Last Sunday, when Travis picked Logan up from the nursery, his teacher said, "He's been walking. He takes about four steps or so. He'll probably need to move up to the next class next week." You guys. That's ridiculous! My sweet baby boy only just moved to the crawlers class. [In January. But still.] He's not ready to be with the walkers yet. Although I will say this: apparently Logan's Sunday school teacher knows better than I how much can change in just a week. On Tuesday he learned how to stand up. Not pull up. Stand up. He'd done it a couple times before, but never consistently. Then on Tuesday, it just clicked. He practiced it all day yesterday (Wednesday) and even challenged himself by trying to pick up a toy while in the standing up process. And then he takes steps. Slow, wobbly steps. He's improved quite a bit in just a week. He even had the thought to chase Sabre yesterday. He was climbing on the poor dog when Sabre finally realized he could leave. Logan tried really hard to walk after him, but only got about two steps in before he fell. [He was trying to go way too fast!] The one thing I didn't expect with all this "learning to walk" stuff was how good Logan is at catching himself. He rarely gets hurt. And I gotta say, after my first experience with baby injury blood, I'm more than happy to avoid any and all injuries. Logan doesn't stop doing something just because he got hurt once--he does it again, just differently. Pretty smart. (As I'm typing this, he's behind the glider playing with a basket of newborn socks I was pretending were already packed away, and his "baby Bible." Not important, just thought I'd let you know.)
So I started binge-watching Fixer Upper the other day. There aren't all that many episodes online, but I'm pretty good at tracking tv shows down. The show itself is wonderful. I've missed home improvement shows, and this one is probably my favorite. (It does, however, make Waco look quite a bit nicer than it actually is. Don't get me wrong; there are some nice parts of Waco. But I know the areas they're fixing up these houses...and there's a reason they don't show you the surrounding houses.) But you know what the problem with watching home improvement shows is? Suddenly your house looks completely inadequate. I mean really though. I've gone through and made a list of all the things--big and small--that I want to change in our house. Some of them have been in the talks for a while, but others are new based on my new vast knowledge of home renovation. [wink, wink] I also want to decorate. My decorating style is mostly a less-is-more philosophy for two reasons: dogs and babies. Anything that touches the floor has to be sturdy. It can't be knocked over by an 85 pound dog and it can't be pulled over by a pulling-up baby or broken by the giant kid trapped in my husband's body. For example, furniture is great! Yep. That's it. Just furniture. Nothing else. Oh! An area rug. I'm more than willing to hang things on the wall. (Which, by the way, is where our TV is now. You live and learn.) Pictures, frames, decorative accents--all great if they go on the wall. Or if they're throw pillows. I bought some inexpensive pillows recently to give our living room a bit more color... and I discovered why they didn't cost much. Already: holes. Big holes. [Because, hello, big dogs.] I found nicer, seemingly more sturdy pillows at Target but the husband said no. My second idea is to buy some sturdy [yet soft] fabric and just recover the existing cheap pillows. My only hurdle there is that I don't know how to sew. I mean, I can sew up a tiny little hole with the best of 'em. But this seems like it might be a bit out of my wheelhouse. We went shopping at this really fun antique/vintage store over by our old apartment, and they had this super cute dining room table. It had seating for six with these cushioned chairs... I would have bought it in a heartbeat. [Which is probably why Travis insisted on shopping with me. I planned to go this afternoon with the baby, but he said he wanted to go. And then vetoed my purchases. Sounds like a conspiracy to me.]
Before you think my dear husband is a penny-pinching tyrant, the reason he's been vetoing all my completely reasonable money-spending is because I convinced him to buy a new [used] car. I kept telling him we'd wait until we were pregnant again... then I said we'd wait till the end of this year... then I said we'd wait till this summer... then we bought a car now. I'm impatient, what can I say? But I was getting frustrated with squeezing myself into our Accord while holding a wiggly Logan so I could get him into his carseat. And out of his carseat. And we had to put the car in the shop for two days a few weeks ago because the AC was acting up and found ourselves without a kid-friendly car. Had the AC gone out in June or July or August, we would have been driving our little baby around in 100+ degree heat without AC because Travis's old junky car also has no AC. Anyway, my point is, I felt it was important to have more than one decent car. Coupled with my frustration at putting a baby in a sedan, we bought a beautiful Chevy Traverse. It's only three years old, has less than 50,000 miles, and is in great condition! It has an optional third row, so once our family expands a bit more (two kids more, actually), we won't have to get another car. At least, that's the hope. :) I love our new car. It's so wonderful. And it smells good.
My son will be turning one in a month and a half! That's crazy! At first I was thinking of just doing something really small. Possibly just a cake smash photo session with just us. But then I realized that turning one is a big deal and should be celebrated as such. So I think we're going to go to Dallas for the weekend, and celebrate with whatever family is around. And since it is a birthday and really, the first birthday is not so much for the baby since to him, it's the same as any other day, why not get the good foods for the adults and, most importantly, the good cake! I love cake. I really love good cake. Like the kind of cake you get at weddings. Some weddings. My wedding cake was delicious! :) So I've been researching cakes [probably too much] and now I just need to decide how much is reasonable for a cake for a one year old's birthday and where I'm going to order one. I was thinking about getting one here in Waco and taking it with us to Dallas, because why not try some local places? Obviously a big city like Dallas is going to have a ton of great [more expensive] bakeries, but why not get to know a few more local places. (Totally beside the point, but I think we're now recognized when we go to our favorite burger place here. They don't know our names, but they know us. And it's kind of nice.) I have a list of local restaurants we need to try. It's taking a while to get through because you know, money... and because Chick-fil-a. It's hard to go anywhere else. ;) OK, let's circle back and review: Logan will be one soon and we're going to go to Dallas, go to the Perot museum (it's also almost Travis's birthday, so the museum is what he wants to do because he's an absolute science nerd), get a Chick-fil-a nuggets tray (yes!!) and a delicious cake, TBD. (And a few other foods, don't worry. It's in process. I still have a month and a half to figure the rest out!)
You already know that Logan is starting to walk and can stand up all by himself. He also loves to eat my food. And he loves to drink water from his straw sippy cup and then dribble it down his chin and onto his clothes. Over and over and over again. Breakfast and dinner are quickly becoming diaper-only affairs. We're just going to have to power through lunch. Logan refuses to say "mama" or anything close to an "mm" sound. He's 100% committed to "dadadadada" all. day. long. He also slept ten hours straight last night. In a row. He's never done that before. And most likely, he'll never do it again. But it was amazing. I couldn't sleep because it was so strange, but that's another issue entirely. If he sees a basket of nicely folded laundry he automatically starts pulling everything out because why not make Mom crazy? (I can't decide if I need a comma after "laundry"...that's gonna bug me.) Dog food is still awesome. And he will now only sleep in his own bed, on his tummy. How things change.
I use brackets and parentheses interchangeably and for entirely different purposes at different times. Just so you know.
