One Month and Charleston....

Blog title of the year right?! Man I'm amazing. I bet you all missed my amazingness (and my snazzy blog titles) while I was MIA... sorry world, didn't mean to deprive you of my awesomeness for so long. 

Apparently I'm not one of those bloggers who pops out a baby and blogs from the hospital. 

Speaking of baby.... 

Caleb--one month old!

isn't he the most beautiful thing EVER?!? Well, one of two of the most beautiful things (that Aubrey is pretty freaking amazing). Seriously, this child is in the running for Best Baby of the Century. No jokes, he's sleeping through the night people.... through. the. night. 

I'm under no illusions that this will continue, but I am hoping and praying it will! Last night he slept from 9:30pm until 7:15am.

seriously. ser. i. ous. ly! Aubrey didn't sleep through the night until she was almost 15 months old. It's amazing how much calmer a mom I can be this time around! 

The above shot is from his one month mini-shoot, he's two months old tomorrow....where did time go?? And my little moose is weighing in at 13lbs 11oz! He's getting his chub on and we're loving it.

I'll post more pictures of Caleb and Aubrey next time (that one was the only one I had edited on my desktop--Thanks PicMonkey website!), but for now I will leave you with random shots that I took this last trip to Charleston. We headed there while Zach's mom was visiting and I'm happy to say that the beauty, charm and gorgeousness that is Charleston has not worn off and was not a hyped-up-first-time-there-so-I-was-in-a-daze type of love... my love for that city is real people and it will not die! Enjoy.... 

A Mini Photo Shoot....

I, Jennifer, love to take pictures.... but I'll tell you something--I'm not a fan of taking pictures of people. There I said it.

I'm not a fan because I'm not that good at it---funny how you like to do the things you're good at and not the things you suck at. ;)

Sure every once in a while I'll get a good shot, but in general...nope.

Anyway, I was kinda procrastinating Caleb's little photo shoot I had planned (and was super excited for since before he was born) because I was scared I'd get crap pictures.

I got over myself and ended up getting some cute ones, not amaze-balls ones, but cute ones.

And some times, well sometimes that's just good enough!

Here he is in all his naked-on-a-coke-crate/cuddled-into-a-fluffy-blanket/jammed-into-a-basket glory :) ....

Photography courtesy of yours truly

and 

Editing courtesy of Amy from Amy Rehbein Photography

Good TImes....

This little girl is testing my patience these days.... Seriously.

She's perfect as can be with Caleb, but in every other area of life? Glass. Cage. Of. Emotion.

All tears, all the time.

I suppose a lot has happened in the last little bit to cause her to feel overwhelmed, but a lot has happened in the last little bit to make me feel overwhelmed too. 

Bad combo.

Ahh to have multiple females in one house.

I can't stress it enough, I have two GOOD kids.

Caleb is a dream baby and Aubrey is so good, but when the emotions come a-knockin' ....

trouble.

And let me tell ya, I've gots me some emotions as well.

I'm trying to keep calm and not overreact, but when you have a baby that is going through a growth spurt and decided that last was an ALL NIGHT eat-a-thon (with no sleep... for either of us)... and the next day your {almost} 4 year old decides to be a drama queen about her Quiet Time... you can lose it pretty quickly.

And I did, but I calmed down (and won the battle after an hour of trying, she's quietly watching a movie in her room!! Victory!) and prayed really hard for patience...and for Zach to get home at a decent time (a girl can dream right?!).

So I just have to keep trying to figure this '2 kids' thing out... or more so, figure out an overly emotional 4 year old mixed with a postpartum mama. 

Good times.

Caleb...

I was waiting to publish this post until I had thought of something to write along with it, but I'm just not  feeling it. So an almost wordless picture post is what you're going to get...

But let's face it, this kid is cute enough for these pictures to speak for themselves!

See, told ya.

Enjoy....

Random Thoughts....

*Aubrey calls Caleb "my baby"! Love. It.

*Post-partum body's are awesome.

*that was sarcastic.

*Why is it that the minute you have the baby, all forgiveness for your body goes out the window and you want all the weight off NOW ?!

*Caleb is a breeze of a baby... only thing is this kid is gassy... like really gassy.
*I have never witnessed a child with more violent hiccups than Caleb. They're make-him-throw-up violent.
*I've rediscovered the joys of gripe water for babies!
*Seriously, this stuff is amazing--be gone hiccups!!
*I'm currently feeling worse than I did the day after I gave birth.
*Awesome.
*Zach's on vacation and I'm SO NOT READY for him to go back.
*Oh Monday, how I loath you.
*I'm missing my parents.
*they were such a help around the house and with Aubrey, it was so hard to see them go.
*Did I mention I hate Monday?
*I do... hate Monday April 2nd, that is.
*I've taken WAY less pictures with Caleb than I wanted to. Whoops. I need to get my photog on.
*I'm currently editing some pictures of him so hopefully I'll get those up tonight... wish me luck!

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!!

He's here.... 

That's right, HE! Whoda thunk... not me...or Zach.

Girl. That's all we thought.

It was once he was born and we found out he was, in fact, ALL boy, that I realized how much I thought it was a girl.

Totally thought girl. 

Weird how we convince ourselves of one way or another.

I guess I should share the name... 

That would be nice, huh?! 

Caleb Nicholas Zachariah

and he's a moose...

8lbs 15oz

and yes, that's pretty much 9 pounds.

Took me until the next day to put 2 and 2 together on that one. I blame the labor.

And speaking of labor... that could be a whole other post on it's own and, no, I won't go into the gruesome details. 

BUT his birth was a bit touch and go near the end and the words "extremely low hear rate" and "Emergency C-Section" were hollered out into the intercom and let me tell you, if that doesn't make you want to push that sucker out, like, RIGHT NOW?!? I don't know what will. 

Point is, Caleb is healthy and fabulous and he smells Amaze-balls! 

Bahahaha balls... boy. 

Sorry, I have a Urologist for a husband and I never really was one to be classy to begin with.

And this beautiful girl is beside herself excited to have a baby brother. 

Zero jealousy and ALL love from her!

And Zach... Oh Zach, he's absolutely BURSTING with pride for his (not-so) little boy!

In all the hub-bub of you know, giving birth'n'all, the doctors and nurses... and med students... and residents.... (yes I gave birth at a university hospital and I had quite the small village watching me do it, AWESOME) people were just excited he was out and all I hear is Zach holler out above Caleb's fabulous cry and ALL that noise (there was A LOT of it) 

"IT'S A BOYYYY!!!" and everyone burst out laughing!

Best part?! Zach has absolutely NO recollection of saying it!

Love. Him.

We are all SO thankful for this healthy baby boy that God has blessed us with and we're all doing good! 

I'll post some pictures that I took once they're out of my camera-SD-card-purgatory... feeling a bit lazy and perfectly content with my mom doing everything for me right now! 

Finally Finished {Faux Chenille Baby Blanket}

So the baby has not arrived yet, obviously or else I'd be shouting it from the rooftops!

I guess my womb is just way too cozy... dang my cozy womb. 

Instead I will show you what else I labored over lately (man I'm funny).

The faux chenille baby blanket that I made based on the Made tutorial turned out SO CUTE!

Even if I mangled my hands with all that cutting between the seems. 

My hand looks like Chandler's Pacman claw from Friends.

Awesome.

One thing that I could do without is binding. 

I. hate. binding.

Or maybe binding hates me....

Not sure, but either way, I always have the toughest time with it.

I love the colors that I chose for the blanket, the top ended up being what I thought would be the bottom.... that was confusing. 

What I meant was, I had a brown and white polka dotted flannel for the side of the blanket that would "show" and I decided at the last minute that I wanted the green on the other side to be the one that was prominent.

Don't really think that made anymore sense than before... let's pretend it did, 'kay?

So in the end, once I had painstakingly cut all the chenille-like-whatever, the polka dotted side ended up looking kinda funky.

But to me it's a good funky, psychedelic if you will :)

And of course Aubrey got herself all up in this photo shoot. 

Funny because this kid is NOT pleased when I pull out the camera these days... guess I over did it there for a while. Oops.

So soft she had to fake-sleep on it.

The lovely green :) 

And Aubrey's too-cute feet....

This seriously was one of the most time consuming projects I've ever done. And soooo NOT an instant gratification one either, which is usually how I roll. 

So worth it in the end...

Even if it looks wonky because I wasn't fully paying attention when I tried to trim the edges and make it a rectangle.... more like a trapezoid (hence no full blanket shot!).