little ladies' man

This morning was Malakai's first Sunday in the nursery at church and he did great.

Tonight we went back and helped with child care for an event. As soon as we set Malakai down he was surrounded by all the little girls.

They were chattering about how cute he is and the faces he was making at them. It was a funny little moment and I'm so glad Ben captured it with his camera phone.

PS Kai's ultrasound on his head to check for excess fluid is tomorrow morning. Say a pray for him tonight if you please.

I'm not big on the celeb gossip...

but when I saw this I couldn't keep from sharing.

Don't know much about the Kardashians, but props to Kourtney for being honest!

photo Friday: cha-cha-cha-chaaaanges

I'm finding myself looking back at Malakai's first few days, heck, even his first few months and noticing what about him looks the same and what is different. I wonder what he'll look like as a toddler, little boy, teenager, and a man. Some days I swear he's going to end up being a clone of his dad.

So as I'm a bit disorganized and also because I forgot that it's Friday already, this post is a bit late. Since I don't have a monthly picture feature on my blog I thought that today I'd post some pictures of Malakai over the past 6 months to chronicle how he's changed.

July

This was taken with my dad's cell phone, one of my favorites from the day he was born. 

Look at that grimace!

Just three days old, so skinny!

my first attempt at making baby food

Earlier this week I began the process of making baby food for Malakai. We chose sweet potato for his first veggie. On Monday night after Ben got home from work I popped over to the grocery store to pick up the potatoes and some freezer bags. The plan was to make everything and feed it to him that night, but my attempt to multi-task didn't work out so great. I got the potatoes baked that night. I used the instructions on wholesomebabyfood.com which say to slice the skin and scoop out the "meat" from the potato, but they were so well done that the skin just slid/peeled right off. I tossed the insides into a sealed container and my project was "too be continued" as Kai enjoyed rice cereal once more.

Tuesday after Henry got picked up and Kai ate his rice cereal I went to work. I didn't want to run the blender while he was sleeping so he stayed in his high chair and watched.

My First GIVEAWAY!!!

Good morning all. (it's still morning for us West Coasters anyway)

I'm excited to finally announce my first giveaway. I never imagined that I'd be asked to do a giveaway on my blog, but I'm thrilled and hope to be able to do more in the near future.

I was just recently contacted by a representative from CSN about hosting this giveaway and obviously accepted. I knew CSN from other blog giveaways that I've entered. They have a lot of different websites and endless items. From bar stools, to baby toys, to kitchen essentials.

Which brings me to the giveaway item. Inspired by my desire to make Malakai's baby food on my own (a separate post on that coming soon), I chose to give a Kalorik Sunny Morning Hand Blender/Mixer in Lime Green. I chose it because I've read that hand blenders are great for pureeing baby food and it comes with a handy little mixing cup.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. It can be about anything. This first entry is mandatory before acquiring additional entries. Also mandatory, having an easily accessible email address on your blog profile or leaving it in the comments.

For additional entries (leave an additional comment for each entry):

• follow my blog publicly- 1 entry
• blog about this give away- 2 entries! (please be sure to link your specific post to the comment)
• follow me on twitter & tweet with a link to this giveaway-1 entry
• add my button to your blog- 1 entry (again, be sure to leave me a link to your blog)
• add me to your blog roll- 1 entry

The contest will be closed at midnight next Wednesday, February 3rd (one week from today) and the winner will be announced on Thursday February 4th.

Disclosure: I have received no compensation or merchandise from CSN


update: I'm participating in the Giveaway Blog Hop!

shots, solids, & an ultrasound

Yep, yesterday was Malakai's 6 month well-baby visit. I'm pretty sure we've had different insurance at every one of these appointments. I'm happy to say that I think we'll be with this insurance for a long time now that Ben is working full time and past his 90 days. His review went great so now we have insurance and a HSA! It's high deductible (bleh) but that's better than nothing...and by nothing I mean having my in-laws pay for private coverage because they're wonderful and we're poor.

 I was so glad I made the appointment for mid-morning. We usually go in the late afternoon after Ben was done with work and we'd be waiting FOREVER because of all the parents with school-aged kids coming in at that time. Even though Ben had to miss some work, we got in straight away.

Malakai weighed in at approximately (because he wouldn't stop wiggling) 20lbs 11oz, length 28 inches, & head circumference 19 inches. Yep, that's my BIG boy.

belated photo friday

 I wasn't feeling very well on Friday so I didn't get to updating around here. I'm doing much better and here our the photos from our past week.

Malakai has taken to really rolling all over to get around. We put away the play gym since he'd get himself caught on the sides and fuss when he couldn't roll anymore. Now he rolls until he wedges himself into a spot like the loveseat...but he doesn't fuss much about it. He just kicks or grabs at the cushions.

Still not sitting up completely independently for a long period of time, but he's working his way there. Having a focal object helps.

oh yeah, by the way

Malakai turned 6 months on Saturday.

I haven't been all that eager to write about it because I don't like thinking about it. I've been looking forward to this age for a long time. He's learning so much and is active and playful and will even snuggle with me sometimes when he's sleepy. But now that it's here, I can't help but be sad that half of his first year has already flown by. Before I know it he won't be a little baby anymore. I'm doing my best to savor the moments while they're here because I already miss the time that has passed.

Anyway, enough of that mushy stuff. We did take some pictures on the day he turned six months (1.16.10)

tweet, tweet

I consider myself moderately savvy when it comes to technology. Most of it I learn from my husband who keeps up via a few websites like engadget and TUAW, what I lovingly refer to as his "nerd sites". He embraces the nerdiness, enough that these websites are bookmarked in a folder with that very title. Gotta love him.

When Twitter started to become popular, I thought it was kinda lame. I figured I could just update my status on facebook here and there and that Twitter was too limited. Then I find that some people post different things to their twitter than their FB.

I've also become mildly addicted to internet giveaways...and many of them offer an extra entry if you follow on twitter or tweet about the giveaway. I just ignored that since I didn't have an account.

Well, now I do. I just figured out how to link it to my blog, inspired by "Blair" at The Heir to Blair and I can tweet via my mobile phone. WHOAH! Check me out, adding some new skills to my techno-resume. I decided to join twitter because I often find myself wanting to update the blog community in little snipits but am still keeping this blog separate from my personal facebook. So you can find me at www.twitter.com/shanleann but I'm still sort of figuring things out.

house hunt

Saturday afternoon we set out to see 4 houses guided by a Realtor we hadn't met, but the first house we wanted to see happened to be listed under her so we just asked her to show us the others as well while we were at it.

The first stop was a short-sale that was either waiting on the bank to approve a buyers offer or had just been approved...I wasn't really clear on that. Either way it wasn't really available but the sellers let us browse as the rest in that area had similar if not identical layouts. Ben really like this house from what we saw of it online, unfortunately the layout wasn't what we were looking for. Also, ALL the bathrooms had carpet. Sorry if this is something you have in your house...but, ew!

The second was a slightly different variation on the first and also a short-sale but with no offers. We didn't really like it either. The fact that it looked like a frat house after finals wasn't helping. The sellers were obviously in between packing and cleaning, meaning that there were just shreds of junk here and there, wires hanging out of holes in the walls, and very very dirty shag carpet. I know that it could cleaned up easily but it was an even more closed off layout so we weren't all that impressed.

We fell in love with house number three. Even though we haven't met with the loan consultant yet, I have a feeling it'll be out of our price range. It had a very open layout with the master suite on the main floor and an open landing upstairs. It's also within walking distance of a great K-8 school.

Number 4 wasn't bad either. Across the street from the same school. A bit older than the others and about 300 less square feet. The whole thing was BLUE. Literally every room had some blue on the walls, the carpet in the entire house was smurf blue and the outside was blue with blue trim! Obviously we could look past colors since they are easily changed, but whoah!

Throughout our jaunt from home to home the Realtor didn't seem to take us seriously. She didn't really tell us much about any of the houses until we asked, and she actually had negative things to say about some of them...interesting coming from the realtor trying to sell the homes! Needless to say, we'll be looking for a different Realtor to work with when we look again.

It was so much fun to look at houses and talk about our likes and dislikes. We drove around the neighborhoods on our own after parting ways with the Realtor and jotted down some of the other house numbers with For Sale signs so we could look them up online later. There was an model house open at the edge of one neighborhood but the bebe bean had fallen asleep in the back and we didn't want to wake him.

After sleeping on it that night we both felt that house 3 wouldn't fit our lifestyles very well. I couldn't get the second story open landing out of my head. It's easy to climb up and would be a fatal fall to the living room floor below. Also, all the "kids" rooms were on the second floor and the master was on the first. While we swooned over the master suite with the dual shower heads and walk in closet through the bathroom, we'd be really far away from Malakai upstairs and I think we'd get too tired of running up and down them in the middle of the night.

Ben and I both grew up in single story or "ranch style" homes and I have a strong preference for a single story home for my small children. Perhaps if we are able to move up to another home some years down the road when the kids are older and more independent that a second story wouldn't be a problem at all. We'd still prefer for the master to be on the main level so we could grow old there.

So I've spent the rest of the weekend browsing homes online and saving them to my favorites on Zillow (an awesome website that I found via The Nest). Once we meet with the loan consultant at the end of the month we'll contact Realtors and start looking in person again.

Let me know if you have any tips to help us make the process go a little smoother. I'll keep ya'll posted on our new adventure!

Photo Friday -the babes

Daddy decided to see the world from Kai's point of view

We finally put together the ball popper. Malakai's Christmas present from both sets of Grandparents

Henry's standing on his own...I SERIOUSLY need to baby proof

someone will only sleep if he's in our bed again

little friends

I always prefer to take photos without flash, but even with lots of natural light moving babies are usually blurry. In this one I've captured their attention with a particularly loud rattle

Happy Weekend!

And to those who have a three day weekend for MLK Jr. Day I'm particularly jealous as my husband doesn't get it off work, which means it'll be just a normal Monday for me too.

PS we're going to see some houses this weekend, I'll update on Monday.

a little scary

Ben and I have started to seriously look into whether or not we could buy a house this year...yikes!

It's pretty overwhelming and it's hard to know where to begin. There are so many factors to weigh in on, people to consult with, and houses to look at!

We're checking out a house this weekend and will probably troll the open houses as well. Also, we have an appointment with a loan consultant that my Grandma recommended week after next. To be honest, our debt to income ratio is a bit scary (darned student loans!) so I'm not getting my hopes up in case we find that we'd be totally in over our heads once we meet with the financing people.

Still, it's rather exciting and fun to dream.

cars and seats

I just ordered Malakai's convertible car seat on amazon. After endless research we decided on the First Years True Fit.

I'm still surprised that we were able to get the car seat we wanted for only $149 and zero shipping! We ordered online because this one isn't available in any stores in our area.

I've read numerous reviews from other moms and it rates well for safety here, there, and everywhere. It should fit well in our compact car...the one that we haven't driven for 5 weeks or seen in 2. That's right, our beloved little Neon is still in the shop. Long story short, after dealing with insurance and a badly timed ice storm we were at the end of the line and they couldn't start working on our car until after Christmas- three weeks after the accident.

They've told us three times now "It should be done by- fill in the blank- call us to check in" and when we check in...there's something else keeping it from being ready. First it was additional damage, now it's water testing on the exterior and then reinstalling the interior, blah blah blah. So we MIGHT get it back on Tuesday.

So we're still driving the electric blue loser cruiser

sorry if you own a car like this...but it's so not our style. I've come to loath it in fact. It has a lot of quirks like, I have to pull the handle of the passenger door three times before I can get out...it's like a prison, a really flamboyant old lady car prison.

photo friday- the usual subjects

Practicing our independence

whooooaah!

Graduated from the bumbo to the high chair, Daddy's legs are grateful

The return of our friend Henry

Who learned to clap over Christmas break

An obsession with mama's hard-plastic starbucks cup

showing off the adorable Baby Gap outfit  that mama & daddy got me for Christmas

watching Henry play while mama takes pictures

Happy weekend everyone!

i finally figured it out!

and then he pooped.