Florida....

One of my cousins is getting married in less than a week... on a beach in Florida, in her hometown. Brynn and I (and my mom) are going. Not only is my cousin awesome to begin with but she watches Brynn 2 days a week while I'm at the office (J's mom watches her the other 3 days). Brynn adores her!

I can't wait to get the heck out of here. I'm in a crap mood and just want to go away. I feel terrible that J and my dad aren't going though. I really wish they could. J isn't going because he has to be at work and my dad isn't going because he just had surgery on his ankle last week. (Sad.)

I can't wait to have a mini photoshoot with my girl on the beach!
Look at how little she was last time we went!!! She wasn't even 3 months old!




xoxo...P

2 Goals Down

I'm proud to say that last night I accomplished my 2nd major goal for the year. GO ME!

I have read 50 books this year.

My list of books can be found in a link above. My favorites for the year are the OUTLANDER series by Diana Gabaldon. I'm obsessed! Like I could read them everyday obsessed.

I also really LOVED the Hunger Games series, The Help, The Bronze Horseman (I'm on book #2 of that series now), Harry Potter and The Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door)

(It would probably be easier to tell you which books I didn't enjoy actually since all of those are a series of books totalling 29 books so far. (Plus another series of 5 books that I also really enjoyed - Fever series)

So books I could have passed and been fine not reading... Murder Takes the Cake, Sweet Valley Confidential, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover, Falling in Love with English Boys. It isn't that I hated any of them... though a few of them got 2 stars... they just didn't stick with me the way other books have done.

So Now what am I going to do since I have reached my goal? ... Keep reading of course! I started another book this morning! :)

Off to read now... have a great night! It will make your night great if you pick up a copy of Outlander and start reading. ;)

xoxo...P

2 Years Ago

... today is the day we found out we were going to be parents! That was such a great day!

This weekend we took Brynn to a pumpkin patch and she had the best time. Once she found the pumpkins that are her size she brought about 10 over to Jeff and then would bring them and put them away.

She also loved the hay maze. It was the perfect height for her to go through.

Look at how big she has gotten! (None of these pictures have been edited yet but I had to show them off.)






















xoxo...P

5K ...RESULTS!!!!

I freaking rocked it!!! I'm so proud of myself I'm still grinning from ear to ear a day later.

I dropped almost a full 2 minutes off of my best previous time.

Here are my results as copied off of the website. (Editing out my last name obvi!)

Bib Number        First Name       Overall Place     Division       Gender       Time               Pace



404                  PAIGE             1187                F2529         F               35:48            11:33

I'm pretty sure I'm going to sign up for another one in November. Anyone have any tips on how to drop even more time. My goal is going to be less than 35 minutes. :) (At least at this point who knows if I improve a bunch before then I may change it.)
My awesome supporters (for some reason I don't have a picture of my sissy's face.)





Me & Jenny - I'm glad I had a friend at my pace! This was just about a mile and a half.... feeling great!



It may look like I'm walking but I swear I wasn't! Just that weird point in my stride. I didn't walk at all!

Brynn wanted to run too.

Brynn was stealing bites of my banana.

Me, Jenny and Eddie -Eddie came in at about 22 minutes!



Peek - a - boo Auntie Paigey!



After the race we hung out at the zoo with Jenny and Eddie for a bit and then my BFF, her hubby and son met us there.
Here is Brynnie being fascinated by the dolphins.

Brynnie was trying to give my purse to her IRL boyfriend Graham.


So happy!
xoxo...P

5K..... TOMORROW!

I am so excited!

My 5K is tomorrow! I can't wait! And I have actually started enjoying this running thing. I have started telling Jeff how I wish we had room for a treadmill so I can keep it up even on bad days in the winter.

I'll be back to update on how I did but here is some pre-race fun for you.... my race shirt a map of the run through the zoo, my bib (#404) and my chip to register my time.  



next up.... 2 PRs last night...



My goal for the run was to break 40 min .... I think I can do it! ;) Now I feel like I need to give myself a new goal...

After the race we are going to hang out at the zoo for a bit. Jeff, Brynn, my mom, my sissy, Chance and my cousin are all coming to cheer me on.

xoxo...P

14 months! and 3 Years!!!

Where the heck has the time gone?

I am a terrible blogger, I apologize. Life has gotten away from me the past couple months and by the time I sit down at night I just want to do nothing or lose myself in a good book. I know excuses excuses. But I'm serious.

Well a few days ago Little B turned 14 months old. (Yes I'm aware I still haven't posted about her party I have the post half done and kinda just forgot about it.) Brynn is just a big ball of fun and I love almost every second I spend with her.
She cracks me up daily. Her laugh is completely infectious. My stomach hurts from laughing so hard after we head up to bed every night. J chases us up the stairs every night and she laughs the whole way up. She thinks it is the best thing ever. Except the last 2 nights... when he pops out from around the corner she says "Hi Da" and then laughs. She says Hi the whole way up the stairs so now J and I are laughing even harder than her.

B is 20 lbs 4 oz (I stuck her on the shipping scale at work the other day) and is 29-30" or so. I really should measure her.

We have been busy busy bees around this area for the last couple of months. The weekend of Brynn's birthday party we had a total of 3 parties and we have been go go go since then. We hung a swing from one of our trees and man does that kid love it. My mom, sissy and I spent a night downtown going to see Beauty and The Beast and went shopping the next day. We also had a baby shower for my cousin. The next weekend Jeff and I spent a night downtown just the 2 of us and had a wonderful night alone. We went to the pool at my parents country club a couple times. Brynn and Chance love swimming! We went to a wedding for my very first best friend ever! (And I made some custom accessories for her big day!) We went to the zoo twice and to Navy Pier and a White Sox game. We had a pool party for work and a movie night on a big screen in my parents back yard. And we have had a couple fun little photoshoots in there too. I'm sure I'm missing something in there too.


Now you may be wondering about the 3 years in the title...

3 years ago today J and I were married. 3 years!!!! Holy cow!!! Time has flown since then. This year was a rough one with a major surgery and quite a long recovery time for J and a HUGE job change for J. Despite all the hardships we had tons of fun and have experienced some of the best things ever with our little toddler. She is such a joy.

If you want to see a ton of wedding pictures here is a link to last years blog post.

And here are just a couple of pictures of my peanut! First one obvi from her party.

Enjoying her first PB&J!!!

A Couple pics from a photoshoot





haha. her "Fake Cheese'n" smile man she is funny!


And in case you are wondering my 5K training is going pretty well. It is 20 days from now and I will run 11 more times before that. I have 7 more training runs in my program so I'm hoping I do pretty well.

I promise my next post won't be 2 months away.
xoxo...P

Brynn's 1 year stats

18 lbs 11oz and
28" tall.

My LITTLE girl is in the 15th% across the board. She is seriously a peanut!

But the DR said she is just perfect and was impressed by how well she is walking (and has been for so long.)
She got 3 shots and got a pretty good fever from them but she is such a trooper.

I can't believe my baby is a year old!!!

Now I just have to decide.... do I wean from breastfeeding now or wait til I'm back in the office full time? Ugh. What to do....

I have some big posts coming up... get excited! ;) (Sneak peak at 1 of the posts...)








xoxo...P

1 Year Old!!!!

One year ago the very minute this blog posted I saw this for the very first time.
...




I fell 100% madly, completely in love. Like nothing I imagined would ever be possible.






Over the last year that love has grown so much it makes me cry if I think about it too much. (I'm not scared to admit it.... I'm sappy and emotional.) Brynn makes me so happy! She is the sweetest thing in the world. I mean seriously so sweet. I haven't ever seen another baby who likes to hug and kiss as much as this little girl does. She does laps around the living room hugging and kissing her toys, her dad and me. We LOVE it! The funny thing is she won't kiss you if you are holding her. She will kiss anyone else though. And hugs... oh they melt my heart over and over again. She loves to pat your arm or back as she is hugging you. If she hugs her dolly or her stuffed Sully she rocks back and forth So.Cute!

But back to how she has grown... She was born at 8lbs 4oz and 20" long at 12:27pm on June 30th. As of June 25th she is about 28" and 18.5 lbs we will see what the DR says at her 1 year appointment next week.

To brag about my little Brynnie a little bit here are all of the fun things she is doing these days...
Walking (getting to be more like running) EVERYWHERE
Playing with all of her fun toys a while ago she figured out her shape sorter and stacker, she loves her stuffed animals and makes them talk to eachother.
Reads - well she makes all her giberish noises while looking through books. It makes my day.
Climbs the stairs
Gets up onto the sofa and divebombs off of it.
Laughs hysterically at the dogs. Especially the littlest dog at my parents house.
Loves wearing her links like a necklace.
Eats or drinks pretty much anything you set on her tray.
She waves and dances when you ask her to.
She dances anytime she hears music. (It basically makes me die laughing.)
She has a pretty good vocabulary for a 1 year old. She says Dada (says that the most), Mama, Dog, Thank You, Car, Good, Done and Hi. Her favorite phrase is Hi Dada! She screams it when he walks in the room.

There are so many other fun things my girl is doing it just blows my mind. I have to go now so I can spend the day with my girl celebrating her life. But what kind of mom would I be if I didn't leave you with some more pictures?! ;) Oh and if you are interested her birth story is in a tab above.

(What do you mean I'm going to be 1 tomorrow?)






Happy Birthday Brynn! I'm am so proud to be your mom. You make all the hard things in life totally worth while. You make all the wonderful things in life even better. I hope you are always the happy, sweet girl that you are now. Daddy and I love you so much we can't wait to watch you grow. Big hugs and kisses.

I love you so much!


xoxo...P

Earth Friendly Baby Stuff #3

And I'm back with a Baby Related Post! :)  

Baby wearing!
So it isn't really earth friendly exactly but alot of earth friendly mamas love it so I figured I would include it. I LOVE to wear Brynnie. It is so convinient and such great bonding for me and my girl.

There are so many different options on how you can wear your baby and I couldn't even tell you how many products are on the market. What I can tell you about are our 3 types of carriers.

When Brynnie was little bittie we used a Moby Wrap. That thing was a godsend when I needed to get things done and she was fussy and wanted to be held. I would vacuum while wearing her and she would fall right asleep. That thing was seriously great.

Well now Brynnie is a bit bigger and I feel like she is a bit too heavy for me to feel safe with her in the Moby so my go to is the Ergo. LOVE LOVE LOVE! It is amazing. The shoulders are padded with memory foam and they way it sits on your body is so comfortable. Plus it is the most ERGOnomically correct carrier for your baby. Similar options (like the Bijorn) aren't very good for babies hips. The Ergo is just great. It can hold a child up to 40 (or 42?) lbs and you can use it as a front carry, a back carry or a side carry. Seriously just LOVE this thing.

And finally we have a sling. I have only used it a couple times because I got it after I got the ERGO and Moby but it seems ok. B is too big now to do some of the carrys with it and just a little too small to do a sitting hip carry.

Training... Father's Day... and a question...

What am I training for?

My very first 5K. I don't know what I'm thinking but I'm going to do it.

I'm doing a variation of the Couch to 5K program and went on my first run/walk yesterday. Though maybe I should have called it my first walk/run because there was for sure more walking than there was running at this point. But that is to be expected and how the plan works.

I was out for about 1/2 hour and went approx. 2.2 miles.

I'm so proud of me. :)

The 5K is September 25th at the zoo.

Wish me luck everyone.



Now onto Father's Day.
Brynn and I are so greatful to her dad. J is just amazing with her and he loves her so so so much it is the best thing to watch them together. One of the best things for me to see is the way that girl lights up and yells (and I do mean yells) "hi dada" when he walks in the room. It is awesome.

For Father's Day J wanted to spend most of the day just chilling out with us so we did just that. All 3 of us even took a nap. About 3:30 that afternoon we took a drive to the place we got married. Starved Rock State Park. We love it there and they have delish food. So we ate dinner and I may or may not have snuck into a wedding because the DJs that did our wedding were there. :) It was great to see them.

J hasn't gotten all of his present yet because it isn't here yet but when it gets here I will show you. It is way cute. One of my friends Heather inspired me. :)

Here are some pics we took. I was shocked but I accidentally left my camera at home so they are cell phone pics. :( (Still cute though!)


This picture of the 2 of them melt my heart. <3!


And my question is simply this....

HOW IS MY GIRL GOING TO BE A YEAR OLD ONE WEEK FROM TODAY?!!

Here are some other cute pics we took recently - also cell phone pics because I haven't taken pics off my camera recently.
First pigtails!


I just loved this outfit!

How can you not love this face?!


xoxo.... P.

Life...

is getting in the way of blogging. :) Not that that is a bad thing. All the time anyway.

We have been crazy since I last posted. We have been fighting with GM... my car is, well was, a 2008 Chevy Equinox. NOT ANYMORE! It had just over 50,000 miles on it and within the last month and a half has had 2 new motors put in it. Clearly at that point I decided heck no I'm not driving it anymore. It isn't reliable and I don't want my precious little girl in it. Sooooo after some long drawn out bargaining with GM (ending with GM, not us, getting the better end of the deal) and figuring out some things on our end we are the proud owners of a brand new 2011 Chevy 2500 Silverado.

Pretty huh?! (Don't ever tell J I called the big manly truck pretty!)

So you might be asking yourself... your going to drive that all the time? Well no. We are getting rid of Jeff's old truck and planning on getting me a Jetta TDI wagon. :)

People crack up seeing me in the truck though. I have had more than one person comment on how little I look driving it. To them I say you think I'm little? Check this out...






**Disclaimer These photos were taken in our yard driving through our grass. We were not on a road being reckless. And the photo of her in the bed of the truck is while the truck is in park. We were using it as a "play pen"! haha**

In other news we have been working around the house constantly trying to get things better organized and make improvements since we are stuck in this house for a while.

And.... I have been planning B's 1st Birthday party! My girl is almost 1!!!! How how how did that happen?
For some completely bizarre reason I can't get a picture of her invite to post but I will figure out a way after her party.

I have some great little decorations all set ready to go and her outfit is soooo cute! I can't wait to see her in it. I have adorable plans for her cakes so lets just hope they turn out ok. haha. I can't wait for her party but the day of her actual birthday I think I will probably cry.

I can't believe the little girl my baby has turned into. She amazes me more and more every day. I just adore her.

I promise the next post will not be so far off. Things have just been crazy.

xoxo... P