phew!

it's amazing what difference a week can make.

if you'd talked to me last tuesday, i probably would have been in tears or irrationally have blown up in your face, after weeks of stress and difficulties with dane's naps. he not only slept for only half an hour at a time, but he'd started crying for up to an hour at a time before he would finally fall asleep in his crib. it was TERRIBLE--for both of us, i'm sure.

then i decided to try and let him nap in his carseat--and the first time i did, he napped for two and a half hours. ever since then, every single day he's slept for about three hours more PER DAY than he was last week. and he doesn't cry when he's falling asleep. he just sits happily in his carseat and talks to himself until he's finally quiet.

and i kind of feel like life is absolutely amazing. he hasn't napped for more than two hours a day since he was six weeks old--i don't even know what to do with myself with all this free time. seriously--what do i do? i've cleaned more, read more, baked some stuff, and right now, i'm blogging. i KNOW this won't last forever, but i am just so grateful that for now, the crying has stopped.

on an unrelated note (BECAUSE THERE MUST BE PICTURES), we took some photos on easter sunday. we weren't matching (my skirt was pink) but it actually looks like we were in these pictures.

he sure looked handsome in his easter outfit his grandma bought for him while she was out here visiting! ESPECIALLY in those overall shorts. those legs of his just don't quit. 

actually a really good family pic, taken just with tommy sticking his arm out. that almost never works! (also, dane = zoolander)

also: BROCCOLI SMILE! (this first picture is my favorite face that dane makes: he always gives these cheesy almost-closed-mouthed grins that make his cheeks look huge and crinkle his eyes. it's even cuter when there's broccoli and peas sticking out from in between his gums.)

pictures for my family

yet another blog post of just dane pictures... because i know everyone wants to see lots of cute pictures of him!

note the drool hanging off his chin.

trying to feed him some food, but all he wants to eat are his feet.

we ate spaghetti for dinner last night and dane had a really great time playing with it and getting covered in the sauce. 

domestic homemaking random stuff

being at home all day makes me much more interested in being more organized in how i do things at home. and much more interested in projects and skills and things i can do here without leaving the house. sounds like every other stay-at-home mom, right? but doesn't it make sense to try and make the everyday things that have to get done anyways more fun for yourself?

• cleaning: other than dishes, tommy and i used to never clean anything around the house until it was all just too messy to ignore and i was about to lose my mind--then we'd spend one whole saturday scrubbing the bathrooms, cleaning out the fridge, and vacuuming. but since i'm home all day things are getting messier more often AND i don't want to spend our only day with tommy home with us just cleaning all day, so i've been doing a bit of cleaning every day and messing around with different types of cleaning schedules. but really, i've come to the conclusion that i'm still a once-a-week-big-cleaning-day kind of gal. i hate having to do something every day. so now i'm going to assign mondays to be the big cleaning day and see how that works--and then the rest of the days of the week i'll organize as necessary and not worry about mopping or vacuuming or any of that junk.
• cooking: we've kind of been in a funk with figuring out what meals to make and what to eat for dinner lately (or at least, i have). so i've made a goal to cook my way through the our best bites cookbook--all of the dinner recipes, at least--which will give us the chance to try a bunch of new things and make it easy for me to pick something to make for dinners every week. i don't know how much it will expand my cooking skills by any means, since OBB is meant to be easy and accessible (and that's why i love it so much) but it will hopefully introduce us to a bunch of delicious meals, which is all we need right now. 
• organizing: we sold our coffee table on craigslist and it has made so much more room in our living room! i am loving it! it was also a huge space for clutter--we'd just drop everything on it--and now that's just removed. hallelujah. instant de-cluttering.
• MOST IMPORTANT: i finished the sewing class that i took at durham tech last week. there were a number of setbacks (buying not enough fabric, cutting a hole in the dress (seriously), cutting the wrong size pattern, being the world's SLOWEST sewist (?)), but i finally finished my dress! the class basically took you through one project, start to finish. we all bought the same pattern and did the same dress. since i basically knew nothing about making clothes before doing this, i learned a lot of things: how to sew darts, how to alter a pattern to fit your body better (i had to add 4 inches of length around the waist on this dress!), how to add sleeves to a dress, how to do a zipper, how to use interfacing (and what interfacing is). i felt really accomplished after finishing this . . . the only unfortunate thing is that i won't be able to wear it anywhere for a while because i'm still nursing. 

but then on saturday i also made this skirt (trying to use my sewing skills!). it was called "the one-hour skirt" on the pattern (it's just one with an elastic waistband, nothing fancy) but it definitely took me five hours to do. oh well! it's all about practicing, i guess. and i DID wear this to church yesterday.

basically, i am cleaning, and cooking, and sewing up a storm around here, around the never-ending working on dane's napping schedule. WHY IS HE THE WORST NAPPER EVER? gahhhhh i just have to get out some of my frustration as i'm listening to him cry in his crib after sleeping for 20 minutes.

at least he's the world's cutest and happiest baby when i'm not trying to get him to nap.

happy hands

dane has started doing this thing we call "happy hands," because it looks just like the happy hands sign language club from napoleon dynamite. remember it?

dane will grab his left hand with his right hand, open and close his left hand, and stare fixedly at them until he needs them to do something else. then a few minutes later he'll do it again. and again. and again. and again. he's so fascinated by them. he'll also just wave his arm around randomly while he's eating, and when he focuses on his fingers he just looks at them like he's discovered the 116th element on the periodic table. 

we're not sure where he figured out how to do the napoleon dynamite move, but it's pretty hilarious. 

seriously, wouldn't life be pretty great if everyone had the same attitude as a six-month-old? so amazed and impressed and excited by every little thing, from the smallest breeze to the light coming in through the curtains. so thrilled to go on a walk or running errands to target. so un-self-conscious when they burp randomly and poop audibly and drool all over everything within reaching distance. so totally, thoroughly happy to see you every time they make eye contact with you--as if you've been gone for days instead of just sitting where they couldn't see you until they turned their head. i bet if everyone acted that way, we'd all be a lot happier. (and covered in drool, but whatever.)

6 months

not much commentary right now, but just a few quick pictures of our big six-month-old boy.

he's been really happy to spend his six-month birthday with his grandma murphy! it's been a great day.

a few random cute pics

and, to make up for the lack of dane pictures in the last post . . . 

we made waffles for breakfast on saturday and let dane chew on a few strips of waffle. he LOVED it--he was chewing, gnawing, swallowing, so happy to be able to actually eat the stuff he was putting into his mouth. it was awesome. we've had friends tell us about different ways they're feeding their babies (same age as dane) and that made us not afraid to let him try and eat this. and he loved it so much it made me want to give him more grown-up food soon again.

and this morning, he rolled over while i was getting ready to change his diaper, and he was so happy just lying there on his stomach. he usually hates tummy time but he was still kind of waking up so he just lay there so happily for at least ten minutes. it was pretty dang cute. 

hello, cute boy!

bond, james bond

lest you think that all tommy and i think about is dane (okay, you're right, it is), here's something else we've been doing recently: we're on a james bond movie-watching spree. RANDOM FACT ABOUT ME: i'd never seen a james bond movie before watching skyfall over thanksgiving break in the outer banks with alec and sarah. tommy stayed home with dane, but they watched several other ones that wes had brought late at night (while i was sleeping) and we both got just enough of a taste of 007 that we wanted to start watching them. so now we've watched eleven of them (without paying for any of them--thank you durham county library!) and we're planning on watching the rest of them. it's kind of a fun entertainment project for us to work on. we're keeping a list of our favorites in order and then by the end, we'll be able to rate them all.

some thoughts:

-we both think the daniel craig ones are the best. but i just think they're a totally different type of movie--you can't even really compare them to the classic ones.
-other than daniel craig, i like sean connery the best. i'm not a huge roger moore or pierce brosnan fan.
-i had NO IDEA how cheesy and punny the movies were before i started watching them! people made them sound like they were all serious film-type movies, but all the one-liners and cheesy seductions that bond throws out really make me laugh. in the classic bond movies, he seriously seems just like a teenager with a gun sometimes.