birthday

hello again! (again)

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sophia-70

so here we are again, again.

it’s been a long time since i’ve thought about blogging, but the combination of a serious candy crush addiction and a desire/need to share a little bit of myself with someone has brought me back again. i can’t promise it’ll be regular (like it ever was), but i will try my damnedest to write every once in awhile.

it’s been so long that i can’t even remember where we left off, so instead of recapping my life over the past six months (more? much more.) i’ll focus on the future. tomorrow my baby girl is TWO YEARS OLD! we are entirely in the throes of toddlerhood, where the terrible twos have well and truly begun rearing their ugly heads. in the bad moments, everything is ‘mine NOW’, epic floor-rolling tantrums, and kicking/smacking/thrashing anything within reach. in the good moments (which to be honest are much more common than the bad), it’s all ‘luv doooo mommyyyy’, cuddles, and crazy developmental strides. i’ll take it. maybe with a glass of wine.

work is the same as ever. mondays at starbucks give me a little bit of a ‘break’ from home. more importantly, they give p and s time together for adorable daddy/daughter dates. most of the time i wish i could be home with them, but there’s something to be said for walking into town without a buggy and worrying about no one but myself. i still don’t think i could handle full time work. i don’t know how working moms do it! (believe me, i still thinking being a mostly stay at home mom is tough too, in different ways.)

speaking of family time, we’re heading away on a ‘mini-break’ to paris next week (thanks bridget jones for the english terminology here!) and can’t be more excited. s is excited too, to take the ‘twain’ through the big ‘nunnel’ and to see the ‘gib ife towah’. and to eat cakeys. obviously. i promise an update after we get back! 

that’s all for now, but we have a mini toddler birthday party planned for this saturday, so i’ll let you know how that goes, too! much more low-key than last year, with more play, less prep, and just as much cake. in the meantime, to make up for my absence, i give you cute toddler photos. you’re welcome. (photo credits to the ever fabulous francesca db photography)

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another family update (and more apologies)

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i think sometimes i lose my writing mojo. or my precious baby decides to sleep 12 hours a night and reminds me what 8+ hours of consecutive sleep feel like and i capitalize on that shiz. one or the other. either way, sorry for the hiatus. i’m back now with a vengeance! and here’s a song for you.

that’s fort atlantic with their amazing ‘let your heart hold fast’ from my favorite episode of how i met your mother. yum.

so, what’s new in our lives?

p and i are now the proud owners of a TODDLER. and whoever coined the phrase ‘the terrible TWOS’ is a dirty, dirty liar. that crap starts as soon as your baby realizes that there is a world outside of the buggy. i swore to myself i would never be THAT MOM (ie. my mom …i wasn’t a very good baby) but this product is on the to-buy list at the moment. sometimes you just need a leash.

s is officially a social butterfly. over the past month and a bit we’ve had more than a few houseguests (p’s sister and her family, s’s godparents and their four kids, s’s other godmummy and my best friend, and my sister…not including the house full for her birthday party!) and s has had an amazing time dancing, playing, laughing, eating chocolate, blowing bubbles, dining out, and shopping.

and a few other things, in brief:

s is addicted to chocolate.

p and i saw the dalai lama.

s had not one, but TWO babysitters, and appeared to behave to some extent.

never go to the natural history museum (or any other free london attraction) during the school holidays. especially with a sick baby.

my baby rocks out to bruno mars, psy, and macklemore. i’m a bad mommy.

this summer is going to be epic. plane tickets booked to america, holiday in wales with s’s godparents paid in full, and s and i get to join p on the choir trip to germany AND on another weeklong program in london. i should probably talk to my boss.

‘no’ is the new ‘yeah’. and i do not like it.

i bought baby crocs and i don’t feel guilty.

some mummy friends and i started a book club and so far we’ve read one whole book! up next? this one! (thanks e for the inspiration!)

that’s all for now, but stay tuned for a post on the party of the year…it was a good one.

sophia loves cake

one year old

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dear sophia,

happy birthday! today you celebrate the very first anniversary of your birth. this time last year you were brand new, tiny, delicate, and wonderful. daddy and i had absolutely no idea what we were doing and were terrified of breaking you, but were so excited to have you in our lives. now we can’t imagine life without you.

in the past year you’ve grown from a newborn to an infant to a baby to virtually a toddler. in some ways you’re like a completely different person, but in many ways you’re exactly the same. you’ve always been headstrong, vocal, happy, and active. now you’re an independent, walking, talking, bubbly little girl. you learn something new every day and love to explore the world around you. your smiles light up our lives and make us so happy to call ourselves your parents. you’ve achieved so much in just one year of life that we’re so excited to see what you’ll do next.

we hope you have a fantastic birthday and can’t wait for many, many more years of celebrations with you.

we love you so much!

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eleven months

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dear s,

holy cow! you’re almost a year old! this time next month we’ll be celebrating your first birthday, and your official graduation from baby to toddler. well, really, you’re a toddler already. you’re my little walker now! you get better and better every day, and now you can stand up from a sitting position, cruise/run around the room while holding onto your wheelybug or the sofa, and walk half a dozen to a dozen steps confidently before falling down on your adorable little bottom. you’re a handful now, but we love (almost) every minute of it.

although you spend most of your energy on moving (and moving and moving!), you’re starting to talk a lot more, too. somehow in the last month you lost the ability to say mama, but call both of us dada instead. you still love to make animal noises, your favorite being meowing like a cat. you can also parrot our own speech, and repeat gone, bye, and yeah most of the time. you call gram gaga and like to chat to your kitty when you’re falling asleep. i can’t wait for you to start talking even more!

your social skills are developing quickly and you love to play with (read: climb on) other babies and older kids. every week we go to kindermusik class with a mixed age range of kids. we also meet up with some friends who have babies at restaurants, the library, and cafes. this weekend you went to your first birthday party! i can’t believe the other babies in our nct class are starting to turn one. it’s your turn soon!!!

we’re starting the process of moving you to your own room by napping you in your nursery, and so far you’re doing remarkably well. you generally sleep from 7pm to 5 or 6am, but lately you’ve been getting up at 4 thinking it’s playtime. please, s, give us a little more sleep! you still take two naps most days, but i think before too long you’ll drop one or the other. take your time! really, it’s ok to sleep lots!

you’re a champion eater, having three full meals and one or two snacks a day. you’re almost competent with your sippy cup, but don’t really understand that a cup without a lid will spill if you bash it and throw it around. you’ve decided you don’t like cucumber very much any more, but love cheese, bread, hummus (the piri piri kind!), and anything starchy. you also like peas, blueberries, fromage frais, and weetabix. you’re happy to explore new flavors but let us know when you don’t like something, either by making a face and spitting it out or sweeping everything off the table and flipping over your plate and mat.

you only take milk from me in the morning and at night time, and sometimes once during the day, but you’re more interested in grown up food and need me less and less. but that’s a good thing, because instead you’re becoming a cuddly bunny who likes to lie on top of us while we scratch or rub your back. like father, like daughter! you also love to give and blow kisses and laugh all the time.

thankfully you still love to read. you sit so nicely with daddy while he reads to you and even read yourself stories in your crib while we get ready in the morning. your favorite books are the touchy feely ones because you really like to be involved in the reading.

thanks for being such a fabulous baby for the last eleven months. and happy almost birthday!!!

love you! ❤

happy eleven months!

happy eleven months!

first birthday prep (or how to plan a frat party with babies)

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in less than two months, s will be celebrating her first (and most badass?!) birthday. it’s equal parts exciting and depressing for us to plan. exciting because our baby is almost almost almost officially a toddler and we get to celebrate the wonderful ways she’s changed our lives over the past year. depressing because, as cool as we make this party, she won’t remember it.

so there will be booze.

obviously. because otherwise it’s just a silly afternoon where a bunch of parents wish they’d smuggled in their flasks of whiskey while their respective babies crawl and scream and cry and poop all over each other. just like every other day, really. just kidding. mostly. in all seriousness, i really want this party to be laid back and fun for kids and adults alike. so there will be beer. and tequila. if you know me, you know that one of my mantras in life is this: EVERYTHING is better with tequila. so there will be beer with tequila (desperados, anyone?!), cupcakes with tequila (for the grownups only, no need to call the authorities!), and, since i’m a little old fashioned, tequila with tequila.

**note: i am not an alcoholic. in fact, after approximately two drinks these days i am done for the night. so obviously most of this is a joke and does not affect the parenting of our beautiful child, who i’m sure will enjoy tequila just as much as me when she’s all grown up. and not before then. i’m sure she’ll be as innocent as a flower until her 21st birthday (please just let me live with this delusion for awhile).

and there will be cake.

we’re still ironing out details for this aspect of the party, but i found a fantastic local bakery two little cats that’s happy to provide a smash cake for s’s photo shoot (surprise! oops) as well as cupcakes for the party. i thought two smash cakes might be a bit extravagant (read: paul thought) so we will have to settle for adorable photos of s smashing a cupcake into her face during the party. on the menu for the cupcakes: raspberry and lime flavored with lime green sugar sprinklings and fresh raspberries on top. yum. as for the smash cake, i’m hoping it’s going to look like this fabulous cake above!

there will be decorations.

Source: hapykoi.com via Kaitlin on Pinterest


Source: indulgy.com via Kaitlin on Pinterest



i toyed with the idea of having a very hungry caterpillar theme for this party, but decided instead to go with bright colors and more basic decorations. i especially love the ideas from 100 layer cake!

and there will be presents.

Source: amazon.co.uk via Kaitlin on Pinterest





Source: amazon.co.uk via Kaitlin on Pinterest

since march is fairly close to christmas, and since my house already seems to be a toy factory, we’re planning on keeping gifts pretty minimal this year. what i would love for her to get, however, is a few musical instruments. she shakes and bashes all of her toys already and really enjoys rhyme time and music of all kinds, so i think she will really appreciate a few things like these.

and there will be s.

Source: rstyle.me via Kaitlin on Pinterest

everyone who knows me knows that i love a little bit of baby style. in fact, i’m kind of obsessed with pinning gorgeous dresses/tops/jeans/shoes/anything to my baby d board on pinterest. and i have absolutely no restraint when it comes to baby clothes. we had BETTER have a girl the next time around, otherwise there are going to be many lonely, depressed articles of clothes that haven’t been worn in s’s nursery. so here is my inspiration for baby birthday style. (ok, so it’s more than inspiration. i bought it today but shhhhhh! don’t tell paul! ps. i want EVERYTHING from the beatrix potter range at baby gap right now. check it out here.)

i’ll keep you updated as the plans progress!

blw week in review: week two

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this week saw relatively little dining on s’s part…i felt bad, but most days her naps tended to coincide with meal times and, frankly, i wasn’t physically ready to get up and do breakfast at the table every day. but these things happen and we tried to give s the opportunity to eat as much as possible, so the practice is still there.

my lovely baby sister visited for a few days this week, since she’ll be studying ooop north this semester, so we went out lots. we let s try a pub chip (big fat french fry…don’t judge me, you know you’ve done it) and a wedge of lemon (which she LOVED! i thought she would make funny faces but begged for more as soon as we gave it to her) at the pub the other day. i think she felt genuinely excited to be considered a part of the group, rather than being stuck in her pushchair the whole time. that’s one of the main reasons we decided to try this whole blw thing!

other new foods:

lasagna: so yummy, and s loves it! the few times we’ve tried it with her the lasagna has been store bought so it’s fairly high on the sodium scale…i’m not too comfortable continually giving high salt content food, so we’ll plan to make it from scratch in the future.

yogurt: we tried it at the very end of last week, but since then have realized that s loves the mango fromage frais and hates the banana. takes after her mother, i think.

asparagus: adorable to watch her eat it, and she seems to really enjoy it!

nectarine: really difficult for s to keep hold of (which i find with a lot of fruit…it’s so hard to cut into big enough pieces for her) but seemed to like it, more or less.

at the top of the favorites list is still toast with houmous and cucumber. i’m happy to let her continue practicing with these few foods until she gets the hang of chewing and swallowing. also we are loving gill rapley’s baby led weaning book…it follows on pretty much exactly with how s is progressing and offers lots of advice. i’ve heard the cookbook is really good too, so we plan to use that on occasion after s starts properly consuming food.

on the poop front (WARNING for those of you not interested in hearing about poop…continue on to the next paragraph), it’s evident that some food is being consumed. girlfriend STINKS. also, the digestive system is apparently not as efficient in infants, so lots of what comes out looks just like what went in. ok, i didn’t get too graphic there. let’s just say i am NOT looking forward to the day that s’s poop looks like grown up poop. not ready to cross that bridge just yet.

CHANGING THE SUBJECT…TO SHOPPING!

since i feel the need to get out of the house pretty much every day, this whole blw lark has been great for my john lewis addiction. i bought s this splash mat and these forks and spoons…adorable! next week: rubber gloves. i have never washed dishes so often in my life.

i leave you with an adorable (almost) completely unrelated pin i found this week…and yes, i’m planning s’s first birthday party six months in advance. you can never be too prepared.