Weekend in Photos

It's been a quiet week for us so far, but here are some photos I meant to share from our weekend. We hung out with family, as usual :)

{As you can see by her wrist fat and cheeks that are wider than her head, she is so malnourished that she must resort to eating her own hands. Poor baby.}

{And then there's this one who had to stop and "take a break" while walking 50 yards to our car. You can tell she had played hard though :)}

{Every so often we have a Mary Kay party with my mom, sisters and cousins. I'm a total makeup junkie.}

...and back to our quiet Monday

Rain Check

I feel like a lot of my post titles have "rain" in them lately. It's been a rainy end of spring, I guess.

Today we planned to meet SIL Nennie at my in-laws' house to swim, but it rained. We decided to get together anyway and take a rain check on the swimming. It was still a fun day of playing, talking, lunch and coffee. 

Riley was totally impatient with Carsen's casual approach to lunch. 

Father's Day

Father's Day at Oriole Park!

Happy Friday

Despite many reports of wild weather in our area yesterday like this photo posted on Facebook by a local meteorological group...

{yes, that's a funnel cloud, a tornado was confirmed} we managed to get only about 10 minutes of hard rain out of the "super cell" storm that was forecast. 

Today temps are about 20 degrees cooler and the humidity is almost zero. We even had to wear hoodies when we went outside this morning. After several recent severe weather events, it was nice to see a clear blue sky even if it was a little cooler.

Carsen celebrated by drawing a dolphin :)

Happy Friday!

Fun Before the Storm

Today was gorgeous and we spent it splashing around at Nana's house.

Everyone was sufficiently exhausted from our fun in the sun. Good thing, because tomorrow we're supposed to have crazy super-cell storms so we'll probably be stuck in the house... hopefully not stuck in the basement.

Game On

Yep, I'm back to training after an almost year-long hiatus for my pregnancy and the birth of our second daughter. I had an amazingly easy recovery so I got the all-clear to resume workouts with no questions at all.  It felt great to start up again after that big break. I really missed it though and looked forward to that first run for a long time. The biggest challenge for me right now {and for many mamas, I imagine} is finding the time to train. I went from having a toddler who naps for a solid 3 hours every day guaranteed, to also having a newborn that naps sometimes really great and other times not so well. While we're currently working on getting her into a good nap time routine, until that happens I can't count on a specific chunk of time during the day to run. So, for now I'm using any nap time I have during the day to prep dinner (something I can fairly easily walk away from and go back to as needed if she wakes up), and then doing my run when Josh gets home. Thankfully long runs are scheduled for weekends :)

Rain, Rain Make My Day

When the radar looks like this...

I highly recommend curling up with a little of this...

and the cutest people you can find...

{A Doc McStuffins marathon can't hurt either.}

Today we're riding out tropical storm Andrea. It's really just a lot of rain but it gives us the perfect excuse to slow down, stay home, and spend lots of time snuggling {and singing, and tickling, and reading, and baking...}. I love getting out of the house to enjoy fresh air and sunshine, but sometimes it's just as nice to curl up and spend some quality snuggle time with my girls. There's something peaceful and recharging about surrounding yourself with soft blankets, soft sweats, soft babies, soft music and the sound of a downpour outside your window. I feel an epic, house-wide nap time coming up this afternoon... 

Nap Training

Here I am at 2:30pm sitting down to eat a lunch that's been waiting for me for an hour now. I'm typing this with one hand because my other one is tucked under a sleeping 2 month old. The three year old is sleeping like the pro she is. She wasn't always an awesome sleeper though. Why do babies hate sleep? I will never know. That's why I'm giving Reagan the same treatment her sister got that turned her into an awesome sleeper.

Early on babies sleep all willy-nilly with no real schedule, but eventually for everyone's benefit, a schedule is necessary. Both of my girls started to develop a sleeping pattern on their own at which point I took the opportunity to solidify it. My strategy is simple. If you take the same nap every day for enough consecutive days, your body will not only be ready for that nap at that time of day, but will need it. But its not just as easy as putting the baby in bed at the same time each day. If I do that, she sleeps about 20 minutes before she begins squirming, farting, fussing, and is wide awake again. I could spend another 20 minutes getting her back to sleep so she could sleep another 20 minutes, but by then she's coming up on the next feeding time and it gets kind of pointless. Therefore, I hold the baby for as long as she'll sleep. For Reagan this afternoon nap has been as long as 3 hours, but often goes at least 2. After 3-4 days, she passes out right on time and sleeps pretty solidly for about 2 hours.

I am so looking forward to the predictability of a baby on a good napping schedule, the benefits of which include getting back to my regular cleaning & workout routines and obviously a better rested, more content baby :)

While we're waiting for all that, I got YouTube Capture on my phone which makes it much easier to share videos here. So, for your viewing pleasure, here is Carsen playing with two Wall-E toys this morning...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwkRDgFgB4?rel=0]

*Disregard the fact that it's sideways. It was in landscape-only mode and I recorded in portrait - oops!

Birthday Weekend R&R

After a birthday weekend full of family and friends, food and fun, cake and candles, wishes and memories, we welcomed a rainy Monday full of rest and relaxation yesterday.

Today we're doing a little more of the same. Coffee, Kelly & Michael, playground, PB& J. It's a gorgeous weather week here so we're looking forward to plenty of outside time and maybe a splash in Nana's pool later in the week :)

Thirty One

Happy birthday to me!

{Me with my girls at the park this morning}

I've had a relaxed, and blessed day with my sweet little family. What more could I ask for? The celebration continues tomorrow with the rest of my family {mom, siblings, nieces & nephews}. Can't wait :)