Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Random Time

Wow... I didn't realize it had been about two weeks since I last posted anything!  I guess we haven't done anything very interesting to write about :)  Since I just have a bunch of different thoughts, I figured I'd do another random post!
First off I started selling Chloe + Isabel jewelry.  A friend of ours started selling the jewelry and when she was here visiting she brought some to show me!  I loved all of it, and everything else she told me about the company!  For the past few months I have been considering becoming a merchandiser for a direct sales company but wasn't sure what company I wanted to work with.  I started researching a bunch of different ones to see what their requirements were, what incentives they had, how much profit you make, what they charged, and so on.  Chloe + Isabel just seemed like the best fit.  They have a great product and everyone I've talked to with the company has been super helpful!  I don't have any requirements I have to meet, but there are incentives if I sell a certain amount each month if I want to try and earn them.  I don't have to pay anything after the initial kit I bought, which is great since some of the companies I looked into started eventually charging you to have a website.  The only downfall I have seen so far, is that I like so much of the jewelry it's going to be hard to not spend all the money I earn buying jewelry! :)  If you want to go check out any of the jewelry Chloe + Isabel has just go to my site here.
 

Next up is Konnor's crazy sleeping (or I should say lack of sleeping).  For the past 5 nights Konnor has been waking up and staying awake for at least 3 hours, and one night he was up for 4 hours.  I have no idea why he is waking up.  Most of the nights he wakes up crying but is okay once we pick him up.  Some nights though he is cranky the whole time he is awake and seems uncomfortable.  So many things have changed for him lately, so I have no idea what is causing this.  He has started walking.  He walks all over the place without our help and is pretty good at it! He also is getting at least one tooth that we can see, but he doesn't let us look long enough to tell if there are more coming in.  On top of all that, he also switched to whole milk when he turned one.  So I don't know if any of these things are messing up his sleep, or if its something else entirely.  I've given up trying to guess.  We have a doctors appointment today (unfortunately it's for another shot) and I plan to ask them what they think might be causing it.  I just don't know what to do when he is awake.  Three hours is such a long time!  I try rocking him, but he either just lays there and still stays awake or he cries and arches his back and acts uncomfortable.  The same thing happens if I try and hold him and bounce or walk around.  The past two nights I've eventually brought him downstairs and let him walk around and eventually he gets tired again.  Luckily the past two nights we have put him to sleep early and he's woken up by 10 and then is back asleep by 1 or 2 and sleeps until 9 so I've been getting some sleep.  Konnor however is still not getting the amount of sleep he should.  During the day he acts normal.  He doesn't fuss and he takes great naps.  Hopefully this phase will eventually stop, or we will figure out what is causing it.  I don't see it getting better any time soon though since he gets another shot today and then we head home to family for the weekend.  He never sleeps well when we go home.  Korey has been helping as much as he can, but during the week I try and let him sleep since he has to go to work and I can always take a nap the next day.  During the weekend though we were both up most of the night!

Thanksgiving!  We are so happy to get to spend Thanksgiving with family.  We will get to eat a ton of food, and we get to also celebrate Konnor's birthday again with our family.  The trip should be interesting.  As usual we will have to pack the car full with all of our stuff, Konnor's stuff  and the dogs and their stuff.  Lots of "stuff"!! :) Then when we come back home we will have even more because I'm sure Konnor will get some birthday presents!!  Luckily Korey is a wonderful packer and always manages to fit everything in!  The other part of the trip that could be interesting is the crappy weather.  We are only supposed to have rain here, but for some of our trip there will most likely be snow.  I am not a fan of snow and I really hate driving in it.  I'm kind of bummed there will be snow.  Korey is of course very excited for the snow.  I wouldn't mind it for Christmas, but I'd prefer a nice, warm, snow-free Thanksgiving.  Oh well.  Konnor is going to need some warmer clothes and some boots, and gloves!

Christmas presents are next.  I had a hard enough time trying to figure out what to get Konnor for his birthday and now we have to turn around and figure out what to get him for Christmas!  We've purchased a few things already, but there are a couple more things we want to get him. I'm hoping he has more fun opening Christmas presents than he did his Birthday presents!  He didn't seem interested at all in unwrapping his presents.  He enjoyed playing with them when they were open, but I thought he would've had more fun ripping off the wrapping paper.  Oh well :) 


The toys on the top row we have already purchased.  I LOVE the superhero plush toys.  We purchased Captain America and plan to at least get Spiderman too (since he's Korey's favorite) but we added ALL of them to our Konnor wishlist on Amazon so we remember to get them when we need other presents for him :)  We also got the Batman and Joker Little People.  He likes the Little People he has now, so we figured we'd add a few more fun ones! We decided to get him the keys because he always wants to hold ours, and then he proceeds to chew them.  We figured it would be better if he had his own set to chew on safely!  We're hoping to get him a couple books and the alphabet blocks at least, and maybe a few more gifts. It's definitely fun looking through toys and trying to decide what Konnor might like, but I think it will be a little easier next year when he can start telling us and showing us what he is interested in!

Well I think that's all the random thoughts I have for now.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 11, 2013

Konnor's First Birthday

I know I've said it already a million times, but how has it been a year already??  I'm not going to lie though, even though we have loved Konnor right from the start, the age he is at right now is probably the most fun so far.  I love watching him walk (and fall down) around the living room.  It's so fun to see how excited he gets when he realizes he is walking.  Usually his excitement makes him walk even crazier though and he ends up falling down!  He's also started "talking" a little.  He likes to say "all done".  It sounds a little more like "ahh done" and I'm pretty sure he has no idea what he means when he is saying it haha.  He is definitely trying to repeat what we say to him a lot more now.  I love when he walks over to us and babbles something and then just walks off again!

We were super lucky to have some friends come visit for the weekend to help celebrate Konnor's First Birthday with us!  They got here on Friday night and it was so nice to have them here!  It felt just like old times!  We've moved several times in the last 7 years and it's great to know that we have such great friends in so many of the places that we have lived.  It's always wonderful when friends come to visit!  On Saturday we hung out in the morning and then we went for a nice walk to a lighthouse and had a picnic lunch that consisted of some sandwiches from Subway that we ate at a park :)  The park had a small zipline for kids and of course everyone had to try it out.  Except for me unfortunately.  I was already wearing Konnor in our Ergo baby carrier.

It was a little chilly, but the walk was beautiful and it was nice to just be spending time hanging out with our friends.  "Uncle" Max even carried Konnor in the carrier for the whole walk (which made me extra happy when we were going uphill near the end of the walk)!










After our walk we came back to the house to celebrate Konnor's Birthday!  Before we ate, we let Konnor open his presents.  I thought he would be more excited about tearing the wrapping paper off than he actually was.  He didn't really seem to know what he was supposed to do.  We helped him unwrap his gifts and he loved everything.  He got some pretty cool gifts from Max, Sami and Jami.  He's a lucky little boy, and we are extremely lucky to have such great friends!  Korey made his delicious meatloaf for dinner and we also made Konnor a cake!  He LOVED his cake.  Korey did not want Konnor to have any cake before his first birthday, so this was the first time he had ever had any.  We gave him a piece and he dug right in!  There of course was cake EVERYWHERE :)


Before Picture...


During the Cake Eating....








All Done??

Of course he had to share some with his best friend Chloe...


And then this is what happens when the cake is all gone...

It's his party...he can cry if he wants to
 Don't feel too bad for him though because he will get another birthday party with family that will involve more cake when we go home for Thanksgiving

Overall it was a great weekend and a wonderful first birthday for Konnor!  Thank you to everyone who sent Happy Birthday wishes and gifts! 

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Birthday and Gifts

I can't believe that Konnor will have his first birthday this Sunday, November 10th!!  It's so crazy to think that a year has gone by already.  I remember during the first few months (when I was sleep deprived, and he wouldn't take a bottle, and we were trying to figure out where we were going to move to next) that this day would never get here.  Now that it's here, it seems like the time just flew by!

As far as birthday parties go, I didn't know what to do for his first one.  I know some people have big parties and invite all their friends and family and their kids "baby friends", but we don't really know anyone here and since Konnor stays at home with me we don't really know any other kids his age that live near us.  So we decided on a low key birthday this year since he won't really remember it anyhow, and he won't care what kind of birthday he has because he won't really even know what is going on!  Luckily for us we have some GREAT friends from Maine/New Hampshire coming this weekend for a visit so they will get to join us for our first little mini birthday party for Konnor.  We're going to have a cake and some presents for him at home and just celebrate with us and our friends that are visiting.  When we go home for Thanksgiving we are going to have another birthday party for him with all our family.  Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a bad mom for not having some big first birthday party for him, but I think this is the best way to do it for us.  Hopefully next year we will know some more people, and Konnor will have some little friends that we can invite to share the day with him.  Also we figure next year he will have more things he is interested in, and he'll be more aware of what is going on! 
Along with figuring out what to do for his birthday, I also had a hard time trying to decide what to get him.  He spends most of his days now trying to walk, throwing blocks and cars around the room, napping, and going on walks or trips with me!  He doesn't really need a ton of toys or anything, but he could definitely use a few new things to entertain him.  We ended up buying him the second Little Blue Truck book called Little Blue Truck Leads the Way.  I've mentioned it before in previous posts.  He loves his Little Blue Truck book so hopefully he likes the new one too!  We also got him some blue truck pj's to go along with the book! We got him some new bath toys since he LOVES bath time, and we also got him this Elefun busy ball popper toy.  Hopefully in the future he just looks back at pictures of his first birthday and knows that he is loved by us and lots of other people!





Friday, November 1, 2013

Konnor's First Halloween

Konnor was born 10 days after Halloween so this was his first Halloween!!  He wore a Tigger costume and I think he actually enjoyed wearing it!  He never fussed when we put it on him.  The only part he didn't love was the hood.  The costume worked out great though.  Everyone thought he was super cute, and it kept him warm while we sat outside on our porch and handed out candy!


Growing up I loved going trick or treating and I'm sure I probably went for a couple years past what I should have :)  Korey and I have lived several places over the past few years so we've had a lot of different Halloween experiences.  When we moved to Charleston for the first time, we lived in an apartment complex.  They gave us a sign to hang on the door if we wanted to hand out candy.  I was super excited because this was the first year we would get to hand out candy from our own place.  We hung the sign on the door, and sadly we had no trick or treaters.  What a bummer.  To top it all off, our dog Bella ate quite a bit of the candy (wrappers and all) the next day while we were at work.  We of course were then worried because she had ate a ton of chocolate, but she was fine.  When we lived in Maine we went out with our friends on Halloween so we didn't hand out any candy that I can remember.  Instead this is what happened...
This picture makes me laugh every time I see it.  I have no idea what I was doing/saying, and Korey's look is priceless haha. 
After Portsmouth, we lived in Charleston again for two years.  The first year Korey had to work on Halloween and I didn't want to have to deal with the dogs every time the doorbell rang so I just left the candy outside.  Surprisingly there was still candy in the bowl at the end of the night.  The second year Korey was home so one of us held back the dogs whenever the doorbell rang, and the other handed out candy.  This year though was by far the craziest/best year as far as trick or treating goes.  When we bought the house, the previous owners warned us that there would be a lot of trick or treaters but I was still not prepared.  We ran out of candy within the first 30 minutes and I had to run out and go get some more.  We still did not have very much left at the end of the night.  There are a lot of kids in our neighborhood, but there were a TON of people that also drove their kids to our neighborhood.  We had fun sitting outside with Konnor and handing out candy to everyone.  Konnor loved being outside and watching all the kids come up to the porch.  He also got to enjoy his first lollipop.  He LOVED it of course.  He was not very happy when I took it away about half way through.


   
                                   


Also to prepare for Halloween we bought Konnor two new Halloween books.  We love reading to Konnor and we read him some books every night before bed.  We bought Goodnight Goon and Dracula.  Goodnight Goon is a parody on Goodnight Moon and Dracula is a kids version counting book based on the real Dracula story.  We enjoyed both books. 

At the end of the night, Konnor decided to give us our own Halloween treat and he slept through the night for the first time in almost 3 weeks!!  Between starting to walk and teething, he has been a terrible sleeper.  I was so happy to wake up this morning and realize that I had gotten a full nights sleep! :)  Thank you Konnor!


So now that Halloween is over is it okay to start watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas songs already?! :)