Question for the Blogger Audience...

I need an opinion....

What color should we paint our kitchen??!!

I will save the whole bonus room story for another day...the short version is we have just hired someone to finish it-all that was left to do was the woodwork around window, and door, baseboards, and paint. John did a fabulous job hanging the sheet rock, mudding, and sanding. In fact the guys we hired asked John if a machine had done his mudding because it was so precise. I took that as a compliment to John that he did a great job (being his anal engineer self, I knew he would try to make it perfect). We simply ran out of time. John's summer class started yesterday and I was going to seriously lose it if the room wasn't finished. We found a GREAT guy through my parents. He is super nice and is going to be finished TOMORROW. I don't know what we will do with ourselves :) And the carpet will be installed next week! However, back to the kitchen. John has agreed for me to have him go ahead and paint our bathroom and our kitchen since it is on our wish list but we know we will never get around to it (or once we did, it would take a month)-we just don't have time for stuff like that right now! We'd rather be playing :) I am painting our bathroom a chocolate brown color. The kitchen is a bit trickier. You can see it from any room in the main part of the house. The color that is on most of the walls (foyer, den, bedrooms, and kitchen) is a beige-khaki kind of color. The dining room (to the left of the kitchen) is more of a slate grayish khaki color. I know that doesn't help very much. I have been thinking of doing like a mustard yellow kind of color, however I don't want it to clash with the 2 rooms that are right beside it. Then I thought about a green.....Please give me your opinion!! I have to pick it out tomorrow!!

Pool Boy

Summer has been flying by! We have been enjoying these hot days camped out at the pool. Will loves it! He is so calm in the water and is content for a few hours. He always naps really well once we come home!!

Happy Father's Day John!

I am a little late on the Father's Day post. This weekend was a very busy one for us! The mudding/sanding phase on the bonus room was complete last Thursday. Friday we headed to Home Depot to get all the paint supplies. We planned on cleaning the room up, John hooking up the electrical outlets, and getting the first coat of paint on Friday night after Will went to sleep. We got Will in bed at 8:15 and got busy. Did I mention without the air on up there it is about 872 degrees. I did not know how John had done all that work up there with no air!! I was miserable after sweeping for 5 minutes. We had a little technical difficulty hooking up the outlets and could not get the electricity to work (we have a light, but the outlets are on a different fuse or something). Then we noticed that the thermostat/air would not work either. It was working when they installed it last July, John just didn't want to turn it on while he was sanding. Needless to say John became extremely frustrated and we just had to quit for the night with the room semi-clean with no power in the outlets, hot hot hot, and no paint on the walls. Saturday morning did not ease John's frustration. He thought endlessly on what he might have done wrong. When Will went down for his morning nap, he went up there and basically acted like a circus performer. He had to climb back into the walls and across several ledges, army crawl at times to reach the original wire box. Everything checked out okay so he knew that was not the problem. He called the man that installed our cooling/heating unit and he happened to be in our area so he stopped by. He took one look at the outlets and had that problem fixed. Poor John had hooked them up wrong. It was just a matter of moving a few wires and they were working. He also got the AC unit cooling but discovered there was something wrong with a switch (there is a much more detailed and lengthier explanation that Iwould have no idea how to tell you about) so he is coming back to fix that this week. So that right there made the weekend much better for John. He is going to finish cleaning it up today (sand was everywhere) and we hope to start painting tomorrow. The carpet should be installed by the weekend. THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL :)

On another note...We had a wonderful Father's Day. We have come a long way since Day 2 of Parenting!

John told Will it was the best Father's day he had ever had :) Will and I gave John an Auburn print for his bonus room-"Bo Over the Top." Much different than last year's gift... It has been a most fun adventure through parenting with John. He provides endless comic relief when I am ready to pull my hair out. It is precious how excited and smiley Will gets when John walks in a room. He is an awesome daddy and will be a perfect role model for our son. I do not know how single parents do it. Not only is John my perfect help mate but he also makes life so fun and keeps me grounded, especially now that we have a baby. Being a daddy definitely suits John!!

Looking Back

It is fun to think about what this time last year was like for me and John. We closed on our new house at the end of April. Two weeks later I found out I was pregnant. And this week last year, the Monday before Father's Day a doctor's appointment confirmed that we indeed would be expanding our family the next January. Reflecting on this series of events is funny to me. I found out I was pregnant the day after Mothers Day last year...it was a Monday. I was late, but of course was on birth control, so hadn't thought much about it. I started emailing a coworker, Holly, asking if she knew when she got pregnant, felt different, etc. She freaked out and told me I had to take a test. She talked to me on the phone the entire time I was in the car from Drake to Walgreens and stayed on the phone with me until I reached my apartment. She told me to call her as soon as I took it. I laughed it off and told her there was no way. 5 minutes later I was sitting on the toilet completely dumbfounded. Speechless. Limp. Alone. John started working in Birmingham at the end of March, so here I was alone in my apartment at 4 in the afternoon with a stick in my hand that had two lines. Not expecting two lines, all I could do was call friend and FREAK OUT. She was picking up her child from daycare and I ordered her to come immediately to my side. She obliged. We both then started freaking out. I knew I had a phone call to make. To my husband-heck no! I needed to make sure I had disability insurance all lined up so at least when I told him the news, he wouldn't panic about insurance. I made my appointment with the insurance people, then I continued to freak out. I called Shealy who was working out. I told her she needed to come over asap. She was at the gym and left thinking something had happened to Bentley. She arrived and then all three of us freaked out some more. They were excited, but I was completely in shock. I could not fathom the thought of any of it. Not that we didn't want kids, or that it was too soon, it just wasn't planned! I tried to figure out how I would tell John-do I just call him...I knew that this would be a moment we remembered for the rest of our lives so I wanted to make sure it was done right. I decided it had to be in person. I knew if I asked him to meet me half way on a Monday night he would know something was up. I decided to let myself process it and tell him on Friday when I was traveling to Birmingham to move some stuff into the house. The whole week was weird talking to John. I was keeping a secret-something I never do with John. I think he sensed something was up, but he just blew it off to the fact that I missed him. Holly convinced me to take another test on Thursday morning. This would be Test #2. Two lines again. Now I really had to plan out how I would break the news to John. Shealy, Holly, and I left after school to a baby store on college. I decided I wanted to buy an Auburn bib for him to unwrap. Friday morning I was anxious. Excited. I had no idea what to expect. As soon as school was over I loaded up my car and headed to Birmingham. I went over how this conversation would go in my head a million times. I didn't even know how to say it-that is why I bought the bib. I was nervous about how John would react. Looking back, this was silly. He has always been so supportive, but still-this is a huge, big deal that we hadn't guessed we'd deal with for a few more years. I decided to have John meet me at the park where we went all the time when we were dating. I told him I had a housewarming gift for him. Around 5:30 I pulled up. John was already there. We walked over to the swings where we had swung many times before. He started to unwrap his gift. I was so nervous that I fell out of the swing, off the back. Anyways, he told me later that at first he thought it was a gift for Bentley. Ha! When he held it up, he just looked at me, at the bib again, and back at me..."You're pregnant?!? That's awesome." That phrase, this memory will be forever etched into my brain. I was so relieved that he didn't panic. The weekend was fun-unpacking the kitchen stuff and hanging blinds. John wouldn't let me lift anything and called me his baby mama. The next few weeks were a blur. We decided not to tell our family until we had been to the doctor, knowing it could have just been a false positive and that it was still early. The days after we fully moved from Auburn, my mom would come over to help me unpack and I almost told her so many times because I felt so awful and the last thing that I wanted to do was sort through boxes :) The Monday before Father's Day we went to the doctor and saw little Caddy with our very own eyes. It was crazy to hear that racing heartbeat and know that was actually inside of me. We were going to wait until Father's Day to tell our families but of course when we left the appointment, I was about to explode. We went to the bookstore and bought Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now by Dr. Seuss. This is the first book that I learned to read with my dad, so this is how I decided I would tell my parents. I wrote inside, "Happy Father's Day Pops-Can't wait for you to read to me come January. Love, Baby V." My dad probably read that sentence 5 times before he knew what it meant. For John's family, we told them we had found some old pictures while unpacking and wanted to show them. We handed them the ultrasound pictures! Of course everyone was ecstatic. The rest of the night was filled with phone calls. We could never have imagine how incredibly happy and blessed and full our hearts would be one short year later!
If you are still reading, my apologies for the long post. I just wanted to recap these events for myself while they were still fresh so one day when I am old and gray, I can read about it and remember :)

Cute Visitor

Yesterday we were so lucky that Shealy and Clayton stopped by our house on their way back from the lake. We were so excited to see them and Little Kate. Though she isn't so little anymore. She is absolutely precious and has grown so much since we saw them last. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from this photo shoot. They are going to hate getting together because every time they are next to each other I snap their picture like crazy :)
This is just so you can compare how much they have changed/grown. Kate was all smiles when she came to visit yesterday, just like Will was when we went to visit them in March. Sorry that I could not rotate the last 2 pictures-I had to upload everything to my mac school laptop to be able to blog since our internet is not working on our desktop and I can't figure out how to rotate pictures on here...well I can rotate them but it doesn't save that way.
Thank you McKinnons for stopping by!!! We miss yall so very much!!!

5 Months Old Today!!

Five months ago today this little angel came to meet us...
and now he has turned into this chunk of an angel.
John and I celebrated with cookies. Will celebrated with bananas :)
I can now say that I can't really remember what life was like without him. We are enjoying each minute with him. The other morning I went in to wake him because it was time to get up and eat and he was sleeping so sweetly. I teared up and just watched him for a while. It is still very surreal that we have been blessed with this precious little person!
Just when we think we can't love him anymore, he grins or giggles and shows his little personality and our hearts get even bigger. He has completely captured them!
A little bit about Will these days...
-He likes sweet potatoes. and squash. and carrots. and bananas. These are the only foods he has tried so far-as you can tell he is not picky. The boy just likes to eat! He opens his mouth WIDE when he sees the spoon coming and grunts at us if we are not fast enough!
-He recognizes the word milk. If you say this to him, he gets all excited, starts looking around for it, and move his arms and legs wildly. Then he cries if you don't give him any. It is so bad, that we now have to spell out milk if we need to say the word but it is not time for him to eat. Hysterical!
-He rolls. and rolls. and rolls. This past week I was on the phone and I put him down on a blanket in his room and I sat on the floor with him and kept talking. I looked away for a second and when I looked back at him, he had rolled halfway across the room. We think he will be crawling soon, and when he does our life is over! He already lifts up on his arms and kicks his feet. He is going to be quick, whenever he does learn.
-Daddy is far funnier than Mommy. John can make noises and faces that crack the kid up. He still throws his little head back in laughter while in the Bumbo which I love. It cracks me up!
-Gone are the days of footed pjs. It broke my heart to buy him big boy pjs. I found some really cute ones at the baby gap and some at target. But they are like boxers and a shirt....now when we get him out of the bath and part his hair and put these on he really looks like a big boy!-Gone also are the days of liquid poop.
-He is "talking" a lot these days and has started a high pitch squeal when he gets really excited.
-He enjoys watching Sid the Science Kid. Like he really pays attention in his bumbo. I only let him watch like 20 minutes in the morning and then he usually watches a Praise Baby DVD in the afternoon.
-He still likes to snuggle with mommy. I don't know what I am going to do when he is not a snuggler anymore! I could just eat him up!
-He is loving his bath!! John is usually the one that gives him his bath. We do this just before bed time. This past week John called me in to come and see him. It appears his bath was a little too soothing...he fell asleep in there! I mean out! We had to wake him up to get him out.

You Know Your Baby is a CHUNK When...

You pick him up out of the Bumbo and the Bumbo comes with him!!!

This is a Bumbo for those of you that aren't familiar...

This happened tonight and I could not stop laughing. His chubby little thighs were squeezed into the Bumbo that when I went to get him out, I had to physically pull the chair off of him instead of it just staying on the floor like it is supposed to :) Hopefully Will will be sitting up on his own pretty soon or he might just get stuck in there one day!

Speaking of chubby babies, I just started reading a book that I ordered off Amazon called Super Baby Food.
I am loving it! Any of you with babes around Will's age would probably enjoy it too. It starts from 6 months ( or before if you start food like we did at 4.5 months old) and goes until they are 3, giving you tips for how to make your own baby food, what to give when, how much, etc. All of this info you get at the pediatrician office, but this is more like a handbook. It is very easy to reference. She gives all sorts of money saving tips throughout the book as well. Some parts are a little extreme...for example when she is talking about the best place to store vegetables, she said that potatoes should be stored in a cool, dark place. She recommends if there is no where in your kitchen to store them, to try the attic. I can't imagine going up to the attic to retrieve a potato. For us, it would be the unfinished bonus room which is neither dark, nor cool at the moment...But she does have some really good tips. I am not one of those crazy organic people that think babies must have all organic....I have even bought the off brand baby food. But while I am home this summer, I am going to give it a go at making some of my own vegetable and fruit baby food. The fruit is easy and with a bit more time, you can make enough vegetable servings for a whole month (she says it takes about an hour). I will let you know how it goes-but check out the book if you are in this stage of life.

All About Me

Something is horribly wrong with our computer. The internet won't even open up. But it is not the internet connection....we have a virus. I am waiting for John to get home so we can figure out what our next step is-we have 2 virus scan programs on our computer that can't seem to get rid of it. I am frantically going to buy something to back up all of our pictures as soon as Will is up from his nap. That is the only thing I care about on our computer-anything else can be replaced! So for now I have my school laptop hooked up to our internet. I have no pictures to share of Will since they are all on my other computer, so I figured I would just do this little task that Katie tagged me to do...
8 Things I am looking forward to:
1. Spending the whole summer home with Will
2. My birthday
3. Planting some plants in our beds outside to bring some more color (all of our neighbors are showing us up)
4. My books I just ordered to arrive from Amazon (Bringing Up Boys, Babywise II, Super Baby Food, and My Sister's Keeper)
5. The day when I do not have to sterilize bottles anymore :)
6. John graduating with his MBA (Dec!!)
7. Taking a celebratory trip with just John next March (because he is finished with school)
8. Learning how to REALLY use my camera (a goal for the summer)

8 Things I did yesterday:
1. Met some school friends at Panera for lunch
2. Ordered Will's baptism invitations
3. Straightened my closet
4. Played with Will
5. Went on a date night with John to Baha Burger and Couples Bible Study
6. Finished The Shack
7. Watched a marathon of Tori and Dean Home Sweet Hollywood (not the whole marathon)
8. Baked cookies

8 Things I wish I could do:
1. SING
2. monogram my own clothes and gifts i.e. I wish I had a monogramming machine
3. Travel the world with John
4. Keep from eating half the cookies I baked
5. Get all my errands done in 5 minutes
6. Fix the cd changer in my car
7. Get a tan
8. See my niece and nephew more often!

8 Shows I watch:
1. 24
2. The Biggest Loser
3. American Idol
4. One Tree Hill
5. Friends (never gets old)
6. The Today Show
7. Beverly Hills, 90210 (never gets old)
8. The Office

8 of my Favorite Foods:
1. Ice Cream
2. Fiber Plus Dark Chocolate Almond Bars
3. Pineapple
4. Zoes Chicken Roll Ups
5. Alladin's Turkey Melts
6. Big Blue Bagel Bagel Chips
7. Burnt Butter Rice (a specialty of John's mom....delightful)
8. Cereal

8 Places I have traveled:
1. London
2. Paris
3. Ireland
4. Scotland
5. Peru
6. Greece
7. Cabo San Lucas
8. New York City

8 Places I would like to travel:
1. Fiji
2. Greece-I would like to go back with John-he has always wanted to go!
3. Anything with a St. in front of it....St Barts, St Thomas, St Martin, St Lucia
4. Napa Valley in CA
5. Barbados
6. Australia
7. Austria
8. China

People I tag:
1. Katie F.
2. Shealy M.
3. April R.
4. Jenny F.
5. Ashley G.
6. Tessa W.
7. Holly M.
8. Christen S.
9. Jessica C.

How could you??

Dear Mom and Dad,

How could you do this to me??!! Because of your neglect to brush me since the hairless dog came to live with us in January, they did this to me when you took me for a haircut. I heard you tell them just to take about half of my hair off, but after you left they just laughed in my face and said I was so matted that they were going to have to shave me. And then...to make it worse, they didn't even cut my ears one tiny little bit so now the neighborhood dogs are calling me Pippi. I don't even want to go for walks anymore and I prefer to be let outside in the back because I am so self-conscious. I can't even look at you when you take my picture because I am so embarrassed. How did this happen. I used to be king. You use to play with me and sing to me and cuddle with me all day every day until that little mongrel came. He has bigger and cooler toys than me and always gets to go with you when you leave the house. This is disturbing.

Feeling Replaced,

Bentley

Enjoying the Summer

Today was a perfect day to be outside and truly enjoy the fact that I am off work for the next 2 months. John played in a softball tournament this morning with church and Will and I went to watch around 11:30. It was so much fun-the weather was beautiful and not too hot. It was a double elimination tournament. John's team did not win, but he had fun playing! There was also a picnic for family after the first 2 rounds.

Isn't he such a cutie? He is getting so big!!

He was cracking up at his friend Alexis!This is Will's cousin James. James was so cute-he would stand on his tippy toes and peek over to see Will. James will be 1 in August. He is not walking yet, but could balance great by holding onto the stroller.

James liked to "rock" Will in the stroller. Will's face cracks me up-he doesn't look so sure of all that rockin'

Life Changing

You must read this book right now!! If you do not have it, get to the bookstore tomorrow. If you are in the middle of another book, put it down and read this one first. It is THAT GOOD. I did not expect to finish this book in 2 days but I found myself burning the midnight oil, staying up long after Will and John had gone to sleep and read every second of Will's nap time. He actually woke up just as I was almost finished and to keep him from crying, but to also allow me to finish the book, I sat him in the Bumbo and read aloud to him the last few pages. I just had to finish!! The front of the book says "a modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman that bound them together." This book was not what I expected, although I am not sure what I expected. You will need tissues...lots of them. I really think it is the best book I have ever read. What an amazing, life-changing story, that is true! You are truly missing out if you do not read it (I know I am beginning to sound like Oprah during one of her book club shows....I just feel that deeply about it). John claims that the last book he read/finished was White Fang in 5th grade :) I have never ever asked him to read a book and I have told him that this one is a must! Please let me know what you think about it if you read it. I have a hard time thinking any of you would be disappointed!

Tricky...

Sleep has become tricky at our house-day and night. Ever since Will turned 4 months old and learned how to roll over, he no longer sleeps through the night. It is so very frustrating because we got used to him sleeping so well through the night! Now he wakes up anywhere between 2 and 4 and if you put his paci in he is fine for an hour or so and then crys again. I swore I would not use the paci at night, but I have learned to never say never. We will not feed him in the middle of the night and we are not going to put him in our bed (don't think that would really help anyways), so we have resorted to the paci. He sleeps soundly once it is tucked in his mouth but then he rolls over, it falls out, and he is awake. We have tried to not go in there and just let him fall back asleep, but that once that took 2 hours which did not make for a fun next day. And he didn't cry/scream for 2 hours, just talked up a storm which kept both John and I awake.
Since I have been out for summer, we normally get out of the house to run errands or meet people for lunch around 11:45 after he eats at 11...which means he does not go down for a nap like he was used to around 12:30. He will nap in the car, but it isn't good sleep like he gets when he naps in his bed. Yesterday I stayed home to try to get in 2 good naps (He no longer goes down in the afternoons-we try, we fight, and he always wins). He slept from 10 to 11 and then from 1:18 - 1:54 and that was IT. I was about to lose it when John came home. He was whiney BECAUSE HE WAS TIRED, but refused to go to sleep. Now he not only can roll from his stomach to back, but just a few days ago started rolling from his back to his stomach. So basically nap time has turned into gymnastics. He is usually at the opposite end of the bed laying in the opposite direction when I go in there to get him up.
I know lots of you out there have been through this. I have read that you start to encounter some sleep problems at 4 months. So I am hoping this will just go away soon. However, if you have any advice, PLEASE offer it. I am willing to try anything. I have tried increasing wake time so that he will nap. Doesn't work. I have tried putting him down earlier than usual for a nap. Doesn't work. I have tried putting 6 pacis in his crib so hopefully with all the rolling he is doing, he will stumble across one and just put it in his mouth-but I don't think he has learned to do that yet. Anyways, any help would be much appreciated!

Summer Reads

(Gasp...a post that isn't about Will) :)

I love to read. Always have. But once I started teaching, I realized how little time there was for me to read anymore, unless it was a picture book or young adult literature that I was reading to prepare a literature circle or something for my students. Now that Will is here (had to mention him at least once!) there is literally no time for reading, maybe not even in the summer. But I am going to try! I started a few years ago making a list of all the books I wanted to read over the summer and then I would read like a maniac from June to August. It is June 1 and I have a rather short list...I am hoping you can help me with that.

One of my students gave me this book on Teacher Appreciation Day. I had never heard of it before. Since receiving it, I have heard TONS about it...on tv, read blogs of people who have read it, and all say great things. I am about a 1/3 of the way through it.

Next on my list is this one. Again, hadn't heard much about it until recently. My dad had it so I borrowed it from him.

Here is where you come in. Please leave in the comments section book titles that you think are a must read for me over summer. I have already read the Twilight series (I just had a feeling someone would say those!) I would love to add to my list. I think the longer my list is, the more inclined I am to get busy reading!