um...hello, easiest thing in the world!

seriously, i can be a real dunce every now and then. i was just yesterday whining and bemoaning about not having a clue how to make collages for my bloggity blog and like an angel from heaven, kevinandamanda had this little gem today waiting for me on my google reader (not really for me since i just religiously stalk her awesome blog and she doesn't know i exist, but still) about sites she has bookmarked and there she was explaining about the simple little collages you can make all lickety split in picnik which is exactly what i was looking for and off i went to check it out and in like seriously 20 seconds, i had whipped up this little nugget...

which i know is only 2 pictures and ones i have posted already at that, but i am at work right now (um...yikes?) and that's all i could scrape up on this here computer and gawd, i am just so darned EXCITED about this! they have a lot of options and even more if you upgrade (naturally) and you want to hear the stupidest thing? i totally have used picnik before and never knew that i could make collages there.

dunce hat.

dur.

i love this.

p.s. the shark rashgaurd. i die. i wish it still fit him, little rolly polly lovebug....

wordless wednesday....beach day

i haven't done a "wordless" wednesday in a few weeks and since the last few days have found me without many words i want to share, the timing is perfect. this past sunday, we spent the day down at the cabana, ben's first trip to the beach, first time with his toes in the sand, first lobster roll (which he slept through!).

summer, in a nutshell :)

p.s. i would really, reeeeally love to start comsolidating some of these pictures into storyboard collages instead of posting them all huge one after another. if anybody has any tips and tricks on how to do that,w here to get some templates to make them or whatever, i would really appreciate it......or do i just do them all from scratch?? i haven't got a clue. help! thanks!

xo

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!