Carter is 10 Months!

Even though I don't usually dedicate a post to every monthly birthday Carter has, I thought a survey would be a fun way to catch up on the last month or so. She's getting so big and learning new things every day, sometimes its hard to keep up!

Height: 27.5in (26th percentile)

Weight: 17.9lbs (37th percentile)

Clothing size: 6-9 months or 9 months

Milestones: crawling like a speed demon, gives toys when asked, putting blocks in the right shaped holes, jabbering up a strom

Special Outings: 

Her buddy Jackson's first birthday party

Uncle Danny and Aunt Amy's wedding weekend (just noticed she had on the same outfit- hilarious)

Alicia's bridal shower

Her Routine: 

6:30-7am: Wake up, nurse. Play until

8:30am: Breakfast! Usually self fed finger foods. More playing. Some days she goes to daycare at 9am

10-11:30am: nap. this is highly varied though: daycare days she usually naps later because of all the FUN

11:30am: 6oz bottle. followed by more playing

1pm: lunch. If its not a daycare day but I work, she goes to my moms just before lunch. Lunch is sometimes finger foods, sometimes purees, sometimes a mix.

3-4:15pm: nap. Again varied, sometimes a little later on daycare days or longer if she took a shorter nap earlier

4:15pm: 6oz bottle

6pm: dinner. Almost always finger foods, sometimes parts of our dinner sometimes something seperate

7:30: diaper change and pjs, every other night she gets a bath also

8pm: nurse and to bed for the evening

We've gotten more flexible with her schedule the past month or two now that she only naps 2x. The naps vary so we roll with the punches :)

Favorites: Watermelon, plums, dog food (seriously. we're up to 4x now) her mama, rubber bath animals, Aden and Anais muslin blankets, keys, swings.

Carter is a great baby and I love being her mama. On to the next month of fun!

One Month Later...

I didn't intend to be away a month when I announced we were moving, but between trying to get settled and attending my brother's wedding that both my husband and I stood up in, it's been a busy few weeks! I'm hoping to post again with some sort of regularity and hopefully include some regular weekly posts!

We've been busy the past few weeks...

Carter turned 9 months old!

One of the things we lost in the move was her 9 month iron on (I put it in a "safe" place!) so I had to get a little creative.


We had a girls day out with our best buds!

We went to a new mexican restaurant and Carter was very well behaved! Considering it was 3 adults and 2 kiddos we managed to actually enjoy most of our meal. Win!

We went to a local festival and Carter got to pet some animals (though she had more fun trying to climb the cages...)

Carter and Elliot (the cat) have become fast friends now that she is very mobile. He is so tolerant!

Wedding weekend! I have SO many photos, so I'll just share some of my favorites:

The day after the wedding the families got together for a little barbecue before we drove the 5 hours home. Carter made a new friend in Callie, my sister in laws dog!

Now that the weather is a bit nicer bedtime has been a bit flexible- this night she was CRAZY hyper so I let her stay up an extra 15 minutes to tire herself out.

There have also been plenty of walks and park playing!

And most recently, we celebrated Father's Day with our favorite guys!

My dad, the hubs and Carter, and my father in law. Carter really was happy to be with them, I promise!

And now onto our menu for the week! We've started planning out lunches AND dinners to try and avoid the 10pm scramble to find something for lunch..

Monday: Leftover sub for Zach, veggies and hard boiled egg for me, leftover crockpot BBQ chicken for dinner

Tuesday: Chicken salad wrap for lunches, YOYO for dinner (you're on your own)

Wednesday: leftover BBQ chicken for lunches, breakfast food for dinner

Thursday: Soup for Zach, TBD for me (my day off) and some sort of casserole for dinner

Friday: salads for lunches, fish and veggies for dinner

I'm hoping to do some baking too, but I have to finish off the cherry blueberry pie bars I made for Father's Day first ;)

Travel Knitting

I don't get as much time to knit this days, with an almost mobile 8 month old, work, cooking, cleaning, dog, cat, and husband. But I usually try to sneak in a few minutes every day, during nap times, at night before bed, or in the case of last weekend, while in the car! I went to my to-be-sister-in-law's bachelorette party and shower this weekend, and since my parents were going too I rode with them. Not only did this save me gas money (always nice) but it also meant I got to knit while I rode! I got more knitting done over 2 days that I have in weeks.

Above you can see the new project I started. Given how little time I have to knit these days, I started thinking ahead to projects I want to finish this year. I knew that I wanted to give Carter a hand knit gift for her first birthday, and that was prioritized over everything but the blanket. So I brought the yarn along (lovingly wound by my husband!) and cast on a Bloom by Georgie Hallam. I only got a few rows in, but it was so nice working with Sunshine Yarns again :)

I devoted most of my time to the squares for the wedding blanket though, and I'm making good progress! Here's my stack:

Here are 16 of the 17 squares I have finished. I originally was only going to make 25, and do a gradient from the middle out where half the colors would go from light to dark (the middle) and back out to light with the other half of the colors on the other side. But I really love how all the colors look together, and even though I would be almost double the amount of squares I'm considering doing it as a full gradient from light to dark and back to light again (does that make any sense?)

I think it would be a more usable size, and I really want them to LOVE this blanket. I think I have enough yarn, so I might start to try to really crank out squares and see how many I can get done.

Linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along today!

Weekend, Menu, and Knitting

This weekend we took our first road trip with Carter! I was apprehensive about it, but thanks to some good planning and a good natured baby it actually went pretty well. We drove about 5 hours to see my brother and soon to be sister-in-law near Albany, NY. Our plan was to mostly drive during Carter's usual nap times since she falls asleep really easily in the car.

The weather was pretty nice on the way out and we made it by dinner time on Friday. Saturday we mostly hung out at my brother's apartment and played cards. We ordered Chinese from the restaurant in the plaza near my brother's apartment and the five of us walked to get it.

(Thanks to Amy for the photo!)

We left early Sunday morning to make the drive back, which due to weather and a crankier baby was not as nice as the ride out, but we made decent time and were glad to have the evening to get ready for the coming week. Speaking of this week, here's what our menu looks like!

Monday: Stuffed chicken breasts and green beans
Tuesday: Alfredo pasta with scallops and broccoli
Wednesday: Tuna melts
Thursday: Salmon and broccoli cheese soup
Friday: Roasted garlic and chicken pizza
Saturday: Eggs in hash brown cups and leftovers for lunch/dinner

I'm not sure if I will bake this weekend. I have some bananas that need to be used up, but I may freeze them instead.

Lastly, I have knitting progress! Thanks to making sure I take some time for myself and car knitting time, I'm slowly gaining ground with the blanket. Here are the finished squares:

I'm making 25 total, and may do an applied i-cord on the edge, so there's still lots to go but I'm feeling more optimistic that I will finish in time.

I'm linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along today.

Revamp

I took a long break from blogging and a lot has happened in the past 15 months or so! I got a new job (library manager), got pregnant, went on a few trips, knitted a lot, made a ton of recipes, went to several weddings, had a baby girl (more on that later) and have had an absolute blast watching her grow up!

I've realized over the past few weeks or so that I really want to start using this space again, but it will probably be in a different way than I did before. There will still be knitting content, recipes, and I'll share a bit about what we do, but I will also have a lot about babies (it's pretty much impossible not to talk about a baby once you have one!) I'm also thinking I may talk about home decor and organization, because for me it has become a bigger part of my life now that I have an infant.

I also really want to do more reviews (movies, books, products, services) and maybe link up with other bloggers. I know when I am looking for a new product I love hearing what other people have to recommend, so it only makes sense to me to include that type of stuff here as well.

I'm going to do a condensed post about my pregnancy and the birth of our baby soon, but that's all the additional catching up I plan to do. I'm really looking forward to using this space again!

Weekend Recap Part 2 and a Menu

Picking up where the last post left off, we woke up Saturday and drove to meet my brother and his fiance before heading up to Alexandria Bay. The wedding ceremony took place at Boldt Castle, which is on an island, so you take a ferry to get there. This is one of the smaller buildings on the island:

And this is the view of a castle as you come up in the ferry.

The wedding location was beautiful, and the bridesmaids and bride walked down the outside stairs on this building.

 Here you can see the matron of honor, flower girl, and bride making their way to the ceremony.

I didn't take too many other shots of the wedding itself, but it was beautiful and I'm sure the photos will be something they treasure for a long time. After the wedding we had some time before the reception started, so the four of us did a little exploring of the castle. I was having some shoe trouble (read: heels and outside wedding on an island with lots fo walking- what was I thinking???) so I didn't take to many photos.

After we had our fill of the island we headed back to the mainland to go to Bonnie Castle Resort, where our room reservation for the evening and the reception were.

It was a fairly small wedding (between 80-90 people) and the tables were decorated beautifully.

 My brother and his fiance (they will be doing this sometime next year!)

Friends Larry and Yolanda, who also sat at our table.

It got hard to take photos because of the lighting, but this is the bride and the groom with the bride's brother. 

It was a great wedding and it was nice to know so many people at the reception because I have known the bride and her family for a while now. Best wishes to the happy couple!

Sunday morning we got up and had breakfast with my parents, brother, and fiance and the North Star Restaurant. 

 I ordered their brocoli scramble, which was hash browns topped with scrambled egg, broccoli, and cheese sauce. YUM.

Afterwards we had planned to go on a boat tour of some of the islands, but since it was raining we decided to head to the Syracuse Mall. My dad was very interested in the racing Zach and I had talked about, so of course that happened.

Mom, Amy (my brother's fiance) and me waiting for the boys to race!

Random racing photos!

After hitting up a few stores and the food court for some lunch, we said good bye and drove home. It was a great weekend!

Now that I have to cook for myself again (what is it about vacation and eating out that makes cooking for yourself seem like such a drag?) we need a menu!

Monday: leftovers/random snacks

Tuesday: lunch- chicken noodle soup and cottage cheese (not together though!)

Dinner: Fish (I think salmon is what is in the freezer) with rice and a veggie

Wednesday: lunch- whatever I can come up with

Dinner- out

Thursday: lunch- undecided (maybe Subway?)

Dinner- Slow cooker BBQ chicken and pasta salad

Friday: lunch- leftovers

Dinner- homemade pizza and salads

This weekend should be fairly quiet, just working around the house and a family event with the hubs. Knitting and spinning progress tomorrow!

Wedding Weekend

Early Friday morning the hubs and I packed up the car and headed out for the wedding of a close friend of my family's. Since the wedding wasn't until Saturday afternoon  the hubs and I spent Friday in Syracuse before meeting up with my brother and his fiance Saturday morning and heading the rest of the way to Alexandria Bay. 

When we arrived in Syracuse it was about lunch time, so we were more than ready to hit up Stellas Diner. We were really impressed- this dinner has a small town feel but the staff was professional and you could tell they stayed busy!

 The hubs ordered a mushroom and swiss omelet with corned beef hash. 

I got the "Garden Stella" which was a egg, tomato, spinach, and cheese sandwich on a bagel with homefries.

Both were delicious! After our tasty lunch we headed over to the Destiny USA mall. Holy cats, this place is huge! We were really impressed with all the modern decor and their commitment to sustainability and low impact on the environment. Here you can see one of the many touch screen directories to help you find you way.

They also had neat sculpture/decor in various places around the mall.

None of this was more exciting (for the hubs anyway) than the indoor go kart track on the third floor. Yup. You better believe he took advantage of that!

They had elevators as well as escalators throughout the mall, so it was really easy to get where you wanted to go.

More cool decoration :)

For dinner we settled on Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, a local hot spot. There is another location in Rochester closer to us, but we hadn't been before but had heard great things.

The hubs got a rack of ribs with fries and cottage cheese. Those ribs were really good!

However my plate was awesome- pulled pork and beef brisket platter with mac and cheese and cole slaw. I wish I had two stomachs so I could have kept eating! (We did take leftovers, but didn't end up finishing them either!) I really want to go to the Rochester location next time we are up that way.

The only downside to Dinosaur BBQ was the wait- almost an hour! We thought by waiting until closer to 8pm to go for dinner we would beat the rush but it was almost 9pm by the time we ate. The good part about this was that we caught some of the live music they had before going back to our hotel for the evening :)

I'm going to wait to post the rest of our weekend adventures and my weekly menu until tomorrow, partially because this post is long and we need to go grocery shopping before I can say for sure what we will eat :)