Family photos & Kawika's Birthday

We got our first family photos done at Sears about two weeks ago.  We timed them right around Kawika's birthday so we could do solo 1-year-old shots of him at the same time.  I'm pleased  :)

The last one of all of us turned out beautifully, but it didn't transfer well to the computer.  It's sepia-tone, and IRL it's 11x14, so it's a nice big photo for us to put in our house.  Kawika was really cooperative; he'd just had a nap and a snack, so he was game to make all kinds of adorable faces for the photographer.  She was actually really great, and if we can get her again, we'll probably go back.

Kawika has recently started walking, as long as he has someone to walk to.  He can take 6 or 7 steps in a row now; it's pretty impressive.  He gets so excited, too, his whole face lights up and he squeals and laughs as he's running the last couple of steps to fall into your arms.  It's completely charming, and totally enough to make me forget what a pain he is at night now that he's cutting a molar.  He's started using other words besides "doggy," "mama," "dada," and "uh-oh."  He now makes a noise that sounds something like "wee-yoo-wee-yoo-wee-yoo" and it's super cute.

We had his birthday party on Saturday.  It turned out really well; the food was great, there were no tantrums or meltdowns, despite K only having 1 nap totaling just under an hour long.  The guava cake I made turned out nicely, and Kawika really enjoyed his cupcake.

My friends Kate, Mallory, Timo, and Cassey all came by, which made my day.  Mal & Timo couldn't stay long since they were headed to Eugene to cheer on our friend Aki while he ran a marathon.  Go Aki!!  Kate brought her 10-week old daughter Fiona and I got in some quality teeny-baby snuggle time.  Cassey brought Maddox and Peyton, and I'm so glad she made it!  Cassey hasn't been feeling well lately and I really appreciate that she came  =)  Apparently Maddox (who is clearly the best big sister ever) cried the whole way home about missing "vika."  SO CUTE.

Anyway, photos: 

The Birthday Boy!

Cousins Kawai (2) and Mahea (7)

The guava chiffon cake! 

MMMMM CAKE!!

Kawika with my Dad   =)

My back was hurting really bad last week so I found a chiropractor who's certified in the Weber (prenatal) method.  I found one close to home, who specializes in it, and he's in-network!  Triple score!  Plus, when I went in last week just to pick up my new patient paperwork, he said he could fit me in, no problem, so I got an adjustment last week.  I've slowly been feeling better, but I'm definitely excited that I have another appointment today. 

My next ultrasound (next Monday the 7th) cannot come fast enough.  I'm so anxious to find out what we're having and then push my name choices down Chris's throat.  =)  LOL.

My boy is a year old!

Kawika had his first birthday on Wednesday.  No party yet; that happens tomorrow.  But still, the milestone has passed.  He is officially a YEAR old.  Chris and I were looking at him yesterday while he was napping in our bed, marveling about how BIG he is.  He was so teeny!  And now he's ginormous!  Proof:  His 1-year checkup was yesterday and he is a big guy.  He weighs 24 pounds and is 31 inches long (85th and 95th percentiles, respectively).  He wears 18-month sized clothes and even those pants hit just above his ankle now.  Good thing the weather is supposed to change soon; he has lots of shorts.  Hopefully he won't grow so quickly that they're all hot-pants when the really warm weather rolls in.

Aside from being a big dude, the doctor also said his iron levels are normal, he says a fair amount of words, seems very strong, and should immediately stop drinking from a bottle.  *sigh* I KNOW, Doctor Kevin, I know.  1 year = no more bottle.  In an ideal world.  But I have no intentions of cutting out the bottle until Monday.  When K will be an entire year AND 5 DAYS OLD.  And then we're phasing it out, starting with naps.  At least I have a plan in place, but I'm not enjoying it.  I don't think K will, either. 

The Birthday Party is tomorrow.  I've only done 1 test run of the cake and it didn't turn out exactly right so now I've got just 1 shot to get it right and I hope the adjustments I'm making are correct.  If not, I suppose I can turn it into a trifle, but that would be pretty disappointing.  Considering I did a test run and all.  I made Chris check to see how many eggs I needed because the recipe is at home with him and I am not.  The conversation went something like this:
"You need 5 egg yolks."
"Okay, how many egg whites do I need for the fluffy part?  Look on the second page."
"Umm... oh!  8 egg whites.  But we don't have 13 eggs!"
"It's okay, we only need 8."
"But... 5 yolks and 8 whites."
"Yes, but I'm separating the eggs.  So those 5 whites that I don't need for the 'yolk' part can-"
"OH YEAH YEAH I GET IT I KNEW THAT."

=)  Sweet, silly guy.

He also reported that Kawika has decided to take up to 5 steps at a time on his own, like, not holding on to anything.  I missed his first shuffling crawl, too.  Oh, and he cut a molar the other day when nobody was paying attention.  What is this 1-year-old crazy growing milestone bullshit?  What happened to my baaabbyy??

While discussing the fact that we need to wean him off of the bottle soon with my mother she said "Aw, but that's my favorite part, the snuggle up time we have when he's having a bottle!"  And I commiserated, because it's also my favorite part of each day: that last night-time bottle before he gets all sleepy and cuddles up on me and starts making cute little mouth noises while he falls asleep. 

And then I cheered her up because I said "Hey, no worries, you'll have another one in 6 months!"  Er, I will, but she totally gets to play with it.  I'll share.

 Here's my 16 week picture for those of you who are into that kind of thing. 

Looks like my 24-week photo last time. Boo.

It's a week old at this point, because I'm 17 weeks (tomorrow)!!  Sheesh!! What's going ON with TIME lately, huh?  It's just slipping, slipping... We find out the sex (definitively) a week from Monday.  I'm super duper excited for that, and I have a strong hunch and I can't wait to see if I'm right. 

Okay, enough for now.  I have things to do that don't involve talking about myself, and they're just as important, even if they're not as fun.  Until next time.

Not announcing, too busy

We have not officially announced that we're expecting again. I mean, we told family, and a couple of friends, but I haven't done the Facebook reveal (I feel like this blog goes relatively unnoticed so I feel no compunctions about posting it here).  It's not that we're hiding it, by any means, but I'm not making a BFD about it, either. 

Don't get me wrong; I'm excited!  I'm happy!  I'm nervous.  But it will be great and we'll get through it and all that optimistic stuff.  And then we'll have two kids (OMG).  But, like I said, I'm not making as big a deal this time around.  Maybe it's because I'm much busier, already having a little guy running amok, and maybe it's because work is picking up again as we head into warmer weather.  I'm not sure why, but it seems like this pregnancy is going much faster.  I had originally intended to announce it at 12 weeks like the last one, after we got the first ultrasound pictures.  But then I forgot the pictures in the baby bag when I dropped C and K back off at home and headed to work and then I forgot the next morning because C had already put them on the fridge and then... here I am at 14 weeks like "Well, I'll just announce it when we know the sex."

I'm not planning on having a 2nd baby shower.  Our first one was so completely amazing, with a huge turnout and super generous family, that we're really not lacking anything.  The only things we could use are diapers, maybe a travel pack n play or co-sleeper, and clothing (if we have a girl).  We will need a toddler bed for K but probably not until around Christmas time.  We plan to have the new baby sleep in our room for the first few months like we did with K, then move K to a toddler bed, and put his crib in the baby's room.  He'll be about 20 months at that point, which sounds right.

If we have another boy, we definitely don't need clothes.  We have so many clothes.  Well, up until the 18 month size.  K's has always had a sizable wardrobe, thanks to hand-me-downs and friends and family who said "This was so cute I just HAD to get it for him!"  When I decided I needed to buy him something I always got a size or two bigger, since we had the most of the smaller sizes.  Now he has enough clothing to get him through the summer, but I'll definitely need to start stocking up on the warmer stuff in bigger sizes.  Now would be a good time to do that, I suppose, with all the summery stuff in season  :)   Smart shopper, over here!

Having kids born 18 months apart means that even if we do have a 2nd boy, the clothes that I have are all wrong for the season that a boy born in October will need.  So I'm still hoping for a girl  :)  Have you SEEN little girl swimsuits??

SO FREAKIN CUTE

Anyway.  I forgot where I was going with all of that.  Or maybe I said what I wanted to say.

In other news, K's first dentist appointment is this afternoon!!  We're going here; Vancouver Pediatric Dentistry.  Since we have new insurance, my old dentist is now out of network (SAD!).  So I found a new one for myself, very close to my house, yay!  And I found one for K.  I really wanted one that specialized in the pediatric part, since dentists are a dime a dozen.  This place has good reviews and from what I've read, they seem very nice.  Wholesome, even.  I'll let you know how it goes  :)

Weekend Update

The weekend was pretty uneventful, which I'm glad for.  I got a new bra!  It's a DD!  (OMG).  We had kind of a crazy awful week, though, so a chillaxed weekend was definitely welcome.

Last week in a nutshell:  C's motorcycle was in danger of being repossessed by some guys who watch too much "Lizard Lick" and "Operation Repo" on TV.  He and I had a miscommunication about when his payment was due (March 6th, for the record) and didn't make it.  Since he's so close to paying it off, his finance company (that I will name because they are the devil and deserve to be recognized as such) HSBC is playing hardball.  They would make tons more money by taking the bike back and refinancing it to someone else than they would by letting C finish his payments so it seems to us that that's exactly what they were trying to do.

Long story short, things worked out, people stepped up, karma came around, and between us and our respective bosses, C and I pooled enough money and worked out enough OT schedules to pay the damn thing off.  $3013 out of pocket, 1 fully owned motorcycle in the garage.  BAM.  Straight up, fuck you HSBC!

Then again, that was a LOT LOT LOT of money (to us).  So this means that we didn't get the bed we were shopping for a couple of weeks ago, and we're on a tight budget for the next 3 months. No new bed means I'm still not sleeping well and everything wakes me up (like C talking on the phone at the other end of the house in his quiet voice!!). THEN Kawika decided to cut 4 new teeth over the weekend so nobody really got much sleep.  But that was pretty much the worst part of it all.  Highlights: Went to Target, got blackout curtains and a cool rod for K's room, and blackout curtains for our room.  Next will be the spare room, which will eventually be baby #2's room, but I'm having a hard time committing to a color scheme at this point so that will likely wait the longest.  I still have to get that room organized... and that's a SCARY prospect.

We moved in to this house in August, and that room became our "I don't know where to stick this so I'll just put it in here for now" room.  And now it's like, full of stuff like that.  Oops.  Office supplies, holiday decorations, linens that won't fit in the teeny hall closet, photo albums, my purse habit... We don't have enough storage elsewhere for everything that's in there.  I'd like to donate or toss a lot of it, but about half of that stuff is Chris's and he's a complete pack rat.  It's impossible to get him to part with things.  He needs his THINGS. 

He worked at Nautilus for 3 or 4 years and in that time accumulated nearly 50 Nautilus t-shirts which he refuses to get rid of; even the ones that are only fit for rags at this point.  "I need those for rags!" he says while I'm shoving them into garbage bags.  "Fine! Take them out to the garage then!"  I reply, tossing the bag at him.  Flash forward 3 months to the same, unopened bag of ratty t-shirts sitting on the garage floor, unused.  At this point, I consider it fair game and toss it in the trash.  He'll never even know.  He has two more bags just like it.

Now, I have a large Rubbermaid tote full of purses.  Only 1 is designer and I didn't even love it that much when it was in season, though I did get lots of compliments on it.  But I have a really hard time parting with them.   I could probably whittle my stash down to... well, let's see.  The purple leather with silver studs, I need, and the big soft khaki Roxy one for casual beachy days, and the hand-tooled leather one my mom made in high school, can't get rid of that... I need 1 small one, so... the little black one? Maybe? Oh, then there's the red patent one, but it's looking kind of tired... numerous tote bags that are too small for groceries but not cute enough to be handbags, the red suede with the white "fur" trim can go, and the two small sequined/crazy patterned ones I could let go of... the Dooney I'm keeping out of sheer greed.  Maybe I'll carry that this summer.  It's not old enough to be vintage yet, but it's old enough that pulling it out now might be considered cute, like reminiscent.  What do I know?  I don't follow that kind of shit.

OK clearly I have a lot of work to do in that spare room and it's pretty intimidating so maybe I'll just pretend I have enough money to buy organizational furniture and play around on the IKEA website for a while.  Yeah, that sounds good.

Forgoing Details

Without spilling all of my dirty laundry guts to the entire three of you who read this, suffice it to say that I'm having one of Those Days. 

It didn't seem like one of Those Days when I got up.  I actually slept really well last night.  I didn't wake up at 3 AM, nor did I struggle to get back to sleep for an hour (both of those have been happening on the regular).  I slept all night.  I woke up feeling refreshed.  Kawika slept all the way through my morning getting-ready routine and was awake and happy by the time we got to Grandma's for daycare.  I felt sort of pretty thanks to a new tinted moisturizer and mascara I picked up yesterday, and I remembered jewelry, so I looked almost put-together when I got to work.  At that point, I was on a roll!

Then midway through my morning Shit Got Real.  The short of it is that money sucks ass.  It's only nice when you have so much of it that you don't have to worry about it.  But if you're not one of the 1% then it sucks.  I am certainly nowhere NEAR the 1%.  So money sucks for me.  I had a little extra, but Something Came Up.  And you know what?  It always seems to work that way for me and C.  As soon as we have just a *little* more than we absolutely bottom-line need, Something comes up and goes "Oh! I see you have a little extra right now!  Let's fix that!"  And then the dog needs to go to the vet, or the car breaks down, or someone has a dental emergency that's only 75% covered under insurance. Something.

I was kidding myself thinking we'd have a small savings built up to help us through when I go on maternity leave later this year.  Sure, it was there, and it was good.  But now it's not, because Something Came Up and wiped it ALL out and we're back to paycheck-to-paycheck.  And $20 at the pump because that's all we can afford right now.  And don't even *think* about rebuilding the savings because we'll need that for groceries.

I don't even know what to say.  It breaks my heart.  If I could call it a day, crawl into bed and cry right now, I would.  But I can't.  So I won't.  I'll suck it up, choke it down, breathe deeply, and start analyzing the possibilities, because that's what I do.  I'm a fixer.  And I'll fix this too.  Somehow.

Bumpy

In rereading my little old blog here I realize how much my photos play a part in my entries, and how crappy half of them are.  Seriously, crappy.  I recently got a new camera (two, in fact) and plan to use the everloving shit out of them documenting both Kawika's growth and my own, plus K's first birthday party in April (SO MUCH STRESS ABOUT THIS), summer fun with family, all the camping we're going to do (SO excited for that) AND all of the baby bump madness to come.

Speaking of baby bumps, I started taking pictures at 12 weeks when I was pregnant with K because that's when I started showing.  At only 10w5d I already look similar to my 20w shoot last time around.  I know, I know, "You show sooner with your second!"   Whatever.  I'm just waiting for the first time someone asks me how far along I am because I'm anticipating something along the lines of "Only __ weeks?? Wow... Get ready for a 10 pounder there, mom!"  At which point I will utilize every ounce of self control I have (which is NOT MUCH on a normal day, let alone while pregnant/wildly hormonal) to not throw a handful of Cheerios in their face. 

Also speaking of bumps, C asked me last night when I was going to start taking pictures because I haven't yet and I'm "already showing."  Thanks, babe.  I'm aware of what my belly looks like, but that's cool.  I'm sure you don't realize that that's probably WHY I haven't started taking them yet.  I think they won't look nearly as cute this time around.  Am slightly dreading the photos.  Fear.

So, NOT speaking of baby bumps but of other things (haha, still baby related) I'm still totally freaking out about the spectacle that will be K's first birthday party.  Hawaiians do it big, man, but I'm no Hawaiian.  Don't get me wrong, I love it.  The culture, the sense of family, the... pretty tropical colors... It's cool!  Really!  But do we have to invite everyone?  Like everyone ever?  I'm not so sure I can handle 50 people at my house.  The house is not even that big!! And we can have people outside, but what if it rains?  This IS the pacific northwest, you know.  And so much food!  And how will we set up drinks?  And I don't have that many tables or chairs!  And what about decorations?  And, and... **brain overload**

Deep breath.  Lucky for me, C seems to have a handle on the food portion, so Imma let him handle that shiz.  I can figure out decorations (oooh, tiki! and luau! and COLORS!).  And come on, what's hard about a cooler full of cans of soda and bottles of water?  BYOB.  I'll borrow tables and chairs from work.  Problems solved. Right?  I mean, I'll probably (definitely) come up with other stuff to freak the fuck out about as the date nears, but, hey!  We have a date!

36 days until First Birthday Madness.


OH! I almost forgot the new pictures with my cool camera!  Silly me.

Oh wait. No I didn't.  See last post.

BUT!  Camera phone pictures!  Shut up, it'll have to do.

Baby nerd

Hmmm, let me ponder that for a moment

Catch up via photos (or, "Hi, I'm lazy!")

What gives? Where's the rest of my food, woman?

The most recent pic of baby and daddy. I like to think K is saying "woop woop!" here.

My wonderful man, steam-cleaning our shower.  Seriously.  Love.

Obv, the date is wrong, but how freaking CUTE is this?

He's eating lots of solids now... growing so fast!

He plays really well on his own.

Such a goob. I love it.

He's not really crawling yet (come on, you're 10 months!) but he tries.

Gahhh, so cute!

The mohawk!!

Aaaayyyy!

I have teef!

*SMOOCH*

I is sleepy, mama.

I know, I know, I've been completely slacking on the blogging.  But as it turns out, I like to read other peoples blogs more than I like keeping my own updated.  Imagine that.  Also... I've been a little preoccupied:

Yep, that means positive!!

Because as it turns out, we got lucky (pardon the pun) our first month out of the gate (read: without protection) and will have our second baby this October, making our kids 18 months apart.  We were aiming for 18-24 months apart, so... Score!  Goal!  Woohoo!  =)

I will try to update more frequently, but... we all know how well that's worked out so far.  TRY, people, the key word here is TRY.