a week with grammy!
Charlotte and I sadly dropped Grammy off at the airport very early this morning. Although we had a great week we were very sad to see her go! Grammy took care of us and entertained us while Jay was out of town.
Below are some of our favorite moments this past week with her!
early morning cuddles
walking our socks off
working on quilting blocks
enjoying a meal
visiting Lewis Ginter
enjoying some good home cookin!
We also just got to enjoy each others company. It was nice that Grammy got to see Charlotte’s growing personality, she will never be this young again and it was great that Grammy got to spend some time with her while she is this young. We had time to have good long talks, get to laugh over silly things and of course visit Sweet Frog a number of times! I know that time with all three of us is time to be treasured and we loved every minute!
Thanks Grammy for coming to visit, taking care and loving on us over this past week! We will miss you and look forward to seeing you in July!
-melissa
avoiding cabin fever by getting crafty
Charlotte has been in our lives now for 16 days, I have been home for 13 of those days and I am ashamed to say I already have a big dose of cabin fever. I blame part of the fever on the weather, it has been rainy and cold in the great Va now for days. I blame the other part on that horrible pediatrician that told us we could not leave the house for one month. Either way I know that is my job to make sure that I do not go nuts and only I can control my attitude and this crazy fever that I have currently. The best way for me to avoid this is by crafting. I am not much of a crafter when it comes to holiday wreathes and potpourri arrangements, but I do love to sew. So I have lined up some projects that in my opinion are very needed in the world and will keep me busy!
The first project that I have in mind is for Benjamin, my too cute nephew who lives in Ohio. I think it is essential that he has a wonderfully handcrafted Easter present from his Auntie Mo and Uncle Jay. After scouring my sewing blogs I have found these...
from the longthread.com. I will post pictures as soon as they are finished. Hopefully they will be perfect for him even if he doesn’t understand the whole bowling thing. He can always chuck them across the house or use them as a weapon for the family dog...sorry Molly!
The second project that I have in mind has been in the back of my head floating around since around Christmas. We have a good family friend that has a beach quilt. I think it is the greatest idea to have a quilt that goes with you and your family every year to the beach. I love the idea of having year after year of family pictures at the beach on top of the same family quilt. I think it will be lovely to see the quilt age with the family over time. So with all those lovely sentiments and gushy feelings out of the way, Jay and I went shopping online (remember I can not yet leave the house, not even for my favorite fabric stores) to find a fabric pack (called a jelly roll in the sewing world) that we both loved and thought would be perfect for a family beach quilt. One of the first companies that we first searched was Moda, they are a great company with very diverse prints. I like that the fabrics do not look like they have been designed by some old bird but also do not look too modern. We settled on this.......
We thought that it would go perfectly with the quilt pattern that we had chosen from cluckclucksew.com
Now this project will be significantly more difficult and take up way more time than the cute bunnies for Benjamin, but I need to get working on it now if I want it complete by our Ocracoke trip in July which means I need to stop blogging!
-melissa
postpartum pillage
Around a year ago we decided that we wanted to start trying to get pregnant. Like most people know, when I set my mind to something I get slightly obsessive. Combine that with always liking a good set of rules and you have my distorted eating habits for the past year. Pre-pregnancy I cut out alcohol and caffeine, which was not that bad expect for when we had a girl night or book club and I did not get to enjoy a nice glass of white wine. The caffeine was a little different with a group of forty five spring infused ten year olds, but once I got over the main addiction I was okay.
Once we found out I was pregnant and we met with the nutritionalist at the doctors office and it was a whole different story. The items that we (Jay, myself and the doctor) thought that would be best to cut out of my diet was enormous. The list included: soft cheeses, hot dogs, rare meats, soft serve ice cream, lunch meat, and that is just to name a few.
Well I am no longer pregnant, no embryo to protect, no toxic weird food chemicals can get to her now...so watch out...a postpartum pillage is about to happen.
Today it happened, Jay took me on a field trip and we pillaged Mechanicsville and all it had to offer! Again because we like a good set of rules we have listened to everything muttered by our pediatrician. This includes that Charlotte can not go into public places for the first month until flu season ends. What this really means is that I can not go out in public, no Target, no restaurants, not even a quick trip to the grocery. Taking this into consideration the pillage had to have some boundaries. We were in the market for a wonderful place that offered delicious hotdogs and creamy soft serve ice cream. Where else can meet all of my pig-out needs like Mechanicsville Turnpike with its Sonic and Dairy Queen.
Our raid started at Sonic where we enjoyed a succulent lunch of chili dogs with that weird cheese you find out of a can, it was simply amazing.
We could not just stop there so we also added a side of onion rings (that tasted strangely like french toast sticks) and mozzarella sticks.
The goodness and rule breaking could not stop there, coming home we passed a Dairy Queen and we stopped to delight in blizzards, made with soft serve ice cream, of course!
The whole trip was amazing, delectable, and oh so gratifying. Good thing I at least get those extra 500 calories...I wonder how many days of calories I consumed today? It does not matter it was so well worth it!
charlotte through the dogs eyes
Every little boy dreams of getting his first dog. A popular kids song dating back to 1820 says,
What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.
I don’t know about the frogs and snails part, but I think it’s built into every boy to want a dog...our composition is apparently 1/3 dog parts as it were. As a kid the closest I ever got was a cat that we owned when I was 4 or 5. Our cat hated me so much, it would hiss when I would walk into the room. Now, Angel had good reason for hissing. As a little boy I would chase her around and pull on her tail. No wonder. Well anyhow, I wanted to post about charlotte through our dogs’ eyes.
Right around this same age, I began to take on an alter ego/imaginary friend. My name was Ruff, but only when I was behaving and doing the right thing. If I ever misbehaved or got into trouble I would simply state that “Strawberry Ruff did it.” It was a great way to shift the blame onto “someone else”. Isn’t it interesting how young we learn to do that. I say all of that to say that I think I have a pretty good handle on how dogs look at the world for three reasons...
1-I’m 1/3 dog parts
2-My alter ego as a kid was a dog
3-I own two dogs today and before Charlotte they were my babies.
As we were setting up Charlotte’s room, the dogs were very interested. We always joked that Abby thought that we were making the nursery for her. She is in fact 7 years old now, so moving upstairs is kind of like getting the apartment over the garage for a teenager. Jack would often come upstairs to the nursery and just sleep on the area rug in the middle of the room. He learned pretty quickly that the width of the slats on the crib just happen to be the exact same width as his nose and long before Charlotte joined us, he would poke his nose in and look in the crib, almost as if he knew not too long from then something would be in there.
We recently also repainted our guest room upstairs just down a short hall and it is a nice green color, so combined with the soothing gray we put on Charlotte’s walls, I think the upstairs is my new favorite part of the house. I anticipated the day that the dogs and Charlotte would all be upstairs sleeping in the nursery, while I sit in the rocker and enjoy life.
It’s been fun to see how the dogs react to Charlotte. When she’s swaddled or bundled up, she’s really just a head. The real fun is when she’s unwrapped and moving her limbs around. The dogs become much more interested with her limbs and movements when she’s out and free. The other day we came home from a doctors appointment and came in and put Charlotte’s car seat on the kitchen table while we got settled in. I let the dogs out like I always do and it was so cute to see Abby walk over to Charlotte’s swing to see if she was in there. For those of you who know Abby, she’s a great dog, but as far as people go, she’s really only interested in a handful of people. She’ll acknowledge you, but she’s only bff’s with a select few. After not locating Charlotte in her swing, she began to stick her nose in the air and locate her by other means. Abby has a big nose, but it’s a case where size doesn’t matter. She can’t find anything very well with her nose, so eventually I motioned her over to show her where Charlotte lay.
Jack has always been a sweet spirited dog. He’s going to be an even better dog when Charlotte gets a little bigger. I think they’ll be best friends after long. Jack has been very tuned into Charlotte’s noises and wakings. He likes to sit right outside her pack n play or crib when’s she stirring to hear her little musings. We haven’t tried it just yet, but I bet they will learn to snuggle together very soon.
Well I’m sure there will be more great stories about dogs and Charlotte, but for now I’m living the best of both worlds. Melissa let me pick out Abby as our first dog right after we got married and a few years back Melissa saw Jack’s picture on the local county cable channel on a Saturday morning and woke me up and said, “we have to go get him.” Now Charlotte...how did we get her you ask...well I think you know that part, but I also think I have to say that she is an amazingly perfect little girl, so in this case, Ruff is responsible for this one!!!
-jay