What Do You Do...

When you have nothing better to entertain an 11 month old????

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You enlist his help with aerating your yard (and I have no idea if I even spelled that right)
He was having a good ole' time!
And when he was done riding with daddy, he wanted to watch him finish up.

Then he did a little stretching...

And a little more stretching (and swinging)...

Then he did some texting (to his many girlfriends, of course)Excited that he got a text back from one of them!

And then Nan came to relieve us of our parental duties for the afternoon and evening so we could go into town to get some of his birthday party supplies and do dinner. It was a successful trip! I love the plates and napkins I picked out and I got him the cutest birthday hat that I'm sure will stay on his head for about 2.5 seconds (if that long). We also finished up getting his birthday gifts (which included the adorable red Paul Frank hoodie from Target, woo hoo!).

Baby Clay's New Obsession

Clay goes through phases where he mainly wants to play with a certain toy. Previously it's been his blocks... then it was his yellow CAT trucks. Now he's moved onto his next obsession... books! He LOVES books! We always try to read to him at some point during the day (all the books tell you to!) and he loves books that make noise, but now he will sit forever and play with his books - flipping through them and babbling like he's reading them. And he can't just have one book... he needs them all!

He likes to get them off of his shelves all by himself. He gets a little feisty if you try to help him!

See... he has to have them all... surrounding him. This is one of his favorites! When you hit the button, it barks and he knows when he's supposed to hit it if you read it to him!Reading his book to me.

And now to my new obsession!!! I downloaded a trial of Photoshop Elements and now I am OBSESSED with editing all my photos with it! It's so addictive! There is a feature called "spot healing" and it is the best thing since I discovered Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper at Sonic. It removes all kinds of spots! Check this out...

Clay with his shiner after the battle with the window sill at daycare...
Do a little magic to it with the spot healing tool... and Wah La! No black eye!

Of course the face still looks a little swollen, but I'm sure there's a fix for that somewhere in Photoshop! There's even a setting that whitens teeth! I'm definitely going to have to buy this once my month trial runs out!

And Yay! for Friday!!!! I don't know why this week has been dragging for me! Maybe it's this project that I finally finished up on. I do have a jewelry party to go to tonight, so that should be fun... and expensive (Just kidding, Mark).

Tomorrow we're headed to town to look for Clay's Bday Party stuff and have dinner with some good friends. We're also in need of a couple of 80's outfits for my sister-in-law's birthday party coming up soon, so I'm sure we'll swing by a few stores to look for that. I'm thinking mullet wig for Mark!

Have a great weekend!

Entertaining an 11 Month Old

This past weekend we had NO PLANS! NO PLANS what-so-ever! We didn't go into town, we didn't have a date night... just me and my 2 favorite guys. What in the world was I going to do to entertain an 11 month old ALL weekend?!?!? Since it was so gorgeous, we decided to do a lot of outside activities. We went for a walk both Saturday and Sunday morning at a walking trail by the lake and then Sunday afternoon, we took Clay to the park! Clay gets to play on the playground at school, but this is the first time we took him. We had a blast!

One of his favorite things to do - swing (this is also my favorite picture from the day)!

Going down the slide with Daddy's help
Trying out another swing.
He was swinging so fast in this one it was hard to get a good picture!
Crawling through the tunnel
Sliding down the big slide with Daddy

But his favorite thing was the merry-go-round.

I was exhausted Sunday evening! I don't see how his daycare teachers do it every day! Even though it was exhausting, I loved and cherished every minute of it! Next week on the agenda... shopping for his birthday party stuff! I'm so excited and can't wait to pick everything out!

Photo Friday - Mexican Style

Clay's new favorite food is Mexican Rice. We were at the local Mexican restaurant Wednesday night with his Nan (Mark's mom) and I gave him a few pieces of my rice. He LOVED it! He kept wanting more and I think he ate more of it than I did. I got a box for the rest of it and gave it to him last night for supper mixed with some avacado (which he also LOVES). Let's just say Mexican rice makes for some messy pictures!

Baby Clay shoveling the rice in his mouth like it's going out of style! One hand wasn't working well enough, so now we use two hands to shovel it in.

I don't know if much was really going in his mouth. We had to shake out the bib a couple of times.

And you can't see this really well, but some of the rice also ended up in the hair.

And this is what I get when he sees me putting up the rice... Not too happy about that!

And in other news, I successfully dropped Clay off at daycare this morning without having to pry him off of my leg. There weren't even any tears! We discovered a little trick... he LOVES to play with balls, so as soon as he gets there I give him the big green ball that he likes and he's totally done with me. I can give him a hug and a kiss... tell him bye-bye and it doesn't phase him. He's content to play with the ball. Now I don't feel so bad when I drop him off!

No big plans this weekend... we might venture to the big city in search of a red Paul Frank hoodie at Target that Lea Anne told me about, but other than that... no plans (except to RELAX!).

Happy!

Baby Clay is happy...

VERY HAPPY!

Happy he got to wear his new Paul Frank shirt to daycare today! (And I think he looks super-cute in it!)

And what does Baby Clay think about leaving Mama to go to Daycare...

Yeah, not too happy about that!

But at least it's Thursday... almost the weekend!!!!

Sunday Swimming

Yesterday we had nothing planned... nothing at all! It was NICE!!!! On the weekends, Clay typically will take a morning nap and an afternoon nap (if I wear him out). He took a good 2 hour morning nap and we were running out of things to do to wear him out, so I decided to pull out his baby pool. His new favorite thing is to have water dumped on his head... I know, it sounds like torture, but he loved it! He'd make the funniest faces when we'd do it and then laugh! I guess we're going to have to come up some new ways to wear him out when it gets too cold outside to swim!

Awaiting the water torture (look at that belly!)

Being drenched by daddy!
Some funny faces

And yes, he took a GOOD nap! I had to go wake him up after 2 1/2 hours!!! Believe me, I would have let him sleep longer, but I also wanted him to go to bed at a decent time :)!

Across the Lake

Our friends, Chris and Jill, invited us over to their house last night for dinner. They live across the lake from us and if we were to drive to their house, it would take 25 minutes. We got a special treat last night… Chris came and picked us up by boat (going to their house by boat only takes 5 minutes!!). This was Clay’s first trip in a boat and I was a little apprehensive at how well he was going to take it. We borrowed a small life jacket from our neighbors and strapped him in. He wasn’t too giddy about the big, cumbersome life jacket, but got used to it. So… how did he like the boat?? At first he was a little scared, but he loved it after a while… especially on the trip home (but I think that is because he got to sit next to Jill and I think he has a little crush on her!). We had a wonderful time over at their house! Jill made Chicken Marsala (which was delicious) and we had cake for dessert. I let Clay try his first taste of cake because he’s going to be getting one for his birthday and I wanted to make sure he liked it. And he did… He LOVED it… especially the chocolate icing.

I took a few pictures (of course!) of Clay’s first boat outing. He looks a little unsure about the whole thing! I should have gotten pictures on the way home because he was much happier with the second trip, but it was getting dark.

Waiting for our ride

First ride!

The "AFTER" Shots

I was bored last night after Baby Clay went to bed and decided to go through some of my old posts and realized I never did an “after” post on our house. Bad Blogger! Anyways, I didn’t have anything better to do since Mark was out of town (and just in case anyone gets the idea to break in and kidnap Baby Clay and I - he’s coming back today. Oh, and I’ve got a .38 along with my pepper spray as well as my 4.5 pound attack dog that will eat you on command. I suggest not breaking into my house! I’m not paranoid or anything. Ha!) I decided to work on my house “after” post. There are some rooms I’ve elected to not show either because we have no furniture in them or I was embarrassed by the clutter or baby junk everywhere (which basically means you are getting the outside and bathrooms).

I also haven’t mentioned lately how I’m doing with the whole medium-sized city to very small city transition. Mark and I were talking about this the other day… and dare I say that I’m kind of liking the new “country” digs. It’s so peaceful out here living on the lake. Everything seems to go at a much slower pace, which is nice. I think living in this small city has affected my brain a bit… I found myself actually tolerating… ok, liking… a country song. Granted it’s Darius Rucker’s new song and I don’t think you can totally classify Hootie as country… maybe it’s the nostalgia of taking me back to Freshman year at Auburn when Hootie and the Blowfish were big! My suitemate blasted Hootie – ALL. THE. TIME! (Sorry for the random flashback!) Anyways, I’m thinking I can handle our time here in the small city… maybe even enjoy it! I’m learning to live without Starbuck’s, Moe’s and Super Target. I have replaced it with Sonic Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper (you MUST try this), the cheap Mexican restaurant down the street (makes the BEST Margaritas – well, maybe not the best, but the strongest) and Super Walmart (although, I still HATE Super Walmart with a passion –nothing will ever replace my Super Target).

Now that I’ve rambled on long enough… here are the AFTER pictures of our finished house! (Most of you who read my blog have seen the house… so it’s nothing new to you!)

Notice the beautiful landscape my hubby did. I think he did an excellent job.

Here is our back patio. This is the scene of the crime for our couple of shrimp boils we've hosted this summer. Part of the Kitchen and Breakfast Room (the part of the kitchen that looks clean). And our poor shaggy attack dog who is in desperate need of a grooming.
Part of Clay's room
Another angle of Clay's room with the adorable pictures my sister painted

One end of the living room - the other end is the "baby zone" and is not very pretty right now.

One of the guest bathrooms. Just a plain old bathroom... but I LOVE my shower curtain! It was the last one at Target and this couple was looking at it. I was stalking them until they decided they didn't want it and I snatched it up before they could change their minds :).

Our Master Bathroom - this room gave me FITS when we were building the house, but it turned out nicely!

And lastly, one of my favorite parts, our screened in porch.

I don't know that we'll ever build another house ourselves again! It was a pain and a lot of hard work and headaches, but I think it paid off!

Uh-Oh!

Baby Clay has learned a new word… he now says “Uh-oh”! ( I don’t know that this really qualifies as a word, but I like to count it as one.) He loves to drop things on the floor whether he’s in his highchair, crib, or baby condo. Every time he does it we would always say “Uh-oh”. At first he started just saying the “Uh” part, but now he’s figured out the “Oh” part. It’s very cute! I’ve been working on getting it on video, but he’s being a bit camera shy.

He also seems to be getting out of the “grumpy phase” he was in last week. I really think it was due to teething (along with a little cold), but now he’s back to normal! He eats everything I put in front of him… his new favs being hard boiled eggs (only the white part), avocado, and dried cranberries (all random… I know!). He still is breaking my heart every time I drop him off at daycare… he wraps those chubby arms around my leg and holds on for dear life when he knows I’m about to leave. As soon as I open the door, big tears well up in his eyes and he starts up his pitiful cry! Yes, breaks my heart every time! I’m really hoping he gets over this phase soon!

He’s got a new pastime… he loves to pull all the Tupperware containers out of the cabinet. We’ve childproofed all the “dangerous” cabinets, but left a few available for Baby Clay to explore. The Tupperware one is his favorite. It takes him about 2.5 seconds to have it all over the floor. He likes to drop it on the floor to hear the sound it makes… the louder the better! This holds his attention for about 15 seconds so I can clean a couple of his bottles.

Not much else has been going on around here… Mark and I had a wonderful anniversary!! He got a room at the new Westin in town and we stayed there Saturday night. We went into town a little early so I could do a few things before dinner. It was the best weekend!!! Even though we were only 35 minutes from our house it felt like we were on vacation! I got to do all my favorite things!! I went shopping (while Mark napped)… I had my Starbucks (toffee mocha chip Frap – which I HIGHLY recommend)… We ate at PF Chang’s with our good friends Emily and Jeremy… and then I got to have Moe’s for lunch Sunday before we headed home. SO. MUCH. FUN!!!

You may have also noticed that I changed my blog up... again. For some reason folks weren't seeing the words on my blog. So, BJ, let me know if you can read this :)!

And now the pictures… Here are a few pictures of Mr. Destructo himself playing with his newfound toys:

And this is his new fall/winter hat he's showing off. He hates hats and left it on for about 3 seconds. I ordered him some cute outfits from Gap.com for his 1 year pictures and I got this cute hat to go with one of the shirts.

Happy Wednesday!!! Hope you have a great rest of the week!!! The weekend can't get here soon enough!