15 months old.

Cale turned 15 months old on Thursday! I can't believe how big my little boy is getting. We went for his check up at the doctor where he weighed in at 21 lbs 10 oz, and was 32 inches tall. His height is average but he's still a skinny kid. He's somewhere between the 5th and 10th percentiles for weight, which I don't understand because he's a bottomless pit. He's anything but a picky eater. In fact, I can't think of a single food he's tried that he won't eat. Although, if vegetables are included in his meal he'll eat EVERYTHING else first. Haha, he's not the biggest fan of vegetables, but mommy makes sure he eats them.

Here are some noteworthy things about Cale at 15 months:

He gets more and more handsome every day. People comment on his gorgeous eyes and blonde hair on a daily basis. He's going to be a heartbreaker!

He runs everywhere. He never slows down. I don't know where he gets all his energy!

He's so smart. He has about a 25 word vocabulary and is such a chatter box....except to strangers. He suddenly gets very quiet when strangers try to talk to him.

He amazes me with the way he picks up on everything we do. For instance, the other day he found a bottle of nose spray on the floor and put it up his nose and sniffed, then switched nostrils and did it again. He learned that just by watching daddy use his allergy nose spray a few times.

He watched a kid program once on TV that had sign language on it, and after watching it just once, he knew the sign language for "down" and everytime he wants down or hears someone say the word 'down,' he does the sign for it.

He has a security blanket. He calls it his "Ny Ny" (baby talk for "night night," since it's the blanket he's slept with since birth.) When he is tired, he says, "ny ny mama," and requests his blanket and to be put to bed. <---- this THRILLS me since he was such a terrible sleeper when he was younger.

He finally started sleeping through the night about 1-2 months ago. He sleeps a full 12 hours and it.is.BLISS.

He gives the BEST kisses. I never even have to ask. He kisses me constantly throughout the day and it just melts my heart.

...and speaking of kisses...sometimes when he does something naughty, I do a little "fake cry" so he understands that what he did hurt mommy's feelings, and he immediately comes over to kiss me all better. He looks so concerned when mommy "cries." Then he squishes his little face into a scowl and fake cries until I give him a kiss! It's our favorite little game, and super funny.

He is still nursing. I still love nursing him, but I'm at the point now where I'm fine if he weans anytime. I think I'm ready to have my body back. He only nurses a couple times a day, but I still think it'll be a while before he gives it up completely. I'll let him make that decision.

He has about a million teeth. He's got his 4 front and bottom teeth, plus 4 molars, and a couple others in there somewhere. Teething has started to hurt him though, so he gets tylenol a lot these days.

He's very polite. He says "please" and "thank you" all the time, ESPECIALLY if he wants something that isn't normally allowed, like sweets. He also is very good at saying, "more? more?" :)

He's learning his body parts. He can point to his belly button, eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, ears, toes, and feet.

He LOVES taking a bath. He asks for them all the time. "Baf?"

He's getting very good at telling us what he wants. He says, "all done" when he's done eating, and when he wants to go outside he says, "side? side?" He also requests to go feed the ducks at the park by making duck noises, "whaack whaack whaack" or saying, "poooooool" when he wants to go swimming. It's so cute.

He loves dogs, but instead of imitating a barking sound when he sees one, he pants with his tongue. <3

He is a F.L.I.R.T...ohmygosh. You don't even know. He has a flirty smile that's to die for, and he knows how to use it. He also bats those baby blues and of course he gets what he wants.

Cale is so full of personality. This is my favorite age so far. Sometimes I tear up when he does something that amazes me. It's awesome to see his little brain turning, and so satisfying to watch him figure things out.

Ugh. I LOVE him!

Memorial Day Weekend!

I am so excited for this weekend. I got to leave work really early this morning, and I have Monday off, so it's almost a 4 day weekend and we have lots planned!

Tomorrow morning Nate and I are going to our wedding cake tasting. We are excited to be able to design our cake and I can't wait to taste a bunch of samples :) We are planning on doing a different flavor for each tier of the cake, and we definitely want chocolate and red velvet as two of the flavors. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

After the cake tasting we will probably take Cale to the park or Monkey Bizness. Nate and I have been really busy lately with work and wedding planning and we feel like we haven't done something really fun with Cale in a while. We have been wanting to take him to the Children's Museum, so maybe we'll do that!

After that we have an appointment downtown to get our engagement pictures done! I am really excited. Nate and I haven't done a photo shoot with just the two of us since we were 17 years old! We've done lots of pictures of Cale, and we had family pictures done last year, but I am really excited to have some good pictures of just the two of us. (Don't worry -- we'll sneak Cale into a few of them too :)

Sunday and Monday don't have any major plans, but I'm craving some BBQ so I'm going to see if the fam wants to get together for some grilling. That.sounds.delicious!!!

I can't wait for our great weekend ahead!

DISASTER!

This week has been SO frustrating!

Let me give you a little background:

I have naturally blonde, curly hair which I have straightened for around 10 years. Sometimes I still wear it curly but you have to be a pretty special person for me to let you see it curly. ;) Although I am naturally blonde I have been a brunette for many years now, only going blonde once in a while. I always color my hair myself because for some reason my hair doesn't react well to professional coloring. It always ruins my hair, which is actually okay with me because coloring it myself looks good and is way cheaper!

As for the straightening...The problem with straightening curly hair is the breakage that comes with it. Ugh. My hair is usually pretty healthy but for some reason in the last few months it has gotten really bad. (Probably cause Cale isn't breastfeeding as much but THAT'S a whole other story FML.)...

Anyway, I have these little "baby hairs" in the front that broke a few months ago and WILL.NOT.GROW.OUT! Not kidding, they are like 1 inch long and totally look like horns cause they stick straight up. They are seriously the bane of my existance.

Fast forward to this week. I decided that since the wedding is coming up that I wanted to go back to my natural blonde color so I made the decision to go ahead and make the change. I bought a new kind of dye (one specially for turning a brunette into a blonde) and F...M...L... that shit burned my hair! The color came out okay, but it seriously made my hair feel like straw. And you know those baby hairs I was talking about?!? It made them 10 times worse!!! They now look like I took a lighter and burned them. DAMMIT! I literally had to take scissors and cut them. Now they are soooo short and look awful.

*Imagine having little curly pubes next to your eyes?!*

My hair is a disaster and it's less than 2 months before my wedding! I have a friend who is a cosmotologist who swears by this shampoo system called "Wen" and so I purchased it right away. I cannot wait for it to get here. I need hair CPR immediately.

I also decided I hate the blonde, so now I need to dye it again. GAH!

"Mukkkkk"

"Muk" used to be his favorite thing in the world. This is a sad post for me! I think Cale is starting to wean himself after 13 months of breastfeeding. I've loved every single second of this time I've had with him and it's slowly going away. He still wants to nurse when he needs comfort, and if he wakes up in the middle of the night, and two or three times a day to actually eat, but other than that, he couldn't care less.

The saddest part was last night when I was nursing him, I reached over and grabbed his sippy cup of milk and handed it to him and he actually stopped nursing to suck on the sippy! WHAT THE HECK! I almost cried.

I love that he still wants his mommy for comfort, and at least he still nurses a couple times a day, but I am more than just sad about this whole thing.... I'm gutted.

For those who don't care to see my boobs, don't scroll any further. But for those mama's who know what it feels like to nurse a baby...here are some memories of our favorite bonding experience!

^^This one was right after he was done eating...he used my boob as a pillow! ♥ ♥

I hope he decides to keep going for just a while longer!

The 'C' Word.

Is it really that naughty to call someone the 'C' word? Cause I reallllllllllly want to call Nate's sister that right now. This week has been so insane and exhausting and I'm just ready to get it over with and move on with my life!

In December, Nate and I moved into his sister's tiny little basement when she asked us to help her with her mortgage because she was going through a divorce. The agreement was that we would pay her $500 a month flat rate (I know, AWESOME right?!) and we would stay for 1 year. As cheap as $500 sounds, her basement is tiny...like 500 sq ft at the most, so it's really barely worth the $500, but it's still been nice to have cheap rent. Between Nate's uncle and us, we put in over $3,000 worth of money into this basement to make it liveable, and now that money is going out the window. Today marks exactly 5 months since we moved in and it has been hell. Corra is a disgusting pig. Her house is always filthy, and I mean filthy. She didn't own a vacuum, disinfectant spray, or even a broom when we moved in. It was that nasty. She has a son who is 7 months older than Cale and when he throws his food on the kitchen floor she just leaves it there for days, and eventually Cale picks it up and tries to eat it. SICK. So I went out and bought her a new broom, all new cleaning supplies etc and I have spent hours cleaning up her filth over the last 5 months, only to have her gross it up the same day. I'm so over it! OH - and the nastiest part of all of it, is that when she changes her son's dirty diaper, rather than putting the diaper in the trash outside, she puts it on our front door step until about 10 of them accumulate over the week, and then she throws them out. VOMIT!

She has the audacity to complain about things we do around the house though! It's "okay" when she leaves her filthy stuff all over, but if Cale leaves a toy upstairs she goes ape shit. On more than one occasion I have opened a window to let the house air out on a pretty day and she went NUTS that the windows were open. (Although she leaves them open all the time.)

So finally she texted Nate a few weeks ago and told him that we had to start paying for utilities. I told her hell no and we got in this huge argument. Yesterday it got really bad and we had quite the argument. I told her that I didn't want to live in her nasty house any more and that we were leaving. So Nate and I went and found an apartment yesterday and today we packed up the basement. We are moving Saturday! Good riddance!

Cunt.




There. I said it! :)

Feeling Accomplished!

With less than 3 months to go before our wedding, I have been super stressed out. But I have finally made some great headway and I think we will actually be able to pull it off by July 16th. (Cross your fingers!)

Last time I updated, I mentioned that our wedding was going to be up in Breckenridge but we have since changed the location. I was stressed about how I would get all the tables and chairs up to the Breckenridge house, and on top of that, the house was booked on the 16th and we were going to have to change the date. We just decided that it would be easier to do it close to home, and I'm so glad we made that decision. My mom's boss generously offered his home/backyard for us to use and it is so beautiful! Check it out:

The ceremony will take place under the gazebo, and the reception tables will be in the grass under the tree house. I've been to his home in the summer when it's warm out and the grass is fully green and the trees are in bloom, and I couldn't imagine a more romantic place to exchange vows. It's perfect.

So here's what I've done so far: I've secured tables and chairs, and ordered the linens. Our colors are black and white with fuschia accents. (And maybe some orange and green thrown in there to make it look more "summer" like.) Our tables will have black floor-length tablecloths with white overlays and black plates, with fuschia cloth napkins and centerpieces that include lots of fuschia flowers. The chairs are white and will have black and fuschia sashes tied to them.

The aisle will consist of white wedding chairs with the black sashes, except the chairs that line the aisle will have fuschia sashes. Then the aisle will be a white runner that I will walk down...and the best part? The 3,000 fushia rose petals I ordered to line the aisle!

We also have the linens for the gazebo, which are beautiful. Here is a picture of a wedding that took place there last summer. I love the way the gazebo turned out!

Everything is coming together great. My mom and step dad are taking care of the catering, and I have a guitarist lined up for the ceremony music. I'm still deciding what we will do for music during the reception. I sent out the "Save The Date" cards last week, and we also got my dad, Nate, and Cale fitted for their tuxes. This weekend we will try to find Nate a wedding ring.

There is still so many things on the list, but I feel pretty darn accomplished for the amount of work I have done in just 2 weeks!

Natalie.

Oooh sweet Natalie. She is my new personal trainer. And I'm in love. We had our first session yesterday but it wasn't an actual workout, it was just an appointment to work out a plan for me and take down all my embarassing body measurements. But today was the actual first workout with her and she totally kicked my butt. She knows how uncomfortable I am with the way my arms look in my wedding dress, and she promised me she would fix them before the wedding. We worked every muscle in my arms today and I feel great. I finished working out almost 2 hours ago and my arms are still twitching! Love it... Love love love!

And not to sound like a lesbian, but this chick is smoking hot. Perfect teeth, perfect hair, beautiful body. Looking at her 3x a week is enough to make me want to change myself!

So cheers to Natalie. I think I may name my first daughter after you!