7 months....

When did this happen???  SEVEN (WTF???) MONTHS OLD for love of baby jesus mary joseph and the unicorns. what in holy hell happened to my newborn baby? and WHY, pray tell, am i still wearing maternity pants????

i digress....

this little boy of mine is growing up at the speed of light and it is breaking my heart. i'll be honest, when he first started going to daycare, i actually looked forward to dropping him off and getting an 8 hour break. now? my heart explodes into a hundred million pieces every morning when i have to leave him. separation anxiety? I’ve got it bad. all i want to do is spend every minute of every day staring at him and watching him look around and babble and laugh and drool and put things in his mouth.

he is sitting up much better, though i am still afraid to just leave him sitting without hovering over him because he will definitely topple over, crash into the coffee table and scream. His bottom pair are still his only teeth so far but he’s been stuffing things into the right side of his mouth like crazy lately so there might be another on it’s way…he's nowhere near crawling and hasn't been too interested in standing either, which is fine with me. what he IS interested in, however, is food. lots of it. all of it. my boy can eat. he holds his own bottle consistently now and if he sees you walking towards him with it and you don't hand it to him right away, he reaches both hands out at you and "asks" for it. we started him on meats a couple of days earlier than the pedi told us too because i got a gorgeous looking package of organic ground chcken at whole foods and now our freezer has his very own shelf with all sorts of goodies i made for him in there. his favorite is the chicken with yams, apples and pear juice. of course, all of this protein has left him a little....uh....clogged up so now he is on the prunes. he's also loving cottage cheese, feeding himself baby mum-mums and making a big old sticky, crumby mess.

 

one of the things i was most looking forward to was the day he would start reaching up for me to pick him up and he does that all the time now, both arms reached out, waiting for mommy to pick him up….. those are some of the best moments of my day....

rolling over at 4am to find him up on both elbows, big blue eyes open wide as saucers, staring at me with a huge smile on his face…when it's time to move him into bed at night  and i lift him up from his rock n' play and carry him into the room and he doesn't wake up, just lays in my arms, 23 pounds of hot, sweaty dead weight with his soft, sweet head on my shoulder….reading books together on the couch waiting for the hubs to get home….those are a few more of the best moments of my day. every moment I spend with him is the best of my day, really.

words just can’t do this love justice.

i can’t even imagine where he will be a month from now, what new things he will have learned….will he finally say “momma” like i have been trying to teach him for months now while he just looks at me with that mischievous half smile and sweet, sleepy little eyes as if to say he knows darned well how to say “momma” and he is just waiting till i earn it? will he stand? will he crawl? will he get his driver’s license and leave for college? fall in love with a girl who is not good enough for him and call to tell me he is getting married?

everybody tells you how wonderful it is to be a mommy, but nobody ever mentions how bad it hurts.

today is a big day....

this is what a little boy looks like when he just wakes up on the first morning of his 7th month...

every night he goes down in the middle of the bed and every morning i wake up with him pressed right up against my back with his tiny nose tucked under my ribcage, any closer and he would melt right into me. maybe he does that because the air conditioner keeps the room a little too cold, but i like to think he does it because that is where he feels the safest and most comfortable. i'm running out of ways to say that he is my heart. i'm running out because words will never be enough. those big blue eyes, my baby boy.

photo shoot tonight.....and 7 month post tomorrow. be ready.

this 40 days of birthday ideas thing is getting borrrrrring

i'm kind of getting sick of the birthday posts, are you?

when i came up with this brilliant idea, i actually thought it would help ease the effects of IBD because it would give me something every day to get excited about and wish for but uh.....the longer i do this, the more i realize how few (material) things i really want.

what i really want, besides the goodies i already posted about, is a vacation to somewhere tropical and far, far away. not super far like fiji, although i certainly wouldn't hand you back the tickets and say "no thanks". that would just be silly.....but someplace like st. lucia or back to  grand cayman for the fish tacos at the sunshine grill (which, if i were ever on that show 'the best thing i ever ate' on food network, this would SO be what i would pick...). maybe another cruise or even a weekend in maine eating lobster and drinking pouilly fuisse....the problem is (besides that whole issue of paying for it) that i don't want to be without ben, and i just do not understand the logistics of travelling with a baby yet so i sit here and daydream, and pin pictures of dream destinations to pinterest, but in reality, i know that a vaction like that is not a possibility for a long, long time...like, 17 years and 5 months, give or take a day....*sigh* but here is a picture of it anyway, just for fun:

that's actually aruba, which would be just fine. or what about st. maarten, turks & caicos, jamaica, puerto vallarta and even napa....??

then i think what i really want is a clean house. just once, a really, super, mega clean house where we could eat off the floors. if somebody could come and clean my house like that just once, maybe maintaining it wouldn't seem so overwhelming and then coming home every day wouldn't make me depressed. actually, getting the behemoth pack n' play out of the living room so i could actually walk around the coffee table would probably help too. baby steps.

also, i really want a tan, 3 months of nutri-system, 4 extra hours in the day and jillian michaels to come to my house and kick my ass.....while we're being ridiculous, i might as well ask for the winning megaball ticket. it's up to $110M right now, which means walking away with around $30M when all is said and done and that would be pretty cool.

this post got out of control. sorry about that.

i had a dream about the jersey shore last night. the douchebags, not the vacation destination (although, going back to the vacation thing, i'd even take a weekend in seaside heights. sun, sand, frozen custard, a little d.j. pauly d......). the details are starting to get a little fuzzy now, like all dream details do the longer it's been since you stopped dreaming them, right? but i think there was some conversation between me and the situation where he told me that i definitely should NOT wear shorts because my legs are not my best feature. duh. asshole.

regardless of the dimples on my knees, i really want this dress:

it's from athleta and it's on sale right now. i am probably going to buy it for myself since i have been wanting it since that stupid catalog came in the mail 3 months ago and i dragged it into the bathroom with me and left it there so every time i am in there for any length of time, i break it out again and stare at this dress. that catalog kills me. by the time i am on page 6, i feel like i could take over the world with nothing but yoga pants and a beaded headband... or at least climb a volcano.

anyway, cute dress, right? can't decide what color i like best....

i'm also going to get myself a bottle of  katy perry teenage dream. it's pretty ridiculous, but i totally love it.

and this concludes today's totally uninspired '40 days of birthday ideas'.

tomorrow, my little mooshball turns seven months old and my heart breaks, again. plase stand by with a box of kleenex...

the return of 40 days of birthday ideas

well, this one is just a pipe dream, but a few years ago, the hubs and i went to an event at the New York Food & Wine Festival and it was just a riotous good time! first of all, anyone who knows me knows that as long as it's not 7pm on a weeknight, it's a good bet that at least one of the tvs in my house is on the food network (7pm belongs to alex trebek, my apologies to mr. alton brown and the entire crew over at 'iron chef'.).

i just love a good festival....throw in good food AND wine?!? forget it. i really can't think of too many things that sound like more fun! so, just for laughs, i thought i would throw these little gems into the birthday ideas hat.....

tickets to Brooklyn's Bounty with Adam Richman

(um. i love adam richman, ok? please look at him:

love.

as long as i don't have to watch him eat ribs. he really freaks me out when he eats ribs. plus, this one's in brooklyn, so we wouldn't even have to cross a bridge!)
or, or, OR....

Blue Moon Burger Bash

i have been dying to go to the burger bash ever since the first year they did the festival in nyc. i *am* pretty bummed that good ole rachael ray is not hosting this year though. whoopi goldberg? what does she know about burgers? that's rach's department, obv....

and oh crap. it looks like the burger bash is sold out anyway....but my boy adam's event still has space...and keep that burger bash idea in your back pocket for next year....a yummy burger never goes out of style.

a blasting roaster

that's what we're calling this weather up here...we're breaking heat records left and right and this california girl is not handling the stifling humidity all that well....

thankfully, the pool i ordered for ben arrived on thursday just in time. it was actually too hot to go outside at all yesterday, so we spent the morning doing some shopping, then came home and stayed in, attempted to nap and *somebody* wound up in an over-tired meltdown and had to be taken for a car ride to fall asleep....i'm not naming names....


today was a little more tolerable, but the humidity just won't ease up. we had breakfast with some good friends we haven't seen in a hundred and twenty years, made the standard weekend run to babies r us and then zipped over to whole foods for some organics so i can try my hand at making a freezer stash for my handsome little man....and got the pool blown up! little bitty prune feet were sure to follow....

right now, he is fast asleep on his daddy's chest....can't imagine why! look at all the fun he had today!

omg. the 40 days of bday posts fairy came through! AND IT'S NOT EVEN AUGUST!

holy crap jeez moley moses y'all!!!!!!!! ("y'all" she says. wth?) lookit what happened!!! for some reason, even though i have been a miserable bear to live with recently, the hubs still loves me...i don't know...but he does. ok well, last friday (i think....and i know, that was dayyys ago, give me a break here...) i got hooked. UP!

first of all, they just opened a sprinkles cupcakes right around the corner from the hubs' office in the city, so just as a goof, during the day, i emailed him a print screen of the daily cupcake menu with the "key lime" flavor circled, perez hilton style. there might also have been a big, obnoxious arrow pointing to it just in case...can't really remember...also, this might have been thursday, it's all a sugar induced blur.....regardless, you know he showed up with a cutie little sprinkles cupcake bag that he protected all the way home through the crazy new york city subways, penn station at rush hour and a long island commuter train....that little beauty looked like this...

except obviously that's not a picture of MINE because MINE was scarfed down too fast to photograph...a whirlwind of crumbs and happiness....

moving on to friday (because i really do think the cupcake was thursday now that i think about it...) he comes home from work like a kid in candy store, all a-twitter over whatever he's got up his sleeve. he runs downstairs, runs back upstairs, runs into the bedroom to change and then tells me to lay ben down on the changing table because he has something to give me....i start to protest because ben is a bit of an acrobat these days and i really don't like putting him down on the changing table, but the hubs insists. then, he hands me a post it:

underpants. i know. can you stand it?

so that is precisely what i do.........where i find this:

1. don't make fun of my underpants.

2. "U.P.", in case you couldn't figure it out, means "underpants". but of course you knew that.  anyway, we're ridiculous like that.

3. i don't know why he wrote "dad's u.p. drawer" instead of "MY u.p. drawer", which i clearly would have known meant HIS u.p. drawer. "dad's u.p. drawer " makes it sound like we have the same dad and he's living with us and he wants me to go rooting through his boxers. gross.

(he probably didn't get an "A" in penmanship, but he definitely gets an "A" for effort!)

and then...............

so i do and would you look at this?!??

i don't even know what to say. i don't deserve either one of them. they are too good to me....either that or they were just really, reeeeeeeeally sick of me whining about it.....

40 days of birthday ideas...what day are we up to anyway?

i want this. i want it really, really bad. i didn't think i wanted it the first few times i looked at it cuz i thought it would make me look like magda from 'there's something about mary' with the super metallic gold and everything, and maybe i am still trying to be that tan, carfree beach angel*  i'll never be but regardless, i want this pallette and gosh darmit, i am getting it. for myself. yes i am. pretty soon, too. maybe saturday? cuz they are all the rage and they keep selling out you know? so i need to hurry....and maybe i should stop at cheesecake factory for a piece of banana cream cheesecake to go too while i am over there....my birthday always makes me want banana cream cheesecake. i love the cheesecake factory....avocado eggrolls, they sing to my heart...but i digress....

it comes with just about everything you need to do every look imaginable and i know it is ludicrous that the hubs works for probably the biggest cosmetics company on the planet of earth and gets discounts on all of it and i am straying to a brand that his company doesn't own (read: no discount) but look at it, would ya? i mean just LOOK at it.

ooooooooooooooh i love it!

this wasn't the post i had lined up for today either...the one i was writing was awesome but then i backspaced and deleted a picture by mistake and the picture is really integral to the (super spectacular) story so that post will just have to wait till tomorrow till i can get back home and re-upload it. stupid backspace....

but ooooooooooooh look at all the sparkly colors!

* speaking of 'beach angels'...could you die over this commercial? it is my favorite.

check-a check-a check it out!!!

um. how super cute is this???? i am dying over it.  i had grace from gracely designs redo my whole little corner of the interwebs and i am beside myself with how wonderful i think it is.....

right?? omg.

i'm feeling much better....thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the hugs you sent and the happy words....no time to post a full update but i have some goodies lined up, plus like 4 days of birthday ideas to catch up on! be ready!!!!!

xoxo

just when you were getting all amped up for 33 more days of birthday posts....

i'm going MIA for a little.

yes, i know. just maybe a week or so. i'm planning some changes here on the blog and also, either the IBD has really set in or i don't know what, but i'm not in a good place, and really, in order to write posts that satisfy me, i need to be in a certain zone. i'm not there. i'm really, really far from there. and rather than whine all over the blog about how shitty i feel and how i want to jump off the roof, i am just going to take a little vacation....when i return, everything will be new and pretty.


here's a picture of ben eating peas to hold you over...

see you in a few.

40 days of birthday ideas, day 6

converse chucks...

in cloud blue...

or rose...

lemon peel....

pool party...

light grey...

 

coral reef! golden sun! blue!!!

all from delia's

40 days of birthday ideas, day 5

new sheets.

i have been wanting a whole new bedding ensemble for probably, oh, the last 7 years. my mom did this to me. she was a sheet snob and never settled for less than the fluffiest, most scrumptious bedding. falling into her perfectly fluffed and puffed, voluminious feather bed was like landing on a 700 thread count cloud....and she had a linen closet cram packed with sheet sets and duvet covers. i always thought it was normal to stand in front of a closet and ask yourself "what sheets to i feel like having on the bed this week?" instead of just "how long do i run the dryer?". i don't know when having lovely sheets fell so low on my list of priorities. NOT having a few sets of nice sheets definitely contributes to my depression...it's deeper than that, but sheets (or lack thereof) is certainly a trigger. part of the problem is the hubs who refuses to sleep under the same duvet as i do, insisting on sleeping on TOP of his half of it, covered in his ratty old, stained, polyester batting filled, scratchy disaster of a walmart bed-in-a-bag comforter. this means one half of my duvet is pinned under him all night so i'm basically sleeping under a down straight jacket and also, his half gets smashed. flat feathers are not heavenly feathers.

i guess i'll never have my bed the way it used to be because the hubs will forever insist on smashing my comforter, flattening my feathers...i guess i just gave up. but i don't want to have given up! i want so much for my bed to be the sanctuary it should be...i want a few sets of glorious, high thread count sheets and a stack of whimsical duvet covers and shams to choose from every week when it's time to change the sheets...

here are a few i found that i love:

Marimekko Puutarha Mist from Crate & Barrel

watercolor stripe by pottery barn

woodland organic by pottery barn

just some ideas....sweet dreams!!

6 months

my sweet little boy...how did you get to be 6 months old? when did this happen? i am positive that just 5 minutes ago you were laying on my chest in the OR, still warm from being inside me, wrapped in a dinosaur blanket with a little pink & blue hat on your head, pinching my nose. at that moment, my heart was so full of love for you it was unfathomable that i could ever love you more, and yet here we are, 6 and a half months later, and i love you infinitely more. every day, your personality shines a little more, you get more independant and more opinionated, funnier and more loveable. you are the perfect, perfect little boy for me and i am so in love with you. i am so torn between the excitement of seeing who you will become tomorrow and the heartbreak of watching you grow. i am so proud of you, of your independant little spirit and your hysterical sense of humor. you are so smart and so trusting and such a joy to be around. i am the luckiest. the luckiest mom in the universe...sweet baby...thank you for picking me. i am forever thankful and forever humbled. you have gifted my heart with a capacity for love that i never even fathomed before i met you. you are the reason i breathe.

i waited for his 6 month well visit to make this post so i could include his hurculean stats, he's actually 6 and a half months now, which is a pretty big deal if you ask him :) he got his immunizations without so much as a flinch (although he is a little cranky this morning in the aftermath) and is hitting all of his milestones perfectly. i know i keep saying it, but i am so, so proud of him.

weight: 21 lb. 15.5 oz. (so 22 lb., duh, but then he peed after the doctor weighed him...all over the exam table AND the doctor so....maybe less? that's my boy!)

height: 29 1/4''

(over the 95th% for both)

teeth: 2 on the bottom, both came in at the exact same time at exactly 6 months

sleeping: awesome! STTN for the first time the night he turned 6 months and hasn't looked back since! he is a total rock star!

eating: 4 bottles a day, 7-8oz each plus fruit and cereal for breakfast and veggies and yogurt for dinner.

loves: his rainforest exersaucer, sophie the giraffe, his bear named harry, banana yogurt, splashing in the pool, mommy & daddy and his aden & anias muslin blankets...

hates: the texture of pureed fresh peas...and that's pretty much it! he is such a lover!

skills: rolling over like crazy, sitting up, hugging mommy & daddy, grabbing for his spoon, practicing the sign for "milk", laughing hysterically at the sign for "all gone", singing loudly...really, really loudly. especially at 6:00 in the morning.

answers to: monkey, monkerson, monker, monker-de-jibs, de-jibs, ben vereen, benjamin netanyahu, ben rothlesburger, benny-bone-jones,  kavasha.

love. you are so handsome, so smart, so funny, so gentle, so charismatic, so loving. everything i hoped you and imagned you would be. i am so proud and so lucky i get to be your mama.