know how to do small birthdays!

I got cookies as favors for the guests;

they were paw prints and bones and they came out

so cute! I'm definitely having these cookies

at all future birthday parties.

Here's a better shot of the cookies.

They really are perfect; not too sweet, just soft enough

and of course the decoration is always perfect.

I email the ladies and send a picture of what I want and they always deliver!

Group shot of all her little friends.

It was a laid back party and

I'm pretty sure all the kids had a good time.

Kissy face with my sweet girl.

I'm so thankful that I got to be in a picture with her!

And then we had to take a selfie because the

morning light was just that good.

Look at those dimples on my baby!!

She didn't open presents until later that afternoon, and of course Sofia

wanted to help. That's why I'm *kinda* glad it was just Andrea at the party

because she needs some time where it's all about her, you know?

Her actual birthday was Super Bowl Sunday, and we

went to a friend's house to watch the game.

I knew it would be a late night so we went over there ready for bed.

I put Andrea in the pjs and slippers she got for her birthday and they were

so cute I could barely handle it.

At two years old, Andrea is hyper-articulate. I'm not surprised because Sofia talked early too and Andrea is the same. She speaks in complete coherent sentences and never uses baby talk. Now she has a little baby voice, which makes it even cuter when she says things like "Mom I'm hungry, let's have some burgers!" You can see her little mind working when she wants to say something and she says exactly what she means and she is very sure of her place in this world. She was born with that confidence and independence and my only goal in life is to do my best to make sure she keeps that confidence and self-assurance as she grows up.

She wants to do everything Sofia does and she's taken to calling her 'MY Sofia.' They are sweet together 90% of the time, but of course they have their sibling rivalry. But honestly, it's not that bad. They truly love each other and they really look out for each other. Just last night, Sofia was having a tough time and was sitting on my lap crying through her problems. Andrea came over to her and patted her knee, saying "I know you're upset Sofia. It's ok, it's ok, I know."

We're still nursing, although it's pretty much just for naps and bedtime. She's so active during the day that she doesn't stop to nurse, although there are random moments in the afternoon that we'll sit on the sofa and nurse. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind cutting back to just one session a day as I'm more than ready to have my body back but at least she's not nursing 24-7 and I'm getting some breaks.

She eats very well, although I'm wondering how long that will last, as Sofia used to eat well and is now the pickiest eater on the planet. For now, I'm just celebrating the fact that I have at least one kid who'll eat what I put in front of her. While she doesn't necessarily have a favorite food, what continues to surprise me is that she likes spicy food. I mean, not set your mouth on fire-type spicy, but she loves salsa and she eats grown-up food all the time. On the other hand, Sofia won't eat unless it's super bland and I swear, she can taste one kernel of spice and she turns up her nose.

Andrea is not in preschool yet. I had Sofia in a mom's morning out program at 18 months, but that's because it was just her and I felt she needed to be around other kids for socialization. With Andrea, she's likely my last baby and I want her at home with me for longer. Plus, there are a ton of kids in our neighborhood and she's got her sister to play with so I'm definitely not as concerned about socialization. When Sofia goes to kindergarten in the fall, I will put Andrea in a program for a couple mornings a week and that'll be plenty. I have no idea what life will be like with two kids out of the house at the same time. I don't even know what I'll do with myself.

Who am I kidding; I'm going to sleep. A LOT.

Andrea is a funny, happy baby. There is always a light in her eyes and I really love just being around her. She is such a sweet baby and she's always wanting to share whatever new skill she's learned. Every day, she's like "Mommy watch this!" and she'll jump and then belly laugh, so incredibly content with herself. Sofia's in gymnastics and Andrea tries to do cartwheels and forward rolls like her big sister, except her forward rolls are just her putting her forehead on the ground and then sitting on her bottom, and her cartwheels look more like lunges, but they're perfect to me and I cheer for her every time she does it.

Andrea's cartwheel

I am so madly in love with her and I'm so incredibly blessed that I get to share her life with her. She is my baby and I love everything about her.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 13:20:00 +0000

So, how about my triumphant return to blogging?! HA! One post a month does not a triumphant return make, but that's all I've got my friends. I write in my head all the time but when it comes to getting it on the computer, life ends up happening and I never get around to it. Oh well, let's talk Christmas!

This is the first year that Sofia really gets what's going on, and despite my Santa misgivings, Sofia has decided all on her own that Santa is real and we're going all in. I still won't do the damn Elf on the Shelf, but for now I won't burst her bubble with Santa. It's actually really interesting because neither Drew nor I have even really talked about Santa, which goes to show you the power of influence that school has on kids, even this young. She already knows that Santa brings presents on his 'sled' and you have to go to sleep for it to happen. We'll go with it for now, but I still have my misgivings.

This is the first year that I really got into decorating the house and I have to say, it was so validating to have Sofia get excited about all the details in the house.

I bought some red seat cushions for our porch furniture and sewed green pillow covers and switched out the bow on the door wreath and it looked so festive!

Remember Andrea's crib skirt fabric? That was back when I didn't know how to do sewing math and if something called for one yard, I bought eight yards just to be safe. Therefore, I have a TON of leftover fabric and the burlap and gold was just right to make a runner for the dining room table. I cut it to length, hot glued the hems and I had a nice free table runner! I found the red sparkly candles at Marshall's and Sofia LOVED them. The early morning light hit them just right and the sparkles made her day. "Mom! Check out these candles!"

The girls each had gingerbread houses this year and I nearly had a heart attack because they kept wanting to eat the candies and all I could think about were the toxic dyes and preservatives and I must have said "Not for eating!!" a million times. Next year I'm making my own gingerbread houses. I think every parent has their one thing they go nuts over, and mine is definitely food. I'm not as neurotic over other stuff, but food will put me over the edge.

Anyway, when I was single and living in an apartment, this was my Christmas tree and it sat on my dining room table. It plays We Wish You a Merry Christmas and every day I'd put another ornament on the tree. Now, it's on our dining room table and it's *my* older daughter who's putting the daily ornament on the little tree. So cool, right!

ALSO, check it! I sewed those placemats! They were such a festive addition to the house and I'm so looking forward to using them every year; I even put a decorative border around them and everything! Of course, it's still me we're talking about here so they're not perfect rectangles and the decorative border isn't straight but they'll do!

I have a crap-ton of jars of various sizes so I went to Target and got some sequin trim and decorative garland and made a little centerpiece thing and put some little candles inside; it took me about ten minutes and I love how it turned out. I went to a gift exchange in the neighborhood and came home with the Santa mugs and the girls promptly claimed them and thoroughly enjoyed having hot chocolate in *their* Santa mugs.

Also, here's Santa on a plate.

Why did I get two mugs but only one plate at the gift exchange?

I was trying to get them to say cheese,

but it looks more like an 'arrgh.'

This is also the first year we've had actual stockings. I got them from Pottery Barn and they had S, M, L and XL. The mediums looked too small so I went ahead and got the large ones and when they came they were enormous! However, they're growing on me and I think they go well in the living room.

They are huge though; It's almost as big as Sofia!

My sofa pillows got the festive treatment too! I have one big pillow and that got the green pillow cover and the other three small ones got the red and cream chevron. I'd intended to use the red and white striped fabric but next to the existing cream pillows and throws, the white made the cream look dirty. So those became the placemats and the chevron worked out perfectly.

Christmas cards are my absolute most favorite thing about Christmas. I love everything about them and I get a little thrill every time I got one in the mail. I have to find our earlier ones, but my plan is to decorate our stairs with our yearly cards.

Christmas morning was awesome. The girls loved their presents and seeing the look on their faces was priceless.

I live for matching Christmas pjs.

I wanted the girls to get presents for each other and of course right now, it's more of a thing for Sofia than Andrea and I'm so proud of Sofia because if you ask her what Christmas is about, she'll tell you Christmas is about giving. Now, picking out the gift for her sister was a bit rocky because I know she would have liked it for herself, hence the identical Pup Pads. But it was still sweet to see them give their gifts to each other and I hope they'll keep it up as they get older.

Now if we're being honest here, I'm quite glad the holidays are over. There were a ton of parties and I went out more this month than I have since the kids were born and I do NOT have the stamina for that! I'm exhausted! Not to mention, Drew was gone for the majority of the month so all the shopping and decorating and Christmas concerts and going to see lights and Disney on Ice and school parties and cookie exchanges and baking and cooking and staying up late and wrapping and wrapping and wrapping ALLLLL fell on my shoulders. I need a nap. But as stressed out as I was, it was truly worth it and I know that's super cliche, but it really was. The girls had a wonderful time and it filled my heart to the brim to see their faces and watch them really get the magic of Christmas.

It was a good Christmas and it's been a good year; I hope that you can say the same and I hope that next year is even better!

Fall traditions

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 04:06:00 +0000

Fall is over, my friends. The Christmas stuff has been out since late October and that gets on my last nerve. One holiday at a time, punks.

I love fall.

So let's have a quick look back before we say goodbye to Fall 2015 and gear up for the craziness that is the Christmas season.

Halloween! I actually didn't used to get into it, but peer pressure is real out in the suburbs, my friends. My neighbor was busting out the ghosts and shit like at the end of September. Then my other neighbors started pulling out all the stops, putting up the spiders and lights and tombstones, so I figured I better do *something.*

Did you know that patio furniture is stupid expensive? Because good God, it is. One morning, I was online and saw that someone in my neighborhood was selling two chairs and a table for $50 and I snatched that up in the blink of an eye; it doesn't come cheaper than that. The pillows weren't anything I was interested in, and that's what spurred me to sew my first pillow covers. I bought a tablecloth from JoAnn's for $3 and I cut it up one night the girls blessed me with a long night's sleep. That first attempt took me an hour but I'm super proud of how they came out.

I even got the pattern to match up on the back side!

I picked up some orange cushions from Pier 1 and I got my Halloween porch!

I also went to Home Depot and got a mess o' mums and some pumpkins.

Sadly, every last one of those poor mums died because I have a black thumb

but they sure were beautiful while they lasted.

This fall marks the first time that Sofia was really into painting pumpkins.

I was so excited at how much she was into it.

Her masterpiece had gold glitter eyes, a gold mouth,

a ring of navy hair and pink ears. It was awesome.

Andrea's was more abstract. She slapped that paint and glitter on there

and was like "It's gorgeous Mommy." I fully agreed.

Our gym had a big Halloween party and it was actually a ton of fun.

I'm including this picture because I'm so proud of Sofia being able

to write her own name. The kid is a genius, what can I say.

I live for matching everything; as long as the girls will let me, I will dress them alike.

It also helps when Target has buy one get one free sales on costumes. Holla!

All that was before Halloween; we spent the actual holiday in Myrtle Beach because they were doing work on the house (AGAIN) so the girls got to do their trick or treating at the hotel.

This was right before we were going down to the activity center for their Halloween party.

I tried to get a more posed shot of them, but I'm such a ridiculous amateur that

I put my poor babies in what was pretty much direct sunlight and I was all, "Smile pretty!"

My poor kids.

The girls had a blast checking out their loot!

I was afraid that they would be the only kids in the hotel for Halloween, but they weren't alone, and the hotel did a great job with all the activities for the kids. There was a dragon egg hunt and everyone got a 'best costume' prize. The girls each got 'best big sister witch' and 'best little sister witch.' It was so cute, and I'm keeping their little certificates.

So Halloween was a success; hopefully we'll be in town next year and they'll actually get to do the whole neighborhood thing. But you know? It was pretty awesome the way we did it too.

Also, the beach.

Always, the beach.

And then came the rest of fall. We took family pictures, and I switched out my porch decor.

My neighbor's 18-year-old daughter took this, can you believe that?

Talk about skills!

This is going on the Christmas card for sure!

My mums bit the dust, so I clustered all the pumpkins near the front door

and added a wreath that I made in about twenty minutes and

it makes me smile every time I come up the driveway.

I bought another $3 tablecloth from JoAnn's and this time it only took me

about twenty minutes to sew the pillow covers.

Right now I'm down to about fifteen minutes and most of that is lining up the fabric

and making the cuts.

When I make my Christmas pillow covers, I'm going to post a tutorial because it's

so easy I'm kind of addicted now.

Alas, I don't think I'm going to get my bookcases done by tomorrow, but you know, it was fun to dream for a little bit. However, I WILL get them done by the end of the year. Hell or high water, my friends. I mean it.

We're having friends over tomorrow, we're going to stuff our faces, fall deep into a food coma, and then, and ONLY then, will I think about decorating and celebrating Christmas. I have big plans and I have lots of places inside and outside my house that I want to decorate so for real, stay tuned. But for now....

One holiday at a time, punks.

Turkey turkey fall fall!!

PS - I was going to do a post outlining all the things I was grateful for, but it was sounding like gross humble bragging and just saying I'm thankful for my family and my health and that bullshit didn't come close to how I feel so I'm just going to say that I am STOOPID blessed. I know JUST how blessed I am, how fortunate I am, how awesome my life is, and for a moment every single day, I give thanks because truly, it's a good life I have.

It's a good life indeed.

Living Room Progress: The Sitch with the Niche

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 04:34:00 +0000

So how are we saying 'niche?' Do you say Nitch? Or Neesh?

I say 'hole in the wall.'

As in, there's a hole in the wall in my living room and I want to do something about it.

Like so.

I don't know why it's only on one side; the lack of symmetry is silly and I would have loved two narrower 'neeshes' on either side of the fireplace. Pay attention, builders. The word of the day is symmetry.

Alas, the builders didn't consult me before they built the house and this isn't a custom home where you get to pick everything down to where you want your light switches. (That's the next house.)

So I've got this hole and I knew I wanted to put a built-in-esque bookcase in there because we have no bookcases in this house and books are life.

Books are life.
via

via

There's a guy in my neighborhood that builds things and he came over to give me a quote and I was this close to hiring him but then my DIY spirit took over and I was all "I have all the time in the world! I can build something MYSELF!"

My husband's laughs could be heard from all over the world.

That didn't bother me; there are IKEA Billy bookcase hacks all over Pinterest and I knew I could do this. So, we went to Charlotte because we don't have an IKEA here. Which makes no sense because there are like a thousand colleges in Raleigh and where there are colleges, one needs an IKEA. But it's whatever; we went to Charlotte and I came home with two small Billy bookcases.

Like so.

Putting the bookcases together was super easy and I was extra proud of myself. I bought Kreg mini jig and made pocket holes and everything! The bookcases were about half an inch too wide so I had to screw them together and the nitch isn't perfectly square, so that bad boy is wedged in there like nobody's business.

Now, the reason why I'm writing about this is because I'd like to get it done before Thanksgiving and there's nothing like putting it out to the Universe, aka you guys, to give you the ol' kick in the pants.

I want to trim it out, put in library lights, and get it all styled and pretty before we have guests next week. Now whether or not that actually happens will remain to be seen, but it's always good to have goals.

A bit of a wider shot of the living room.

Those are my fall pillow covers; they look more

golden and fall-ish in real life I promise.

And one day very very soon I'm painting all our interior doors black.

Wait for it; it's going to be awesome.

But this is about my neesh. I have plans for it, my friends. Plans that I hope to execute in the coming weeks and then I'm going to write about it and it's going to be wonderful.

Oh, and let's talk about my sofa for a quick second. It's pretty much the most awesome sofa ever and I love it so very very much. Our old sofa wasn't cutting it in the slightest.

You can kind of see where we were putting the TV in the nitch and the rug was too small and the sofa was too small and it just wasn't working. We needed a sectional. I wanted to get a nice one but my neighbors talked me out of it, saying that my kids were still too young and would trash a super nice sofa so we got the Amalfi sectional from Haverty's and let me tell you; I'm so happy with our choice! Navy doesn't come standard but I had my heart set on a navy sofa and seriously, I love it so much. Navy is an excellent neutral, did you know that? It seriously goes with everything and now that I know how to sew pillow covers, I plan to change them out with the seasons and navy is the perfect backdrop. Even though I'm not about celebrating Christmas until after Thanksgiving, I kind of can't wait to make some Christmas pillow covers. Because that's where I am in my life; I sew and get excited over pillow covers. Call me Eunice.

Anyway, the sectional is amazing; I got a jute rug from RugsUSA and the living room is slowly but surely starting to come together.

Keep me accountable, my friends! Help me finish my neesh before the end of the year!

*PS - I went to my neighbor's house tonight for a party where you buy stuff and I had lots of wine, so I'm really hoping this all makes sense and is entertaining and you like it because your girl has a straight up buzz and I'm loving it.

You're so pretty.

Allow me to reintroduce myself

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 04:29:00 +0000

Hello again! It's so nice to see you!

I do hope that this is the start of something beautiful and that I'll get to visit here more often, provided the two small people in my life give me that time.

Now, I feel like I've been gone so long and so much has happened that a little recap is in order. And on the off chance that you're reading for the first time, I'll bring you up to speed. A lot's happened since my last post and it's always fun to look back to see how far you've come.

Join me on Memory Lane, won't you?

Way back when, I was unmarried with a hot boyfriend.

Not a care in the world.

After a while, we got married.

Bliss.

Then it got complicated, and life took off at breakneck speed. You see, on the day we got married I thought I was pregnant. I mean, I was; I thought I was pregnant with a live baby but it turns out I wasn't. That was my first miscarriage and it was bad. Like, so bad that I didn't think the sun would ever shine again and it was a downright shitty way to start married life.

But, that was our start and through a LOT of tears, fights and despair, somehow we persevered. I had another miscarriage, but finally I carried a live baby to full term and my first daughter Sofia was born.

Sofia's birth story

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 It's kind of an awesome read, if I do say so myself.

It seems like it was yesterday.

Time passed, and we decided we wanted to add to our family. We knew what we were up against, and I had two more miscarriages and it sucked. Hard. However, once again I was able to carry to term and my second daughter Andrea joined us almost two years ago.

Her birth story was pretty epic too.

I am blessed beyond measure.

Life as a mother of two is a ride for sure and the A Number One reason that my writing took a distant backseat. That hot boyfriend I married and had those beautiful babies with? He has an amazing job that he loves, but that job takes him out of town a lot. A lot a lot. I'm on my own the majority of the time and actually, I hope to be able to write more about that in the future.

But him being gone means I'm responsible for everything 24-7, no breaks, no tapping out, no helping hands. All Mom, all the time. And did I mention we move a lot?

This was our first house, in Texas.

I loved that house so very much.

Three years later, we moved to Pennsylvania and this little ranch

became our home.

Two very short years after that, we came to North Carolina

and this is where we lay our heads.

If you're keeping track, that's three houses in six years, three states, a baby in each state (except here; I told Drew that there will NOT be a baby in North Carolina.) It's a lot, and while the adventure is fun, I'm looking forward to putting some roots down and sittin' a spell.

My babies are four and almost two now.

Someone please tell me when the hell and how the hell this happened.

This too, please.

My days are so full sometimes that all I want to do at the end of the day is collapse in bed and binge watch Netflix. These days I'm starting to feel like I'm catching my breath and one of the first things I wanted to do was come back here and reconnect with you, my readers and friends. I've missed you guys and it warms my heart more than you know to get those emails checking in on me, making sure I'm still alive. I've said it before and I'll never stop saying it, you guys are the best.

So I'm back. I'm here and I'm going to do my best to stick around and update more frequently because I've got ten months worth of stories to tell and I do hope you'll want to hear them.

As always, this blog is a reflection of my life in its current state and currently, I'm all about being a mom and daydreaming about decorating my house. Do you remember way way back, I was terrible at sewing? Well guess what? I'm pretty decent now and I'm regularly sewing things! Nothing major, I'm not making wedding gowns but I've made things and they don't suck!

With every move, making our house a home is a priority for me and this time, it's no different. I've just got a gigantic canvas now and it's been a fun challenge. I've been doing little things here and there and I'd love to share them with you and as usual, I've made mistakes (jewelry storage anyone?), I've learned things and maybe I have some knowledge that might of use to you. If nothing else, I'm always good for a laugh.

So thank you. Thank you for checking in on me, thank you for sticking with me and I will be back soon!

Andrea's pink and gold first birthday party

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 22:18:00 +0000

I've been working on this post for two days now; fingers crossed I can actually finish this time!

I sure am glad February is over my friends, because it hit us hard. I thought it was going to be off to a good start because we got to have Andrea's first birthday party on her actual birthday (the 7th) and that's got to be a good sign, right? Except, no.

The party was great, but as with any event, the planning is always a production and her party was no different. I wanted everything to run smoothly and I didn't want to be running around doing a million things last minute. I started planning and prepping a month in advance with every spare second I had and with help from my mom and my friend Aimee, the party was a great success. But honestly, I was really looking forward to having a break once it was over. Parties take a lot of effort and staying up late every night was taking its toll on me. Unfortunately, Sofia got sick the day after the party with an ear infection and the winter yuck. I felt terrible that she was sick but I thanked my lucky stars that at least Andrea and I were healthy. I should've kept my mouth shut, because Andrea got sick just as Sofia was getting better, then Drew went on a work trip to Europe and I got sick and the world ended.

It's one thing when your kids are sick; it's another thing entirely when it's the mom and the kids and there's no one around to tag you out when you can't take another step. I was alone, I felt like I'd been beaten with a bag of lemons and I was coughing up a lung. The baby couldn't breathe so she couldn't sleep; she was exhausted and miserable, Sofia wasn't back to 100% yet, so she was clingy and whiny and it was enough to plunge me straight into despair. There were a couple of times that all three of us were just sitting there crying. I seriously didn't think we were going to make it through and I was questioning all of my life choices that had gotten me to that point. I hated everything about my life and I cursed everything in between the coughing fits, the crying, the nose-wiping, the sneezing, the 'I'm hot Mom', the 'I'm cold Mom', the body aches and the praying to die.

That was our February. It wasn't pretty.

However, we're all better, I'm still married, Drew came home and things are back to normal for the moment so before anything else happens, let me tell you about Andrea's awesome birthday party!

........................................................................

I wracked my brain for a good theme for Andrea's birthday. I was definitely feeling that second-child guilt and I wanted her party to be as good as Sofia's first birthday. I just went back and read that post and I'm feeling all the feels right now. So much has happened in four short years...

But back to Andrea's first birthday. I chose pink and gold for the theme, because if we're being honest here, I couldn't think of another one I liked as much. I searched Pinterest for a theme that jumped out at me and nothing did, so I drew my inspiration from her nursery. Thankfully pink and gold birthdays are a thing, so I didn't have to re-invent the wheel; I just had to pick which elements I wanted and go with it.

With each birthday party I've planned, I've learned and refined my process and while every birthday is a production, I'm getting better at it. Of course, Drew would disagree and he lectures me every year about doing too much and every year I ignore him. As long as I have breath in my body and pennies in the bank account, my babies are getting elaborate birthday parties. Birthdays and anniversaries are my thing and it's just better for all involved not to get in my way. To his credit, Drew did just that. I did everything I wanted for the party and he just got out of the way. That's what you call growth in a marriage.

Once again, I made cupcakes and her layer cake and froze them ahead of time. Also! I figured out how to get even layers and pink food coloring without dye! I really want to make a whole separate post about the cake because I love cake that much, but I just can't keep this information to myself.

I bought these baking strips at JoAnn's and they are game-changing.

You soak them in water, wrap them around your pans

and voila! Even layers without having to saw off the tops!

This deserves its own post and maybe I'll write it one day

but these little guys from Target will give you

the color pink and it's magical!

But enough about the cake, this is about my baby.

Gah, she's so cute.

Did you ever see a cuter baby?

I mean, seriously.

I had her pictures done by my amazingly talented neighbor Karen Lord. She's so sweet and professional and it was an absolute joy to work with her. If you're local, I highly recommend her!

To prepare for her birthday photoshoot, I searched high and low for the perfect onesie and I finally found it at KinKin Designs. I'm always nervous buying things online because you can never be sure of quality. I didn't want the onesie to be thin and I didn't want the glitter to be cheap to where it comes off on everything. I crossed my fingers and placed my order and I was so happy with the result! First, shipping was super fast which is always good when you procrastinate. Not that I do that, ahem. The cotton on the onesie was nice and thick and even though there was no label telling you the brand, I knew it was good quality. The design was perfect as well, just the right size and the glitter stayed put. Overall, I was a very happy customer and I definitely recommend this shop. I took it to the embroidery place at the mall and had her name stitched on it before I'd picked out the tutu, so it was quite a happy accident that the colors matched.

Now, I've talked about how I dress my babies before, and while I've relaxed on my 'no tutu' rule, I won't ever put giant bows on them. I was going to put an example, but I've gotten soft in my old age; I don't want to post a picture of a baby in a giant bow and make fun of them on my blog, but you get the idea. The bows or flower headbands that are half the size of the kid's head? It's a no-go in this house.

With that in mind, I found some simple, well-made bows from cutebows4girls and ordered a pack. They're great quality and this is another shop you should check out. No one is paying me or giving me free stuff to talk about their shops; I'm just one happy customer sharing info so you can be happy too.

Besides, no matter what's in her hair she just tries to take them off anyway.

I didn't print invitations this time because we only invited invited five families and three of them were Drew's work people. I charged him with sending them a quick email and the other two were Andrea's godparents and my neighbor so invitations seemed like overkill.

They came all the way from Pennsylvania and it was

so great to have them with us!

So let's talk food and decorations! The party was at the house, which made party prep a little easier. I worked on things as I had the time and just set them in the dining room as I completed them.

I got a heart punch on sale at JoAnn's and made the cupcake toppers

with some gold glitter scrapbook paper and toothpicks.

Sofia even helped make a couple of them!

I also wanted macarons and I couldn't find them anywhere

around here so Aimee brought some from Pennsylvania.

Oh yeah, it was fancy.

I may have done a little much in the sweets department. We had cake, cupcakes, macarons, creme puffs, cookies and brownies in addition to regular food. Also, we had the party at three in the afternoon and that makes for horrible lighting so my pictures aren't the greatest. My apologies, but you get the idea.

These beautiful and tasty cookies are from

Southern Sugar Bakery

and pictures don't do them justice. They were gorgeous

and I'm crazy impressed that they do all the designs by hand.

I'd asked the lady making the cookies to use/find gold glitter

but she couldn't so we made do with yellow.

However, my neighbor Monica made the creme puffs and

she found gold glitter at Marshall's so she wins.

I made a pineapple lemonade and floated some frozen strawberries

for our pink and gold drink and it was a hit.

Whenever I make punches, I'm always worried they'll be too sweet

but this one was just right.

By comparison, the punch I made for Andrea's baptism gave

everyone a sugar headache and we all had to water it down.

I really shouldn't ever try to modify recipes if I haven't tried them first.

I'm bummed I didn't get a shot of the cake once it was cut, but

I promise the layers were beautiful and even and it

tasted great to boot!

I doctored a box cake this time but for Sofia's birthday I think I'm going to

try my hand at making a cake from scratch.

For the regular food, we had ham and turkey sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, white bean dip, hot spinach and artichoke dip, and pureed pea crostinis and hummus with sun-dried tomato crostinis. I wanted to have more food but they all convinced me that what we had was plenty. For me, it's not a party without cake and food and I would consider it a terrible faux pas if I invited people to my party and I didn't have anything to feed them. Also, I'm learning about portioning! We usually have way too much food left over at the end of our parties and this time the leftovers weren't overwhelming. We only ate on them for a couple of days versus the week we were eating tiny sandwiches and meatballs that we had at Sofia's second birthday party. And third birthday party. I'm telling you, I'm getting good at this birthday party thing.

I kept decorations pretty minimal, but I knew I wanted to showcase Andrea's weekly pictures. I took Sofia's weekly pictures too but I couldn't get it together enough to have them printed in time for her party and I didn't want to make the same mistake again. Again, the lighting was terrible but I bought teeny clothespins and spray painted them with gold glitter paint and they turned out so cute! For some reason, I didn't think that 52 pictures was going to be that many and I envisioned one string of photos and I was going to have her one week and one year picture on each end. Please note: 52 pictures is a lot. It doesn't seem that way but it is. Remember that.

People had varying opinions on her changes; some said she stopped changing around fourteen weeks, some said you could see subtle changes every week. I really liked seeing all the pictures side by side because being with her 24-7 sometimes makes it difficult to notice the little changes and for the record, I saw changes in every single week once I had the opportunity to see the pictures all together.

I got the wood frames at Michael's and spray painted them with gold glitter and

glued some cardstock to the backs to frame the pictures.

I found gold glitter stick-on letters at Michael's and that

saved me a ton of time making the banner.

I made another one for the dining room archway

that said Happy 1st Birthday Andrea,

but I didn't get a shot of that one.

We wrapped some balloons on the newel post and that was it for decorations.

I wanted to make a tassel garland for the stair rail but

we ran out of time and a tassel garland is harder to make

than it looks.

Besides, Andrea was the star of the show anyway.

It's not a first birthday if you don't have some baked goods to smash.

That's a rule.

We all sang to Andrea and Sofia and Aimee's son Carter

took care of blowing out the big candles.

I didn't plan that, but I'm so glad they had something to blow out

because Sofia definitely didn't understand that this wasn't her party

and was a little confused that all this wasn't for her.

I'm pretty sure Andrea didn't know it was for her either,

but I know she loved her cupcake.

After a quick bath to wash the cupcake out of her hair,

the birthday girl was back and ready to party.

We had a great time, and once everyone left it was time to clean up.

I mean, it was time to fashion a sassy gold skirt out of the

birthday decorations.

The next morning, the birthday girl

had a wonderful time playing with the tissue paper from her presents.

She could have gotten bags of just tissue paper and she

would have been thrilled.

Whew! I got to finish a post, Andrea's birthday party is in the bag, Sofia's party is going to be great, my birthday is tomorrow, we go on vacation in a few days, we're all healthy again, and the kids are taking naps!

I think that calls for a happy dance.

I'm just going to leave this right here.

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 05:31:00 +0000

Hey it's still January, I can say it! You guys! My babies are asleep!

Wait no, forget I said anything. I don't want to jinx myself. But woohoo I get to write!

Let's talk Christmas! How was yours? Ours was awesome and wonderful; it was just us in the house and it was peaceful and fun and just what we needed.

Andrea's two front teeth poked through two days before Christmas.

How's that for timing?

Sofia was much more aware of Christmas this year and it was so much fun

to watch her open presents and be so enthusiastic.

"Oh wow this is AWESOME!"

"This is so COOL!"

She got ALL the dress-up dresses this year and she wears them

all multiple times a day.

She loves her big and poufy Rapunzel dress the most, but they

all see heavy rotation.

Of course, Andrea was more interested in the paper and boxes

than the actual presents but it's all good.

After Christmas, we headed out of town because they had to do some work on the house and we didn't want to have to dodge workers with two small kids in the house. Yeah, they had to do work on our brand new house. Let me tell you something, this new house thing is is a trip. HGTV lied to me; I thought when you go into a brand new house it's all "Wow! It's so beautiful and perfect! Everything is in its place and in perfect working order, let's sit in our brand new kitchen and marvel at our good fortune!" In real life? Doors don't close all the way, walls have to be ripped out because they were done wrong the first time, it takes four tries to get the shower built right, lights take forever to get installed, cracks appear overnight, and it's an endless stream of workers fixing something.

So instead of dealing with all that, we drove a few hours south to Kiawah Island, South Carolina and we had ourselves a birthday/New Year cele-cation. You know, celebration and vacation? It's a new word, I just made it up, go with it.

It was chilly, but we bundled up and had a little beach time.

Sofia got a fishing pole and was eager to see if she could catch anything.

She didn't have any luck that day, but we have plans to get back out there

and catch us some fish.

New Year's Eve was Drew's birthday and we had Carolina barbeque for

his birthday lunch. Sofia loved the burnt ends, which is major because

these days she is the pickiest eater on the planet and it drives me

absolutely insane.

Andrea on the other hand, eats like a grownup and that day she did WORK

on a catfish po' boy. My sweet baby can EAT and she claps her hands

every time I strap her into her highchair.

"It's yogurt time y'all!"

We stayed at the Andell Inn and ERMAHGERD. That hotel is the most beautiful hotel I've ever stayed in and I wanted to take a picture of every single thing and bring it all into my home. Oh wait, I *did* take pictures of every single thing so I can bring it all into my home.

I need this rope bench swing thing on my front porch

and that light may look a little garish in the daylight but it was

AWESOME at night. I really just wanted to sit on the rope bench swing and just

stare at the light like a human moth.

At $5200 a pop, I won't *quite* be able to have those chandeliers but

good LORD they were gorgeous.

This dumpy, squishy, soft and divine leather sofa was absolute perfection

and the small people in my home would destroy it in 2.5 seconds.

I want a console table for our entry and Drew is going to build one for me.

He doesn't know that yet.

This giant mirror is VELVET. And TUFTED.

And I DIED when I saw it.

Then I came back from the dead and went into the women's restroom

where I DIED again when I saw these mirrors.

I NEED these mirrors in my bathroom.

Oh sure, go ahead and tie some branches together and make a completely

bad-ass egg chair.

Then, why don't you put it right next to some completely kick-ass

modern wingback chairs and because I haven't had enough heart attacks,

stick a Sputnik floor lamp right in between them.

Oh, sorry for tripping you, that was just my tongue on the floor.

I'm gonna need this giant head-scratcher chandelier in my entry

please and thank you.

I've actually seen these mirrors on Pinterest as a DIY somewhere.

Sometime. Maybe I'll do it myself and I'll become a Pinterest sensation.

Is that a thing?

I don't even know. I'm high off reliving these design moments.

I'm not playing you guys, I live and breathe design and this hotel was

a freakin' dream come true.

Plus also, can someone please cut down a GIANT DAMN TREE and

make it into a table for me?

After our wonderful and relaxing cele-cation, we came home to our

beautiful perfect house. HA! They are STILL doing work!

I'm pretty sure these houses have guest bedrooms not for guests

but for the workers who never ever leave because the

work is never ever done.

If I ever get to blog again, I'm going to tell you about our shower.

The shit is EPIC.

That picture is of the carpet runner that I would like to eventually have installed on our stairs. The dog is killing the wood with her nails and I live in fear of the kids slipping on the stairs and falling to their deaths so a runner is in order. Except! Runners are STOOPID expensive and frankly, we ain't got it. So until the bank account gets a leeeetle fatter, we have to wait on a stair runner, but I still had them come out and measure and give me a price, just so I have a number in my head when I'm vomiting over the expense.

PS, the one I chose is the bottom left, not the beige one.

I wanted something fun but muted and this one sang to me, and

with a new sofa and new rug, the runner will be perfect.

Of course, that's not going to be for a while because

we have other stuff we have to pay for first,

but I have a vision and it's awesome.

For the time being, I'm limited in my house decorating because we took a massive hit when we sold the house in Reading. If we had had a crystal ball and we'd known we were only going to be in Pennsylvania for two years, we wouldn't have done anything to the house, because redoing the kitchen, laundry room and front yard cost a pretty penny and we didn't recoup those expenses. So, we have to let the savings account rest from the beating it took before we start again with the decorating and the spending.

That doesn't mean I can't do *any* decorating; I've actually gotten some things accomplished since I last wrote and it's enough to keep my creative needs satisfied. If the kids stay on this current sleeping streak, I may actually get to write about it!

Currently, my creative outlet is being channeled towards Andrea's first birthday. YES Y'ALL. My baby is going to be A YEAR OLD in less than two weeks. I don't even know how that happened and I'm in shock. I know everybody says it, but I truly feel like I had her yesterday and I still vividly remember her newborn diapers.

Her birthday is all pink and gold, errywhere and it's going to be great.

Everything is coming together and I'm so excited for the big day

and you know I'll be back to share all the glittery details!

It's a Christmas miracle

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 06:16:00 +0000

You know, that I'm actually getting to blog. Between endless house stuff and these kids not sleeping EVER, I was beginning to feel like I was never going to get to blog again. I hate that it's been over two months that I've been here. Even the spammers thought I was gone for good. I started getting tons of ridiculous spam comments on random old posts, like I'd abandoned my blog and the cockroaches tried to take over.

But I've shoo'd them away and I'm once again dusting off my poor little blog and once again hoping that it won't be this long before I post again.

And since I'm OCD I have to pick up where I left off, so bear with me for a second. I'll just hit the high points.

When we moved to Pennsylvania, one of the first things I was excited about was how close we were to New York City. I swore we were going to be in the City like every other week because it was so close. It never happened. Even though we were only two hours away, we never got around to going until it was time to move away. It was our last weekend in our house before the movers came, and my two girlfriends and I packed up our eight children and we spent two days in the City and it was awesome!! It was hectic with all those kids but completely and totally awesome and I'm thrilled that we got to do it.

The one and only thing I wanted to do was go to the Museum of Natural History and take a picture with the T Rex.

The kids were completely melting down but I was totally geeked out.

It was an adventure and I'm so glad

we got to make the trip.

We also took the kids to Frozen on Ice.

Such a fun night!

Then the movers came and packed our house and

we went to stay with friends for a week

before we moved away for good.

Our last night in Pennsylvania coincided with

the annual Halloween party.

This year we were residents of Pixie Hollow.

Drew was Lord Milori, I was Queen Clarion and

Andrea was a Tink in training.

God, she's so cute. How is it that she'll be a year old in two months?!

I couldn't get a shot of my Tinkerbell

until after we'd done our trick or treating and she was

assessing her loot.

Even then she wouldn't put her wings or her shoes back on.

Such is life with a three year old.

Before we left for good,

we had to get one last shot of the three musketeers.

One last shot of the moms.

I miss them so much...

Immediately after the party, we loaded the cars and with many tears and hugs we headed south. We spent the night in Virginia, got a little sleep and finished the drive to North Carolina the next morning.

Stretching our legs and taking a selfie at the gas station.

And bing bang boom, we were driving up to our new home!

We arrived just before Halloween, so it's been what, a month and a half now? It seems like it's been longer, as nearly all of the boxes are unpacked, but of course it's going to be a while before everything is they way I want it. Every week I try to do one decorating thing; it'll take a while but I'm getting there, baby steps at a time. Our first night, Drew and I were laying in bed, just looking at each other. "This doesn't feel real. It feels like we're house-sitting for somebody else, somebody more grown-up than us." It's so weird to call this our home, but Drew has worked so hard to provide for us and he has absolutely earned it. The least I can do is make it pretty for our little family.

So bit by bit, I'm hanging pictures, I'm arranging stuff and it's feeling more like *our* home, and I think it's high time we had ourselves a house tour. Of course, we'll call these the before shots....

Here's my entryway.

I'm kidding I'm kidding! No one wants to see pictures of bare walls! That would be an incredibly boring house tour, so I ran around taking pictures of everything yesterday afternoon. THIS is what my house looks like, for real. These are the real before pictures and I'm warning you, the house is a wreck.

Let's play "What Needs to Change!"

The wine rack is what you see right when you come in, just so you know what kind of people we are. My mom came to help out right after we moved in, so while she watched the kids, I was able to unpack boxes and even get some decorating done. I spray painted the wine rack and it's a vast improvement over the reddish wood that it was before. The marble top is still cracked and at some point we'll probably replace it, but it's good for now.

This is the drop spot for all our junk and I desperately need to get a handle on it. I need a spot for keys, the dog's leash and Drew's headphones, and I need to find new homes for all the other stuff on there.

The entryway is nice and big with a wide hallway, but

I need to do something with that left wall.

The dining room is to the left and I want to replace that bench.

I keep meaning to pull the two dining chairs at the end of the table to either

side of the buffet but I just haven't gotten around to it.

I don't like that you can't see the buffet all that well but I'll figure something out.

I had the movers put it like this at first but Drew

thought it looked better the other way.

I'm going to go for something like this in the dining room.

One of these days.

image courtesy

The butler's pantry is through the dining room

on the way to the kitchen.

We had them take out the upper cabinet and tile the whole wall.

Eventually, we'll put in a couple of floating shelves.

For now, it's the drink station.

The main pantry is across from the butler's pantry and

It. Is. Everything.

My mom organized it and sometimes I go in

there to just stare at everything in its place and I feel calm.

I love my pantry.

There's my big ol' messy kitchen.

I love it so much.

They finally changed out the Jesus fish lights to the ones I originally chose, but the third pendant is on backorder somewhere and I'll probably get it when Andrea is in kindergarten. These lights have been the bane of my existence. However, the rest of the kitchen is beyond lovely and I love everything about it. I love the glass subway tile, I LOVE my soapstone island, I love the countertops, I love my white cabinets and I LOVE all the space. It's a pretty awesome kitchen if I do say so myself. One day, I'm going to get three barstools for the island, but for now this is how we're living.

The breakfast nook needs window treatments like woah.

Our back porch is screened in and I had high hopes for having a cute outdoor living

situation, but it gets drenched when it rains so

I don't know what's going to end up happening out there.

Check out our awesome Christmas tree.

Sofia kept taking the ornaments she could reach and throwing them

all over the house so I had to toddler-proof our tree.

We have an open floor plan so I can see the family room from the kitchen, which I love. There was a wall in the old house and I hated not being able to see the kids while I made dinner so this set up is a million times better. Eventually, we'll hang the TV over the fireplace and put bookshelves where the TV is now. You know, one of these days.

The guest bedroom and bath and the mudroom are also down here but I forgot to get pictures. They're pretty basic and the guest bedroom is so bare; there's just a dresser and bed in there, our poor guests.

The stairs to the second floor are in the family room, I was picky about that. I'm not a fan of seeing stairs right when you walk in a house, so instead of the staircase coming straight down and spilling out into the entryway, they turn and go into the family room.

Standing on the stairs.

And Sofia has a star over her because she's naked.

She's always naked.

I'd like to get a sectional, and when the tree is down,

we'll move the chair over to that corner and

obviously we need window treatments here too.

The playroom is at the top of the stairs, and that room

is nowhere near where I want it to be, but the toys are somewhat corralled.

Eventually, this TV cabinet will go up to the third floor and we'll

hang the TV on the wall so we can have more space.

I need to organize so much in this room.

But at least I organized the crayons!

Previously, they were jumbled up and hidden in a drawer

and they never got used.

This way, they're accessible and getting played with.

I have no idea why I didn't open the shade in Andrea's room

to take pictures. Again, please consider these the before shots.

Craigslist here is awesome. North Carolina is known for their good furniture and Craigslist does not disappoint. I scored her dresser soon after we moved in and I love it. It's a little beaten up but it's going to be even more gorgeous with a new coat of paint. I'm staying with the pink and gold theme in here and I plan to sew a cover for the floor pouf. Eventually.

My neighbor's husband hung the shelf for me and I plan to put a frame collage

under the shelf or maybe drape one of those rag buntings.

I like them? I think?

I'm not sure.

image courtesy

Sofia's room is somewhat set up, but of course

there's a ton I want to do with it.

Her last bedroom was navy and raspberry and I'm

staying with the blue and pink theme,

but this time it's peacock and bubble gum.

I took my inspiration from her storage boxes.

I'm absolutely in love with her storage boxes and I snatched them up when they went on sale. Drew built Sofia's dress-up caddy over a year ago and I finally got around to painting it when my mom was in town. Honestly, I'm happiest when I'm painting something and time to paint is the best gift anyone can give me. That, and some new boots. I want some new boots.

Anyway, Sofia's room! Yeah, it needs help.

I found some peacock sheets at Target and her lamp still works in the room,

but those poor walls! They need art, stat!

Sofia has a big walk-in closet and she has a Craigslist dresser in there, so the dresser in her room is more of a catch-all for toys. Her room is a great size and I like the furniture placement, but I just need to tweak some things.

And then there's the master bedroom, or 'owner's retreat.'

I guess master bedroom isn't PC anymore?

I had no idea.

Maya's in here with us too, because it felt cruel to make her sleep downstairs by herself. I kind of don't even like the kids to be sleeping in their own rooms, but they seem to end up in our bed at some point during the night anyway.

Oh look! More windows that need curtains!

Once I get things truly decorated, I'll take pretty pictures.

Right now, I'm just happy to be blogging.

Obviously, this is from move in day.

But this bathroom is so fantastic.

I love it so very very much.

I mean, I *would* like to do something with those builder mirrors,

the counters already look cluttered and it needs more decor,

but it's still so so SO much better than the

"master bath" we had in Reading.

SO much better.

The girls love the big tub and

maybe one day I'll get to take a bubble bath in there

with a glass of wine and a book.

A girl can dream...

There's a third floor too, but I didn't get any pictures of that because it's just a big room with another trio of windows. One of these days, it'll be workspace for Drew and me, where I can sew and do my crafty stuff and he can do work stuff. One of these days. We have a long way to go to making this house our home, but if you gauge lived-in by how big your mess is, then we are most definitely home.

Whew! That was a monster of a post, but now my OCD is at peace and now I feel all caught up. I sure hope it's not another two months before I can come back. I miss writing and I miss checking in with you. I hope you're all well, and just in case I don't get back here before Christmas, have a very merry Christmas! I hope all your wishes come true!

Wanna see my new house?

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:50:00 +0000

Hot damn, am I blogging? Is this really happening? Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit! *I'm moving down South, I have to practice my Southern sayings.*

All you moms that have kids that are good sleepers; stop what you're doing and thank whoever it is you thank because having one kid that doesn't sleep is no fun. Two that don't sleep is a downright injustice. I've hired a sleep consultant. Maybe one day I'll tell you about it, but not today. Not right now because we've got some house decoratin' to talk about!

In precisely two weeks, fourteen short days, the movers will arrive to pack up our little house here in Reading and begin the trek down south to Nohrth Carolinah (It's not so easy to type with a Southern accent, doncha know.)

We'll take possession of the Beast on October 28th.

He's ditched the yellow exterior

and he's looking quite dapper.

If you're building a new house from scratch with a custom builder, it can take up to a year or more. Our house is built by a production builder and if you start from scratch with them, it can take about six months. We found our house when it was framed in, so it was about halfway done. They were roughly two weeks from putting up drywall and furnishing it with their own builder basic stuff. If we'd found it after they'd done that, we probably wouldn't have gotten the house because what's the fun of buying a new house if you can't pick out your own light fixtures?

So, we pulled the trigger and made a last minute trip down to Raleigh to pick out finishes.

Andrea's first time in first class.

She's so posh.

Drew's company covered plane tickets for the two of us for our homefinding trip but not Sofia. We bought plane tickets two days before we traveled and in real life that would've been a billion dollars, AND we were only going to be gone for a night, so we left her with friends. I knew she was in good hands and I got lots of text messages and pictures and she barely knew we were gone. Still, I felt naked, like a piece of me was missing. I'm going to be a complete mess when she goes to kindergarten and I'll probably need to be institutionalized when she goes to college. We're not even going to talk about when the baby of the family leaves me, but I digress.

It was a whirlwind trip. Usually, people get three days to pick out everything for their house, from kitchen faucets to bathroom sinks. We got three hours.

Thankfully, I have a black belt in Pinterest and I read design blogs every spare second I have, so three hours was enough for me.

We started in the kitchen, because that's the most important room to both of us and it would be the easiest. First off, I knew I wanted a white kitchen. I loved our white kitchen in Dallas, and if our painter (and Drew) hadn't vetoed me, I would've painted our kitchen in this house.

Hi there, Dallas kitchen!

I have a better picture of our Reading kitchen somewhere

but I can either keep typing or keep looking for it.

I'll keep typing.

You get the point; the Reading kitchen was good to us too.

Then there's the Beast.

Aren't you so impressed?!

I'm just kidding. They'd already ordered and picked the cabinets when we found the house, so I couldn't do anything about that, but thankfully they were white and I was able to pick out everything else.

This is where we're going with the kitchen.

The gray glass subway tile was a no-brainer and I picked that out immediately. I also knew I wanted to mix the countertops and I have a pretty serious love affair with soapstone. That's on the right and that's what'll the island will be made from. The quartz under the subway tile will be the other countertops and of course, white cabinets.

I am incredibly nervous and I'm crossing everything I have that it will turn out pretty because it's super hard to envision an entire kitchen with small samples but that's what we had to do.

I picked the cups instead of handles for the drawers and the cabinets will have knobs.

These I'm not so nervous about because

I LOVE cups.

First the cabinets went in.

Sorry for the picture quality but this is all I have

of this stage.

Then they installed my CUPS.

My beautiful soapstone island is underneath that paper

and I can't wait to see it.

But wait, you need to see what's in that doorway, just beyond the kitchen.

Pa-POW!

That, my friends, is the sexiest walk-in pantry you have ever laid your eyes on. Do you have ANY IDEA how excited I am about this pantry? No, you do not. Any idea you may have you'd have to multiply it by 15,682 to even approach how excited I am about this pantry. This pantry means I get to do things like this:

Oh good Lord the organization.

The containers.

I can't breathe.

image courtesy

I could stare at organized pantries for hours.

HOURS.

I love organized pantries and I'm about to get one!

I may need to take a moment.

image courtesy

The island will have a beautiful white farmhouse sink with a gorgeous faucet that I'm quite certain is the prettiest faucet I've ever laid eyes on, and I almost didn't get it. You see, while I was picking things out for the house, Drew was in another room on a conference call and I found it's dangerous to let me loose in a design center. There are just too many pretty things just laying around, begging me to put them in our house and there are no price tags anywhere!

So when I chose my faucet and then Drew came in and was all How much is this, how much is that, he nearly stroked out when he heard the price of the faucet. But it's in the island! It'll be seen! You can't just have any old faucet in the island, it has to be pretty, like jewelry! He grumbled and moaned, but I got my faucet. And of course I suck because I don't have a picture of it. But I promise to have pictures of everything once it's all done.

I DO have pictures of the lights though. The builder standard was to put three small lights over the island and I knew I wanted two big ones, so I quickly leafed through their catalog and found the ones I liked.

Bottom row, second one from the left.

They're awesome and I love them and I can't wait

to see them in real life.

So can you tell me what the HELL is wrong with this picture?!

The Jesus fish lights are the builder standard and it took me 2.5 seconds to shut it down. I wanted BIG lights over my island. Big, SHINY lights. I did NOT want three tiny Jesus fish lights.

So WHY. In the HELL. Did they put the wrong lights in my new house? Our realtor down in Raleigh took these pictures and emailed them to both of us, but Drew saw them first. He was standing in the living room looking at his phone and he said "Oh shit." I was like "What?" "Oh. SHIT." "WHAT?" *nothing* "What are you oh shitting about?" "They put in the wrong lights." "WHAT?!?!?!?!!!!!"

I was livid. It was nine o'clock at night. I wanted to get on the phone and bitch everybody out. Three lights where there are supposed to be two is a big deal. They're going to have to cut two more holes, patch the original three, the ceiling will look like shit and I was PISSED. I was ranting and raving and cursing and Drew was like "Calm the F down!" "I will NOT calm down! This is huge! This is terrible! The ceiling is going to look terrible! What the Fuck! How did they miss this! We have a list of everything that's supposed to go in the house! Did they not READ the LIST? Did they think they could just put in any old lights! Call somebody!!"

You guys, thank God for my husband. If it were me, I seriously would've woken somebody up screaming all kinds of obscenities. I would've insulted everyone and their dogs. I'd be in my car, driving to Raleigh that second. Thankfully, my husband's cooler head prevailed and he sent a pointed yet professional and polite email pointing out the huge error. I read it and I was like "You're too nice! Move over, I'M writing the email. They need to KNOW they screwed up my lights!!" Thankfully, he did not move over, I did not send the email and the builder is fixing everything before we close. I'm breathing into the metaphorical paper bag that the ceiling won't look like swiss cheese when it's all said and done.

Moving on to happier things...

This is the beautiful, awesome and BIG vanity in the master bath. You guys! No more board over the sink! That low counter is where I get to sit and put makeup on! I'll get to have a dedicated spot for all my pretties! I'll have drawers and cabinets for all my things! Drew and I can get ready at the same time and it's going to be amazing!

Again, I'm nervous about my choices

but the samples sure were pretty.

This is my inspiration picture for the master shower.

Cross your fingers for me that it ends up looking good.

Is this not the biggest most awesome master bath EVER?!

Our current master bath is the size of that shower.

And hell yeah that's a walk in closet!

With a window in it!

I'm actually more excited to bathe the girls in that giant tub than I am

to soak in it. I've never really been a bath person...

This is going to be such an incredible improvement over our current bath

situation; there is barely any space for me to properly reach them without banging

my knee on the toilet so the new bathroom is going to feel like heaven!

Obviously, Sofia is behind the star and you can't see anything,

but you can't be too careful when you're

putting baby bath pictures on the web...

As for the floors, we went with an engineered hardwood with a handscraped finish. Apparently, with engineered wood, if it gets damaged, you can just pop out the damaged plank? I don't know a lot about it, but dogs and real hardwoods don't mix so well. Plus I'm hoping that with the distressing, the inevitable scratches and scrapes from Maya's claws will be less noticeable. Again, I'm nervous and I'm crossing my fingers.

Because that's the hardest part about picking stuff out for a house. Small samples sometimes don't translate to large spaces but you don't know until it's in place and then there's not a lot you can do about it. I'm hoping that by going with a mostly neutral palette that it won't be too hard to mess up and things will go together. Additionally, a neutral background will allow me to bring in color with accessories, which are much easier to change and much less costly than stuff like repainting your whole house.

Speaking of paint, I had three choices when it came to wall color. That's the other thing about new construction - everything is an upgrade. You want running water? Upgrade. Indoor toilets? Upgrade. Every upgrade you make drives up the cost of the house so you can mess around and start with an affordable house and end up with a giant nasty mortgage because of your fancy kitchen faucet. I mean...

So, I could have chosen a different paint color but that would have been another upgrade and paint isn't a big deal. We can do that ourselves later if we so choose. Thankfully, there was one good one in my three choices and Repose Gray is a nice neutral that won't shout at you from all corners of the house. Also, I'm kind of digging what this blogger has going on in her house. I'd cut down the number of patterns in one space, but something about her living room speaks to me.

Plus, we're dog twins so that's something, right?

image courtesy

How sweet is this bedroom?

Incidentally, tissue paper poms are super hard to make.

I tried to make some for the first time for Andrea's baptism

and I never got past the first one.

image courtesy

So that's where we are with the new house! Obviously, there's a ton more to talk about: I haven't gotten into the plans for the living room, or where the kids' playroom will be, and I'm going to get a crafting and sewing space and I'm beyond thrilled about that! I have a Pinterest board for the new house, so if you'd like to take a peek I'd sure be obliged. *I'm practicing my Southern speech. Don't want to stick out down there, you know.*

There's still a ton to do to get ready to move out and the time is ticking away. There are holes to patch, walls to paint, clothes to pack, calls to make but I'm getting so excited for this new chapter. Already, Sofia is asking "Are we going to move to North Carolina TODAY?" I'm so glad she's excited too, but I won't lie, I'm wary of her reaction when it sinks in that her buddies aren't coming with her.

These have been her homies for the last two years and

it won't be easy to get on without them.

That's the story my friends! Thanks for hanging in there with me and hopefully this sleep consultant will work some magic and I can get my nights back and start writing more! Have an awesome day and I hope to be back soon!

Movin' on up

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 05:39:00 +0000

Listen! Do you hear it? It's the angels; they're singing!

Have you ever seen such a beautiful thing?

That, my friends, is a fully executed contract for the sale of our house! That's right, you heard me, we're under contract!

But let's talk pros and cons...

I spent several nights of laying in bed staring at the ceiling going What have we done? This was the stupidest thing we could have done, this is going to bite us in the ass so hard, why did we do this, holy shit I'm scared, can we back out? How much money will we lose if we walk away now?

You see, we took a HEE-YOOGE risk and bought a house in Raleigh before we sold our house in Reading. Last time, it took us ten months to sell the house in Texas and we were apart for nearly that entire time, with Drew going back and forth from Dallas to Reading. It was terrible and I didn't want a repeat of that. However, I also didn't want the nightmare of a double mortgage with a vacant house in another state. I had nightmares of the pipes freezing and bursting and no one knowing about it until it was too late, I was worried about vandals and squatters destroying our house because isn't that a thing? Leave your house vacant and the squatters will come? Anyway, I was sure that would happen to us and I was terrified. I had wanted to wait to look for a house until we actually sold but Drew was not on board with that idea.

We went down to Raleigh once, supposedly to get to know the city and don't you know we found a house. I knew that was going to happen and that was the main reason why I didn't want to even go down there. Now we were in the position of having to decide between getting it right then or being okay with losing it if we waited. Drew was not okay with losing it and neither of us was really okay with being apart for a long time if the house in Reading didn't sell. There were so many late night conversations, so much back and forth and in the end we pulled the trigger and commenced to biting our nails and second guessing ourselves.

The whole double mortgage thing aside, I wasn't sure even I even wanted this new house. For one thing, I like old houses. Our first house was built in the 20s, with all kinds of charm and character.

Hi there, Old House.

We sure do miss you.

You were good to us, Second House.

You've served us well.

And then there's this guy.

The Beast.

The Behemoth.

The House on the Hill.

This house is roughly three times the size of our current house; it's kind of obscene and I won't lie, I had misgivings about it. I felt like it was too big, that we were biting off more than we could chew, that we don't need a house that big, I'm not a suburb type person, I want a yard with giant mature trees, subdivisions are so cold and soulless, I'm better suited to quirky small older homes, new houses have no charm, they have no story, I want a house with a story and character and past and what the hell am I going to do with all that space?

Then Drew started talking. For all my romanticizing of old homes, they're not without their issues. Old homes have teeny bathrooms and teeny closets. In both of our houses, the 'master' bathroom was barely big enough for a toilet, tiny sink and shower stall. Both of us couldn't be in the bathroom at the same time without somebody hitting some body part on something hard and cursing about it. Forget having two small kids and a giant dog in there at once, except I can't forget it because that's how I go to the bathroom every day of my life. Why everyone has to watch me pee is beyond me, but that's how it is.

Old homes are also rarely energy efficient. Even though our house has all new windows, you could tell in the winter where seals weren't especially tight and our utility bill reflected that. We also have creaky floors which are a nuisance when I'm walking the halls trying to get Andrea to sleep without waking everyone else.

Old houses almost always need fixing up. I actually love that about old houses; I love the refinishing and the painting and uncovering something cool, but again that's me romanticizing things. The reality of fixing up a house is chaos.

The reality is having your entire kitchen on your dining room table

for weeks on end.

Additionally, unless you're independently wealthy, which we aren't, and have loads of cash laying around, which we don't, the reality is you're fixing up your house with your own two hands on nights and weekends a little bit at a time for a very very VERY long time. That was the nail in the old house coffin. Drew looked at me and said "I don't want to spend my free time fixing up a house. I want to spend my free time with my kids."

Ugh. Way to play the kid card dude. What the hell can I say to that?

Because that's the reality. Drew has a very demanding full-time job that is NOT bringing my design ideas to life (as much as I wish it were.) He just got another promotion and I'm insanely proud of him, but that means he'll be even busier at work, with even less time for us, much less having any time to hammer and nail stuff.

And I have my hands more than full with both my kids, so as much as I want to pick up the nail gun and nail some boards to walls, the reality is I just don't have that kind of time anymore. Case in point, I'm blogging at one in the morning because that's the only time I get to myself anymore.

Now, at the risk of sounding like someone you want to punch in the face, living in an ugly house was not an option either. I love old houses but I love pretty old houses, not the ones with peeling paint and rickety porches and bats and cobwebs. Our house in Texas was gorgeous and perfect and our house in Reading was freshly redone, so even though they were older, they were not falling down fixer-uppers.

Therefore, all signs pointed to new construction, so begrudgingly, kicking rocks, I decided to give the Beast a chance. I know, punch me in the face for not being falling down grateful for a brand new house.

Just don't punch me too hard, because I'm there now. I'm incredibly thankful that we are fortunate enough to have choices. I know just how blessed we are that we won't have to carry a double mortgage and picking out the finishes for the house *was* pretty cool.

In fact, I'll be right back with all the insanely fun stuff that is designing our new house. But I'll leave you with this breakdancing bear, because

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!

I know what you did this summer

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 17:07:00 +0000

...Is what you'll be able to say when you finish this post! Oh yeah, it's me, I'm back, corny jokes and all. But seriously, I think fall is upon us. School has started for almost everybody and up here, that means the turning leaves and cooler temperatures are just around the corner. Of course, this fall is going to be different in that we're getting out of here and heading south before it gets nasty cold (thank the baby Jesus) so why not take a moment to look back on this past summer?

Without further ado, "What I did this summer" in pictures, by Desiree.

While technically not summer, this was the start of warmer weather and we celebrated by having a homemade Easter egg hunt at the playground in my girlfriend's subdivision. The dads went down and hid the eggs and we had so much fun. Last Easter it was too cold to do anything outside, so this was a real treat.

Checking out her haul with Daddy.

We took the kids to Sesame Place, and you talk about a production!

This is how it is everywhere we go.

Sofia absolutely loved it and didn't stop talking about it for days.

Aimee held the baby and I even got to ride a couple of rides with Sofia!

There was a trip to the Philly Zoo.

The big kids were obviously thrilled about having to indulge

their mothers and take a picture.

We spent some time at the Please Touch museum.

She was all about the carousel and just couldn't understand why we couldn't spend the entire day just riding around and around.

We went out to the Trexlertown Zoo as well.

Of course, Sofia didn't want to feed the cows and insisted

that I do it. Letting a cow lick my hand for my daughter? That's love, people.

One of the coolest parts about the zoo is that there's an ankle deep river (creek?) right next to the zoo and the kids had a blast throwing rocks and splashing around.

I put on my water sling and the baby and I got in there too!

Actually, that was a really awesome day.

Probably one of my favorites this summer.

We also went to Kansas for a week for my high school reunion

and to get some Grandma time. She was over the moon to see them.

Andrea is named for my cousin and

it was high time the two of them met.

Snuggles from Tia.

Then there was the one time this summer that I got dressed up,

put on heels and partied out for my 20-year high school reunion.

It was so much fun and there was much dancing and drinking

and for one night I wasn't a nearly 40 year old mother of two.

I need more nights like that. I mean, I don't need the drinking (I won't lie, it was fun though) but I sure did like getting out and having fun just for me, you know?

The next day, it was back to being a mom

and back to the farm.

I went with a friend from high school and we took our kids

to the Deanna Rose farm where Sofia got to feed

baby goats. It was quite possibly the cutest thing I'd ever seen.

We also took a trip to Raleigh to look for a house,

which I NEED to blog about.

We went to the Durham Museum of Life and Science

and it was so cool.

They had this walking path with all these dinosaurs and I called

myself trying to get on the dinosaur for a picture.

It didn't work.

Then we found a house and I got to pick out all the stuff that's going in it.

This is going to be my kitchen and I seriously hope it ends up looking good.

It was a super last minute trip and Drew's company would only pay for

plant tickets for Drew and me so for the second time ever, we left Sofia with

friends for two nights. It was so hard but I knew she was in good hands

and picking out house stuff went so much more smoothly without a busy little

girl running around touching everything.

It was such a great summer; we hung out at the pool, we had lots of playdates at our friend's houses, we ate lots of ice cream, we caught fireflies, we stayed up late, we slept in, we watched movies and ate popcorn, went to birthday parties and tons of other stuff in between.

That's what we did this summer! Now, we're gearing up for our next adventure in our move down to Raleigh. The movers have been tentatively scheduled and we have a closing date on the new house. Now all we have to do is go under contract on the house here and things will be perfect. I'm still crossing my fingers on that one. Cross your fingers with me, my friends!

When they're in high school

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 04:03:00 +0000

That's when I'll get to blog again. Sofia and Andrea sleep in shifts all night long. It's like they have a pact to make sure I never sleep again.

I have a lot to share and I'm sure they'll be in high school before I get to share it.

We bought a house in Raleigh.

It's new. It's big.

I've never lived in a brand new house. I wish I could share all my thoughts and questions; someone please tell my kids to sleep so I can blog.

My baby started her second year of preschool last week.

I made a sign.

She's growing way too fast.

Baby Sister's growing like a weed too.

She can sit up by herself, she's eating solid food,

and I'm pretty sure crawling is just around the corner.

I have so much more to share, but it'll have to be later. I swear, if I set an alarm to wake up early, the kids wake up fifteen minutes before the alarm, no matter how early. If I try to put them in bed at a decent hour, they fight until midnight only to wake up a couple hours later. As it is, I feel guilty because I had just started this post when Andrea woke up and I'm nursing her by the light of my keyboard and I really should shut it down so she can sleep because I'm sure the sound of me typing isn't helping things.

Oh well.

I'm hoping it's not another month before I can get back here. If you care about that sort of thing, I'm on Instagram a lot as it's quite conducive to the ten-second posts. I'm daydreamer411, if you're so inclined.

I sure miss blogging though. It's a perfect creative outlet and I miss you, my friends.

I hope you're well and I hope to be back soon.

Fun with needles

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 14:04:00 +0000

It's okay guys, we're just talking about sewing. Nobody panic.

I did these projects a couple of weeks ago and I've been loving life. It's one of those tiny things that has changed my life, I'm not even playing. Wait, let me explain.

But first, pin this shit.

Trust me.

I am super blessed to be able to breastfeed Andrea. I don't take it for granted for even one second; I know how lucky we are that it's somewhat easy for us. We had our challenge dealing with her thrush early on, but thank the baby Jesus that shit is long gone and now she's a breastfeeding champ.

All those delicious leg and arm rolls are

oh so satisfying.

I do so love my baby chunk-a-lunk.

But this is not about the baby. Nope, this one's about me. Specifically, how finding clothes when you're nursing is a pain in the ass. I'm constantly on the lookout for nursing-friendly clothes that don't look matronly or stupid.

I hate these kinds of shirts the most.

Because I could rarely find cute shirts, I defaulted to button-down shirts and v-neck t-shirts and that's all I ever wore. Ever. It sucked and I felt frumpy and I wanted something different. Now, I did luck out and find a couple of shirts that were nursing friendly but I passed on a ton more shirts than I ever bought. Not to mention that I had a closet full of shirts that I couldn't wear because I couldn't nurse in them and the whole thing just pissed me off.

I couldn't believe I'd never heard of nursing undershirts. And while I completely support mom-owned businesses, I support my mom-owned wallet more. Therefore, I need you to *not* charge me $25 plus tax and shipping for something that I can make for cheap or free.

With that, I dug through my drawers in search of a tank top with a straight back. That part is important. Lo and behold, I found seven such tank tops. I bought them a thousand years ago and stopped wearing them because they were so old-school they only came to my waist, not like the more current longer length shirts they make today. I bet you've got some of the same tank tops buried in your drawers too, and if you don't I've heard that Forever 21 has them for like three bucks.

This is so super easy but of course I made it harder on myself and pulled out my sewing machine. Learn from me: You only need a needle and thread for this.

It has to be a tank top just like this one; spaghetti straps and straight across the back.

First, you cut the straps off at the back.

Then you cut the strap short enough to where you can make a loop

from the remaining material, like this.

I nearly broke my sewing machine *again*

trying to sew this loop closed.

It was way too much for such a little space.

You really only need a needle and thread because you're sewing such a small area.

Once I got wise and put my sewing machine away,

it took me no time at all to transform my shirts.

Then you slip the loop around the clip of your nursing bra and you're in business.

Easy as pie and now I can wear whatever kind of shirt I want!

And as a bonus, since I cut the straps the shirt hangs lower; always

great for layering!

I used a blanket as a nursing cover with Sofia for about two weeks and then I tossed that shit because it was way too much hassle, and I ended up just pulling my shirt down and nursing from the top. Unfortunately, even the deepest v-neck t-shirt would eventually get stretched out and after having Andrea, nursing from the bottom was not an option. Even though the baby weight is gone, I still have a stomach because I have no muscle tone anymore. Additionally, I still have bruising and discoloration from the shots so it's pretty likely that my belly will never again see the light of day. My handy-dandy handmade nursing shirts solve both of those problems for me. I no longer have to stretch out the necks of my shirts, I don't have to subject the world to my flabby belly and I'm pretty much covered from both the top and bottom when I nurse. Of course, there's a brief nip flash when I'm latching Andrea but if you see that then you're looking for it and those kind of people are the creeps.

Now, I know that there are other sites and blogs with this exact tutorial but I just wanted to add my contribution because I haven't been this pleased since I figured out to put a board over my sink so I could do my makeup.

Moving right along, I did another project about a week later. That project? THAT mother-fucking project? And yes, I dropped an F-bomb as it relates to sewing because that's how frustrating that shit was. But it's done and it's awesome and now that I know how to do it, I want to make a hundred of them. Maybe.

Sure, it almost killed me but I made it.

I had a MAC brush roll for years and years but I left it in the hotel in Charlotte a while back. To this day, I don't know how it happened because I'm meticulous when it comes to making sure I have all my stuff when I leave a hotel but that fateful time I left behind my brush roll and all my brushes. It killed me. Eventually, I replaced most of my brushes and they were living in a jar in my medicine cabinet.

Last week, I took the girls to Kansas with me for my high school reunion. Obviously, I'd need my makeup brushes but I didn't want to spend the money on a roll when I could just as "easily" make one. I consulted the almighty oracle Pinterest and found a tutorial that said it would take "about an hour." My friends, this mother-effing makeup roll took me THREE mother-effing hours. I made it the night before we left and this became a battle between me and my sewing machine. I was going to finish this damn roll, even if I missed my flight.

Of course, neither child wanted to sleep that night

and instead of battle them, I strapped one in the baby carrier

and set the other up with the iPad so I could finish that damn roll.

After all, it was just going to be an hour right? Ha.

I got all my brushes, some scrap fabric and laid everything out.

Every couple of minutes I'd stop and try to get Sofia to bed,

which added to the entire project time, as well

as the multiple times I locked up my sewing machine with all the tangled thread.

Then I cut another piece, folded it in half and laid it on top.

Pretty straightforward; so far so good.

Then, using my brushes as a guide, I pinned the pocket to the outside.

But this is as far as I got.

Pinning stuff is a pain in the ass.

Skinny pencils and brushes like these need a one-inch pocket.

Fat brushes need an inch and a half.

Once I figured that out, I didn't bother with pinning and just measured my spacing.

The tutorial was decent but it did not cover how to make the ties to keep

the roll closed. It took me a solid hour to figure that out. I was PISSED.

Then I googled it and found this and made the other tie in like five minutes.

No seriously, I was PISSED.

But holy balls, I did it!

I even have room for more brushes or pencils if necessary.

I love the way my makeup brush roll turned out and now that I know how to do it, I'm sure I could do it in less time and I seriously want to make more of them. The actual sewing part probably did take just an hour, it's just that I had to rethread the needle a billion times, untangle the bobbin, reload the bobbin, cut away all the tangled thread.... BUT! I did it!

There you have it, how to be less frumpy while nursing and have a cute holder for your makeup brushes!

I will not ever say I'm good with a sewing machine because I nearly break it just about every time I sew. However, I'm pretty proud of my little sewing projects and if I can do it, then seriously anybody can do it! I'm thinking I might make some more brush rolls as Christmas gifts.

If I start now, I *might* have them done in time...

Bautizo 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:12:00 +0000

Two years ago, I wrote about the baptism of my first child.

Look at my little baby!

This past Sunday, I put the family dress on my second baby and once again, we took our place at church.

Sofia was a year old when she wore it and Andrea is five and a half months,

but it still worked.

Andrea's godparents are here and since we're moving, we wanted to make sure we got her baptized before we left.

It was a no-brainer to ask Aimee if she would

be Andrea's godmother.

She's such a special baby that she gets two

godfathers. Drew's good friend DJ (left) and Matt (right)

stood up for her. Matt's girls are the sweetest

kids you'll ever meet and they just adore Sofia.

We went to Mass before the baptism and that made for a long day for Sofia. This was her first time in church and while I was prepared with snacks and toys, it wasn't long before she became insistent and antsy saying over and over again "Mom, we have to GO. Mom, it's time to GO." Bless her heart, she hung in there but it was just a little much for her.

Between Mass and the baptism.

They were literally jumping around in circles.

I begged her to take her fingers out of her nose, but no dice.

Eventually, she cooperated.

Then it came for the ceremony. We all filed in, symbolizing our

welcome into the Church.

Anointing her chest with holy oil.

That's what she thinks about this whole thing.

Andrea was blowing raspberries, Sofia was just about to melt down

but I got a shot of my girls.

They called us over to the baptismal font (fount? I'm not sure) one by one and as we walked over, the gravity of the whole thing hit me. I haven't stepped foot in church in many many years and there are lots of things I disagree with, but let's face it. I was raised in the Catholic Church and these things are ingrained. They don't just go away. My spirituality is a part of me, for better or worse and I was moved. The symbolism of what we were doing - we were presenting our daughter to the Church - it was major and I was humbled.

When things are major, I usually cry.

This was no different.

Seeing her receiving her blessing, being held

by my dearest friend,

surrounded by people who love my baby and our family,

yeah I was ugly crying.

Of course, Andrea was a champ. The water surprised her but

she didn't cry.

Anointing her forehead with oil.

Holding the baptismal candle, the sign of new life

The baptismal garment, symbolizing purity and innocence

Blowing more raspberries.

I need to get a video of her doing it because it's the cutest thing.

What's on your mind Babe?

For that matter, what's on my mind? Why so serious?

PS, this was where all the families came up to the front to be formally

presented and congratulated.

With that, my baby was baptized. It was such a wonderful day and it was one of those amazing special life moments, you know?

All special life moments require cake.

And macarons. That's a rule.

Poor baby. This whole party was for her and she
got no cake, no macarons, no sandwiches, no punch.
Life's just not fair.

I don't know why words are failing me right now to describe how much this meant to me. All of it - being in church with my family, sitting next to my husband singing the hymns that I remembered from grade school, saying the prayers just like I remembered all those years ago, presenting my daughter just like I'd presented my daughter two years prior, seeing the water wash over her little forehead, having feelings about church and religion in general, yet feeling that twinge when the priest talked about marriage being between one man and one woman (c'mon guys don't mess up this great day), being surrounded by our friends but missing my mom and other members of my family, but feeling very like a matriarch myself, and feeling very much the Woman of my own house....

You guys, it was so much.

I'm so happy we did it and I'm beyond blessed to have such a beautiful family and SUCH wonderful, funny, happy, healthy daughters. Seriously. Blessed. For real.

And I'm looking back at these pictures and I kinda feel the need to talk about my dress. I know it's not about me, but I just have a feeling that maybe someone might take issue with the neckline of my dress in church? I know I was self-conscious, but I needed something low cut so I could nurse. I did Rent the Runway again since I don't own dress up clothes anymore and I needed something knee length, with sleeves, low cut and in my size. This was pretty much my only choice and I kept telling myself that it has to be low cut, I have to be able to nurse. I even practiced a little speech should anyone say anything, but thankfully no one did. Actually, I got a pointed stare in church for Andrea crying, not for me nursing her. I had pumped a bottle just in case but you should have seen the side-eye I got from Andrea when I tried to give it to her.

Anyway, I just feel like I had to point out that I wasn't being disrespectful.

Ok! Enough about me! My baby got baptized! My family is amazing!

Seriously though, it was a great day and we are incredibly blessed and I just wanted to share the day with you, my friends.

Everything and nothing

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 11:50:00 +0000

Ugh, has it been nearly a month since I've been here? So much for 'meaty content' aka 'I'll be blogging omg So Much!' Man, kids and summer will do that to you.

It takes me a couple of hours to write a decent blog post and I just don't have that kind of time anymore. As Sofia gets older and more articulate, she's much more demanding. As in, "Mom, do you want to play with me?" Every Day All The Time. Every time I want to say no, because didn't I *just* play with you, kid?, all the articles and posts I've read about how the time goes so quickly, how play is so important, how they'll remember everything forever, how dare you not play with your kid, but all I really want is some time with just me and my writing, but of course I end up on the floor, playing dolls or cars or blocks. And I'm not *really* complaining because one day she'll want nothing to do with me and I'll long for the days when she was at my heels, begging me to play. I just wish there were a couple more hours in the day, just for me. Just so I can recharge.

Then there's Andrea. My chubby chunk-a-lunk, happy go lucky, babiest baby.

Oh this baby.

She does indeed have every bit of my heart.

True story: I texted my girlfriend the other day because I was convinced something was wrong with her because she took a two hour nap and I'd laid her down more awake than drowsy and she just rolled over and went to sleep. I just knew she had some sort of vitamin deficiency that makes you sleep all the time because Sofia never ever in life went to sleep that easily. Hell, she still doesn't. But my little Andrea will sleep anytime, anywhere and it's never a battle to get her to sleep. Of course, I'm sure I'm jinxing myself as I write this but I really just want to record this for posterity. At one time in my life, I had a kid who slept easily and often. I never thought it could happen to me, but dreams do come true, my friends.

She's a finger and thumb sucker too.

I've tried my hardest to get her to take a pacifier but she just

spits it out and puts her fingers in her mouth.

I sure do hope she outgrows it and doesn't end up sucking her thumb for life.

In house news, it's officially on the market and I'm hoping and crossing my fingers and toes for a speedy sale. We haven't had any showings yet, but we listed it the week of the 4th so I wasn't panicked that no one had called. This week we haven't had activity and that's caused Drew an insane amount of anxiety and guess who gets to deal with that? He asks me nearly every day if I've heard from our realtor, as if I'd forget to tell him, or I'd keep it a secret from him. No really, I'm crossing my fingers, toes AND eyes for a speedy sale because another ten months of that is not the business. Already, I've been like "BABE. Seriously. If I hear anything, you'll be the first to know. SERIOUSLY."

I mean, who wouldn't want our little house?

We didn't actually intend to do the front purely to sell the house. We wanted to clean up the landscaping for our own enjoyment, but as the universe would have it, we got the word that we'd have to move after we'd committed to having the landscaping done. That was a fun little cursing session, and we briefly debated pulling the plug because we didn't want to put more money into a house that we weren't going to live in much longer, but there was that pesky contract we'd signed and hopefully the new front yard would attract buyers.

So they commenced to ripping up the front yard

and Sofia and I spent several mornings watching them work.

At the bottom right, you can see the concrete slab to nowhere that

always bugged me.

I thought a walkway would look better, since you always had to shimmy past the cars

to get to the front porch.

Also, the beds weren't even, as the one on the left (top) was

much skinnier than the right.

Then there was this nasty mess o' weeds on the right side of the driveway.

There was a tree stump in there, a bunch of big rocks and tons of prickly plants

that of course were Sofia's favorites.

They dug all this up and now it's a nice bed of grass.

I wish I'd gotten a better shot, but that tree was massive.

The stump wasn't that big, but the roots were insane.

After a few days of their landscaping magic, we have our new walkway!

The beds are nice and even and it's so much prettier this way.

See, doesn't it look so inviting and symmetrical?

If I were spending more money on the house, I'd get a bench

for the front porch and maybe a planter or two, but

I'll leave that for the new owners.

Remember our awning?

Back in May, we had a hailstorm. Thank GOD it was before we did the landscaping - I think Drew would have set the world on fire if we paid all that money for new plants and stuff only to have it destroyed mere days later by hail.

As it was, I couldn't do anything but watch as my brand new car

got pummeled.

Remember my pretty azaleas in the dog pen?

All gone bye-bye.

Drew was in China at the time, and this was my first hailstorm.

I know I know, I lived in Kansas and Texas, how is this my first storm?

But it was, and truthfully I was a little scared.

Of course, my Sofia was completely fearless and ran outside the second it was over.

"Look Mom! It's balls! It's cold!"

Thanks to the hail, we got a brand new roof.

They also took the awning down. You can see where it's all pockmarked from the hail.

It made no sense to repair or replace it,

as it was original to the house and they don't even make them anymore.

It looks so much cleaner and more open, I'm not sure why we didn't do this before.

Do you see, New Owners?! Do you see the awesome house you get to have? New roof, new landscaping, new laundry room, nice open back patio, I mean really, how can you not snatch this up??

**Please, someone buy my house.**

We haven't even bothered seriously looking at houses in Raleigh because the real estate market is so crazy down there that houses are selling within days of being listed, so there's no point in even looking because we have no idea when we'll be ready to move. The good thing is that Drew won't have to leave until we all leave so I won't have to mess with getting the house ready for showings by myself. It's just that however you slice it, trying to sell your house is no fun and having to wait until it sells before we can get on with the next chapter is just a pain.

Yet, I'm thankful that we have a house to live in. I'm thankful that my husband has a great job that's affording us this move and as always I'm thankful for our collective health and wellbeing that allows us to focus on everything else going on in our lives. If any of those things weren't there, this would be a much different story.

Everything's okay as long as I've got them.

And I sure do love that man.

These kinds of pictures are my favorite and I can't

wait until both girls can hold his hand.

Oh be still my heart.

I could take pictures of the two of them all day.

Who am I kidding, I do.

They're my favorite people.

Vacation this year was down to Williamsburg, Virginia.

We wanted to stay close to home as this was the first time we'd taken

Andrea on a trip and we're traveling again in a couple of weeks.

We didn't get out a ton because this was right after Drew's China trip

and I wanted family time more than tourist time.

So we spent most of our days lounging around the room or down at the resort pool.

We did make it out to The Living Museum and that was fun,

but it was all pool all the time on this particular vacation.

Of course, I got no pictures of our pool time because two kids in the pool requires hyper vigilance and all hands on deck so we have only memories, no photos. Although, I'm going to have to take some pictures before summer is over because Sofia is really doing so well in the pool. She can't go without wearing her floatie just yet, but she's almost there; I can feel it.

There you have it - we've been doing a lot of everything and nothing around here, much like all of you guys I'm sure. So in closing, I sure would appreciate all your good vibes for a speedy sale of our house and hopefully it won't be this long before I get to blog again.

For now, I have to start getting ready to travel. Yup, this time I'm the one who gets to go out of town! Oh yeah, I'm taking both girls with me on a plane by myself. I'm not crazy, not in the slightest. But I sure would stay home if it weren't for a good cause - namely, my 20 year high school reunion.

Good lord, I'm old. Let me go dye my hair and put on some eye cream or something.

Drew of all trades

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 02:48:00 +0000

Let me brag on my husband for a quick second, I really don't do that enough. First off, he's cute. It comes in handy when he's being a pill (which of course is the nice way of putting it.) And yeah, I should probably have put other things first, like his smarts or his devotion to his family but what can I say, I like his butt. And he has an awesome smile.

I mean, of course there's other stuff too. Everything he does is for his family. Seriously, everything. He thinks of us before he thinks of himself, sometimes to his detriment. He will run himself down to the bone for us and while that's not good for anyone, he truly is devoted to us.

I trust him implicitly and I don't need to tell you how major that is. Trust is earned, not given and he has demonstrated over the years that he is the most upstanding man of his word out there.

There's fun stuff too. If you give him a bunch of stuff and tell him to fit it into a particular space, he can do it. You can give him 100 things and a teeny box and he'll magically make it all fit. Seriously, it's one of the things I love about him because it's so cool. Every so often, he'll go through the cupboards and rearrange things and organize them so everything fits and looks nice and somehow we have more space than before. That's the engineer in him.

He is great at parties too. He knows how to work a room without making it look like he's working the room. I love that he's outgoing and loves to entertain. He's an amazing chef and I love how much he loves food. He gets giddy over a fresh loaf of bread - like for real giddy and it's really cute.

Naturally, he's got his areas of improvement - that temper is a monster (which is the nice way of putting it), but overall I'm reminded just about every day that I made the right choice in my husband. If you have to do life, he's the one I'd choose to do it with.

One of Drew's other major talents is that he's quite handy. This is super fantastic because I'm DIY-design-obsessed and I want to try every idea on the Internet. So, last fall when we finished redoing the kitchen, the next and final big project was the laundry room.

This is what we had when we first moved in.

Nasty popcorn type ceiling, off-center light, prison gray walls.

As if doing laundry isn't depressing enough.

Step one was to move the light to the center of the room.

Then we lived with the hole in the ceiling for a while.

Then we got a new washer and dryer and decided to stack them to try and get more space.

We worked with this for a while but it was still depressing.

Last fall, Drew and his friend got started on the renovation for the laundry room with the goal to finish it by the time Andrea was born. That didn't happen but it doesn't matter because the end product is fantastic.

The original ceiling was popcorn-y and terrible. The texture just ate up the light and for a room with very little natural light to begin with, that was not the business. The wall behind the washer and dryer was the same texture and it was just gross. One option is to skim coat it, which means run spackling over the popcorn and sand until smooth. That option is a gigantic pain in the ass. That's when I stepped in and showed them the beadboard ceiling at The House of Smiths. Except, beadboard is also a pain in the ass - from what I understand. I didn't do the cutting and measuring. Drew didn't want to do the cutting and measuring and really just wanted to paint the popcorn, to which I kindly and gently replied, "I Am In Here Nearly Every Day Of My Life And I Want Beadboard."

First panel of beadboard.

I will die on this mountain.

You get your yellow bedroom, I get my beadboard.

Drew and his friend, who is also an engineer, spent many nights last November measuring and cutting and buying new sheets of beadboard because they messed up, and measuring and cutting some more.

A lot of beer and cursing was involved in placing all the beadboard because the

laundry room was an afterthought addition and the ceiling and walls were wavy and uneven.

The engineers were meticulous in their measurements

but there's no accounting for a wavy ceiling.

I started getting nervous because if the beadboard didn't work out,

I'd never hear the end of it.

Then I got really nervous because once it was up,

it didn't look all that great.

There was no turning back now. With the beadboard up, we turned to the sink. I really liked having a sink in the laundry room, I just didn't like the generic utility sink and I didn't want to replace it with a plain silver sink like what's in every laundry room. We searched and searched for something that would jump out at us and one night we found it on Craigslist. It was an antique baby tub that would serve perfectly as a unique sink for the laundry room. I drove out to get it and my handy hubby plumbed and placed it. Incidentally, did you know that with the proper plumbing know-how, you can make just about anything into a sink?

We bought butcher block countertops from Ikea and the boys got to measuring and cutting once again. We unstacked the washer and dryer to have a place to put the laundry basket and other supplies. I really wanted everything to have a home and the laundry basket had been 'living' on the edge of the utility sink. Again, not the business.

Out of the box, the butcher block was too wide, but they ripped it down and

put the raw edge at the back.

They also moved the water lines for better access.

Or something.

Honestly, I'm not sure.

Obviously, this isn't a tutorial on how to redo your laundry room.

The other thing they had to address was the circuit box; namely, I didn't want to see it.

So they bought a cabinet, cut out a hole in the back and put the whole thing

over the circuit box. They're so smart.

They also installed three LED ceiling lights on a dimmer switch because

it's right off the kitchen and the kitchen dims so the laundry room needs to dim too.

I need mood lighting when I'm washing diapers.

Much neater!

Then they cut covers for above and below the cabinet.

They're only three sided and they're not attached to the wall

so they're easy to remove should we need to get to the wires later.

Now that eyesore of a circuit box is all nice and hidden.

Then there was the issue of storage. Our kitchen isn't that big and we don't have a lot of counter or cabinet space. The bigger appliances that didn't get daily use were just sitting on the counter getting in the way so the guys took some more butcher block and made shelves on the wall behind the sink. We moved all the stuff in there and I thought it was going to be a pain to get the blender and bring it into the kitchen whenever I want a smoothie, but it's no big deal. And it *is* nice to have the counter space back. Plus, they even put outlets in the wall so in theory I could have the crockpot going in the laundry room. This is amazing because Sofia regularly climbs up on the counter and I don't have to worry about her touching the hot crockpot and with it on a shelf in the laundry room, it's completely out of reach. Putting outlets out there was seriously a genius move.

Right around this time, the boys ran out of steam and I *think* I'd already had the baby - I can't remember what I did yesterday so remembering what happened last fall is out of the question. We called Bill the Painter to come in and patch all the seams and caulk the gaps and paint the room. We ended up using the same color as the kitchen (Ocean Pearl by Behr) so it would be more cohesive. Since the dog goes outside through the laundry room, the door is always open and we wanted it to look like an extension of the kitchen. Bill did a kick-ass job and you can't see any of the seams, not one.

Scary

Ah-mah-zing!

Gorgeous!

My antique sink with my modern faucet. Love it!

Look at that beautiful ceiling! Not a seam to be found!

This is how it looks today.

And I'm proud to say that in this moment in time,

that heap of clean laundry is folded and put away, thank you very much.

Also, those are peel and stick carpet tiles from Lowe's.

I gave up on trying to have a runner in here,

and the carpet tiles work really well.

We also got an organization system from Pottery Barn

where I keep track of Drew's travel and other stuff.

I have calendars on my phone and computer but you can't

have too many reminder spots.

PS, I got some Nate Berkus push pins from Target because regular push pins just wouldn't cut it in my fancy new laundry room.

These are the stupidest pushpins in existence!

Once you push them in, there's nothing to grab onto so you can

get them back out!

I have to wedge my fingernail underneath the pin and pry it out and it

sucks!

Boo, Nate Berkus. Boo.

Not my hand, btw.

It's whatever.

Back to my pretty laundry room.

Bill the Painter painted the doors French Gray by Glidden

because the old color was sad and ugly.

I had that quart sitting around for ages and had him put it up because I was dying to use it.

It's bluer than I thought it would be but it's a nice contrast with the walls

so I'll keep it.

Also, I can't get over how well he patched all the seams and painted everything

so perfectly. You know what they say: "Caulk and paint will make it what it ain't!"

Another shot of my pretty sink.

Also, we sealed the butcher block with mineral oil.

I learned that little tip from ol' Mr. Google.

I kept meaning to get another trash can that would fit under the counter and move the

dog food bin out to the garage, but I never got around to it.

And now that we're moving, it doesn't make sense to get another trash can

since we don't know what the setup will be in the new house.

Also, grown men shouldn't stand on butcher block countertops when doing ceiling work.

Lesson learned, hindsight 20/20, all that.

We'll probably build a center support to help with the bowing

at some point before we move.

And this is the longest photo caption ever.

Also, if we were staying I'd build a custom

drying rack for the wall to the right of the cabinet

and put a giant stain guide on the wall to the right of the shelves.

I keep meaning to take that poster down from the top of the cabinet too.

Drew put it up there for 'decoration.'

Bless his heart.

However, since we're leaving it doesn't make a lot of sense to put more time and effort and money into it since that'll just be money we won't have at the new house. Besides, it's quite pretty how it is and it's an enormous improvement over how it used to be so I'll take it.

Drew and his friend did an amazing job and I'm so proud of their hard work. I love my new laundry room and I no longer get depressed about life when I go in there. It was the last big project to get the house to where it feels like us and I really like it.

Naturally, this all happened just in time to turn it over to someone else. Isn't that how it always is? I mean, it's probably not that way for other people, but it seems to be a theme with us.

Of course, since we're moving so soon after arriving here, it *may* not have been the best idea to do any of it.

Oh well, lesson learned, hindsight 20/20, all that. You know how it goes.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my laundry room for however long I have it and maybe the new owners will pick up where we left off. At the very least, hopefully they will appreciate Drew's hard work! I know I do.

Thanks Babe!

The Pieprzyks are on the move!

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 12:04:00 +0000

Knock knock! Anybody home?

Let me blow the dust off of my poor neglected blog here and see if I still know how to do this...

Not much has been happening around these parts, we've just been living life and it's been slow, blog-wise. Summer is finally here, thank GOD. I didn't think I was going to make it through this winter! And with sunshine and warmer days comes more energy, so it's only fitting that I get on back to writing, right?

And what better way to kick it all off with some nice meaty content - so how about it?

We're moving again!

Yep, we've been in Reading less than two years and it's time to depart these parts. Drew has been an absolute rockstar at his job, getting promotions and raises and this newest change will take us to the lovely town of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Once again, I've never been there and I know nothing about the city. Drew's brother and his wife live in Charlotte, which is only a couple of hours away but that's the extent of my knowledge. I do know it's warmer and for that I'm exceedingly grateful; I'm a giant wimp and I just can't handle winter so I'm going to be so happy to get to nicer weather.

I'm excited to house hunt again and decorate a new house and I'll be sure to share my GIANT list of the things I want in the next house. Before, I just wanted to be close to Target but with a baby and a toddler, my needs have certainly changed and you know I'll be crowd-sourcing info from you guys too. This is our third house and I want to get it right this time. Although, I'd say we've done pretty well so far.

I will always love this house

You know what though?

I've fallen in love with this little house too and

I'm really going to miss it when we're gone.

It's a drag to have to leave so soon after we got here because I just got the house to where I like it and to just turn that over to someone else is kind of sad. We're not house flippers, we're house-living-inners, and I like to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Ah well. I guess we can only hope that the new owners enjoy our finishes.

And speaking of new owners, can I put a request out to the universe now? Please Universe, can we sell the house in fewer than ten months this time? With the Texas house, we had over 50 showings. FIFTY. It was hellish enough with just one baby and a dog, but now with a baby and a kid that takes for-flippin-EVER to get out of the house? The mere thought makes me twitch. So yeah Universe, it would be cool if you could do something about that.

Yet, as much as I want the house to sell quickly, I am beyond heartbroken to leave my friends. I found three women here that have become my tribe, my people. We see each other several times a week, we laugh, we cry and I am going to miss them so much. Just thinking about leaving them makes me so choked up and I really just can't think about having to try and find friends like that in Raleigh. I mean, I'm not going to; my girls can't be replicated. They are the most amazing friends ever.

I love them. For real.

And I'm getting misty-eyed just looking at this damn picture.

This part is going to suck.

UGH! Before I start sobbing at my keyboard....

Anyway! We have lots to talk about - I have to show you all the stuff I've done to the house that the new owners will get to enjoy. Namely, the laundry room that's been done-ish forever but I still haven't shown you yet. We redid the front of the house and it's positively gorgeous, I think the living room is where I like it and I got a ruffled shower curtain for the Bathroom of Hate and now it's only the Bathroom of Strong Dislike!

This is a great move for Drew's career and I'm so proud of him for doing so much to provide for our family. I really don't tell him that often enough: Babe, thank you. Really. I know the travel is tough on you too and I really appreciate all you do for us. You're my hero and I love you. Even when I fuss at you and I'll try my hardest to fuss at you less and love on you more, okay?

I hear the baby fidgeting and Sofia is already up, so I have to run but let me at least show you a couple pictures of the laundry room. Drew and his friend did all this themselves!

This was shortly after we moved in.

This was just after they finished and before we put everything back.

I have lots more pictures, but didn't they do a great job? Drew is quite handy when he's not traveling halfway across the world.

Okay, I have to run but if you know anything about Raleigh, lay it on me!

I'm so crafty; you already know

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Mon, 19 May 2014 21:27:00 +0000

Guys, I'm kind of obsessed with Iggy Azalea right now, so please humor me when you read the title of this post and do it like this. Then please hum the song for the rest of the day and you'll be inside my head.

Once again, I'm on my own and solo parenting. Drew is in China right now, working but also doing cool stuff like walking the Great Wall.

He said it didn't even look real and I definitely agree with him.

The travel is hard on all of us, but it helps to have perks like this to make it worthwhile. Seeing the Great Wall is one of the things on his bucket list, so I'm super happy for him that he got to cross it off. Plus, he's been able to Face Time with us every day so it doesn't feel like he's halfway across the world. I don't think about it too much, because it actually makes me nervous; this the first time he's gone this far and for whatever reason, Europe is less scary than China.

At any rate, he's doing fun stuff over there and I'm doing fun stuff here too. It's no Great Wall, but I got to cross some things off of my own list. My mom has been here for the past week and it's been really great. We've had some rough patches in the past so it's been nice to reconnect with her and spend some quality time together. Plus, she's been an amazing help and I'm so incredibly grateful to her and I'm so glad she gets to spend time with her granddaughters. It totally warms my heart when Sofia calls out "Grandma!" and runs to give her a bear hug and seeing Andrea smile when my mom makes the googly sounds to her is super cute.

So, with my mom on baby duty, I got to putter around with my own great walls, that is, the walls of my house. Ooohhh, I'm, so, PUN-NY. You already kno-ow!

Let's start in the living room because it's gone through like twenty incarnations.

In the time of the blue rug, that far wall looked like that.

Then we moved the wine rack, with disastrous results.

We played around with seating because we only had the sofa.

Unfortunately, this felt too closed in on this side, and closed in doesn't

work with a toddler who runs everywhere she goes.
Plus, you can see how the blue rug was too small for the room.

Then we moved into the Striped Rug era,

and the awesome green chair replaced the wine rack.
*And*, you can see that the striped rug is too big and sloppy for the room.
See, I don't just buy rugs for fun. I'm learning here, people!

The green chair was a great Craigslist find, but the arms of the chair and sofa made the computer area feel cramped. We'd have to shimmy to get back to the computer and it was a pain. It turned into one of those things where we'd complain every time we had to get back there but we never did anything about it. Enter the Gray Rug period.

Mid-furniture rearrangement.

The other green chair's lack of arms helped but it still wasn't working.
This rug is a better size, not too big, not too small.
I'm just not sure about the color...
I kid, I kid!

The bench filled that nook much better and as soon as

I recover it with a cool fabric, it'll be perfect.

You saw this one; the green chair is now on the other side of the living room.

If you squint your eyes and look past the kid clutter,

maybe you'll notice the green in the pictures on the wall?

That brings us to the present. I liked the living room setup but I wasn't done. We don't have a lot of surfaces to put stuff so the surfaces we have tends to get overloaded. So with my mom here, I called my friend's brother to come over and hang some stuff and saw some other stuff because I won't use the miter saw. I would most definitely lose a finger, if my crafting history is any indication.

I moved my bullfighting poster to the other wall and had my mom

take a picture to see how it would look.

We took a field trip to Ikea and I got a Lack shelf and I tried it on this wall too.

In the end, this is the current incarnation of the living room wall.

The shelf is high enough so whoever is sitting on the bench doesn't feel smooshed

and I have a place to put stuff.

I'm going to get some more throw pillows to tie everything together and I think it'll work out nicely.

Moving on to the next wall...

I finally finished the gallery wall!

It sure is a good thing this isn't a photography blog.

I got all three from Etsy and I really liked how it all turned out.

Then I needed something for the wall left of the dots.

Whatever it was, I wanted it to be big. I had the grouping on the other wall so I figured I needed one big thing to balance it. During a late night nursing session, I found my inspiration on Pinterest (I won't say Pinspiration; smack me if I say Pinspiration.)

This from here

Glitter makes everything better.

I took a guess at the colors, bought a canvas, glitter and glue

and got to painting while the baby took a nap and my mom played PlayDoh with Sofia.

The colors aren't exact but I think it'll do.

Then my friend's brother built me a frame using this tutorial.

PS, read every word of that blog. It's hilarious.

My cheapie canvas looks totally legit with a frame now!

Next up is Sofia's wall and her clippie situation. Much like my jewelry storage situation in the past, her hair clips were getting out of control.

My jewelry.

Her clippies.

I also find clippies in my pockets, in the car, in my diaper bag.

They're everywhere and I can't keep up.

During another naptime, Ryan built me another frame. I spray painted it white along with some leftover hooks and he screwed them into the top of the frame. Then he took the green ribbon and stretched them across, while I was painting the nursery frame.

Et voila! Sofia has a clippie and headband holder!

I've been wanting one forever and it's finally crossed off the list.

I'm not sure which wall will get this but the jumble on the dresser is history.

Here she is, all loaded up!

I ended up putting it in the Bathroom of Hate because

Sofia really doesn't have any more wall space in her room.

Besides, it's probably about time I did something with the bathroom

so I don't hate it anymore.

I can get a ruffly shower curtain and really make it a girly bathroom.

Hmmmm....

Aside from the wood for the frames and the Lack shelf, I already had everything laying around the house, I was just never able to get it sorted and organized. I'm so thrilled to have these little projects done and it feels so good. AND, I get to blog about it; I'm thriving, my friends!

I tell you what, having help makes all the difference in the world. I feel rested, capable and not frazzled at all. Of course, my mom leaves tomorrow so please stay tuned for a Woman on the Verge post, because Drew is going to be gone for ANOTHER nine days. And we're going on vacation right after that, so it's up to me to do all the vacation prep.

As much as I don't want to bring this much stuff,

with two kids I don't really see how to *keep* from

bringing this much stuff.

Good times.

Our bedroom walls are still pretty bare but I got some more frames at Ikea and I just have to put pictures in them and get them hung, and I'll have one more thing crossed off my list. Like I said, it's no Great Wall but it makes me happy so it counts.

Ok, the baby's calling me but as always, thank you for visiting and emailing and commenting and being there. I appreciate you!

Precious moments

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 08 May 2014 19:03:00 +0000

Today was Mother's Day at Sofia's school. She made presents for us that totally made me cry and it was so cool to spend time with her. I got to enjoy her, I was completely present and it felt so good.

I'm gearing up for another long solo-parenting stint and I'm not looking forward to it at all, not one tiny bit. However, this is just my life and that's all there is to that. My mom is coming in town to lend a hand and I'm going to have our babysitter come in to help as well. Previously, I didn't want to have any help because I felt like this was my job and it reflected poorly on me if I couldn't hack it.

I've since seen the light.

I can't do everything and I certainly can't do it all alone. I need help; not a ton but an extra set of hands on occasion will save my sanity and it doesn't mean that I'm not busting my tail or that I'm not a good mom. It just means I can't be everywhere and do everything and that's ok. So I'm having people clean my house and I will be paying someone to come hang out with Sofia while I catch my breath. That way I can be the best mother I can be.

I am so blessed to be their mother and they deserve only the best.

And if that means I get a mother's helper so I can smile more often, then so be it.

They're worth it.

Happy Mother's Day, my friends.

Who am I kidding?

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Tue, 06 May 2014 13:52:00 +0000

You guys, I'm so sorry for that last post. It was absolute shit. I apologize to the handful of you who read it and I apologize to the handful who may read this one. God, some days I wonder if I should just hang up the blogging thing all together. I was much more interesting and funny back in the day. Now, I'm just boring and frazzled.

I tried not to write about what was really on my mind, but I've noticed that every time I do that, whatever I do end up writing about is absolute shit. I'm just no good at lying. And actually I don't suppose it's lying but it's definitely not telling the whole truth.

Yes, I bought a rug and yes I actually do like it a lot and I do love decorating and I would like to write about that stuff but really? I'm feeling overwhelmed and pent up and when I feel that way, it does no good to try and deny it.

I know I sound like a broken record and I can remember several posts I've written where I'm all Being a mom is hard! I'm sick of myself, but damn, this shit is hard.

I'm wracked with self-doubt: Is it this hard for everyone? Or am I the only one who's not doing it right and it could be easier? I try to be objective about it - I don't expect my three year old to know calculus or Mozart. Hell, we've even given up on potty-training completely and totally. She's even in disposable pull-ups! I wanted to keep her in cloth but once in a blue moon she wants to pee in the potty and she needs to be able to pull her own pants down and you can't do that with cloth. Honestly, she's happier and that's all that matters but I'm mentally preparing myself for being the only mom around with a kid in kindergarten who's not potty-trained. I know they say that one day they just get it and you can't force them and blah blah blah, but I'm not convinced. Not that I have any experience potty-training anyone, but my beautiful baby has less than zero interest in doing anything but shitting her pants, bless her heart.

Ahh see, it's working. Real writing just made me crack a smile. That's what I needed. Let's see what else is in here....
........................

Is there some way to find a support group for wives with husbands who aren't around? There's got to be something out there like that, right? I'm not talking military wives because I know I don't belong in that group. That's a whole different level of holding it down. Those women don't know if their husbands are even alive or not and I wouldn't dare ever compare my situation to theirs. I just want to talk to other women who know that their husbands are alive, they're just not home and they have to do a lot of things by themselves.

Because the travel is hard, on all of us. I have to leave notes around the house because he doesn't know how things go around here and Sofia is in the prime place where routine is paramount. Deviate from the schedule at your own risk. Actually, don't deviate from the schedule because then I'll have a demon on my hands and dealing with a demon makes me want to run away from home. So just stick to the routine and obey the schedule for the few hours that you're home, please and thank you.
.............................

I'm jealous. I hate being jealous - it's a worthless emotion. If you want something someone else has, go out and get it. If you can't get it, make your peace with your present situation and let it go. Those are the only two options - jealousy has no place in the world.

Yet I'm jealous. I'm jealous of moms with potty-trained kids. I'm jealous of wives whose husbands are home every night and are parenting teams, where one does the bath and the other does the teeth brushing or whatever it is. I'm jealous of the ones who don't have to do it alone.

I'm jealous of the women who take girls trips. I've wanted to take a girls trip since forever. I've never done that and I think it would be so much fun. One of my Facebook friends is on a girls trip right now and I'm positively sick with jealousy. They look like they're having so much fun. I wish I could do that.
........................

Then again, could I be okay being away from my babies? Probably not. Whenever I get overwhelmed, Drew is right there, telling me to get out of the house, get away, go have a glass of wine at the restaurant up the street. But I don't want to. I want to be home. I want to take a shower and do my hair without interruptions. What I *really* want is for *them* to leave *me* alone in my own home. I want to sit on the sofa and watch like ten design shows back to back without anyone asking me to do anything, without anyone crawling on me, taking the pillow from under my arm, drinking my drink, without anyone talking during mah programs!

Aww, there's another smile...
......................

I love my babies. I love them so much it takes my breath away and I hate that I get so overwhelmed sometimes because I feel like it prevents me from truly enjoying them. It's like being thirsty and being given the sweetest most wonderful nectar of the gods. You want to savor every drop because it's just that good. But no matter how wonderful the drink, when it's being blasted at your face with the strength of a fire hose, it gets a little difficult to enjoy and there's not much savoring. You're just trying not to drown in the nectar. I hate that. My kids are the sweetest gift in the whole world and I want nothing more than to savor them because I swear to fucking God, I know it goes by quickly. I don't know what it is with the world, but I've had like five random people tell me to enjoy my kids because it goes by soooo quickly. Like I don't fucking know that. It's just hard to enjoy when you feel like you're drowning and I'm begging whoever it is on the other end of the fire hose to just turn it down a pinch so I can enjoy this for fuck's sake. Just give me a few of days without cooking and cleaning and laundry so I can just roll around on the floor with them. Just a little bit of breathing room so we can run around and look for fairies and butterflies.

Because I know it's going to be over before I know it. That's the cruelty of the fire hose. You get blasted and you're choking and you can't breathe and you're gasping and then it's over and it'll never happen again and you find yourself shaking the hose wishing just a drop of yesterday would come out. I'm so painfully aware of that.

So I wonder what I'm doing wrong. Why no one else around me appears to be drowning. Why everyone magically has clean clothes and dishes and a fridge full of food all the time. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to run a tighter ship? Do I need to wake up earlier? Do I need to make more lists? What's the secret and how can I join the club? Where's the balance? No seriously, what am I doing wrong?

Well for one thing, I'm blogging when I should be emptying the dishwasher and folding clothes and making a grocery list and vacuuming the dog hair and picking up the toys. *sigh* I guess I should go.

Okay, but I do feel a teensy bit better. I've really got to stop putting on a happy face here. This is my only space where I can be fully authentic and let it all hang out. That's the purpose of this space for me and I need to keep it as such. I'll put on a happy face for the rest of the world but this needs to stay real.

I am happy with my rug though.

I think.....

I may need to get another one just to be sure.

I can quit any time I want

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Mon, 05 May 2014 16:54:00 +0000

Let's see if I can do this...

Andrea has entered her season where she wants to be close to me at all times for all things. I'm trying to frame things in a positive way: reminding myself that this is just a season, telling myself that she wants to be close to me, rather than pulling my hair out that this kid won't let me put her down!

I mean, she wants to be close to me. It's just a season.

I wish I could do nothing but hold her and lay in bed and nurse her all day. I want to be close to her too. I want to bond with her like I did with Sofia. But I can't and I feel guilty that I'm not giving her everything I gave Sofia in her infancy. I may even have to cut this post short because I put her in the swing because I'm twitching because I want to write but she's starting to fuss.

But this isn't the old days and I have no village. Instead, I have dishes and laundry and meals to make and emails to answer and a house to clean and another child to tend to and a baby who won't let me put her down.

I wear her as often as I can, but 90% of what I have to do (laundry, dishes, picking up toys every second of my life) involves bending down and that's not easily done with a baby strapped to your chest. Hands-free becomes one-handed when you have to support their head from flopping whenever you bend down to unload the dishwasher, put clothes in the dryer or pick up toys every second of your life. And I have mentioned that I'm going to be on my own again? For two solid weeks?! No seriously, where's my village?

I love this sentiment, I really do.

But what happens when tomorrow comes and there's no food

in the house because you were rocking your baby

when you were supposed to be grocery shopping?

Or there are no clean clothes because you haven't done laundry?

Or you're about to scream because you've rocked your baby for what

seems like forever and you really just want to do something else right quick?

What then?

PS, dust and cobwebs don't sleep or settle down; the only thing they do is multiply.

Whatever. Let me stop complaining. Lots of moms have it much harder than I do. Of course, even as I say that I get pissed off. Just because other moms have it harder, does that mean I have no right to say that it's hard for me? That can't be right. Ugh. Let me stop. Let's look at pictures. I've been wanting to share this stuff for ages but I haven't been able to because I'm rocking babies, nursing, playing with sidewalk chalk and picking up toys every second of my life.

I'm not addicted to rugs.

I can quit any time I want.

This was our last rug incarnation. I went with a flatweave this time because I wanted something durable and wouldn't stink quickly. Flatweaves are both of those things but they're also thin. I liked the rug style but I hated how thin it was. It was a glorified blanket and those wrinkles were a constant pain in the ass. I tried to make it work because I was on thin ice with Drew with all the rug buying I was doing.

Plus, I felt like I needed to edit. For example, there's no red in the living room -

why did I get a rug with red in it?

It was also a little too big for the room because I only eyeballed the measurements.

I even took the rug to Carpet Mart and had them cut some off the length

to make a runner for the laundry room. But the carpet tape they sold me was worthless

and every time Maya would run in from outside, this is what I ended up with.

Plus, Maya made it her chewing blanket in no time.

I wanted to start over. I wanted to edit and use what I've learned about rugs. Namely, I needed something thicker than a flatweave. We spend a lot of time on the living room floor and a blanket type rug was not cutting it. It also needed to be smaller. The striped rug was a 10x14, trimmed to a 10x12. That was too big for the room; a lot of the rug got bunched up under the sofa and dog bed.

This one was an 8x10 and it was a pinch too small.

I don't know if I got it right with this one but

the size is good.

This one is just shy of a 9x12. I get all my rugs from RugsUSA and they're very inexpensive, which is good for someone with a rug fetish like I do. But they're weird sizes - this one is 8'3"x11, which is actually a good size for our living room. It's not lost under the sofa and it stops just in front of the dog bed. Since it doesn't go all the way under the mirrored buffet, your eye stops at the edge of the rug and the cords underneath the buffet aren't as noticeable. And it's nice and plush, which we all love.

Drew knows I worship at the altar of Jeff Lewis and he brought me

some Jeff Lewis flowers. (Click the link and look at the Tujunga picture - see!)

Of course since this is real life and we can't have nice things, I quickly

put the flowers on the dining room table so the small person

wouldn't destroy them.

Also, real life dictates that you have a kitchen, easel and Learning Tower in your living room.

However, I try my best to make things look as design-y as possible and eventually I would like to sew a new dog bed in a solid neutral fabric since the the print competes with the rug. I'm thinking a canvas dropcloth with gray piping - that would be nice. Of course, that's saying I'll ever find the time to sew a new dog bed but a girl can dream. I'd also like a slipcover for the sofa since I have fifty shades of gray going on, but at least there's no red in here now.

I love this look. I'll get it right one day.

source

The striped rug is now outside on the patio and

I officially have run out of places to put rugs.

But! It makes more sense out here because the red in the rug ties into the red of the chairs.

It hides the ugly concrete and the kids have a softer place to sit.

Even Drew said he liked it!

Okay, that's my time. Andrea has officially declared that she is done with the baby swing so I have to go. But yeah, I bought another rug and I wanted to show you.

Back to rocking my baby....

A most epic birthday celebration

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 18:05:00 +0000

Three cheers for sleeping babies! Let's all do a quick sleep dance (I have no idea what that looks like, so improvise) so I can write an epic birthday post.

You know, if and when I ever stop blogging, I will probably check in once a year, well now twice, just so I can do birthday recaps. I love birthdays and even with all the stress and the last-minute and the no sleep, I really love doing it. I love celebrating my babies and ironically, I thought of a working theme for Andrea's first birthday just today. It may end up being something different between now and then, but the thoughts have already started swirling for my second baby's first party.

But this post is about my first baby. And how she's no longer a baby. I think when you turn three you're officially a little kid, which makes me sad but at the same time she is turning into such an amazing little person that I'm so excited to be able to watch her grow. I know I'm biased, but Sofia really is the coolest kid out there.

So let's talk birthdays! However, I'm feeling a teensy bit nostalgic so will you join me for a quick walk down memory lane?

My sweet girl on her first birthday; it was a garden party theme.

Birthday number two was all about Yo Gabba Gabba.

This year, Lightning McQueen was in the house.

This is the best picture I have of Sofia because the kid would not stand still.

Most of my other pictures are more like this.

I asked Sofia over and over again what kind of birthday she wanted. She's obsessed with Frozen right now and I was sure that's what she would want for her birthday. But true to form, she surprised me and every single time I asked "Do you want Lightning McQueen or Frozen?" she'd holler out "Lightning McQueen!" She never wavered, she was never unsure, so Lightning McQueen it is.

Now, a Cars birthday is usually associated with boys and while that didn't faze me in the slightest, I *was* a little unsure where to begin. Lucky for me, Cars is a very popular birthday theme and there was already a blogger that did a Cars birthday for her daughter. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel and I say with no shame that I used a ton of elements from her party and found other elements on Pinterest. I don't think I had one original idea and I'm okay with that.

First up was the invitation.

I searched Etsy and found a super cute design from KraftyKansas - had to give my home state some love! Turnaround time was super fast and I had the image printed at Ofiice Depot - easy peasy.

But wait, let me back up. I was actually late printing and sending the invites because I didn't have a location for the longest time. The blogger I was copying rented a movie theater for her party. That sounded like the coolest idea in the world so of course I had to rent a movie theater too. Except, I couldn't find what I wanted. I found a theater I could rent but I couldn't show my own movie, and what's the point of a Cars themed party if you show The Lego Movie, I ask you?! Then I found a theater that would let me show my own movie but I couldn't have my own food, which also wouldn't work because I *had* to have themed food with my themed birthday party. I mean, DUH. Like I'm going to serve non-themed food. What am I, an animal?

I'd just about given up on the movie theater idea and was just going to have the party at the house again when my girlfriend suggested The Strand. It was a 40 minute drive from my house, but they would let me show my own movie, have my own food, I could set up the night before, *and* it wasn't an arm and a leg to rent! For that, I will drive 40 minutes. I got my movie theater!

Then came decorations. Dusty was kind enough to provide some printables for the party, but not all of them and I had a very specific vision for what I wanted. I intended to make them myself, then I remembered that I don't have the first clue about Photoshop. I was able to find a free version online and I was able to erase backgrounds on the images, but that alone took me several hours. I asked my girlfriend for her help because she knows thismuch more than I do about Photoshop and it took us several more hours to try and figure out how to resize pictures and put them on a background. We finally turned the project over to her husband who is a computer genius and he was like ClickClickDragDropClickClickSaveDONE. It was seriously a joke how fast he did everything and how good it all looked. So while I would like to contribute to the Internet and give out printables and all that, I got nothing. I barely know how to upload pictures to my own blog.

How kick-ass is this logo!?

I got it from NhelyDesigns and put it on everything I could.

My girlfriend's husband designed everything for me, from the birthday banner to the food labels. If it was printed, he designed it and I was so grateful to him. But that meant I had a lot of cutting and taping and gluing to do and I'm super bummed that I didn't get to use all of his designs, which was totally on me because once again, I ran out of time and bit off more than I could chew. It's all good though because it turned out to be a wonderful party. Now, you'll have to excuse the photos because it was a movie theater so it was pretty dark but I'm sure you'll get the idea.

I fixated on a lot of details for the party.

Some might say it was unnecessary, I say that's what makes a party.

So of course my girls had to have coordinating outfits.

From KooCooSay

The Strand is a single-screen, old-timey, mom and pop

movie theater and it was perfect.

It was the perfect size and we had the whole place to ourselves.

Even though we brought in all our own food, the concession stand was

open for anyone who wanted soda or candy.

There was a separate party room but everyone pretty much stayed in the theater.

We used the party room for gifts, food prep and coats.

They already had the red tablecloths which worked out perfectly and I sure did return the ones I'd purchased for a refund. Keep those receipts!

I bought five yards of checkered fabric from JoAnns, cut and hemmed them and they

were perfect table toppers.

There was a foyer at the back of the theater and that's where we had the main party stuff.

Yes, I was setting up as the guests arrived. One of these days I'll get it together.

Give me a couple more parties and I'll have this down to a science.

One thing I did right and I'm really proud of were the cupcakes. I made them several weeks beforehand and froze them and they thawed beautifully. I seriously might do this from now on. Also, they're from a mix but I doctored them and I got lots of compliments on how good they tasted. Also plus, you NEED to use this frosting. It takes two days to make but it is SO worth it. My cupcakes were the bomb, which was absolute torture when I had leftovers and then decided to cut sugar out of my life.

Another thing I fixated on were the food labels. I had themed food so I needed cute labels for all my food. Again, I straight up copied off of Dusty's party. No shame, people.

I wanted to go for a hybrid between her food label and pit pass for my food labels

and my friend's husband did an amazing job.

I think he did an amazing job.

I had labels for Ramone's Body Art - that's where the kids could put on temporary tattoos, Sally's Cozy Cone Fruit Cups, Luigi's white- and black-wall tires - those were chocolate and powdered donuts, Maters Taters - potato chips, Doc's Dipsticks - those were veggie sticks and Flo's H20 Cafe.

I loved how her water bottles turned out.

This was the first stop.

I got some wipes and put them in a lunch box

that I found on clearance at Target the night before.

After you washed up, you could put on a tattoo from

Ramone's House of Body Art.

The bottom part of his sign says "Get the ghost flames!"

Then it was time to get some sandwiches.

I did all finger foods because we were in a movie theater and I didn't want

people to try and cut things with a plate balanced on their laps.

Then we had Mater's Taters.

His sign said "Like puh-tater, but without the Puh!"

You'd have to know every line of the movie to get the puns

but seriously, coming up with them was the most fun for me.

Each cozy cone was supposed to have a dollop of whipped cream on top

but again, I ran out of time.

I'm going to have to prep more food the night before, but I was scared

that it would get wilty and slimy so I left the majority of the food prep for the day of the party

and with only thirty minutes to get it all set up, it just didn't happen.

So I just set the whipped cream next to the cones and told everyone to help themselves.

I was literally running around the table, trying to snap a picture

of each thing with our guests patiently waiting to eat so this one was super blurry

which is a shame because it's my favorite.

"Look at me! Here I am! Love me!"

Guido's Pit Stop Popcorn was in the back and Flo's H20 cafe was the last stop on Route 66.

Also, ask me how much I love my food label holders.

The answer is SO FREAKIN MUCH.

I'm using them for every party from now on forever.

Once everyone got their food, it was time to get situated for the movie.

There was a stage in front of the screen that turned out to be perfect

for sprawling out and watching the movie.

She did such a good job blowing out her candle!

Most of the kids stayed still for nearly the entire movie, but towards the end they got up and started running around which was totally fine. It went amazingly well, the venue was perfect, Sofia had a blast and I felt like it was a success.

I got a racing pennant and I was going to string it criss-crossed over the food table

but yeah. Ran out of time.

The birthday banner came out really great though!

We had a pretty wide age range for the kids so I wracked my brain

trying to think of a party favor that would appeal to a 12 year old as well as a three year old

and I came up with stoplight playdoh. Well you know, *I* didn't; Pinterest did.

But you know what I mean.

It didn't take long to make and I think they came out really cute!

Sofia ran and played for nearly three hours straight

and I barely had her buckled in before she was knocked out and snoring.

I'd say that's a successful party.

The next day, we went to Disney on Ice. It was another birthday present and I wasn't sure that Sofia would get it or sit still but she was entranced. She didn't stop talking about the 'princess ice-skating' for days.

I don't think she blinked the whole time.

She and Carter loved it!

I seriously love these people.

Aimee was there when I was laboring with Andrea, Marcus designed everything for Sofia's party, Aimee helped with setting up for the party because I wouldn't have gotten anything done without her. Then they treated us to Disney on Ice for Sofia's birthday?! I'm not joking, I LOVE them. Sofia has stayed the night at their house, and we've joked that we should just get a compound somewhere and be sister-wives, but we'll keep our own husbands. It's just so we can hang out together all the time.

And while I'm not trying to marry the two of them off,

I sure would love if they stayed friends forever.

So, we had to have Sofia's birthday party the weekend before her actual birthday because Drew had a last minute work trip and had to leave town the day after her birthday. He came back for her actual birthday but then had to leave again, but not before we celebrated just a little more.

I took the leftover cupcakes to her school the next week

and they had a little party for her and she got *another* crown!

Drew likes to leave messages for her since he leaves before she gets up.

When he got home, she opened her presents from

Mommy and Daddy.

Every doctor needs a coat.

She's very serious about her craft.

"Just a little pinch."

She also got some more magnetic building blocks.

Either a doctor or engineer, people. I'm working

that subliminal messaging now.

My sister even flew up for Sofia's birthday!

My mom came up too.

*That* was a fun time.

But also, look how big my little baby is getting!

The Sunday after Sofia's birthday, she went to an Easter egg hunt

at one of her little classmate's house.

It was so much fun watching her scramble around gathering eggs!

So, we ended up preparing and celebrating Sofia's birthday for two weeks straight, with Drew being home for about four of those fourteen days and silly me, I was trying to thrive during that time *and* dealing with thrush. At the end of those two weeks I was delirious and I'd abandoned all attempts at thriving and trying to cut sugar out of my life. I need fruit and cupcakes and maple syrup in order to stay sane and deal with my husband traveling as much as he does.

And that, my friends is how my big girl celebrated three whole years on this Earth. She is the light of my life and I am so blessed I get to be her mother and I get to celebrate her like this every year. She's the greatest kid a mom could ask for and I know all moms say that, but seriously, even when she's trying me (and good Lord, does she try me) she's still the greatest.

I love you, Sofia.

The T word

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 20:06:00 +0000

Sorry I fell off posting; it was actually fun posting every day and it was interesting to do a loose day-in-the-life type week. I'll have a birthday recap for you in a second but the reason I've been gone this week is because I'm dealing with another headache. Last week, it was hectic birthday planning and I'd rather plan fifty birthdays than deal with this bullshit.

Andrea and I have thrush.

I had no idea what thrush was because Sofia didn't have it so I was completely clueless. I thought it was just milk on her tongue. I was over at my girlfriend's house and she was holding Andrea when she looked at me and was like, "Um, you know she's got thrush right?" I gasped, clutched my pearls and said "What's thrush?!"

I'll tell you what thrush is. It's the mother-effin' DEVIL, that's what it is.

I ran to the pharmacy, got some Gentian Violet and painted her up for seven days. It made a little bit of difference, but I didn't know that we both have to be treated at the same time and I didn't treat myself, so while it cleared up a little bit, just as soon as I stopped the Gentian Violet, it came right back because she'd probably given it to me and I gave it right back to her. Then I started having pain so I painted myself with the Gentian Violet and hoped that would help some.

My poor baby

This was after she nursed because I had painted my nipples.

When you put it on the baby, you're only supposed to paint their tongue and the inside of their cheeks. I don't want anyone Googling thrush, seeing this picture and thinking you're supposed to paint the outside of their cheeks.

I was still having pain and her tongue was still coated so we went to the doctor on Monday who confirmed that Andrea has a mild case of thrush. She and I both got some Diflucan, I got some nipple ointment and I've been cursing ever since.

This shit HURTS and I'm heartbroken that my baby might be in pain too. She hasn't been fussy so I'm hoping it's a mild enough case that maybe she's not in pain. It just sucks.

Apparently, to get rid of the yeast you have to starve it. That means that I have to mess with one of those elimination diets, which is pretty much my worst nightmare. I don't do well with cutting food out of my diet. It's not good for my brain. However, I don't have a choice; I want my baby to be healthy again so I'm looking at The Candida Diet, which is a big fat pile of bullshit.

Thrush is a yeast infection, so to get rid of it, they say you have to starve the yeast. Well, yeast feeds on sugar so you have to cut sugar out of your diet. Except,

there's sugar in EVERYTHING. EVERY MOTHER-EFFIN THING YOU CAN THINK OF.

The only things I can safely eat are meat, vegetables, eggs and plain yogurt. Sounds YUMMY.

I'm using my nipple ointment, I'm taking the Diflucan, I'm on probiotics, washing everything in hot water, all that shit. But it makes no difference if the food I eat feeds the yeast. This sucks BALLS.

I need to hear from you, my friends. Have you dealt with thrush? How long did it take to go away? Did you do an elimination diet? It's only been a couple of days and I'm twitching. I want sandwiches, I want fruit, I want cupcakes, I want fruit snacks, I want juice, I want pancakes and syrup, I want sugar!!!!

Please help. Remind me that I'm doing this for my daughter, that this sacrifice is necessary for her health. Remind me that it's temporary. Remind me that I'm strong and I can do this. Remind me that cutting this stuff out will make the thrush go away faster.

Because let me tell you, a sandwich with no bread is just STUPID and reading something only to find out it has sugar makes me want to throw things. Why the F is there sugar in mayonnaise?

Hopefully I'll be back soon with a birthday recap and I can stare longingly at all the delicious cupcakes we served. And the sandwiches. And the donuts.

Ugh, let me stop. I should probably go eat some carrots and hummus or something.

Thrush is the devil.

Nothing is ever all bad

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 08:12:00 +0000

They say there's no rest for the weary. Or is it the wicked? At any rate, there's no rest when you have two babies and you're solo parenting for the week, night and day, all you, all the time.

Now, there may be no rest but your body adapts. One of my favorite phrases is yoga is 'resting in motion.' I used to say it when i was halfway into a tough class and I could feel that my people were working hard. Simply saying the words changed the room and it can change your mindset.

For me, that's the most important part about solo parenting - finding those moments where I can rest in motion. Because there is no finish line; it's not like I just have to put my head down for a few days and then it'll be over. It's not like pregnancy where there are bits you can enjoy but for the most part you're just hanging on until it's over and you'll never have to do it again. I mean, of course that's how it is for me; my hat is off to all you women who glow and love every second of pregnancy. Please spread your pixie dust on the world.

No, this won't be the last time I have to solo parent. Actually, my husband is going to be gone for most of the month of April. He gets back tomorrow but there's no time to rest. We have a jam packed birthday weekend and he leaves again Sunday night. So it's imperative that I rest in motion - there's really no other option. And that's precisely what I did.

Just after I finished my last post I was able to get Sofia down for a nap. And wonder upon wonders, I was able to put Andrea down to sleep as well!

It was amazing.

I had a ton of things to do. There was laundry to fold, dishes to put away, birthday stuff to do but I was reckless. I threw caution to the wind and I TOOK A SHOWER. A long one. It was the most beautiful experience and it was just what I needed. I tell you what, there's not much that a long hot shower can't make better. I even put on lotion! Talk about luxury! I was renewed and able to be present for my girls and it was great. Wednesday night was so much better than Tuesday night and Sofia didn't even poop on the floor!

Thursday was great too. Sofia had school and while she was there I went back to Office Depot to finish the printing, which was infinitely easier with one sleeping baby in the Ergo and a competent person behind the desk. I was in and out in minutes and I felt so accomplished and stress free. We came straight home after school, I fed Sofia and we even got out for a little walk. She took a great nap and the day went smoothly.

Now, that doesn't mean that we didn't have moments. Usually, I make it through my day with Andrea in the Ergo but sometimes it's better when she's in her bouncy chair. She would prefer to be close to me and I don't blame her, but when I'm making dinner and messing around with knives or a hot stove, it's better for all of us if she's in her chair. And I had my moment while trying to make dinner because Andrea was in her chair screaming her face off because she was thirty kinds of pissed at me, Sofia was outside in the dog pen, naked except for her rain boots and a cardigan and the new recipe I tried was not working out and the food was sticking to the pan and smoking up my kitchen. The crying was making my chest tight, the food sticking was pissing me off and Sofia was out in the dog pen. Where the dog poops. Those are the moments where I really miss having an extra set of hands and I curse solo parenting, because there's no one to holler to go get Sofia or to pick up the baby or to help with dinner. It's all me, all the time.

I turned the heat down, grabbed Andrea and ran out to bring Sofia inside.

"Hi Mommy! I need pants!"

"I see that. Can you please come inside? Dinner's going to be ready soon."

"Uh, no thanks. I'm good." The things my kid says sometimes...

"Sweetheart I really need you to come inside. You don't have pants on and dinner's almost ready. I'll let you watch TV!" *sinking to bribery*

I opened the gate to let her out and of course she takes off running across the yard, so I have to awkwardly chase her with the baby in my arms and trying to grab her - when did she get so fast? It took forever to get her back inside and by some miracle dinner wasn't ruined and actually tasted pretty good. Of course, Sofia wanted none of it and had chips and cheese for dinner.

And we weren't meltdown-free either. Banging on the keyboard of Mommy's computer is the most fun ever so of course when I told her to stop and took the computer away, well, that was cause for Tantrum #1. I got a bonus meltdown at bathtime - apparently, when Sofia puts marker over her entire body, backside too, I'm supposed to leave it there for all eternity, not wash it off. Silly Mommy.

Mom, this is my Look.

I'm not joking when I say that the child had marker on every square inch of her body, and it took her less than five minutes while I finished dinner. Again, extra hands would've been nice but I guess I just have to be thankful that it was just marker and it was just on her, not the walls. Once again, I put Andrea in her bouncy chair while Sofia got her bath and once she was in the water, she was fine. What is it about these kids? You'd have thought I was trying to put her in boiling lava, yet three minutes later she's splashing around "I'm swimming like a shark Mom! Look at me go!" Even Andrea was okay in her chair - I think she liked watching Sofia in the water and I'm really looking forward to putting the two of them in the bath together and watching them play.

Even bedtime was much smoother than Wednesday night and we settled fairly quickly. Unfortunately, Sofia had a bit of a stuffy nose and couldn't get comfortable. "Mom my nose is broken! Fix it!" And then Andrea chimed in with a most impressive middle of the night poop which is why I'm awake. I got them settled back down and asleep but now I can't sleep.

Honestly though, it's nice to be able to write. It's nice to get this moment to myself and while I'm sure I'm going to pay for this in the morning when I'm zombie tired, I'm enjoying it now.

Rest in motion. Just because it never stops, just because the job is 24-7, there will be moments of peace. Just watch for them and be present when they happen and you'll be able to keep going.

That's what works for me anyway.

Peace, my friends.

Rookie mistake

noreply@blogger.com (Desiree) — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 17:42:00 +0000

I was hoping to get to Wednesday at the least before I completely fell apart but no such luck. Yesterday was a complete Mommy failure and it was my fault. I committed the most rookie of all mistakes and it derailed the rest of the day.

ProTip: Never ever ignore your child's hunger. Ever. It won't end well for you.

I know this cardinal rule and I honor it above all things most times. However, there are times when I take leave of my senses and think that my toddler is a logical and rational human being and can ignore hunger pangs for a quick second while I run an errand. That way of thinking is absolutely ridiculous and frankly, dangerous. Toddlers are not rational people; they don't eat balanced healthy meals at properly spaced times. They have two hunger modes: Not Hungry and Oh My God If I Don't Have Food Right This Second I Will Spontaneously Combust. There's no in between and if you've tipped the scale in the wrong direction, sorry 'bout your bad luck.

So why oh WHY did I think *this one time* it would be different? Because it's not. It never is.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays Sofia is in school. She usually gets out at 11:15, we're home by 11:30 and she's stuffing her face by 11:40. If it's a good day for me, a nap will follow shortly after. Because of all the snow days we've had, they've extended her day, dismissing at 11:45. Plus, it was nice out and they did some hard playing on the playground. So I picked up my baby, who was tired and starving.

Why oh WHY did I go to Office Depot to print birthday stuff instead of carrying her STRAIGHT home?! But that's just what I did and when we pulled into the parking lot instead of our driveway, the Hunger demon and its twin, Fatigue, began to possess my daughter.

"No Mom, we have to go home." That was my first and last rational warning. I ignored it, like a stupid rookie.
"I know sweetheart, I just have to make one quick stop and then we'll go straight home I promise." No stop is ever quick when you have a tired hungry toddler, FYI.

I was convinced it would be so fast that I naively didn't even put Andrea in the Ergo; I just had her in one arm and held Sofia's hand with the other. SO DUMB.

Because of course the Office Depot person didn't know what I needed, despite me being as clear as I could. Of course they didn't have the paper I needed. Of course she took a personal call as I was standing in front of her, the demons slowly invading my daughter.

Sofia put on a SHOW in Office Depot. Rather, it wasn't her, it was the demons. The demons made her collapse on the floor and scream for the entire store to hear how hungry she was and how she wanted to go home. Mother of the year, right here. Then she wanted to run off so I had to awkwardly chase her while holding my seven week old in my arms. She didn't want to stand up, so I had to pull her arm, which I hate because I'm always terrified of pulling her just right and her frickin arm coming out of socket. But I can't bend over because of the baby and it was an absolute mess. I had to leave the store and run outside, drag-carrying a screaming Sofia so I could get the double stroller. I felt the tightness in my chest, the admonishments in my head. What the hell was I thinking? I know better than this!

But the damage was already done. Sofia was gone and the demons had taken full possession. Now that she was in the stroller she screamed to be let out. "Please Mom can you take me out?!" "Two seconds honey and then we'll go I promise" as I feel the sweat forming on my back and my head getting itchy. Then Andrea winds up and starts crying. I nursed her in the back of the store - at least I could do something about her crying - with Sofia crying in the stroller. What a mess.

In reality, this was all about ten minutes but it felt like an eternity. Time stops when children cry, I swear. My poor Sofia was delirious with hunger and I pulled into Wendy's to get her a cheeseburger and fries and we sped home. She INHALED that burger like I'd never seen, making me feel like the lowest slime alive. I felt so bad, but again, the damage was done and now she was overtired.

Overtired toddlers do weird things like run around in circles screaming. It's deceiving because they're climbing the walls but they're exhausted. It's a strange phenomenon and I did all I could to settle her down but it just wasn't working.

Finally, I put her in the car and we headed to my girlfriend's house. We'd already planned to have dinner with them and it was a thirty minute drive. Sofia was asleep before we left our neighborhood, so she slept for thirty minutes but she really needed a couple of hours.

This wasn't yesterday but it was another day that I'd tried for hours to get

her to sleep and she falls asleep within seconds of being in the car.

I guess I should be thankful she sleeps well *somewhere*.

We got to their house and Sofia ran and played for hours with my girlfriend's son. When we left I was sure she would sleep on the way home, but she was too wound up from playing.

Bedtime was a nightmare. The demon Fatigue hadn't released its hold on my baby and wasn't going out without a fight. I tried to speed through bedtime but you really can't speed changing two kids, chasing one down to put pjs on, nursing one, brushing teeth for another - it was bad.

We all finally settled down to sleep around ten and Sofia slept hard. Poor thing was full-out snoring and she didn't wake up until almost ten this morning. Thankfully the demons left her and she was my happy smiling girl once again. I was a little spent though and we've spent the morning watching lots of TV because Mommy needs to recuperate.

It's crazy how badly things can go off the rails when you make a rookie mistake and I definitely didn't thrive yesterday. As I was driving out to my friend's house, I was completely beating myself up, all kinds of negative self-talking in my head and I felt things spiraling. I really lost it yesterday and I was really disappointed in myself. Thankfully, I spent the evening with friends so the day wasn't completely shot.

Today, we're going to try again. We all got some much needed sleep, I've already fed her well and often today so the demon Hunger is kept at bay. I will try my hardest to get her down for a nap but that's harder these days because I've always laid down with her to get her to sleep and that's not always possible with the baby.

Yesterday was pretty bad - oh yeah, she pooped on the floor again too, but at least that one was smack in the middle of the living room so I didn't have to play poop detective. And I didn't handle it well. I was frazzled from Office Depot, mad at myself, frustrated that I couldn't get her to nap, Andrea was crying and I come around the corner to a poop-covered kid and a nasty present on the living room floor. I got on her level, looked her in her face and with a harsher tone than I should've used I was like "Sofia!!! Poops go in the potty!!!!" It was less a teaching tone and more a 'what the hell is your problem' tone. I'm not proud of that - I should've taken a second to get it together, but the poop on the floor was the last straw to a wacked-out few hours.

Yet, today is a new day and I'm leaving the events of yesterday in the past. I'm going to try again to get her to nap and hopefully I'll be successful and when she wakes up we'll reconnect and do something fun. And I think that's what matter the most. I'm going to fail, I'm going to mess up and I'm not going to thrive all the time, but as long as I don't give up, that counts for something, right?

Anyway, that's what I'm going with.

Gotta run - the baby's crying and it's time for Sofia's nap. Wish me luck.