In case you're wondering, yes I'm in yoga pants.

Usually once a day, I sit down to my computer for one specific purpose. I log in to blogger. And check my dashboard- where all the blogs I follow have been updated. I right click each blog post and open in a new tab until my window is full of new tabs and new things to read. It makes me giddy. Is that weird?

It might be embarrassing for me to disclose how many blogs I follow/stalk. It's a lot. All different kinds too- friends and family, craft blogs, design blogs, mormon bloggers, famous people too. Am I the only one that thinks it's addicting to read about other people? More than once I have had to go through and clean out the blogs I follow just to make sure I'm not on the computer for four hundred hours a day.

Now, I love to blog, and I do it primarily as a record for our family, and secondly for our extended family and friends to stay current with our lives. Sometimes I read blogs and I'm so overwhelmed by how awesome other people are- in every department. These women cook organic meals and raise four or five thoughtful and well dressed children. Their large and spacious houses are decorated to perfection. They know how to sand and modgepodge with the best of them, and then they have a "craft" etsy business on the side that makes them trillions of extra dollars. Secretly they are trained photographers and every shot of their life looks perfect. And, to boot- they run marathons or teach zumba or climb mountains and are fantastic shape. WHO ARE THESE WOMEN.

Look people. If you come to my house unannounced, it is 90/10 that you will find me in yoga pants. Even at three pm. Wait, ESPECIALLY at 3 pm. Sometimes that last load of laundry sits in my dryer for three or four days. I am not ashamed to admit that Isabelle loves macaroni and cheese. The processed kind. With all the preservatives. Delicious. A few weeks ago, I closed the garage door on my car a little bit. I love my camera but the majority of the time I have no idea what to do with it. Lots of my clothes are from TJ Maxx. I could nap literally every single day, no problem. And I only have one very adorable and energetic child. Just the one!

Sometimes I feel so pressured to make sure that I don't post excessively unflattering pictures of myself. Or that the house is in semi-order when I'm chasing Isabelle with the camera. That video I recently posted of Isabelle laughing? I was thisclose to not posting it because I don't look great and there are a variety of chunky chin shots and that stupid white shirt is so stupid. Vanity! But deep down I love that video so much..that is exact representation of my life at that moment. I seriously cried the first time I watched it. Having a baby has permently altered my ability to keep my emotions in check.

Anyway, my point is that the internet can be a blessing and a curse. I do love reading blogs and will continue to do so, but I can't let it make me feel any less of a wife or mother or individual just because I didn't recently organize a 5k for charity or build a window bench from salvaged barn wood. Just don't expect me to have makeup on before breakfast...and if you see us at the burrito bandito, it is likely because I forgot to defrost meat. Again.

Nite nite, Isabelle.

I wish that I could carry this video around with me, so that when people ask me if I like being a mother, or if I would rather be a career woman, or if being home is boring or messy or lame, I could show them these 90 seconds of my life. Because this tiny clip of my evening represents how much I love my life just the way it is. And even though my hair is in a ponytail, my makeup long gone from morning application, and I'm wearing my pajama shirt from our honeymoon- in that moment I felt completely perfect.

Rain, rain, get thee hence.

Well. We woke up to another dreary day. I want to preface this by saying I LOVE the rain. I love dark drizzly days, thunderstorms, puddles, the whole nine yards. HOWEVER. Weeks and weeks of monotony can get to anyone. Not to mention, how can I spray paint stuff when it is soggy? The main problem here is that we really can't play outside, and by we I mean Isabelle. She she goes a tad stir crazy.

We do all the familiar song and dance entertainment routines. Movies. baths. coloring. puzzles. pretend. The new kitchen has helped, but every so often she goes to the front door and turns the knob. So sad. We do go to the mall and run around and when things get bad, we head to Grandmas. Grandma has the cool toys and the better food and the giant spring horse to ride.

Yesterday I was DETERMINED to go run errands. We badly needed groceries and I wanted to pick up a few craft items for a project I'm working on. It also happened to be the windiest (is that a word.) most blustery day in recent memory. So we went.. and two hours later returned like drowned rats. Isabelle is at the "take off shoes and socks in the car" stage so I had to lean over her in the pouring rain and reattach her footwear. She did get a new bouncey ball out of the whole thing so I think she was good with it.

I know when summer hits, I will instantly regret my decision to move to Redding and it's 115 degree heat. I will pine for the days of rain and dark clouds and indoor activities. But this is my blog and really, I can complain if I want to.

I finally got the white cabinets I've been dreaming of.

Sometimes, your cousin stops by at night with a bedtime treat. And she is willing to share.

Sike.

Ok for reals, she did share.

Happily.

Then we made some important calls.

And got some chocolate on our freshly bathed foreheads.

This is Isabelle's new play kitchen. We got it on Friday afternoon and it literally took me three hours to put together. And then one hour for Jazz to polish it off. And by "polish it off" I mean fix the screws I put in the wrong place. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of all of the pieces out of the box, it seriously looked like I was building a brand new space station. I know Isabelle is young to have a pretend kitchen but she always loves Madilyn's when she plays at her house, and we had a promotion code for CSN that was expiring, so we really got an amazing deal. Bottom line, she is OBSESSED with it.

She mixes the food in the pots on the stove, then spoon feeds it to her babies. She puts the hot dogs in the microwave and presses the start button. She tries so hard to carry around the plastic fried egg on the spatula.

(how much do you love that Olivia hangs out wherever Isabelle is. bffs.)

I love the kitchen with all of my heart. First of all, it isn't bright red and blue and yellow and made of weird rounded plastic. You know how much I love that stuff. The vintage flair is right up my alley. Also, it is very petite, which makes it the perfect height for our 32-inch baby. She can reach everything, but also has some room to grow as well. It's sturdy without being too heavy, I'm not worried about it leaning or tipping over on accident.

Right before bed, Isabelle decided Eyore needed a bath and proceeded to remove the sink and shove him in in. She turned on the faucet and pretended to wash the stuffed animal. Aaaaand that's when I resuscitated myself from my cuteness overdose. I'm just glad there wasn't a tiny garbage disposal.
 

Now we must schedule a trip to IKEA to get the appropriately tiny kitchen accessories!

hair today...

I finally had my bangs trimmed this weekend, about five weeks overdue.... you know you get desperate and start hacking things youself.. and pretty soon you are looking like your eight year old brother decided to give you a spontaneous haircut. Anyway, I was making my next appointment and had to plan around the sister-weddings I will be a part of this spring.

And I started questioning myself. I mean, are my bangs cool enough to wear to weddings? Will I be THAT girl that has gross dated bangs in all of the photos? Will I regret my trend? Maybe. Maybe I should go back to a previous style? I started looking through some older photos for inspiration. For your viewing pleasure...a few of my finest moments of the past few years. And be thankful I cropped some of you out of these pictures. Embarrassing.

Long and chunky. No bangs. Moonlighted as a stripper.

 This is my "my hair has SOME curl" phase. It doesn't.

 Short, flippy, and more stripes. Also, fat face.

My betty crocker 1950's look. Dark, no bangs.

Honeymoon hair, perfect color, a few bangs. Loong.

Longer here, no bangs, no hair dye. (gasp!)

Do not ever cut your hair whilst pregnant. Ohhhhhh my regret. Just know that when you are growing a baby, your brain can NOT make any reliable decisions.

 

In an effort to correct....only got worse. And shorter.

Longerish. All over dark with skinny stripes.

Dark, short a-line bob.

Long, highlights, swoopy bangs.

More pregnancy hair. I would say it's basically black. But shiny!

First hair cut after having Isabelle. She was five months...soooo it had been awhile.

Dramatic A-line, lighter color, some side bangs. Trying to make up for my sudden post partum hair loss.

My current dark hair, tapered bangs. Middle part.

OR, We could go back to this!

Yes, that is me. It's a good thing I had my ears pierced.

Let's put it to an internet vote. Imagine me- bridesmaid bangs vs no bridesmaid bangs. Thoughts?



fat jeans tomorrow.

You guys. I seriously ate more than half a bag of these damn cadbury mini eggs today. Totally by myself. Somewhere far away, Satan and his minions are boiling up pots of these things things, sprinkling them with extra calories and sending them to my doorstop. I kind of want to throw up now.

Izzie at 17 months

We're about due for another bombardment of Isabelle pictures. At 17 months, she weighs 24.1 pounds and measures 32 inches long. She's in the 50th percentile for weight, and moved up to the 90th percentile for height.

Right now I can hear here babbling "uh ohhhh" and "dadada" and "nonoono" from her little bed. Jazz just finished giving her milk and I can hear him talking to her and telling her cute things. I kind of want to die from how adorable it is to listen to. Have I mentioned lately how much we love this tiny person? Because she is more of a tiny person than a baby now- her personality shows more and more everyday.

She loves to be organized, shutting drawers and cupboards if they are open, putting rocks back into the rock bed. She would rather be outside than anywhere in the world- unless of course Sesame Street is on. She loves to bring me things from her closet, over and over and over until I have a giant pile of outgrown clothes on the floor next to me. She skips and walks and runs and does a weird big step waddle thing that is hilarious to watch. She can now reach the doors, much to our dismay.. can get into the bathrooms if she wants. So far nothing has met its demise in the toilet.

She loves all of her dolls and animals and knows them by name, often putting all 7 or 8 of them in the doll crib at the same time. She pretends to feed them bottles, or pretends to put chapstick on their lips. She loves dress ups and sometimes brings me three tutus to help put on her. Not sure where she gets that... She LOVES music and sometimes we sit at the piano together, she dances or claps while I play primary songs. She also loves to read and will pick out her favorite books to sit on our laps with.

She is getting really good at feeding herself with a fork and spoon, though the spoon can mean a giant mess. Especially if its cheerios and milk. She also loves to color in her high chair, though mostly she likes to chew on crayons and throw them on the ground for me to pick up. Jazz says it "crayne." Bless his east coast heart.

My favorite though is her little laugh. She just dies when we chase her or play hide and go seek. Or throw her up in the air. Or nibble her neck. She is so ticklish! There really isn't a sound in the world that I love to her more than her uncontrollable giggle. She blows us kisses and plants big wet open mouth ones on us when we are close. There is nothing like it.

She got a cold about a month ago and stopped sleeping through the night again- I think we had like a three week record going. We are back to the wake-up-at-four-for-a-milk-snack routine and I swear I had a dream that Isabelle was like a grown up teenager and I had to make her this giant two foot bottle because she was still waking up at night. I hope that doesn't happen.

My arms are getting a workout because occasionally she likes to be rocked to sleep. If she is over-tired or doesn't feel great or just wants to make me feel important- she seems restless and I ask her, "Do you want mom to rockabye you?" And she says "yeahhhhhh." Jazz thinks I am crazy because I'm creating a bad habit but mostly I'm like WHATEVER SHE LOVES ME AND WANTS ME TO HOLD HER. I'm in. I pick her up and hold her close as her body makes a half moon shape around mine. I sing songs to her while her hand traces the features of my face, and I pretend to bite her little fingers and she laughs and laughs until she can't keep her eyes open. Sometimes I hold her an extra few minutes, I memorize her face and the way she clings tightly to Olivia, the way her breath changes into a slow deep pattern. These moments are going to be gone so fast and I would do anything to slow them down.

My love of spray paint continues...

I've got so many projects going on right now it's hard to keep them straight. The kitchen counter looks like Michael's threw up paper and die cuts and glue for Sabrina's bridal shower invitations. The craft table has pieces of things I can not mention because it may or may not be a gift to said bride. There are frames on the back porch, spray paint long dried but totally lost from my mind. My most exciting project is being housed in the garage- an estate sale find for our family room... a table I plan to sand with love, then prime and paint within an inch of it's life. My list of to-dos keeps growing and not enough things are being crossed off. Not to mentioned my sudden obsessing with all of the BBC masterpiece series'... why must they be so long?

Anyway. Here is a project I completed awhile ago that was easy, cheap, and fast. I will refrain from making a joke there.

I am in lurve with our kitchen. It is very spacious and there is literally five times as much counter space as our Sandy apartment. Above our cabinets we have some space between the ceiling that is just so....empty. I saw this on a friend of a friend's blog and thought, like I often do, I can do that!

I ran through all of our local salv army type stores and grabbed vases, jars, plates- anything that I could envision spray painting. I got them home and washed the gross off of them. Am I the only one that feels the need to wash up to my elbows after I visit a flea market? After they dried, I took them out back to the spray studio (...the grass) and gave them each about five coats of my fav white high gloss. Sounds time consuming but really, the thirty minutes drying in between went by super quickly.

Some pieces are actually white milk glass pieces that I already had, so I threw them up there too. I really love the way it turned out, I feel like it filled the space really well without being distracting. Total cost: About 30 bucks, mostly on spray paint.

And here's another ongoing project of mine:

The child that loves dress ups.



trip to the tah, the caboose

Where did we leave off? Oh yes, right after our cousin play date.

So that evening, Isabelle was walking around with her snacktrap full of puffs. Which she started feeding to the dogs.

She made sure she evenly distributed her treats, one for Gertiedog, one for Elliedog. Her little face was so cute, her mouth open in surprise like "Hey! They are eating these out of my hand! They love me!"

This is her "all gone" sign. Sorry Elliedog.

And of course, a little theatrical production was necessary. We all laughed until we cried.

As I was packing, a little neighbor friend stopped by and delighted Isabelle. She laughed and giggled so hard, she was basically delirious.

As when left on Monday, Jared and Sabrina helped haul our THREE FIFTY POUND bags into the car. Bless them and their server muscles. Also, their engagement shoot was amazing. If you need a great photographer in Utah, look up Rebekah Westover.

And here is our sweet hostess, my very petite Aunt Tami. Makes me feel like shrekess.

 Yes, I am aware of the terrible lighting. It was dark at 8 pm when we left for the airport. I think we pulled into my house about 3 AM utah time.

This trip was SO fun and SO worth it and I'm so glad we went. I've said before that Isabelle loves to go and she really does love to go everywhere and anywhere. She was so flexible and awesome with her naps, extremely smiley and cute for friends and family. She even did all her tricks like clapping and identifying face parts and blowing kisses. She's a charmer.

HOWEVER. Bless her tiny baby soul because the nights were absolute misery. I don't claim miserable nights often because Isabelle has NEVER been a great sleeper. We've discussed here before the woes of getting a baby to sleep through the night and while some nights are better than others, Isabelle is not consistent in this department.  The first night she was up constantly, wanted to be held, so I obliged her and chalked it up to an unfamiliar bed and sharing a room with me, she totally knew I was there.

The second night we moved her into to the office- close enough for me to hear when she was making noise but not so close she could sense when I flipped over my body like a rotisserie chicken. She woke up at ten. And midnight. And then, at two am, I could not get her back to sleep to save my life. I changed her and fed her and gave her orajel for her two teeth that were squishing though her gums. I sang to her and rocked her until my arms were literally numb. Finally, at 6 am, I raised my white flag and went to find my mom. My mom, who can fix anything. My mom, the baby whisperer. I felt like a little kid again, tip toeing into her room in the middle of the night to tell her I was sick or had a bad dream. Of course, this time I was sobbing and said, "Moommmm? Can you hellllp me? I caaaan't get *sniff* Isabelle to sleeeeeeeep."

My mom took out her earplugs and donned her supermom cape and took Isabelle as I collapsed in her bed, exhausted and feeling so defeated. So, so, defeated. Within a half hour, she had Isabelle peacefully sleeping and went back to bed herself. My mother, the magician.

The next day, my mom noticed Isabelle acting a little dizzy and off balance. I did not notice, mostly because my brain was functioning at 10% due to lack of sleep and my eyes were shut most of the day. She asked Isabelle if her ears hurt, and Isabelle nodded yes. AN EAR INFECTION! Her first one! Is it terrible that I was relieved to know that there was a reason why Isabelle was not sleeping? I was so relieved! She loved me after all! Everything was ok! We got her some antibiotics and for the remaining nights spent in Utah, Isabelle set Olympic sleeping records. Phew.

Since we've been home, Isabelle had felt so much better and it has showed in her sleep patterns- long naps and successful nights. Really makes me grateful for 1) my husband, who I can 'tag in' when we have rough nights 2) modern medicine and 3) my mom, who continues to show me that being a parent is never truly finished.

trip to the tah, round two.

Tired of pictures yet? Ok! Here are more!

Isabelle and I made a special trip up to Sandy to see the Mackay Family. They kind of swooped in and took us under their wing when Jazz and I were newlyweds and moved into their ward. They were there when Jazz got baptized, knew as soon as were expecting, and helped me after Isabelle's birth. Syd threw me a lovely baby shower- AND. Poor Garrett was one of the ONLY people to come over and help us pack up our 24 foot trailer when we moved. Just really, really good people. Since we moved, they bought a beautiful home and had a baby boy three days after moving. Busy busy! We got to catch up and let the kids play together, which Isabelle loved. She doesn't get to play with many boys over here in lady land. Trucks were a whole new experience for her.

How cute is he?

Isabelle found this hat and was obsessed with it.

We took about fifty pictures of the group, but after photo three Isabelle threw a fit. Consequently, this is the best one. Actually, we are all looking at the camera. Ten points.

And of course, what would a trip to Utah be without Uncle Kerry giving us some sort of musical rendition from his childhood.

I know I didn't get a picture of Sabrina at her office, so I forced her to come over and pose in her restaurant attire. They work together! Isn't that adorable? Jared is demonstrating how the servers write their name backwards and upsidown on the tables at work. Talent, I tell you.

Sunday we spent most of the day up with our Sorensen side of the family. Here is Dayton, Ellie, and Isabelle. Can you tell that their genes are a tad dominant? I think they look so alike.

Again with the hats... I love this classic Isabelle face, like she is SO close to rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me.

The kids were so cute with Isabelle, chasing her and tickling here and playing peek-a-boo. I sure wish we lived closer! How can we get rid of the entire state of Nevada?

More snow and a gorgeous view. I love Olivia in this picture.

Isabelle loves magnets! And Grandma Bobbie

Bobbie just returned from San Francisco and brought the girls matching kimono outfits from Chinatown. Isabelle's fits her perfectly, and the colors are really great on her.

This is where Isabelle gets her light eyes!

 The whole group. Britta, mom, Bobbie, Dayton, Me and Iz, Ellie.

Towards the end of our visit, Isabelle was getting sleepy and just laid in Dayton's arms. For a baby who isn't a huge cuddler, it was so adorable.

Utah friend Krystal dropped by for a hello- I have a very specific picture in my mind of Krystal holding Isabelle in her blessing dress at the brunch in our teeny apartment. Just a great memory.



I still have more pictures to document our trip and since this is my journal I can post as many as I want. No one is forcing you to read it. Wait, keep reading! The conclusion of this dramatic series shall follow shortly.

(Speaking of dramatic series.. I just finished Downton Abbey....so, so good..)