da da da da da.... I'm lovin it!

Being home is the BOMB!!!

I have time to work out and fit in my skinny jeans.

I get to play with this adorable thing ALL day!!!

Even when he is doing naughty things

I do teach him good things: See he is eating with hashi (chopsticks) all by himself!

I am teaching him the Waddoups PJ Fashionware.

He learned how to climb up on things by himself.

Obviously someone gave him the hankering to get up high however :(.

I even taught him how to binge out on Oreos! 

(p.s. he was actually sick this day, not just sugar sick)

He even has learned how to take pictures. He keeps stealing my camera and walking all around with it. It is always interesting to see the world from his view.

Unfortunately I forgot to pack my camera for our Idaho trip. But I will forever have an image of him sitting on the little red bench watchin my mom garden engrained in my head. It was sooo flipping adorable.  I almost feel guilty I love being home so much! I love spending time with Graham. I love having time to clean the apt (not that I always do!). And I love that the weather is getting nice, so we can go play outside just about every day! Graham is slowly working on his words and sign language. He keeps getting a little confused, but we almost always know what he wants. In fact, he gets so clear about what he wants that he will refuse to say it. ugh. He walks with the grace of a toddler and is an incredibly pleasant baby. Not sure how I lucked out... but I'M LOVIN IT.

Starting off with a bang

Obviously I have a bit more spare time (and computer time) now that I am a, dun dun dun, stay at home mom!  (BIG SMILES). And we surely started my first day off right. Graham cried at five (he was pooping). Went back to sleep till 7, whined until 9... it's all a blur until around 12 when I ditched the fam and went and got a PEDICURE (that's right Kim, I stopped asking permission and finally got it done!). My toes are a crazy green, but I guess it works for St. Patrick's this month. Then I went and met up with Seanypoo and GK at Wally's. We got the little man some more shoes, we left the last/only pair that fits at the babysitters and I'm not exactly sure when I will go back to SF -- soon I'm sure. And a Wally trip with all of us pretty much counts for FHE right? So we are on the right track there. Then Sean was a wonderman and watched GK again while I went to a Body Pump class with my pedi-buddy. It was a freaking awesome workout.

 I realize this is not a typical stay-at-home-mom day. But it sure was a great way to start a new era out with a bang!

I'm Done!!!

No pics today, but I officially am done with working at the Clinic! YAY. I will dearly miss my girlfriends but am stoked to stay home with my babes... who currently NEEDS me RIGHT NOW. Full time momhood... here I come!

One

 

My baby is one. My heart has broken, just a little. I'm not sure if it will ever be the same again. Wait, that is stupid. I KNOW my life will never be the same again! I realize they have to grow up. I look forward to him walking (better) and learning how to talk (not argue)... but really.... ONE!?  Who said my baby could become one? I want to know who you are, seriously. Becuase I have a problem with my little smoosh being one.

Anyways... besides him growing without my permission, he is also getting extremly cute.  I finally bought him a tie, only to realize it was WAY too small. But if I crop the pictures just so, it looks AWESOME!  He now has a bigger tie, but I'm still working on getting a white shirt for him to wear to church. (They are hard buggers to find for cheap!) Currently he wears alot of plaid shirts with kakhi's.

 For his birthday we threw together a last minute party. Sorry if you weren't properly invited. Sean's family has a tradition of the dad making a cool/unique cake for the birthday, and Sean had the brainchild of making a toothbrush. (Graham loves loves loves the toothbrush caddy in the bathroom-- which also happens to be the one thing in the house he really isn't allowed to have.)  However the cake went as follows: Sean baked, Sean pulled cake out of pans, Sean started stacking, Sean mixed up icing/whipped topping, Rachel iced, Rachel finished stacking/making brustles, Rachel put the cake outside to firm up, Rachel colored icing, Rachel finished icing, Rachel put a decorative G on the cake, Rachel carried the cake down to Grandma's condo.     

Let's call it a joint effort.

 

But we really know who MADE the cake!

Some of us

Around here not a whole lot is going on. We like to spend time like this:

Just hanging in our PJ's at home.

Occasionally we do take a bath and do a little beauty routine:

 

(Graham LOVES toothbrushes right now).

And we got out to see the lights! It was a suprisingly difficult thing to do.

Graham spent most of the time completely docile in his chair. He really didn't care too much about this lights this year.

 

But in the end we know he liked it. OK we really only know that he survived and didn't mind too much, but he is pretty cute none the less.  

I realized I missed blogging in December. It was kind of a crazy month. We went up to Idaho for a week for xmas. It was fun. The boys especially had a great time. We also went down to SF for New Years. Turns out Sean, Graham, and I all had a terrible cold. My head just throbbed and throbbed. It was kind of crazy. Sean's throat was really hurting him, and Graham was coughing, sneezing, and in general not very happy. We still had a pretty good time. Sean and Graham rode the side by sides out in the field, and I slept quite a bit.  Other than that not much exciting is happening around here. We are all still on the recovery, and I realized at 10p last night that no one even left the apt yesterday. How odd. I guess I'm more of a homebody than I thought.  

 

This morning...

I was so delighted this morning. It was 7:30 and Graham was still just talking and being quiet. I imagined the delightful day we were going to have. We were going to stay in bed. Maybe slowly wake up and eat some breakfast. Go walking if we woke up in time to meet the neighbors, go later if we didn't.  It was going to be a nice mellow calm day. I awoke, laughed with Sean about some of the funnier little things Graham was saying, and finally decided to go in.

THIS... is what I found.

Yes, that is POOP.   Yes, that POOP is EVERYWHERE.   I mean everywhere. On his head, in his mouth, front and back of his body, on his bottle, on another bottle I found outside the crib, on the sheets, blankets, EVERYWHERE.  We had a serious tub before we could do anything.

\

Yes, I did laugh and get the camera after calling Sean to come see exactly what his son had done! Unfortunately he is just too cute (and the first child to boot) to punish. We just bathed him, then I fed him some food. I am still pretty worried about getting hand/foot/mouth disease, because... well the kid ate poop. I made him drink lemon juice with some water, and then loaded up his sweet potatoes with cinnamon, as I heard that is disenfectant of sorts. Well, hopefully he survives. If not and we get a mad cow baby, he might just look like this:

which would be adorable of course.

Slim Pickin's Thanksgivin's

I think we ripped my in-laws out of a holiday.
       I worked M-W and came home (SLC) Wed night to get all ready for our big Thanksgiving Weekend Event in SF. I delivered a friend's gift, bought all the items I was responsible for bringing to the big dinner, and packed Graham and I all up. I had the next morning's schedule all planned and explained to Sean. We were going to leave in plenty of time to miss traffic, and probably show up an hour early to the dinner, meaning we wouldn't eat for almost two hours once we got there.... Then The Illness struck. I call it The Illness because I have no idea what it really is.  Wed night I end up going to the bathroom like 6 times. I figured I just ate way too much at work ( I was preparing accordingly for the huge meal I was expecting to eat). Then the next morning Sean was pretty tired. I mean REALLY tired. I just figured he was enjoying the holiday, an didn't mind as long as we left in enough time to get there. Well as my estimated departure time goes by, and then my back up departure time goes by, and then the "if we leave right now we could still be OK" and THEN the "we could possibly still get some pie" time all flew by, I knew Thanksgiving was not going to be the same this year.
      Sean was super sick the night before and completely exhausted in the morning. Then it turns out he couldn't eat anything. He could literally barely down a piece of toast.  I wasn't feeling peachy, but I wasn't nearly as bad as him. Well, most of you know me, and most of you know Sean. Which means all of you at one point or another have gotten the excuse from us "Sorry, Sean's sick." So of course the in-laws were sceptical. Honestly, who wouldn't be? Even my neighbors have asked a few times why Sean gets sick so often. I have gone the rounds in my head many-a-time wondering if he is faking it, just a pain in the @$$, or legitimately sick. Turns out this time it was legit. So I'm trying to keep the in-laws posted, keeping up the hopes we might be able to just stuff Sean in the car and head down (and eat left-overs at least), and Sean just gets sicker and sicker. Today he was super pale, looked nasty, and is having a hard time even wanting to eat anything. I keep trying to get liquids down him, but adult boys are HARD to take care of. Then I stopped for a second to realize I haven't been able to eat much either. Last night I was scrounging for food, realizing it was definitely time to grocery shop, only in time to realize all the stores were closed or filled with early Black Friday-ers.
     So it is probably a good thing. We probably would have gone, gotten everyone sick, eaten way too much and made ourselves feel even sicker. Instead I have had a lot of time with Graham. :) :). He has learned to army scoot super good! He is such a cheery happy little soul, I don't even think he has realized his parents aren't up to par. So this Thanksgiving, we ate this little ham:

Halloween fun

OK, in reality, Halloween was kind of a mess.

 

I had just gotten back home (aka SLC) from a quick weekend trip to Idaho with no Seanypoo. I was super frazzeled (if you don't believe me, just read the blog bellow). I dquickly did a lot of laundry to get ready for the week, and started packing to head back down to SF. Needless to say I forgot to pack costumes for Halloween.  It wouldn't have been such a big deal if I hadn't been telling people at work that I was definitely dressing up etc. I really do love Halloween and it kind of did break my heart. My neighbor in SF tried to convince me to run home  (SLC) on Tues night and just stay down in SF for Wed.   I considered it before I realized, I would be EXHAUSTED. Working a 10, driving to SLC, not actually getting to see my baby for longer than an hour or so before going to sleep, waking up an EXTRA hour early to drive back to work, work another 10, get ready for Halloween and then pretend to enjoy it all?  That just wasn't going to happen. Luckily I put my decision in Sean's hands, and with a little prayer we decided just to stay in SF, and drive home on Wed like usual. The fun part was dressing Squish up for a whole 15 minutes... and taking really cute pictures!  He is a Grahmpire, and I was "Bella Cullen" (which really was my work clothes with a lot of make-up!).  But the pictures are so cute!

Cutest little Dracula/Vampire you have ever seen! His hair was the perfect length to push it all forward! I wanted to spray it black, but you take what you can get.

His little outfit had wrist bands in the cape! It was so adorable he would walk or reach up to hold my hands and his little cape would flap! Super fun.

Tirade...

Tirade of an insane mom...
  

  Yes, I realize I brought this on myself. Each and every stinking problem I have... I know is entirely my fault. But can I just say... it is TOO much.

I love my family, but I am so sick of carting half of us to once city to work for a while, then another to clean and "live." I want to put things away in my apartment. I want my winter clothes to fit in the stinking closet! I want to OWN enough hangers to put my winter clothes in the closet that they should fit in. I want things to have a place and to know, and hopefully remember, where that place is. I want to clean my bathroom more than once a month. I want to spend more times with my super cute babes (I clocked one work day: 2.1 hours with Graham. That's it). I want to be able to dote on my husband, and cook dinner more than once a month. Is this really too much to ask for? (Again, I already know... this is my fault.)

 I like my job, it really is quite interesting. But I am SICK of working with crazy people. I may understand why things happen, or why people do thing, but that doesn't make it any less offensive.  It doesn't mean I think about it less at night, efficiently getting myself roiled up, and then having to calm down again. I like doing my job, I've discovered I don't like doing insane leadership/reporting on things I can't change and I can't fix. That is particularly depressing. I know managing is an art, and quite frankly I am a sucky artist (at least at this job).

Ok, so there are only two major things... but tonight, just tonight as I sit in the lap of luxury at my mom's house, unable to act on any of my problems... I tirade.

Sad Days

You know it is bad when your FATHER tells you that it is time to update your blog. We have just had some crazy weekends.  So here is my update, but I know what you really want is PICTURES. So here is a ton!

Well, Graham is "sizely". We happened to be at the doctors office for an unrelated visit and I slapped him on the scales, 20 POUNDS. He is getting very long, rather than fat. But it still is a workout to get him up all the stairs to our apt. Here you can see his little scooch. He really doesn't like doing this very much, but he was enthralled by the door jab thing. (He loves these in every room he can find). If you notice he makes a nice 180.

 He will prop himself up when he is on his belly, but he won't crawl. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing!

What happens at Nate and Kim's, stays at Nate and Kim's! Mostly, we just wanted to see what he would think of a "beebee". We didn't even put bows in his hair.

  He loves the cougars!  However sitting still for games is impossible.

 Nakey baby's are sooo cute!

 Such a smily baby!

 Graham loves walks and walking. We found some pretty dinosaur leaves (is what I call the huge leafy plants) and I couldn't resist a little photo shoot. Graham also perks right up when he sees a camera.

 He LOVES being outdoors. My sister-in-law has a theory that if you treat babies like cave men they will be happier, and Graham definitely loves being outdoors.

 However I'm still trying to teach him that dead leaves don't taste good.

 Yes, this is a U bib. He was being a temporary traitor, but it was just so gosh-darn cute!

He doesn't really like to be swaddled anymore, but this just shows how long he is.

This picture reminds me SO much of Sam! Graham is definitely made out of a Doups mold.

I was actually happily surprised to find over 200 pictures on my camera of Graham and I. I worry every now and then that I am working too much and not documenting Graham's life. In fact, and Nate and Kim's I even gave Boston the camera (He actually did pretty good, but the pictures are a little too psycadelic for the blog). I'm very lucky to have such a photogenic baby. It makes taking pictures much more fun than it was for the first few months!

 I'm still working on a blog of Hawaii. It was really fun, but very different than I was expecting. But hopefully this will tide everyone over for a little while! I look the same, fyi.