just smilin' and talkin'

this is jeremy's newest game to play with cayden. we're about ninety-nine percent sure that this is how we'll eventually get his first laugh to come out. he's s o o o o close it seems...

my loves...

kitchen decisions

ok, so when it comes to wanting to do a new design, i'm so impatient to wait. i want it done right then! with that being said, remember this? yeah, well, about the time we got all the knobs back on the cabinet doors, i hated it. a lot. off to ebay i went, and i found a great seller with reasonable prices for more modern hardware. whew! crisis averted... until we realized there really was no way for us to install these on our drawers since our current hole was in the middle of the drawers. sure, we could've filled it in and painted them (i guess), but that was a little more work than either of was willing to commit. what'd we do instead? peel that silly black spray paint off thirteen pulls and replace them with the original pulls. geez. if i would just hold off for a couple of days and think about something, we could've avoided some of these things. but don't our cabinet handles look lovely? i'm quite smitten with them... (oh yeah, we also got a new light fixture for our dining area. you love it, right?)

loveless cafe

omg. if you've never been, you've got to go. it's our second time to go to loveless - and it was still just as good as we remembered. we learned about it while watching bobby flay's throwdown one afternoon. miss carol fay is the "biscuit lady" there... and wow, the best biscuits and preserves EVER. plus, it's an adorable little place - an old motel where the rooms have been converted to little shops. and well, it's also a good opportunity to take a few photos...

music city brewfest

what a day it was. nice and warm, and more beer flowing than one can imagine. jeremy, justin, rachel and i rode to downtown nashville in style (rachel got a new car - surely she'll blog about it soon [hint, hint]). i forget how much i absolutely love nashville. and the people there. they always seem to have so much more style than the folks in birmingham. but i digress.

the day was beautiful and the beer sampling was wonderful. my tolerance level seems to have gone down quit a bit over the last year or so (i can't imagine why!), so i had to go a little slower on the sampling... but a great time was still had by all.

after the brewfest, we all hopped in the car and drove to the vanderbilt area and justin got a new tattoo. we then hopped back in the car, headed back down broad and made a stop in at hatch show print and american apparel. for dinner we met up with my parents (and cayden!) at the hard rock cafe. overall, a great day, but super tiring...




(we totally stole this idea from some friends at work. thanks beth and evan! the hatch people didn't like us doing this so much, and actually asked us to stop. bummer cause i would've changed out that "c" and "d.")

two months old

a little yard work

... and jeremy may have had a little too much fun doing it! no worries though. we aren't people to dig up trees and throw them out. no sir. we moved that sucker (even though we still have NO clue as to what kind of tree it is) to the back yard. it doesn't look so great at the moment, but i've heard that this can happen sometimes before the tree comes back beautifully. i'm hoping that'll be the case - it'll give our back yard a little more privacy from the house that sits behind us.

we also did a little work to the flower bed we built off our back porch a couple of years back. we used to have herbs planted here. they got completely out of control, and well, one of our cats kept using the bathroom in the planter, so we weren't so sure how good it would be for us to use the plants that were coming out of there. we settled on something simple that won't require a lot of work from us. yes, we're lazy.

and lastly, we got finished planting the japanese maple beauty out front earlier today. it took the place of the mystery tree, and well, it just looks a little nicer in the front now. so we're happy with it.

thankfully we had a gorgeous weekend to be able to get out and do this without dying in the middle of july. oh, and today's my dad's 56th birthday. happy birthday, daddy!

cloth diapers

as some of you may be aware, jeremy and i decided long ago to use cloth diapers on cayden. these aren't the type of cloth diapers that i'm sure many of you remember, or even possibly used. these diapers are very much like a disposable, except instead of throwing it away, you throw it in a bag, and every other day, you throw the entire bag into the wash and voila, they're clean! (ok, there are a couple of steps in the washing process, but you get what i mean.)

the initial cost of these was a little high, but the thought of being able to use them many times over (and even on multiple children!), made the cost reasonable to us. unfortunately, daycare can't use them, so we still have to use disposable there, but hey, at least we're doing what part we can in helping the planet (and our pockets just a little).

the diapers we decided to go with are really pretty and come in great colors. supposedly you're able to use them on newborns, but our newborn just didn't fit in them - way too big. tonight, we tried one again, and yay!, it fits! so we're giving it a try overnight as well just to see how it all works out. we're keeping our fingers crossed that we're done with disposable diapers at home!

here's cayden in his first cloth diaper. it's personally my favorite color of the ones we have. it's called "ribbit." oh, and enjoy the crying fit he's pitching and the subsequent pouty face. it's just too much!

first days...

cayden started daycare this week. and well, so far, so good. i suppose he has fun there (although how much fun do you really have when you don't do a lot yet?). he seems happy when he gets picked up, and he's had nothing but good reports so far (except for a little bit of a peepee accident yesterday - he got his teacher!). jeremy and i are both very comfortable with our daycare choice and feel so blessed that we actually got cayden in there.

i also had my first day back at work today. i don't have any photos to share of that (thank goodness!), but it went pretty well too. it was nice to be back at work and surrounded with people my age. i went to lunch with my girlfriends from work, and i'd say it was probably one of the best lunch breaks i've ever had. good times...

below, see cayden's crib at daycare. mommy and daddy with cayden on his first day (mommy now wishes she had done her hair and make-up!). and there's also a picture of cayden being passed along to his teacher - miss alicia.

just one more trip...

... to the driving range! yes, you read that correctly. it was my first time ever (as you'll witness from my poor form below). and i'm sure everyone will love my footwear. flip flops. of course. but it was awesome. i finally got my form a little bit better (keeping that one arm straight is ridiculously hard!) and i even manged to hit that little white ball thingy off the tee. amazing! jeremy was a great teacher and was super-patient with me. and hey, i even managed to not get frustrated. and for me, that's huge! i think i could probably come to love golf. but i've already decided that i'll be an early spring/late fall player. it was too warm out for me... but i still very much enjoyed myself.

a small project...

... that *might* hopefully turn into a larger one. i've talked for ages about opening an etsy shop, but never quite gotten around to it. i hate to say that cayden has finally gotten my butt in gear, but i suppose he really has. this is just one of many projects i think i'd like to do. i'll hopefully be able to make my own buttons soon (got a few difference pieces on order to see what will work best), but for now, with him heading off to daycare on monday, i knew i needed a pacifier holder pretty quickly.

and, as inept as i am at the sewing machine, for the moment, i'm actually thinking of trying to make some really cool bibs. the bad thing with most baby items is that it's hard to find things that aren't so cutesy and have a little edge to them. i'm hoping to maybe bridge that gap just a little and see if other people aren't interested in buying what's created.

any feedback here would be appreciated. just leave a comment below (and if you aren't a google user, feel free to sign your name so i know who's sending me some good vibes!)

p.s. isn't our model the cutest thing ever?

hey mr. tom!

can you teach me not to believe in hiccups, too? as you can see, i'm having some trouble figuring that one out... (haha!)

great grandmommies

it took a little while, but cayden got to meet all of his great grandmothers - and it all happened within a week of each other! he behaved for both of jeremy's grandmothers, but man was he in a mood when he met my grandmother! either way, i'm pretty sure they all love him bunches...

i'm poopin'

yes, sometime in the future, i'm sure cayden will hold a little tiny bit of resentment towards us for posting this video. we've been wanting to capture him poopin' on video for quite some time. it's the funniest thing (as you'll see below). unfortunately, we're never quite fast enough to catch it all on film... so imagine the below scenario - only with quite a few more grunts thrown in! (and feel free to laugh. it makes us giggle almost every time.)

smiles

not the best photo, but we're starting to get a lot more of these. surely there will be better photos to come, but thought i'd share what i have in the meantime...

delirious? maybe.

lately jeremy and i think we're pretty funny. like, laugh-out-loud-at-ourselves-all-the-time-funny. and i swear we're getting enough sleep (our little one is averaging between six and seven hours at night!). apparently something else is affecting our sense of humor though. because really, we're funny right now.

(really, we're not. but for some reason, we're hilarious to each other. and i suppose that's all that's important.)

here's how a quick shot of ourselves ... not one of them turned out good, but man did we have a good time laughing at ourselves afterward.

fourth of july

we all spent the long weekend in tennessee with my parents. and when i say "all," i mean me, jeremy, cayden, rachel, justin, ethan and lexie. so we all stayed with my parents over the long weekend and celebrated together.

cayden had a chance to meet one of his great grandmothers on saturday (he met and hung out with the other two earlier in the week - they both live in alabama; look for a post on that sometime soon). he also got to meet some other family members too - a great aunt and uncle and two more cousins. we had root beer/coke floats and watermelon. a new fourth of july tradition? perhaps so!

anyway, cayden slept through the fireworks, but here are a few other photos from the evening. we had a great time. justin bought an awesome firework that made us all feel a little bit cool. unfortunately, we were a bit too close to fully enjoy it ourselves (other people in the neighborhood surely "oohed" and "aahed" over it though). it was a little difficult to capture it in a photo. all in all, a great weekend, and good holiday.

tummy time

here's cayden practicing his tummy time. it's to help him build his neck muscles to hold up that big noggin of his. he's actually gotten even better since this clip was taken, but thought we'd share anyway. and apparently the tongue action helps him out! ha!

cayden had his six-week check-up today too. he's weighing in at a good 10 pounds and twelve ounces. and he's 23.25 inches long (50th percentile for weight and 75th percentile for height - where'd he get the height from?). he also got four shots today - two in each leg. the first one went pretty well... by the time we got to the second one his face was so red and i didn't know he could scream that loud. jeremy and i both teared up just a bit... but he calmed down quickly and he's been acting just fine since then. whew.

oh, and he's started smiling at us in the last week. i can't even put into words how it makes us feel. hopefully we'll catch that one on camera soon too...