side note before i get started: my house is SO MUCH QUIETER with only one dog. poor bella is at the vet waiting to get her upper right canine extracted. because. she eats rocks and metal crates and such. jake is flying solo today and i'm enjoying the lack of double trouble. bina, however, misses her bella like crazy. she cried when we left her at the vet, "bew-boo! bew-boo!" we'll get her back tonight. a couple weeks ago i had a bad week. it started with some digestive discom

i was hoping that bina would stay in a crib until she was five. ok, that's pushing it. three. i thought maybe we would have another solid year of crib confinement. but no. bina the explorer discovered the morning of tuesday, july 4 that the pack n play could not contain her. how fitting that she discovered her new found freedom on independence day, of all days. this one. always going out with a bang. we drove up to northern michigan to spend fourth of july weekend at my dad's

and now we have a walker. which opens up a whole slew of new activities! first and foremost, she can transform into diaperzilla. which, of course, the dogs love. her favorite place is the dog crate. no bunnies allowed. now we have gates at the top and bottom of the stairs. she realized she couldn't squeeze under them going forward, so she tried backwards. before we added the bottom gate, she enjoyed dragging all sorts of things up the steps with her. our many exhausting outin

yesterday bina turned one year old. its so crazy thinking back to those first weeks of her life when every day felt like a year and i was distraught thinking it was going to be like that forever. so much has happened in the last 12 months. so very much. when i had bina, i was able to take 12 weeks of maternity leave. i dealt with post partum anxiety weeks 2-6. that was the worst month of my life. i thought i would never get myself back and i was no where near the mom i though

and it has been three weeks. someday i will get this weekly posting thing down! the last three have been a whirlwind. a flurry of sawdust and paint fumes. working tirelessly from when we wake in the morning until we crash late at night. i am never. moving. ever. again. our first week here, david painted the ceilings and walls in the entire house. that's a lot of paint. like. 10 gallons of wall paint and 5 gallons of ceiling paint. and then we had to get more. he's glad (and s

this past week our normal childcare arrangement was unavailable and i was unable to find backup. i planned to watch bina at work over my lunch break while david was in class, but my supervisor graciously allowed me to work from home on tuesday and thursday instead. obviously this is nothing like watching sabina 24/7 because most of the day i was still working. but it was a nice little glimpse into what my life will be like in just under a month when we make the move to michig

our little monkey turned 10 months on friday. 10 months! and she doesn't want to sit still and smile for photos in her little green tub anymore. not that she really did that before. i think the only time she was somewhat still was for her one month photo. little wiggle monster. look how long she is. crazy. when did that happen. let's reflect on some milestones from the last month: 1. cut two more top teeth, for a total of eight! 2. first barfing stomach bug 3. first trip to t

my goal when i started this blog was to produce at least one post per week. seeing that my last one was march 5... well. tomorrow starts a new week. i've been a bit preoccupied lately with work, buying and selling houses, and bina. i don't know if we've been this busy yet. and in the midst of it all bina has been getting fun doses of sickness to make things a little more interesting. like the diarrhea she had the week of my once a year recruitment event at work. and then this

this. i look at this little munchkin and look at my husband and say "i cannot believe we made this." our very own tiny little human. our tiny girl david. i've given up on her looking like me. she is all daddy. it's crazy thinking back to her first weeks and months that were so very hard. it really does just take time. you army crawl through those first three... four... five... months and then everything gets really fun. there are other challenges of course, like teething and

i cannot believe our sweet girl turned seven old months on january 1. of course we were late taking our monthly photo because she came down with RSV (scary acronym for cold from hell). on january 1 she was quite miserable. that night she woke crying unless she was being held by me or david. she would only sleep in our arms. the next day she was totally lethargic and not interested in eating. turned out she was running a 103 temperature and i had a mommy panic attack. a trip t