i heart faces: hearts!

this week's theme at i heart faces is, quite appropriately, "hearts." i didn't really plan to take this photo, but after running errands on sunday and picking up a red heart balloon for davis, he brought me his black converse high tops to put on and i remembered we had just gotten his valentine's day shirts in the mail from carters.com. i set up our "photo studio" and tried to capture a few shots while he was in a good mood and would cooperate. first time i've tried to do a studio look with him in a while, and let me tell you--mobile toddlers aren't easy to photograph! but he cooperated long enough for me to get a few good ones and to remember this precious, precious time. when he was definitely the "most eligible bachelor"--but only had eyes for his mommy.

apologies

i didn't really intend to take a week off--but i did. every time i thought about blogging, i got distracted or was caught up in another project and so it just kinda got pushed to the back burner. but here we are! a week later and i'm finally getting around to writing about our previous weekend :)

we had a simple friday evening, bringing dinner in and relaxing at home

davis pretty much gets his own food right now--we don't make him eat our dinner and stick instead to the things we KNOW he'll eat. but he was having a blast eating off of my plate that night, and i would set aside a couple of green beans or some mac and cheese that he'd immediately grab and devour. the boy loves him some mac and cheese :)

saturday morning, i got up and made myself presentable for a presentation on campus. my job doesn't require weekend hours very often, but i was happy to do this one with the career center and got lots of good feedback from the students who attended.

 

afterward, i headed home and we got ready for my mom and grandma to come visit. honestly, saturday afternoon wasn't too exciting--we pretty much stayed around the house and spent a little bit of time outside playing. my brother stopped by since he was in town for all-district band and visited with all of us. mom and grandma offered to watch davis for us that evening so we could go out to dinner for my birthday (which was sunday.) i was intially in a bit of a funk because of the gloomy weather and stressing out about some things, but once we got out and were able to get some time to ourselves, the funk moved on out. the brownie sundae after dinner didn't hurt either!

 

thankfully, even though i shared my birthday with the super bowl again this year, the steelers weren't playing and it was more of a "normal" football game. we got up and went to church, leaving davis at home to take his nap and spend more time with his gran and gigi. 

after church and his nap, we met them out at rucker john's for lunch, where i got another brownie sundae and singing, this time.

davis was quite entertained by the spectacle of it all.

and when we got back home, he was more than happy to help me open my gifts (small ones, since my main gift this year was the iPhone!)

a life is good shirt! so soft and comfy--and i LOVED the details with the embroidery.

 

we all settled in to watch the game, and we didn't even do any special food. we had tons of leftovers in the refrigerator, so i think we had leftover barbeque or spaghetti or something like that. so exciting... and as quickly as the weekend began, it was over again. i snapped this instagram photo before davis went to bed that night. i'm sure many of the other working moms can relate with the sunday nights blues...just that feeling in the pit of your stomach that the weekend is over and we're coming up on another long week of busy mornings and evenings that seem all too short in getting to spend time with your child.

(and looking back at all of these, i realized that davis has his wubba nub--pacifier--in every picture. i promise he doesn't have it all the time. but with these last couple of molars cutting through, he has seemed to need it more often lately. i'm not looking forward to the process of weaning from it...)

the night concluded with a cupcake from your perfect cake--my favorite! i actually made it last for several days since i had had so many sweets over the weekend. nothing like indulging over your birthday :)

and of course, most of these photos are instagrams. i think i'm a little bit addicted.

no big plans for this weekend, which is nice. it's been an atypical week with justin's mom out of town and us using a back-up sitter (who is wonderful, but you know how it is--just not davis's routine and he's seemed a little off.) i've only run once this week as well and am going to try and stay motivated to go running tonight. i've hit week 5 of the c25k plan, which has a couple of intimidating days for me as i've looked ahead. i've contemplated repeating some days until i feel up to the "jog for 20 minutes" interval that is scheduled for day 3 of this week....but i don't know. i don't want to wimp out either. maybe we'll see how tonight goes (jog 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 5 minutes) and take it from there.

what are your plans for the weekend?

a little messy...

i had one more thing that i wanted to do with davis before the weekend was over. i had read before about using vanilla pudding as finger paint, and adding a drop of food coloring to it to create fun, edible colors. we had a box of pudding in the pantry and some leftover food coloring from an activity i had done with clients while i was still doing child therapy. so sunday night, before dinner and bedtime, i decided to give it a shot!

he wasn't quite sure what to make of it at first....

but eventually  he got into it and was smearing the colors all around his tray!

he started to get fussy, though, since it was right before dinner, so i cut up some fruit and added it to the tray in case he was hungry. grapes and strawberries taste good with vanilla pudding!

he was quickly done. seriously, this probably only lasted about 10 or 15 minutes, tops. i guess i hoped he would enjoy the texture and "getting messy" aspect of it more, but i think he was cold and hungry and just a bad time of day to do it. and maybe my expectation of his attention span was a little much, too?

at any rate, it was fun while it lasted! we whisked him away to the bath since he was pretty sticky and hosed down the tray for an easy clean up. good times!

playdate!

we are so blessed to have great friends in our lives who are at similar stages with their families. i know that a huge number of my readers click over from lindsay's blog, and i can't put into words how grateful we are for their friendship. i have actually known lindsay and jeremy since we were in college together (jeremy and i were in the same scholarship program, and he and lindsay were dating at that point, so we saw her often) but since getting to know them from our small group that met at their house a few years back, then going through our pregnancies together when she was pregnant with collen--it has been so wonderful to have them there!

our boys occasionally see each other in the nursery at church, but neither of them do real well staying in there right now, and both of us kinda prefer to have them with us as long as we can. what can i say? i only get so many hours with my son on the weekend, and sometimes it's hard to force him to stay in the nursery when i would rather just stick with him! we had been meaning to get them together recently and finally got a playdate set up for this past weekend. we packed up some of davis's big car ramps and went on over to their house to hang out for a couple of hours. the boys had a blast! they are about 10 weeks apart, so not a huge gap, but collen is definitely more vocal than davis and has a wider vocabulary. 

they had fun pushing each other around on this ride-on toy.

and then they both got a kick out of the hokey pokey elmo that is collen's newest favorite toy. collen will dance with him :)

you could tell when they started wearing down and were ready for the afternoon naps (or "rest periods"--davis never actually napped that afternoon.)

"so, what do you think? should we do this again?"

so so thankful for sweet boys who can play together and dear friends that we can spend time with! the adult conversation is just as important as watching the boys play together :)

backyard

we have still been so blessed this winter with some beautiful weather. saturday was another sunny afternoon, and we got some yard work done outside. all of these changes with the weather have the weeds growing but the grass is still dead. so justin decided he could dig up all the weeds while they were easy to distinguish from the grass. and of course, davis had to help! 

we brought out some of his tools so he could dig if he wanted to (without possibly poking his eye out)

but he was more drawn to the big boy tools

lots of fun getting dirty!

i adore all of his sweet faces...

then it was time for a spin in the cozy coupe. he still hasn't actually figured out how to make this one move, but he loves climbing in and out of it.

nothing like stealing mama's pear and taking a few bites out of it (he actually got a decent snack out of this)

and probably my favorite photo from the whole afternoon. i may not have a girl that i can dress up in flowers, ruffles and bows, but i can definitely enjoy a pair of adorable jeans with dirt on the knees and a worn-in pair of converse high tops.