M-I-C-K-E-Y M...O...U...Suck...E

Good morning, Internet. I'm sipping over-creamed, over-sugared coffee (because that's how I do it) while listening to Jack Johnson croon softly in the background. It's grey and gloomy outside, and the perfect morning for doing exactly what I'm doing. Nothing.

Baby B is snoozing upstairs, resting up for his big nine month check up this afternoon. I don't think there are any shots today, praise God, so I'm not too worried. I think he got something crazy like six last time. It. was. awful. I cried harder than he did. I told him that if he behaves he can go visit Aunt Aubs afterwards. He's pretty pumped. He can do a lot of new tricks since she last saw him - like stand, and clap, and grind his teeth (this drives me CRAZY).

Aubs arrived in from FL last night, much to our (and her) happiness. Let's just say that Disney is a little different when experienced from the employee perspective. My mom, Aunt Danielle (Baby B's surrogate aunt), and I all stood at the top of the escalator watching for our tanned little Disney drop-out to make her way to freedom.

And, in true ΑΔΠ style, I made a welcome home sign for her, glittering to my heart's content.

This is the pic I drew of Aubs in her rockin' Disney costume. Really, that's what it looked like - except it had a necktie that I added after I'd already taken pictures. Pretty sweet, eh?

Anyways, we're glad you're home Aubbers!

Please Pray

I have been following MckMama recently - a faith-driven woman and an excellent photographer with the creativity to nickname her kiddos Big Mac, MckNugget, and Small Fry. Her infant son, Stellan, (aka MckMuffin) has been hospitalized with heart irregularities. Wrap her family up in bloggy love and say a prayer for this sweet boy. You can leave her a personal message in the comment section of her posts at My Charming Kids.

Aaaachoooo!

Ugh. Baby B passed his germies my way. My head is stuffed up. My ears are stuffed up. My nose is stuffed up. This is not how one is supposed to spend Spring Break. I blame it all on the weather. Seventy degree weather down to thirty degree weather is an ill-fated combination. Literally.

I'm not sure about my agenda for the week. One of my main goals was to have cleaned the house and catch up on the laundry by Saturday. Which I did. Check.

I now need to deconstruct the playroom in preparation for our guestroom/office that I'm super excited about. Details to come. Clue: it involves IKEA. Get pumped.

I also need to do some lesson plans. Gag. If there was some way that I could avoid this, I so would. Perhaps, telepathically, my ideas will materialize into a Word document and will also check out any necessary trade books without me having to scour websites and wrack my brain for something ingenuitve. But, on the upside, I only have to write lesson plans EIGHT more times. Yup. That's it people. EIGHT MORE WEEKS UNTIL SUMMER VACATION. (Insert some girlish squeeling followed by skipping and twirling around in flip flops and tank tops here.)

I don't really think I was able to take full advantage of summer last year because I was warehousing a child. My temporary swollen state made it difficult to be outside for longer than ten minutes at a time unless I was shaded by a massive umbrella, while B alternately fanned me with fern fronds and spritzed me with water every .2 seconds. Kidding. But seriously, half of summer was spent waiting for Baby B and the second half was spent acquainting myself with his Royal Cuteness. Now that I know him better (i.e. loves wagon rides, sharing popsicles, and eating dirt/leaves/grass), I think summer will be full of our exciting adventures sidewalk chalking the driveway, visiting our local parks, and chasing after the icecream man. I can hardly wait.

In the mean time, I will pray and pray and pray that the weather will return to its more pleasant, warmer self. Enough so that I can open the windows, permanently shut off the furance, and stroll around our neighborhood with Baby B in tow. Sunshine would be nice too. Lots of it.

PS. Aubs is coming home from FL tomorrow and I am soooo excited. Don't you for a second think I am not going to meet her flight at the airport at 11pm tomorrow night, glittery welcome-home sign in hand!

And, because I have no other picture to tag with this post, here is a random one from THREE years ago (March 2006) of me, my sisters and my cousins from one of my bridal showers. Whoa, blonde hair!

A super Saturday :)

First, some pictures of Sweet Precious to warm your heart...

In this pic, Baby B has a paci in his mouth from when he was a newborn. It is far too small and his ample cheeks really emphasize how small the paci is.
The goose is wearing my head warmer here. Stunning.

Baby B: Mom, can I not eat my Cheerios without you snapping pictures?
Me: The day you stop being adorable, I will stop snapping pictures. So, pretty much, no.

Baby B catching a ride on his newest toy - a gift from Gramma and Grampa Saint.

I just told him a really funny joke about a guy walking into a bar. He's also modeling his newest bib from his Great Aunt Ann and Great Uncle Chris. Go, Wings!

It's been a rough morning at the Babbling Household. Baby B has a nasty, stuffy cold that even the best snot-sucker cannot combat. We have to restrain him in order to rid his teeny nose of all that icky gunk. He was up at 2:40am and 4:00am, and I eventually just brought him to bed with us so that everyone could get some sleep. Despite his midnight wakings, he still sat up and was ready to play at 7am, crusty nose and all.

But, on the up side, I am on Spring Break, so what better time to be sick than when your mamma can stay home all week and snuggle on you?

We're in for a nice, relaxing weekend at home. We spent every weekend in March thus far travelling somewhere, and we desperately needed to just stay - even if it meant making our own coffee. So, with Baby B down for a nap, Big B paging through the latest IKEA catalogue, and me writing about the mundane, we're pretty content to stay in our pjs until noon and watch Saturday morning cartoons on our cable-less TV.

O O O O O

I don't know if it's the Spring Fever I'm catching or the fact that we're going to have real, live houseguests in May for the VERY FIRST TIME since we've owned our home, but I'm just itching to decorate and renovate. If you've been a reader for awhile, then you know I catch this bug like once every couple of months and then change my mind when I come to terms with the fact that stuff costs money and money is certainly not springing up on the trees in our front yard this year. Only cherry buds. Darn.

One of my nearest and dearest is getting married on May 30th, so another nearest and dearest and her husband are going to be staying the whole weekend with us. This means they're going to need a place to sleep, unless they want to put to use the pair of sleeping bags that we got from our wedding. So, the plan to convert Baby B's "playroom" (formerly our bedroom) into a guestroom/study. Where we're going to relocate the changing table, toy organizer, and chest of drawers to is the problem. The basement is clearly not an option since it contains heaps upon heaps of junk that we've accumulated in our almost three years of marriage.

I've had my eye out for wicker baskets that can easily be stored in our TV stand and under our coffee table, but I will not pay the $15 that Target demands for such storage. Actually, I picked up four yesterday when Baby B and I went to Target, along with four summer outfits for him, and put everything back except for two $1 sippy cups. $60 worth of baskets just seemed a little pricy. If space is limited in your home, what do you do with excess toys?

Well, I better hop in the shower before my sick puppy wakes up. Have a super Saturday!

Already?

The Boo Bear has suddenly become crazy silly in the past two weeks. We laugh at him and he laughs back which becomes a vicious cycle at bedtime, prolonging the time it takes to put this child down for the night. What used to be 10 minutes is now 20 as we marvel at his ability to spring a foot in the air off of his crib mattress. It really is impressive. And funny.

He can also clap. Again, resulting in fits of giggles all around. He claps. Stops. Waits for us to clap. And then claps again. B and I could do this with him for an hour. Baby B think he's a pretty good clapper, and we agree. Probably the best clapper (and cutest) I've ever seen.

And, believe it or not, he's not so much a softie lover anymore. He's moved on to a blanket with a bunny head attached (Bunny Bear), and a blanket with a giraffe head attached (G). The giraffe has this fuzzy tail that he likes to chew on. He holds onto this tail while nursing, painting my face with his slobber - blech. Sometimes he'll try to chew on the tail and nurse at the same time. With his eyes closed.

He also says mama and dada repetively. However, he says dada in a singsong voice, chanting it happily as he eats Cheerios or plays with his toys on the floor. While mama is usually said in a fit of rage, while he's arching his back awaiting a nap. Figures, huh?

Then there's his sleeping habits, er, positions. Baby B sleeps sitting up. No lie. This kid resembles a wilted flower when I go up to check on him, folded in half at the waist with his head resting on Bunny Bear and G. What's up with that? I don't know, but it really amps up his cuteness factor.

Photographic proof that Sweet Precious is a strange sleeper:

Baby B will be Nine Months Old as of tomorrow at 5:30pm. I am going to deny that he is going to be a year old in three months, that I will not have a toddler by the end of summer, and that a year from now he will be less into clapping and crib jumping and more into Sesame Street and kicking a soccer ball with his daddy.

Sigh.

Me? Kreativ? (I really HATE the spelling of that, btw)

I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to introduce you to some of my new BFFs (that would be Blog Friends Forever for those of you who are out of the my loop). I have really loved blogging because not only do I get to babble about anything random that comes to mind, but also because I have met some very sweet people.

First, there is Nat. She blogs over at It's a Charmed Life, and I love catching up on her almost-married-I-have-a-super-cute-house life. I knew Nat and I would be good blog buddies when I read about her love of clothes and wine. If she didn't live up east, we'd totally hang out. Anyway, she recently bequeathed me the Kreativ Blog Award, which I have been meaning to write about since, oh, two weeks ago? Anyway, I'm supposed to write about seven things that I love and then pass the award onto seven other people who do the same thing.

Seven Things I Heart…

1. Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies. I just polished off the second to last sleeve. Straight from the freezer, of course. I'm not sure there's any better way to eat them. Maybe with peanut butter?
   
2. Teaching Catalogues. How much fun is it to post-it an entire catalogue of teaching supplies?! I could do this for hours. My husband budget won't allow me to actually purchase anything, but a girl can dream.
   
3. Diet Coke, Barefoot Wine, and iced tea. (This counts as one since they're all beverages, right?)
   
4. The City. I'm a little depressed that I'm going to have to wait through a season of The Hills before I can find out if Whitney and Jay hook up again, or if Allie catches slimeball Adam in the act. Love, love, love it!
   
5. Drinking coffee on the weekend with B at 7am. It makes me feel like a grown-up. Because only grown-ups have any reason (i.e. babies) to be up at 7am on a Saturday, jonesing for caffeine. Though being 26 alone might qualify me as a grown-up. I'll have to check.
   
6. Warm weather. Can it not be June already?! Oh, wait. I can wait for June. Because then Baby B will be a year old. And I will cry that he is getting too big. Can't it just be warm now, then?


7. My Boys. I seriously love them. Both of them. To pieces. To the moon and back infinity times infinity. As big as the whole universe, assuming that the universe is infinite. I love them <3

Thanks, Nat, for the award! I now pass it on to…

Carrie @ The Ossege Family

Heather @ The White House

Rachel @ Babywebbsite

Lindsey @ The Alexander Family Blog

Joy @ Mommy's Joy (A super funny read!)

Nat @ The Pettijohn's (P.S. This SUPER-CUTE momma-to-be is also a new BFF! Go check out her link, she is darling and she also gave me an award that I will post about soon!)

Amy @ From This Day Forward (Another new BFF! I love me some new friends!)

Have a happy, happy day y'all!

And, because every day needs some sweet precious in it, here is the boy child. Check out those toofers.

Almost Wednesday...

Tomorrow in kindergarten we are making dinosaurs. So, being the awesome kindergarten teacher that I am, I made homemade playdough so that we can mold and shape our way into prehistoric bliss. It's even Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade flavored, though I hope none of my little darlings choose to eat this pasty concoction. I'm sure someone will sneak a taste, and he/she will inevitably be tattled on. That's how things work when you're five. I don't need to have eyes in the back of my head (though I do) because I have 25 pairs of them to help me discover any wrongdoing committed in the 180 minutes we spend together daily.

So, anyway, I made playdough tonight and spent $5.99 on some spice called alum that I didn't even use. It would only figure that I would find recipes that didn't call for it after I had already bought it. Sigh.

Since I had boiled water in the kettle for the playdough, I went ahead and boiled extra so that I could make a delicious, springy beverage that I haven't made in years. Okay, I've never made it. My mom always made it when I lived at home and she always vowed each pitcher was the last she was making since my sisters and I always drank it up, but never made new to replace it. Ah, how I love me some sweet tea. It goes nicely with our 70 degree weather that I am totally digging. However, my pale legs and arms are not. Maybe spring break will lend itself to laying out while Baby B naps??? Doubtful, but I can wish.

Oh, and here's Baby B in his most serious state

And here's Baby B modeling a darling sweater that his Great Aunt Lynn made him. How cute is that?! Baby B thinks it tastes great too - which is mainly how he chooses his outfits these days. Supposedly knit star sweaters are super delicious :) Thanks, Aunt Lynn!