This Face.
Kitty snuggles.
Exploring the Wild Animal Sanctuary.
Flying with her Papi.
Hozier.
Spring weather. And gratuitous photos of myself.
Things I am not loving lately:
Packing.
Category Archives: photos
Catching Up
So apparently I am The Suck lately at keeping this blog updated. Which is dumb because I think about it all the time, and then at the end of the day I’m still sitting there like “damn it! I didn’t update my blog!”
C’est la vie I suppose.
So here’s what we’ve been up to lately.
Birthday!
Bean had her first birthday two weeks ago! We had a party. There was cake. There was a preponderance of presents. There was singing, but Bean mostly looked at us like we were crazy.
Professional Photos
We took Bean to JC Penney to get some professional photos done for her first birthday. It ended up being more expensive than I thought it was worth and we weren’t really crazy about the products they gave us, so I doubt we’ll go back at any point, but whatever. These were some of our favorites.
12 Month Checkup
Bean had her 12 month checkup yesterday and weighed in at 18.10 pounds and 29 inches tall. She is right on track for weight gain and a little bit short for her size, but otherwise is developmentally perfect. She can say “Dada” and sometimes “Mama.” She talks nonstop and has several phrases that I hear her repeat often, so they must mean something to her. Who knows. She will walk all day long behind her push cart and cruise around the furniture (and over it, and us) but has yet to take any independent steps without holding onto something. I catch her standing independently every so often, but it only lasts as long as she doesn’t realize what she’s doing. She’ll be on it in no time, she just has to get up the nerve to do it on her own. She has no problem getting places, crawls like a speed demon, climbs the stairs like a pro, and can scurry backwards up a slide like it is her job. I definitely see the makings of a daredevil. Her new favorite is standing on top of her new chair (Harold the Chairold) and trying to climb onto the tv table. Nothing that could go wrong there, right? Cameron is concerned that she’ll be able to climb out of her crib, but since she has yet to figure out how to vertically scale things, I think we’re safe for a little while. Basically I’ve accepted the fact that as soon as she gets her feet, I’m doomed.
What else….
I Drank the Kool-Aid
Uh, yeah. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you’ve probably heard me bitch about my frustrations with constantly getting hit up by friends and family who do the “It Works” thing. I think the whole thing is a sham, but that’s neither here nor there, and if you think it works that’s fine, and if you sell it, that’s fine too. I’ve always been resistant of sales companies like that, and then I came across this thing called Jamberry which is basically THE SHIT. I like it because it’s 1) an actual product that doesn’t claim to make you lose weight through magic wraps, 2) it’s non-toxic and made in the USA, and 3) It’s fun, cute, and inexpensive. I can do my nails at home in about 15 minutes for waaaaay less than it costs to get a manicure in a shop. The designs are gorgeous, you can mix and match, they stay on for 2 weeks (no lie, even on Mommy hands), and they’re super easy to do yourself. They somehow manage to make even my teeny tiny fragile nails look bomb. I was pretty much hooked after one order. Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying that I drank the kool-aid and signed up to be a consultant for Jamberry. And, because I hate a hypocrite, this is officially the last time you’ll hear me talk about this here. If you’re interested in learning a little more or ordering, please leave me a comment…but I’m not going to go talking about it all the time. I will however leave these pictures of some applications I’ve done because shit, they’re just so cute.
Anyway.
It’s almost time for Thanksgiving and then Christmas! You have no idea how badly tempted I am to put up the Christmas stuff now, but I’m making myself wait. We have yet to figure out what to do about our tree situation. Our tree bit the dust last year and I haven’t decided if we should shell out on a new one or go for a real tree this year. My gut is telling me buy a new artificial one, since I’m sure Bean will be more than happy to ingest pine needles if she could. We also have to figure out where we’re going to put a tree. Our place is slightly awkward for setting up a tree, especially since I am freakishly right-angle about everything and feel like a tree has to be in a corner or dead center in the middle of a window. Anybody else like that?
11 Months
Man it has been difficult to find time to get to my computer lately! Whoops.
Bean is now 11 months old! (As of a little over a week ago.) See above.
Last weekend, we went to San Diego for Cameron’s brother’s wedding. We had a fun time and Bean was a traveling trooper. We had short flights luckily and she was pretty good both times. The flight home she slept pretty much the entire flight. We were only there for a short weekend, but we got to stop at the beach, so Bean has now put her feet in two oceans before her first birthday!
While we were in San Diego Bean got to meet lots of family on Cameron’s side and everyone was so excited to see her. Although I have to admit that as much as I love her, I probably would have opted to leave her at home for this trip if I thought the family wouldn’t have killed me for not bringing her. It would have been nice to have a baby-free trip and enjoy more of the wedding festivities, but c’est la vie. As it was, Cameron’s aunt and cousins graciously took the Bean for a few hours on our last morning there and we were able to have breakfast and visit the beach by ourselves.
So, what is Bean into these days? EVERYTHING! She figured out how to pull up on things a couple weeks ago and now she is cruising around the house like nobody’s business. She makes laps of the living room and she is working on learning how to let go of things and sit down so I have a feeling she will be taking unassisted steps in no time. She is interested in everything and she is very brave.
She was doing really well sleeping through the night, but then she had two teeth come in about the same time and has been a little disrupted of late, but luckily is usually still only getting up once a night for a few minutes. After another dose of Advil and some cuddles she goes right back to sleep. She still naps twice a day, usually about 2 hours per nap, and gets into bed between 9 and 9:30 each night. I am working on transitioning her off formula soon, but I am thinking I will leave her on the toddler formula for a little while until she is more used to cow’s milk. I started giving her a couple ounces with food but it seems to make her really gassy, so we’re going to see how it goes. She gets 3 bottles a day, so I think soon I will work on cutting out the two daytime bottles and only give her one before bed because it helps her settle down.
Bean has a very independent personality and she definitely does not like to be crowded. She has never been much of a cuddler, and she becomes extremely overwhelmed if she is surrounded by lots of noise and people. In loud restaurants or gatherings she gets fussy easily but if she is removed from the situation she cheers up right away. Most of the time she prefers to play on her own and only comes to us to play occasionally. She still loves her kitties most of all and I have a feeling she’ll be using Sherlock as her dress-up doll/doctor patient/plaything in the future. She plays fine with other kids when we take her out to play with the neighbors, though she is more interested in observing the older kids than she is actually engaging in play–so she might be a little shy or socially nervous around strangers like I am. Now that she can cruise and do things a little bit more independently the playground is becoming more accessible, so I think the more I introduce her to other kids the more she will hopefully open up. I don’t think she’ll be much of a social butterfly, though.
Bean is a chatterbox and has started to say “mama” and “dada” with more regularity now. She also says “ooh-day” when she is excited or interested in something. She loves birds and airplanes and points at everything. She LOVES to dance and she likes to watch nature shows and recently has become interested in Curious George. She has been spending a lot of time with her Papi when I am at work, and they go for walks and hang out at the playground a lot.
We are trying to take her out for lots of fall activities, and yesterday she went to her first pumpkin patch. Just a small one; we planned to go to a place called Anderson Farms that has lots of activities, but she was a grumpy gills and wouldn’t take a late nap, so we opted for the one nearer to our house and we are planning to take her up to the big farm next weekend. Oh–and she is dressing up as an owl for Halloween! I also have to start figuring out what to do for her birthday…I can’t believe I will have a toddler in a couple weeks. When did that happen?
10 Months
My bitty Bean is 10 months old!
What a month for the Bean. I feel like she has developed so much in the last few weeks, especially in becoming mobile. She still isn’t crawling, but that doesn’t stop her at all. She gets around! I have to be careful where I leave her because she could get into trouble. She is standing, not quite on her own unsupported, but very close. She knows how to take steps with help and she is starting to pull up on things. (Just while I was writing this, she stood up on her own on the side of a foot stool) Climbing out of the tub seems to be her favorite project right now.
Aside from getting going, she is chattering up a storm. No actual words yet, though we get “dada,” “mama,” and “baba” parroted back at us over and over and over when she feels like it. We sometimes get what we think are “hey/hi” and “wow/woah/oh”. She also hums, shouts, screams, and shrills like a bird at all times. She even whispers “dadoo” whenever you pick her up. As pleasant a baby as she is, she is definitely not shy about telling you when she is unhappy, be it vocally or physically. If she is done drinking her bottle, she will shove it out of her face. If she is done with the attention, she will shove you out of her face. We went through a screaming phase not too long ago, but it seems to have ended now thank goodness…or maybe I should say, it has ended for the time being.
Eating and sleeping have been about the same. We are still trying to get her to hold her own bottle, especially since she’ll be with Papi during the day soon and it would definitely be easier on him if she could drink her own bottle. We’re getting there. Mostly if I hand the bottle to her she wants to investigate it, turn it upside down, shake it, play with the nipple…she definitely knows how it works but for whatever reason just won’t take the final step of lifting it up. We had some success with a bottle that had handles on the bottom, but nothing concrete yet. She still gobbles up just about everything I give her for meals. Her favorites right now are ravioli, mandarin oranges, blueberries, and graham crackers. Oh, and she has four teeth now!
So, in lieu of another detailed monthly update, I thought I’d do a Day in the Life of A Bean…with approximated times, of course. A girl hates to be predictable.
6:30-7:30ish – wake up. Diaper change, breakfast, playtime, bottle
8:30-9:30ish – nap (mom’s time for an uninterrupted cup of coffee, breakfast, laundry, straighten up, etc)
11ish – wake up. diaper change, get dressed. If we have errands to run this is when I do them. If not, we watch a nature show or go for a walk, go to the park, etc
12:00-1:00ish – Lunch. More playtime/tv
2:00-3:00ish – another bottle, then nap.
4:00-5:00ish – wake up. Dinner.
6:00-6:30ish – evening walk
7:00-8:00 playtime, or sitting outside if the weather is nice, generally just family time
8:00 – bath time
8:30 – get out of the bath, quiet time in her room, bedtime routine. Lotion, pajamas, quiet music, last bottle
9:00 (hopefully) bed time
It’s hard to believe I am within two months of celebrating my little girl’s first birthday! I am thinking owl theme, she seems to love owls. Think that also might be her Halloween costume too. In the meantime, every day I am watching this bright girl learn more , test her boundaries (and mine) and become a little person. It’s so exciting!
9 Months
The Bean is 9 months old! Well…9 and a half at this point, but you get the idea.
At her checkup last week, she weighed 16lbs15oz and measured 28 1/4 inches long. Growing growing growing! The doctor was very pleased with her weight gain even though I was a little freaked out at first (I thought closer to 18lbs surely), but though she be but little, she is progressing through the percentiles normally. So she’s in the 24th percentile for weight and the 66th for height, so it may just be that she will be petite and tall.
As of last night, she had taken one “step” as a crawler. She can get herself into the position and turn herself in circles, but she hasn’t quite been brave enough to take a leg forward. So is really close though, and gets very frustrated when she can’t do it, which makes me feel bad, but I don’t think it will be too much longer. However, she loves to stand behind her walker which we converted to a walk-behind. She isn’t taking any steps on her own just yet but she has exceptional balance and can stand there holding onto the bar for some time. I think she will be walking by her birthday. I really need to baby-proof stat.
Sleep is going okay, we had a slight setback with her nighttime sleep due to her top teeth coming in plus all the traveling we’ve been doing in the last few weeks. Things have been a little topsy turvy for a bit so hopefully she will settle in soon and the teeth will stop bothering her. She still naps like a champ though, usually twice a day for about 2-2 1/2 hours.
Bean eats everything in sight. She has 3 8-oz bottles a day and then breakfast, lunch and dinner. For breakfast she usually has fruit (blueberries and oranges are her favorite), Cheerios, and a waffle or an egg depending on how lazy I am. For lunch she typically eats some cheese cubes, crunchy puffs (the veggie dip flavor is her favorite), some more fruit and maybe a veggie. For dinner, if she doesn’t eat what we are eating, she loves to have things like ravioli which she snarfs like there’s no tomorrow. I also try to give her those fruit and veggie pouches, which are convenient but a lot of times she wants to eat things on her own and not let me feed her. Usually if I put her food in front of her and leave her alone, she will clear (most of) her plate. She’s not a picky eater as of yet and will pretty much eat everything I give her. She still won’t hold her own bottle, but we’re working on it. Mama needs her hands back.
She loves to swim at the pool! We put her in her little floatie and she kicks and splashes like crazy. She also loves remotes and wind-up toys. We take evening walks and she waves at everyone we pass. She loves to sit in the castle tent we got her at IKEA and play with her toys. I realized while we were in Maine that while she is sociable and likes spending time around people, she definitely gets to a point when she wants to go and do her own thing and be quiet. She doesn’t like to have a lot of people smothering her and still doesn’t want to cuddle much. Some of the best time during the day is her “quiet time” after her bath, when I let her sit on the floor in her room and just play. She has magnetic letters that she loves, and she is a pro at the roller-coaster bead toy. She is extremely interested in small details. She’ll spend twenty minutes in her bath investigating the hole in the bottom of a rubber ducky or turning the wheels on the bottom of her wind-up airplane. She’s still incredibly observant and loves to sit outside in the grass and just watch the other kids. She isn’t very interested in other babies it seems like; if we sit outside with our neighbor’s 13-month old, she is more interested in the older kids than him. It is plain fascinating to watch her investigate something new. Ripping up my junk mail or magazines seems to be one of the best ways to entertain her for ten minutes.
Here are some other pictures of the 9th month!
Round Two
Bean is in the thick of her second set of teeth coming in, these being to two buck teeth up top. (Those being the scientific names of course.) She went through the cranky-all-the-time phase while we were in Maine. The last few days she has been in the scream-at-random-moments phase and last night we were in the up-every-two-hours-screaming phase.
I mean, just look at this grumpasaurus rex.
Luckily, yesterday afternoon I saw the top left tooth cutting the gum so hopefully he worst is over for that tooth. Still, she was up a good portion of the night last night unable to rest, and today her morning nap was almost 2 1/2 hours long. Poor Bean.
Transition
The summer is starting to close. Kids are heading back to school. The nights are a tiny bit cooler and there are little splashes of color appearing inside the trees. Yesterday, even though it was in the 90s, the sky had that deceptive “fall” color to it–extra bright and clear and crisp. Football is back on and I am officially burning the “fall leaves” candles. And, as I noticed this morning at 5:30 courtesy of Bean’s extra early wakeup call, the sun is staying in bed a little longer.
All good with me. Fall is my favorite time. What’s not to love? Warm days and cool nights, beautiful color in the foliage, pumpkin EVERYTHING, more fashionable clothes (sorry summer). Lots and lots to do with the family. I don’t know about you but I hate super hot temperatures and it makes going out and enjoying things outside really difficult unless you’re in the pool. Once temps start to come back down it makes going outside so much more enjoyable. Zoo, Botanic Gardens, we can go to the park any time of day we want…plus, can we talk about pumpkin patches?? The time between Halloween and New Year’s is, in my opinion, the best time of the year.
OMG WHAT DO I DRESS UP THE BEAN AS FOR HER FIRST HALLOWEEN??
Fall is a time of transition and that’s sort of where we are right now. Bean is transitioning out of babyhood and into toddlerhood. Which is crazy. Cameron recently left his job at Starbucks and will be starting work as a banker with US Bank after Labor Day. We have had some difficult times the last few weeks and we’re transitioning out of that. Time helps. We think we will take a quick vacation this weekend down to Ouray or Glennwood Springs, leave the Bean with my parents, and get some time to ourselves so we can get back to…somewhere.
Anyway.
Here’s what else is transitioning around here!
Some Random…Ramblings
— Bean has been, fairly reliably, sleeping through the night for the better part of a month now, not including our trip to Maine. This means I’ve been getting away from my 8-month long mind fuck that said I had to go to bed as soon as she did because she was likely to be up a couple times during the night and I would need to get as much sleep as I could. Now that this has ended, I’ve thought about what a good opportunity it is to spend an hour or two working on the book (oh yeah, remember that?) before I come to bed. Have I done that yet? Noooooo….
— Speaking of Bean, she had her 9 month birthday when we were in Maine but we won’t have her checkup till next Monday. So I’ll update her new stats and what she’s been up to next week.
— My phone takes lousy panoramic pictures.
— I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to IKEA. When it first came to Denver and those massive blue walls went up and everyone essentially lost their minds over affordable Swedish furniture, I scoffed at the fad. Silly, I thought. Theeeen I moved back to Denver about 15 minutes away from those massive blue walls and basically I’m there every other weekend now. I would literally replace every piece of furniture and accessory in my house with IKEA stuff if I had the money. So, sorry IKEA. However, you still haven’t won me over with your meatballs.
— I read today that the Pumpkin Spice Latte launches on the 25th. I don’t have an in on Starbucks happenings anymore since Cameron left the company (I literally haven’t bought coffee in almost 5 years what am I going to DO) but it seems a little early to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as obsessed with pumpkin things as the next person, but everything in its due time. Summer is for lemon and caramel. Fall is for pumpkin. Okay and also caramel.
— Speaking of fall I had a moment of squee not too long ago when I realized we’d be able to take Bean to her first pumpkin patch soon! They also had costumes out at Costco today and I nearly died. SO EXCITED.
— Bean met a stuffed moose today. She was not impressed.
— I have been learning this summer, perhaps more than ever, that life is hard sometimes. Really hard. Sometimes life sucks and will hand you more than you think you can handle but somehow, the time passes, the sun goes down, and it comes up again the next morning just like it did the day before and will the day after that too. And sometimes it will rain, and thunder, and lightning will light up the sky and it will be scary for a while…but the storm always passes. It always does. And if you’re lucky, you get to see a rainbow when the clouds have lifted. And if you’re really lucky, it will look like this: 
Home is Where the Bean Is
We got home late last night from the Bean’s first trip. We didn’t get her to bed till almost 11 but she was still wide awake at 5:30. Curse you time zones!
As I mentioned last time I posted, we traveled back east to send my grandmére’s ashes out to sea and settle her estate. We had the mother of all flights going and coming–Denver to Orlando to Hartford and Hartford to Tampa to Denver. Lordy. In addition to the flights, we had an hour’s drive to Montague, MA, to stay a few nights with my Grandma Linda, and then another 6 hours up to Maine.
Oh yeah, and the Bean was teething hardcore the entire time.
It wasn’t all bad. She was actually quite the trooper. She only fussed a little bit on the flights out there and got frustrated toward the end of the long drive to Maine and back, but really, who wouldn’t. The flights home were a different story, especially the Tampa to Denver leg. Her upper tooth either came through or was mighty close to because she woke from a deep sleep on Papi’s lap and screamed bloody murder for 45 minutes. Needless to say I’m happy to be home.
Overall, the trip was good and I’m glad to have gone. We visited with a lot of family I haven’t seen in a really long time and spent time in the place we had gone for many summers when I was a kid. The Bean tried lobster for the first time and dipped her toes in the Atlantic Ocean and met the biggest Newfoundland I have ever seen in my life. In addition to sending my grandmére’s ashes out to sea (along with her dog’s, Cappy), her sons also settled her estate and decided who would take which of her antiques and family items, since she only specified in her will that everything would be split four ways. She had a good number of very old antique furniture items, a lot of jewelry, and many pieces of sculpture and painting that she had done. My dad graciously gave me out of his share of the inheritance a large hallway mirror built around 1820 in France that we assume has been in the family since then. I also received a few pieces of her jewelry including a silver cuff bracelet with two whale tails, which I was really happy to get because I remember her wearing it often and it matches the whale tail pendant that Cameron got for me in Hawaii.
And Bean almost started crawling while we were away.
8 Months
So, Bean turned 8 months back on the 3rd. I wrote half of her monthly update post and then closed the tab on accident, and lovely WordPress failed to save it as a draft, so it was all gone. And frankly I got too lazy to go back and write it again.
So here’s some pictures of the Bean’s 8th month of life.
Two Lattes and One Bean 