Happy Anniversary to us!

I can't believe it's been TWO YEARS since our wedding! In that time, we've managed to buy a house, stuff it with some grown up furniture and have a baby.

Our actual anniversary fell on a Tuesday and we all know that I'm useless on school nights, so we just relaxed at home for the night. We started out the evening with a romantic chili meal, then watched our wedding video while drinking our bottles of Asti Spumante that were the favors at our wedding. (ok, by "bottles" I mean that I drank one bottle and felt a headache coming on, so I cut myself off...hey, it's been over a year since I've had a sip of alcohol!)

Our official anniversary celebration took place on Saturday...my parents came up to babysit Jake & Brian and I had our first real grown up date night out since he was born! It was a big night for us...surprisingly, I didn't cry, though it was weird to leave him. It was nice to get out of the house for a bit and wear clothes weren't covered in some combination of spit up, slobber or snot.

We went to Monterey Bay (which is located on Mt Washington-a great view of the city!) While I'm not a seafood fan at all (and I did make the comment "it smells like fish in here" when we walked in) the steak was delicious and even more important, the dessert (Apple Streusel Cheesecake) was to die for.

Take a stroll down memory lane with some of our wedding pictures (done by Lisa Kyle, if anyone is looking for an awesome wedding photographer!)

Being a baby is hard work.

So hard in fact, that sometimes you need a nap after finishing a really good meal.



And after a hard day of playing, there's nothing like snuggling up on the couch with your favorite puppy (and Mr. Woofy) to get in a good afternoon nap.

Me & My Mama :)

I don't get too many pictures of just Jake & I, but here a few from this week that I wanted to share.

Babyproofing, here we come??

We may be close to having to break down and baby proof the house. My reason for thinking this? Please see Exhibit A:

Jake can get to this position and just kind of pelvis-thrust the floor. He doesn't get anywhere, which seems to frustrate him. He then drops to his belly & slithers backwards (again: frustration) We will keep you posted as progress is made....

Baby Love

After counting down the days all week, we were finally able to depart on Saturday for Virgina to meet Baby Ben!!! Is it possible to fall in love at first sight? Yes, I believe it is, especially when it comes to babies. It happened with Jake & the same thing happened with Ben. He is perfect and I could have just held him all day long (unfortunately, I had to fight Brian for him a few times and eventually give in & take turns)

We decided that we HAD to get pictures of the new BFF's, so we put both Jake & Ben down on a blanket on the floor. First, we left them a few feet apart:

After a few shots, we wanted to get brave & move them in close together for a cuddle session...this seemed like a good idea, until we realized that Jake is known for trying to eat everything in sight (including baby heads, apparantly)

Best wishes to the new mom & dad....Ben will be making his first trip to the 'burgh in late October, so the countdown is on until then!!!

Gracie + Jake = BFF

Whether it's waiting for daddy to come home after work....

Or fighting over toys....

Or providing hours of endless entertainment to each other:

These two are proving that dog truly is a baby's best friend!! :)

Welcome to the world, Benjamin Anthony!!

My BFF Melissa and her husband Dennis welcomed their new baby boy into the world this past weekend!!

Benjamin Anthony

Saturday, September 13th, 4:57am

5 lbs, 10 oz

19.5 inches long

Ben was born healthy and with a head full of dark hair! The new family is doing well and we will be making a trip down to VA this weekend to see them & meet my nephew (and Jake's new BFF) More pictures to follow after the trip, I promise! :)

Welcome to the world, Micah Wayne!!

My friend Jen and her husband Scott welcomed their first baby boy last week!! Both mom, dad and baby are doing well & we can't wait to meet Micah!! (now if only we could get them to relocate from Maine, back to Pittsburgh!)

Micah Wayne

Wednesday, September 10th, 10:17am

8 lbs, 7 oz

20.5 inches long

Jake's 1st Tailgate

I love fall for many reasons and in the past few years, I've even grown to appreciate football (thanks to my BFF's husband's mild Steelers obsession) & have added that onto my list of reasons I love fall. Yesterday was the Steeler's home opener, so we pulled out our Steelers gear & headed down to Dennis's tailgate!

Jake seemed a bit overwhelmed by everything at first (I don't blame him, sometimes I get overwhelmed when I'm surrounded by yinzers too---speaking of which, we actually saw someone with "Yinzer" tatooed on the back of his neck. Classic.) but eventually he was content to hang out in the back of the car & check everything out.

When leaving the tailgate to head home in time for kickoff, we saw this gem walking down the streets of the North Side:

Yep, those are 3 teenagers using their bare bodies as jerseys. Strut your stuff boys, strut your stuff.

When we got home, Jake wanted to watch the game while looking like someone on the team. His hair isn't long enough to style like Polamalu's and we didn't want to shave it bald like Ward's, so we settled for Jeff Reed (aka Skippy Skeeve):

And what's a football game without some beer, right?

***Please note-no babies were harmed during this photo shoot. Nor did any babies actually consume beer. Please do not report us to CYS. We have no idea why he looked so infactuated with the beer bottle....

Cooking with Emmy

Wait, don't run away! I'm not burning anything, I promise!

I've discovered my new favorite style of cooking...pureeing. Yep, I've started venturing into making my own baby food! (I must say, it is MUCH easier than cooking regular food!) Before I get into how easy this is, let me tell you a few of my past cooking mishaps:

-a recipe called for "refrigerated linguine"; naturally, I went to the grocery store, bought a box of linguine and stuck it in the fridge. My mom was over one day and we were trying to figure out what to make for dinner; I enthusiastically suggested this recipe and produce the box of linguine directly out of my refrigerator. Needless to say, my mom got a good laugh out of that one.

-While attemping to be all "Suzy Homemaker" during my maternity leave, I decide to make cupcakes just for fun. My cupcake pan only holds 12 cupcakes, but the box makes 24, so I just filled the little cupcake tins up as far as they would go and the leftover batter went into a small square cake pan. I was really proud of my quick thinking, until I pulled the product out of the oven, only to discover that they looked like cupcakes on steroids and had taken over the entire pan. Determined to make the most of it, I decided to go ahead and ice them (and my small cake) anyway, only no one ever told me that you should let stuff cool off before attempting to ice. My cake looked like someone let a rabid dog get a hold of it. :(

-And last, but not least, Brian & I had our friend Olivia over for dinner one night....while chatting away with her, I was putting some frozen twice-baked potatoes into the oven (you know, the kind that come pre-stuffed in a box, you just plop them onto a baking sheet?) when Brian interrupts our discussion to inform me that I was putting the potatoes on the sheet upside down. I was adamant that I was doing it right, for some reason, I thought for sure you put the skin side up! Brian then pointed out that if I did that, the cheese & stuffed part would bake onto the sheet and make a big, burned mess. Oops. (Liv was not surprised by this incident---she had Cooking Class with me in high school...my group always put me in charge of making the Kool-Aid to go along with the meal, I'm not sure why....)

So, back to my latest cooking adventure...you may be thinking to yourself, "If she can't even cook dinner for herself, why is she trying to cook for her baby?" I'll tell you why...baby food is expensive. It may not seem like it when you're looking at the individual cost, but add up what you're spending over time and it's quite a bit! We've been using Earth's Best and the cheapest I've found it is at Walmart (about .48 for the Stage 1 jar--he gets about 2 meals out of that) So instead of doing that, I started buying bags of frozen veggies (for about $1), steaming 1/2 bag, pureeing and freezing and viola, meals for the Jake Man! A 1/2 bag makes about 12-14 meals!! Much more cost-effective.

For any moms looking to venture into this (and clearly if I can do it, anyone can) I have been using www.wholesomebabyfood.com as a resource for many of my questions. So far I have stocked our freezer with peas, carrots, pears and bananas!

Swing baby, yea!

Unfortunately, the trees at our house are not conducive to swinging; the branches are either too small, too high or the tree just isn't in the right place to hang a swing. The good news is, there are plenty of trees at G.G. and Pappy's house to hang one from! I picked up a swing at Toys R Us (Little Tykes) a few weeks ago on end-of-summer clearance and Pappy was nice enough to install it for us. We tested it out this weekend & it was a hit!!

At first, he wasn't sure what to make of it...

But soon, he had a smile plastered across his face as daddy pushed the swing (sometimes a bit too high for mommy's liking!)

Of course, we had to go back out the next morning to get some more use out of the swing before heading back up to Pittsburgh....here is Jake sporting his stylish new hat that Mommy is mildly obsessed with:

Giving credit where credit is due....

While I feel I gave Brian all of the credit in the previous post about the house updates and he appreciated the fact that I didn't try to pass it off as any work that I had done, he felt that I should have mentioned what I was doing while he was out doing back-breaking labor in the yard.

98% of the time, I was sleeping.

But-let's keep in mind that most of this work took place when I was in my 1st trimester of pregnancy last summer, thus, I was in a coma the majority of my days. As Brian puts it, he would be out in the yard doing his thing and would peek in through the living room window to check on me....what he would normally see was me passed out on the couch, drooling on a pillow with some mindless TV re-runs on the screen. ahhh....those were the days.



I would also like to point out that I did help out one day (the week before I found out I was pregnant; which, had I known at the time, obviously would have given me a "get out of manual labor free" card)....I started the day off by spray painting an old set of table & chairs.



You can tell by the picture that I'm really passionate about my work. Later that day, I pulled a bunch of ivy that was taking over every square inch of our house and fence. It's harder than it sounds, that stuff is serious business. Brian claims that after doing this for an hour or so, I found him in the front yard & made a dramatic announcement that I was about to fall over and die and I was done for the day (this was around 11am).

That was pretty much my first (and last) experience with manual labor in the yard. I did plant some flowers this year, which I feel is a step in the right direction. we'll see, maybe I'll go crazy next year & help spread mulch...(don't hold your breath though!)

Book Review: "sTORItelling"

sTORItelling (Tori Spelling)

Ok, don't laugh...I LOVED this book. While I was never a huge fan during her Donna Martin days, I started to have a fine appreciation of all things Tori Spelling while watching her show on Oxygen this year (Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood) and I was excited to read the book.

I laughed out loud during parts of the book, while others were heartbreaking and almost made me tear up (particuarly the parts about the problems she's had with her mother since childhood) It was a really easy read, so if you're looking for something different (or would like to change your personal views about Tori Spelling) pick up this book!

DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES!!! :)

(PS-only 1 week until the NEW 90210 premiere!!)

Outdoor House Updates

Brian has been slaving away on the outside of our house for the past year and a half. He was "that guy" that you'd see out there uprooting trees with his bare hands, spreading mulch like his life depended on it and planting flowers in the pouring down rain. But his hard work has paid off! the previous owners had pretty much let everything go outside (ie-did absolutely nothing at all in the years they lived there) so Brian decided to rip mostly everything out and start over. Here are some before and after pics:

Before: ugly shutters & door, overgrown half-dead bushes

After: fresh paint on shutters and door, ripped out all of the dead bushes, new plants

Before: the owners must have loved to watch ivy consume their house, more overgrown half dead bushes growing alongside the driveway

After: peace out, ivy! new flowers and plans along driveway.

Before: gazebo with ripped canopy top

After: new gazebo frame and cover, Brian leveled the sidewalk in front of the gazebo and put down new stones

Before: backyard, where the owners thought it would be a good idea to have HUGE bushes growing right smack in the middle of the yard (yea, those things that look like trees are actually BUSHES. in the middle of the yard.)

After: Brian ripped out all of the trees, planted new grass and built a retaining wall on the bank going into the backyard.

Before: patio area that was made up of wood chips and a huge playset (which we sold on Craigslist, go us)

After: had a patio installed, put plants in on the bank