Wordless Wednesday

One of her five senses is in overdrive!

Sophia is quite a touchy baby. She loves to hold our hand, touch our face, or rub our arm all the time. Lately she wants to have her hand held just to go to sleep. She even rubs her own face when there's no one else around (like in her crib). It's so adorable. Her need for physical touch is so obvious these days. And we're more than happy to give her what she wants.

Who wouldn't want to hold this hand?

A little of this, a little of that...but all about Sophia.

I know you all miss your strictly Sophia updates. It's been difficult around here, that's the bottom line.

Sophia is teething. At first I wasn't sure. But it became increasingly more clear. I can't see any teeth. The moment anything comes anywhere near her face she wants to gnaw on it, and gnaw on it hard! I let her use my knuckle when all else fails, and I'm now just waiting for the day when there's something solid poking me instead of the gummy mouth that goes to town now. Sophia doesn't make looking for the buds of teeth easy, as I said she'd much rather chew on my finger than let it move her lip to investigate. So I wait. She's a little more needy these days, which I'm ok with. I missed her wanting to be held during her naps, so it's a nice change of pace. It does mean that I don't get to write updates as often. It also means that I don't have much time for things like cleaning and showering. Thankfully Cody has been doing what he can to help out.

Now on to the much dreaded schedule talk. I was on the boat of baby does what baby wants when baby wants to do it. But after realizing how miserable she was on the weekends when her surroundings were different and when we were on the go I decided that we needed to have some sort of schedule in place. And we should do our bed to follow it even when we were out of the house. I am still majorly taking her lead. But I'm keeping better track of her general time line, and I'm going to be making sure we follow it on the weekends and any other time we are out and about. I know that there is a whole camp of parents that strongly disagree with a schedule. But let me be clear, I am not keeping her from eating when she needs to eat, actually on the weekends she sleeps more in the car and ends up skipping a bottle and it ruins everything come the evening. So more than anything this is to insure that come Saturdays and Sundays that she's not sleeping TOO much and that she's not missing bottles because of sleep. Seems easy, but it is usually against all advice to ever wake a sleeping baby. I'm sure there will be some adaptions to this over the upcoming weeks and months. Especially with moving and how that will likely take it's toll on her schedule and her mood.

Sophia's started two new things this week. Well one new thing, and she's just getting better at the other. Her new thing is waving her paci in the air. She used to accidentally brush it out of her mouth, back when her hand coordination was minimal. But now she purposely takes it out. The downside: She can't figure out how to put it back in! So we spend quite a bit of time trying to keep her hands busy when it's wind down time. She knows she's the life of the party, and she knows the tricks that make her tired. She doesn't want to fall for any of it! Her next thing is rolling ALL OVER THE PLACE. Yesterday she rolled all over the living room, seriously just rolling and rolling until she was 8 ft away from where she started. It was one of the few things that made her happy during her crankiness yesterday so I didn't dare pick her up and bring her back to her starting position. With that she's really trying to figure out this whole knees thing. I am realizing that our time of having a stationary baby are quickly coming to an end, and that as soon as we move into the new house we should start on the baby proofing. Even through fully crawling may be a little bit out, I don't think it'll be long until she gets on her knees and inches her way to where she wants to be.

I haven't been weighing Sophia or doing her weekly updates. I've been slacking. But with the house hunting, the paperwork that went along with that, the teething, and the time Cody has had off....we've just been super busy. I will attempt to resume those next week, but if I don't get to it you can be sure it's because I was busy playing/entertaining wee Sophia. And I think that's a darn good reason to miss it! :-)

This picture isn't very good quality, but you can see she's SO HAPPY. Her grin in this picture makes my heart want to explode into a billion pieces. When she spends most of her day cranky lately, it's so great to see her so happy! And just so you know what you're looking at. Her starting point is where the brown couch pillow is. She actually ended up even farther than this picture shows..but she just kept rolling into the pinguin moving him across the room with her.


*I just looked posted and realize you can't really see her grin all that well on here. So you're going to have to trust me, she was a very happy baby!

Wordless Wednesday

*we're back to the old way for a week because I'm too tired to mess with a collage.

Has it been four days?

The four day weekend is coming to a close, it's been a busy four days. Cleaning, packing, running to the mortgage company, running to the Realtor, watching some TV, and hanging out in general. WHEW.

The update to the house goes like this: We are closer than we were on Thursday. :-) We had the inspection at the new house on Friday. It went REALLY well. We also met the current owners and really like them. It helped us feel more comfortable with the house and they told us a lot of things about the house that we probably wouldn't have known. While it may not be common to meet the owners before closing, I'm really glad that we got the chance to!

As I said the inspection went really well, nothing major with the house. The inspector himself was really great. And now that he's inspected the house if we need anything ever when it comes to the house we can call him and he'll come out and look at something or advice us on what to do free of charge. Which may be something all inspectors do, we aren't really sure.

All the paperwork is where it needs to be, and now we're just pricing insurance. Which is a little stressful, but we have a couple weeks, and we're sure we'll find something that works between now and then.

I did take lots of new pictures of the house, and slowly but surely they are getting added to the website I set up just for our house projects (to keep from cluttering this site with that sort of stuff). It's a slow process because I am going through each room to show you what it currently looks like and what we have in mind for the rooms. I am also trying to not post any of their personal pictures and stuff, since this is a public blog and it's not their public blog. So far I've only really gone over what will be the guest room. If you look over there you're going to see after the most recent post it's sort of a mess. I was setting up the tabs along the top of the page and I had to make posts to go with them. So just ignore all of that! :-)

Besides insurance we're just waiting for the appraisal to be done and packing up a little bit of stuff as we go along. I will do my best to keep everyone updated as we get closer. I am not officially giving out the address until we've closed, but after we've closed and we're all moved in I will be sure to share that information with everyone (probably not here!).

Sophia's new favorite food.

You may remember that a few weeks ago I tried out banana's. I didn't think she was a fan. She just wasn't getting it. Well I think that I need to actually puree the banana instead of just mushing it up. I bought her a thing of banana baby food (I'm not on the all or nothing train of baby food making, jarred food isn't the devil....I just prefer she eat homemade food). Anyhow, so I bought her a thing to see if it was the consistency that was a problem.

She LOVES banana's. She eats them faster than any other foods, and she has her mouth open wanting more and more and more and more. She screeches when I walk away after she's done with it, because she knows that means she's done and there are no more.

This week we also introduced oatmeal. I could tell she wasn't a big fan of the rice cereal. I picked up some oatmeal just to give it a try....and I think we may never use rice cereal again. She really enjoys it, and I can't really blame her. It smells like it has to taste better!


This week we've also tried carrots...what.a.mess. I decided not to homemake carrots even though there's information out there saying that as long as you don't reuse the water that you steamed it in, you will be ok. I got a message from a friend this week saying her pedi told her something completely different. I thought it over, did some more reading...and decided....eh why take the chance (as small as it may be). We can't be sure if she liked the carrots. She's only had it once, and it takes her two days to decide if she even likes something. So I'm sure in a few days we will know for sure!

Wordless Wednesday

*With out a video. I'll explain tomorrow.

New Years Resoultions 1/3-1/9

Wow, I'm late with this. As I said before, weekends are not for blogging. We're busy people....we Charming Chandlers.

Ok so my new years resolutions are as follows (with a couple additions I didn't discuss before)

-Make one new recipe a week.
-Do one new thing a week.
-Pick up the pieces of "I just had a baby" and make sure I look presentable most of the time.



There was more, but I can't remember. No where did I say "Get in shape." "Lose 10 pounds" or "Visit one of the many wonders of the world."

So a weekly update.

I made a new dish. And it was delish! I have to credit my friend Amanda for giving me this recipe because it's so easy a cave man could do it! It was Chicken Chimi's.
Here's what you need:
Tortilla Shells
Chicken breast (we used 2.5 large ones)
Large can of Salsa
EVOO
butter
lemon


Preheat the oven to 350*. Then cook the chicken breast in butter and lemon (or EVOO and lemon, but use lemon...and use a lot of it.) After the chicken is cooked through shred the chicken apart and return to the pan, add salsa. There you have the inside of your chimi.

Oil the bottom of your baking dish with EVOO. Now roll the good stuff into the tortilla shells and place into the baking dish. Brush EVOO onto the tops of the chimi's and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Here's where you can have fun with your chimi's. You can put more salsa on top, shredded cheese, cheese dip...whatever you want. We used shredded cheese, but next time I think I'll use cheese dip.

The changes we made. We made yellow rice and mixed it in with the chicken and salsa. It was really good. Next time we might even add some shredded cheese to the mix before stuffing the chimi's.



I did something new. We put an offer on a house. Which I'd never done before. We were accepted. Both things I'd never done before. Two things in one week SCORE! (ok just one thing...whatever.


I pulled myself together. i made an effort twice when it would have made more sense for me not to. When it would have been logical to wear PJ's. Why you ask? Because I get spit up on during the day. Sophia is teething....and so there is drool all over my arms and my shoulders. Even when I wear jeans and a shirt, and I straighten my hair......even when I'm put together. I look a mess because I'm covered in Sophia. But I will keep trying. Because that's what matters. Even though by the end of a feed, or at the end of playing....I look a mess. At least I've tried.

Maybe I just need better looking PJ's. So that I can look put together with out having to wash all my normal clothes so much!

So there you have it. It's not really pretty...I guess I should work on that. Maybe next week the update will be more presentable!

Here's the link I said I'd get to you.

It's the blog about our house. I'm using it a lot in reference on design/DIY/decorating forums and boards and other blogs. For that reason I am keeping our names out of it. So if you comment just please keep that in mind. I don't want anyone to get offended that I've deleted their comments. :-)

This link will be on the side of the blog for future reference.

http://journeyfromhousetohome.blogspot.com/

She takes after her....

...her Daddy y'all. At least in one way. She doesn't really LIKE having her picture taken. She's not a fan. The camera comes out and her smiles quickly fade. It's WORK to get a smiling picture. And usually requires two people.

Don't believe me? Probably because I take a hundred pictures to get a smile. I work at it. Because here's the type of pictures I usually get:



She's still so adorable huh? Even serious Sophia. Who really would make a great president someday. Who wouldn't trust a girl who even as a baby got serious. :-

Weekends are not for blogging.

I have great pictures of Sophia to share. A blog to write about the new thing I did in the first full week of 2010 and the new recipe I did. I also have a billion trillion gazillion ideas for the house that I'm bursting at the seems with (I really need to make a list, a long list, a color coded long list, a color coded long list on note cards, a color coded long list on note cards organized by importance). But because making a list is time consuming (I spent over an hour making a list of what we needed to do in the house before we moved in (including going in very soon to take measurements of all the windows, the dimensions of the soon to be craft/office room, and a bunch of other things that will all be worked on and hopefully completed by the end of the summer)).

I decided today to start a home blog. Charmingly Chandler will be about us, as a family, and will undoubtedly still include "home" things. But we are going to have another one, one focused completely on making our first house as homeowners into a home. The Chandler home. It will include the DIY projects I'm excited to do, it will include the projects we're not dumb brave enough to take on ourselves. Don't worry it won't be just Cody and Alena renovating and redesigning the house...we will have help. After all what are friends for right?

I am going to start up the blog this week. But obviously don't expect much in the way of activity. I am going to post some pictures there of the house from the online listing, and hopefully we're going to go back and look at the house this week and take some more pictures (for planning purposes, and for y'all to see!) I will be passing along some DIY blogs that I'm already addicted to and totally in love with. And share the ideas and the plans for the house that we've already decided on.

So a lot coming up. I will have a link to that blog on the side of the page for those that want to mosey over there when it's up and running (And pretty, because I can't have an ugly blog y'all!!)

But as I was saying, weekends are not for blogging. Weekends are family days and we stay so busy (and yes, reading design and DIY blogs is "busy"). I find much relief in Mondays (unlike those of you who work at paying jobs!) because on Mondays Sophia and I can hang out in our jammies and cuddle and play.

I will do better this coming week about blogging, since this coming week we won't be in a state of limbo about the house. :-)

We got the house y'all!

I was thinking I was going to have to wait on the final word until 12. And I was going to go crazy waiting. Being patient is not something I'm good with.

But Randy our agent called, and we got ourselves a house!

So on February 27th, 2010 we will have the keys to our new home.

I know you all want to see pictures. So I'm going to show you pictures off the listing. Which includes all of their belongings. And they don't show all of the rooms, in fact they only show two of the 3-5 bedrooms (they have the basement converted into 2 bedrooms, but we won't be doing that, one will eventually be a movie type room, and the other will be my craft room. For them there are 5 rooms, for us there will be 3). *It's been asked, I forgot to add it here. The house is 2,200 square feet!!

Ok to start off this is the sideish view of the house. I think they probably didn't post a picture of the front because two of the shutters are broken. But they are being replaced before closing. It IS only a one car garage, but they extended the driveway out for more parking. So for us, it's just fine. (Here, one car garages are all the rage. We aren't exactly sure why).


Now on to the living room from two different angles. We are leaving the wall color this color...at least for the time being. We *think* it will work out ok with our furniture, and if it doesn't...well it's just going to have to be like it is until we can get to that part of the list. We think it will be just fine!



Here is a picture of the kitchen. It may not be a dream kitchen, but it's pretty good. The closet you see on the left was a washer and drier area, but they moved the hook-ups else where and it doesn't look like they ever did anything with this space. We're going to add some shelves and make it an awesome pantry. Oh and yes, all the appliances are staying!!


This is the dining area. To the left of the table are the doors that go out to the deck.


Here is the master bedroom and bathroom. We have some MAJOR plans for the bathroom. But it will probably be a couple of years before we can make that happen. Eventually we will be repainting this room, again...big plans.



This room will be Sophia' room. It comes with two closets and is a decent size. They are repainting this room before we move in. A color of my choice, so I'm still trying to decide! Her room is on the second floor, and down the hall is another room, which I don't have a picture of, and a bathroom. I have a picture of that bathroom, but it's very similar to the master bathroom, so I don't think I need to show it! :-)


They converted the basement into two bedrooms and have a bathroom down there as well. I don't have any pictures, but imagine that you go down the steps and to the right is a room and to the left is a room. The room to the left has a door leading outside and has the door to the garage. The room to the right is just a plain room, with a sliding door closet at the end. We are removing the door and the tracks and having a book shelf built in. That room will be my craft room. And I can't help but remember what my Moms craft room used to look like and be excited that I will have a room to work on all the stuff I'm trying to learn how to do!!

The house isn't a fixer upper, but it is a few projects away from being the house that we want it to ultimately be! So in the future expect to hear more about that and see more pictures!!

She's gone from an animal of flight, to a fruit.

She's sounding a little less like a pterodactyl every day. She's found something new to do, and it amuses her way more than screaching and laughing.

She's now blowing raspberries. All.The.Time.

I spend most of my day squinting at everything because if I wear my glasses they end up with drool that took flight mid blow.



She's adorable right? Even with gallons of drool pouring our of her mouth constantly. You can't hate on it, because she makes drool cute!

Wooosahhhhh Baby Steps

No not Sophia's baby steps. Thank goodness. I am not ready.

But our baby steps into home ownership. First there was the looking for the house. Then the pre-approval. Then finding a house we liked (which was actually a huge step). Then the first offer. The counter offer. The counter offer to the counter offer. The approved counter offer. And now the waiting. The waiting to see what the other possible buyers are going to do with their contingency offer.

Ohhhh the waiting.

They have 24 hours. Twenty four hours. That's all. I can stay sane for that long right? To know if we have to start the searching again, or if this is it. If this is our home. Our Home. Ours. The home Sophia will take her first steps in. The home where we are 110% responsible for all of it. The home where I will likely burn more dishes, and where we will make more memories. Memories that will be remembered by wee Sophia. And by wee future Charming Chandlers. This would be the house that we invest in. Ours.

But we have to wait to know for sure.

It's all just baby steps after all.

Wordless Wednesday

Pictures:







Video:



*In future weeks you'll see some slight changes to Wordless Wednesdays to sort of dress it up instead of just tossing a bunch of pictures on here. :-)

This is the behind the scenes look....

I know I have been behind on the Sophia pictures. Things around the Chandler house have been busy. We've been looking for a house. Which, lets be honest, isn't that easy for two hard headed people like Cody and myself. We both have strong ideas about what we want, and while we both have the right idea in mind...we bump heads about the details a lot.

First we were looking to just buy....and everything we found was horribly taken care of (A common theme for this area from what we've learned). After that we decided to build. But after talking those details over with two people a little (ok a lot) more experienced we realized that the time frame would set us back and all of this area's new constuction is all "ticky tacky and they all look just the same" (name that show and you get a fake cookie!) Not to mention the details of trying to build anything we actually wanted cost us more than we would make if I had two husbands! So back to the idea board. We looked at newer construction, came back with the same results as if we were to build, with the added bonus of seeing what horrible work they are doing trying to get houses up here as fast as possible. We kept looking. Kept tossing around ideas....we found some more houses we'd like to take a look at and set up the appointment with the realtor.

And then we found it. Cody gets the credit for this find. I have no idea how my endless online searches of real estate never brought us to this house. But as I was getting ready to meet with our realtor Cody calls me into the living room to look at this house. It checks off 90% of the things we wanted and 100% of the things we felt like our house had to have. It has more room than any other house we've looked at. It has one more bathroom than any house we'd looked at. Was it too good to be true? Were we going to look at it and realize two chain smokers smoked inside the house every day for five years? Were we going to get there and find knife holes in the walls? Were we going to get there and see a huge mess left by someone who wanted to get out fast due to a foreclosure? (these are all things we HAD already seen, and that's skipping the house of the recent bachelor that lived in such clutter and mess that I needed to shower when we walked out of the house)

We pull up catious of having our hopes up. But they weren't y'all. They weren't at all. It was amazing. Two good sized kids rooms (which is SO uncommon for this area). A decent kitchen (nothing amazing, but it wasn't a closet sized kitchen so I liked it). Great closets through out. The basement has been remodeled, and they had made two bedrooms and added a bathroom. The master bed room would actually be big enough for a larger bed (which we've been wanting badly) and while the master bathroom needs some updating....we can work with it!


So....this brings me to the second new thing I've done so far in 2010.

We put an offer on a house!

We're expecting a counter offer. But we're praying. It's not in our hands. We know how far we can budge....so hopefully it all works out the way it's supposed to! And trust me, the moment we have more information, so will you!

How is wee Sophia these days?

You may be wanting a Sophia update. Since I didn't do one after her appointment last week. And with the holidays I didn't really write as much as I normally do.

Sophia is pretty much great. She didn't gain quite as much weight as we thought, she's still pushing 19 pounds. She's 26 and a half inches long. You may be wondering why she didn't grow much. Well I had the length wrong before, she was 25 inches long. I think it started off as a typo that just kept going. Oops.

Either way she's still hanging out in the 105th percentile. But the doctor isn't concerned because she's growing with the curve, just above it.

What I really want to talk about is sophia's HILARIOUS personality. It has REALLY come out lately. The girl LOVES to laugh. And she loves to trick people. We call her the pterodactyl now because she screaches and then laughes or blows raspberries in the air afterward. (I want to admit, I had to look up how to spell pterodactyl, because it seems like it would be spelled taradactile...but it's not). She does this silent laugh with her mouth wide open and her eyes squeezed shut, she kicks and flails her arms. She finds so much to be happy about. I love it!

We've been trying food as I've posted before. We've been through Pears, Avocados, Bananas, and Squash. She wasn't a big fan of the avocados or bananas, but I'm thinking it may be the consistency. She loves pears and I'm thinking she may be ready to have more than just an oz because she seems very disappointed when they are gone and she has to have a bottle.

She has learned to roll every which way. Which means she's waking herself up in her sleep more, and becoming even more of a daredevil. Now she has it in her mind to roll over in the bath. The first time she did it I almost cried. Half of her head was in the water and it felt like slow motion pulling her out of the water completely. We've decided it's time for a better tub for her, this week she'll probably be trying out the blow up tub.

We received a camcorder as a Christmas gift, so I plan on taping her a lot more. Every week I'll add a video on with the pictures of Wordless Wednesday. I can't promise that they will all be really interesting, but hopefully I'll be able to catch her personality for you all a little more.

More than anything I want to prove to you that she was a flying dinosaur in a previous life.

Two Thousand and Ten

I am looking forward to this year. To seeing what fun adventures are coming our way. This time in 2009 we were preparing ourselves for a baby....praying every morning and night for her healthy growth and that I would be able to keep her safe until she was ready for the world. And I think I did a pretty good job.

This year we on our way to owning our first home!

I have no doubts that 2010 will be a year we will always remember. As we make our first home together, a home that we own, I am excited, nervous, cautious, hopeful, and just plain HAPPY!

The rest of the blogging world did a review of 2009. I'm not going to put anyone through that since I spent most of the year pregnant. I spent a couple months in zombie mode because I wasn't sleeping. And I've spent the last two months or so blogging consistently enough for you to get a good idea of what our life is like here.

I will do the typical listing of my new years resolutions:

I am going to try to cook one thing I've never made before a week. That's a minimum of 52 new recipes this year.

I am going to try to do one new thing a week. Meaning 52 new things this year.

And as so many people before me have said, I am going to try to be a better person. More patient. More kind. I am going to listen more. And support more.


*Just to update after this there will be a thread a week about how I'm doing with my new years resolutions.

**I've already done something new: I got my eyebrows threaded today. Which was pretty painful (I don't care who says it's not). But they look pretty awesome!