Seven Months

Happy Seven Months AG!

You are still my sweet little girl. More and more of your personality is starting to come through, and I think you might have a little spice to go with all of the sugar we've seen.   You think everything is wonderful and exciting, except for solid foods. You have tried rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas, apples, sweet potatoes and plums. You didn't like the bananas, and you really didn't like the plums!

Plums

You are turning into a true social butterfly. We have play dates at the park and the zoo, and you charm everyone you meet. You love to ham for the camera, and you grin every time I try to take your picture (which is often!). If you are starting to get a little fussy for any reason, once you notice someone new around you turn on the charm and quickly become happy again.

Your first teeth are starting to come through on the bottom. It went from one, to two, then four very quickly! Once you sat up on your own everything has happened even faster. You started pulling up right after you turned six month and crawling the week after that. No one believed you could crawl yet until I put you on the ground with your Daddy's iPad at the other end of the room!

You weigh 17 lbs and are wearing nine month clothes and size three diapers.  You still don't have much hair, but I can see where its slowly starting to grow on the back of your head.  That's ok with me though - I tell everyone that you are using all of your energy to grow your brain and hair can wait!

Your Daddy and I love you more and more every day, sweet girl.

Love,
Your Mama

Fall

Living in the south, it's very, very easy to forget about seasons. I mean, I see the sweaters packed away in the top of my closet and I notice the coats and jackets squirreled away in the guest room closet, but any weather other than hotter than all hades fades away around March.

I pack up my sweaters and break out my rainbows faster than you can say flip-flop on the first warm day of spring. I've never been a fan of cold weather (so I try to refrain from protesting about weather so hot that my hydrangeas look like they are ready to commit hari-kari two-thirds of the year).

Fall is different though. Fall means football and foliage, pumpkins and apples. It tempts you with brisk evenings combined with warm, sunny days. I used to resist the beauty of fall simply because I knew that fall meant cold, drab winter was right around the corner.

Maybe it's all the years of marital bliss that have changed my mind. The Captain loves fall - he is usually out hiking, camping, and generally enjoying the brisk air while I sit inside and scowl at the leaves that we have to rake. Don't get me wrong - I don't see any camping in my future - but I do feel the urge to go enjoy the beautiful fall leaves, then come home and bake some warm, spiced apple treat. Perhpas motherhood has given me a fresh view on the merits of seasons.  Or maybe I'm just ready to bring my favorite boots down from the closet.  (English Saddle? Yes, please.)

<Insert perfunctory Baby/Fall picture here.>
Seriously though, she was definitely the cutest pumpkin in the patch 

Either way, I find myself actually looking forward to brisk mornings and mild days.  Snuggling on the couch watching UGA salvage the rest of their football season, taking AG to the fair, and enjoying afternoons at the park without feeling the need to bolt to the nearest air conditioned building have all had effect on me.  Who knew you could grow to like seasons? Anyone else feel the same way about their boots?

From Wibbleton to Wobbleton

"From Wibbleton to Wobbleton is fifteen miles..." goes one of the nursery rhymes AG and I learned at Mother Goose story time. You sing this little rhyme and rock back and forth with your wee one in your lap (and then get stuck with that little ditty running through your brain for the rest of the week). If you have your own little one and are familiar with that particular rhyme, I apologize for the inevitable fact that you are stuck humming that now. Fifteen miles.

I have felt like I have been pulled from Wibbleton to Wobbleton repeatedly (again, sorry) for the past few weeks. Here's a quick recap of what we have been up to recently; hopefully some calm will follow all the chaos.

The Captain has been gone even more than usual recently, making for a cranky baby and a very cranky mama. He works long hours during the week, so when he is gone every weekend as well we all get a little burned out. I never knew that when you were a SAHM you would look forward to weekends as much (or more) as when you had a traditional job. I love my weekends now though - having the Captain here to take AG for a few minutes, actually seeing him for longer than our hurried weeknight evenings, and being able to share some of the fun things about having a seven month old together.

"Look Ma, no hands!"

AG is actually teething. I know I had mentioned it previously, but the proof in the form of a tiny little white razor blade in her mouth, along with some new behavior, tells me I had no idea what I was talking about before. My sweet little angel, while still sweet and angelic, does not want to be more than two inches away from me. No more setting her down a few feet away to play so I could work, or pay bills, or clean my house. She has to be touching me at any given time or she is crying. Daddy (and anyone else) is a poor substitute. While I'm flattered to have reached rock star proportions with the infant crowd, I don't notice any riders in my contract about someone to handle the mountain of laundry that is accumulating while AG clings to my leg.

My stepfather was recently diagnosed with a serious illness that required almost immediate surgery. For his privacy, I won't go into details, but due to a lengthy hospital stay I am now playing hostess to he and my mother's Pomeranian. This little dog is ridiculously demanding; he has never been to a boarding kennel and came with a set of instructions longer than I would send with AG. However, I'm really worried for my stepfather (and my mother) and am happy to do what I can. That's what family is for, and I know they would do the same for me.

Due to some circumstances at my former job, I have been working more hours the past few weeks. I am also short a babysitter while my mom takes care of my stepfather. I'm grateful for the flexibility that my former job allows me, but add that to everything else in my life and I'm feeling a little more than overwhelmed.

This weekend we helped host an oyster roast/graduation party. The good news is that I am just did the cooking and it wasn't at my house. I also tried out some amazing recipes that I will share later this week.  We also hosted a birthday dinner on Sunday, this one was at my house and I still got to cook.  Ack. I'm getting tired just writing this all down. Hopefully we can get through the next few weeks and manage to find some downtime before the holidays creep up on us. I'm thinking for Christmas this year everyone gets a framed picture of AG.

Shredding

Well, I think my post about the leftover baby weight, combined with the fact that it was chilly enough a few weeks ago require me to put on pants, was enough to spur me to action. (Note: I have not been going around town in only a shirt. I just very much prefer sundresses, and many happen to be more forgiving to my post baby body than a pair of jeans. I also do not believe that you can simply throw a belt around a shirt and call it a "dress". Not even if you are twenty.) I started doing Jillian Michael's Thirty Day Shred a few weeks ago and so far it's kicking my butt. (ok, so for those of you that have done it before - when you have to do the series of "butt kicks" how much does it annoy you when she says that you are "literally kicking yourself in the butt"?). Seriously not a huge Jillian fan, but I will have to say that her workouts have been effective so far. They are advertised as twenty minutes, but with warmup and cool down it's closer to thirty. I'm not complaining, they are quick enough that I have been able to squeee in a workout most days.

I started this little masochistic endeavor three weeks ago and have lost four pounds. I started out doing it every day for the first ten days. Since my life has gotten a little more hectic (ever tried to work out with a baby attached to your ankle? Literally?) I have only been able to do it a few times a week, but I'm still very pleased with the results. I have made only minor tweaks to my diet so I have to say it's all do to the workout. Tweaks like "no thank you, I shouldn't have a third second cookie". More than the weight loss, I can tell a difference in the way my body looks and how my clothes fit, and to me that's almost more important than the scale. I'm happy with my progress and I have slowly been trying to get re-aquainted with some old friends in my closet. Perhaps when I reach my goal I can introduce them to some new friends. J Crew has been taunting me with catalogs recently, and I have to admit I've missed them.

Perfection

For some reason in my life, when it rains, it pours. I have a lot going on with family and friends right now and I have been stressed and far too busy recently.

I try very hard to be the "best" I can for everyone in my life. It seems sometimes that the harder I try to juggle everything and be perfect, the more I stumble.

For instance, a close friend just lost her mother. I rushed home from working this afternoon to bake her a pound cake - poor AG had been with me at work and was tired and cranky. She was fussy and just wanted to be cuddled, but I put her in her swing so I could make the cake. Once I got it in the oven, I went to tend to her - she is now napping on my lap peacefully. I had a moment of panic though when I realized the recipe called for 1/2 cup of butter - which is one stick, not two. That's right, I doubled the butter in the recipe. While that may make Paula Deen happy, I doubt it's going to do my pound cake any favors.

The more I try to do, the more the quality of what I'm trying to do goes down. I enjoy blogging. I really do... Writing is therapeutic for me and I really enjoy reading other people's blogs. How am I supposed to encourage anyone to read mine though if I don't post for eleven days? *insert audible sigh here* I still struggle to find a balance to everything in my life. Right now I'm off to deal with a butter logged pound cake. Anyone have Paula Deen's number?