Friday, March 30, 2012

Cleaning. . . UGH!

I am a mostly organized person.  I like my house to be picked up and put together and for things to be clean and my chores to be done.  I don't even mind doing dishes and doing the laundry is not THAT bad.  But I DO hate doing the "elbow grease" kind of cleaning.  I despise scrubbing the toilet and the showers, and I most of all HATE cleaning the stove!!!  I mean, who really likes to do those things, unless you're Monica Geller.

I found this one post on Pinterest about cleaning the grates on my gas stove top (which are the WORST to clean) with ammonia and so I had to try it.  This lady promises no scrubbing and I'm hear to tell you it look ALOT of elbow grease but my grates are the cleanest I have EVER seen them.  The stove was here when we moved in and I never could get them clean from day one.  The fumes were awful and I had to open the bags outside but ultimately it did get the grates clean.  So WIN!


The other tip I found was for cleaning the microwave and it is awesome.  Worked like a charm and my microwave smelled like vanilla. This is not my microwave but mine looked like this afterwards.  This one took no elbow grease and I will definitely be doing this again.


I guess the ultimate lesson to keeping a clean kitchen is don't buy a gas stove top (not a fan!!) and don't let your microwave get that bad.  Uh. . . so anyways, I just wanted to pass those along.

Complimentary Pic of the Post
 I will be posting more about Micah very soon,
hopefully this weekend!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Flashbacks and Maternity Pictures

We had a play date with my friend Sarah and her son today, and during our conversations we started talking about when she took my maternity pictures.  I realized I'd never posted them, so flashback about 9 months (this was right before my due date) and imagine a super hot day in June and here we are!


Look how wonderful my husband is, putting on long sleeves and jeans in the middle of June.  Look how wonderful I am for being outside, 9 months pregnant in the middle of June and not having a breakdown.  :)


And look how wonderful Sarah is for capturing such great pictures outside in the middle of June.  She was wearing shorts, smart girl!


We got some really great shots and I'm really happy with them.  I can say this now because I'm not 9 months pregnant, but I'm glad we braved the heat to get these special pictures.  

Sarah is currently taking appointments for photoshoots.  Please check out her website for more info at sarahcrumphotography.com

TTFN,
Stefanie

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Micah is 7 & 8 Months Old

Oh my goodness. . . I have been missing out on my blogging, yes?!  So sorry, but what can I say?  I have a lot going on.  :)  I can't believe I didn't post an update for Micah's 7 months.  I wrote it, it's just that adding the pictures takes FOR-EV-ERRRR.  So, I never quit got around to that part.  So, since time is flying by so fast anyway, I'm going to combine my updates and tell you about Micah's 7th and 8th month of life, all in one.  :)

7 Months

Man oh man, has Micah been a busy little bee.  He just thinks he is such a big boy and has put himself on the fast track of life and is trying to grow up too fast.

 8 Months


In the last two months he's gone from officially sitting up all my himself to full blown crawling and pulling up on things.  He quickly went from pulling up on his mommy and daddy to pulling up on the furniture all by himself and loves to bang on the coffee table.  He also loves to stand up in his crib and turn on his musical toy.

I only got one of him sitting, the rest he wanted to stand up

He started off only crawling around the living room rug but after a few days of that, decided he was ready to venture onto the hard tile floors.  He's crawled all the way down the hall and even into our bedroom.  He likes to chase this one ball that rolls really far on the tile so he's constantly chasing it down and getting stuck under the bar stools.
 Learning to crawl

He's started making the "MaMa" and "DaDa" sounds although he's not associating it with us.  It's still cute to hear.  His 'talking' is one of my favorite things in life.  It's just so adorable and I know he's just telling us how much he loves us and thinks his parents ROCK!  :)

 He loves his DaDa

He's sprouted four more teeth for a total of six.  Two on bottom and four on top.  The ones on top are taking their good sweet time coming in and still aren't completely in.  His top two teeth have the cutest gap between them.  I cannot get a picture of this because he'll barely let us touch them much less look at them.  He is not a fan of you trying to see his teeth.  In fact, he'll bite you. . . HARD!  I am working to switch him from breast milk to formula for that very reason (enough said!).  Brushing his teeth is always fun because of the biting . . . little stinker!!!  He also grinds his teeth together sometimes, which drives me absolutely bonkers.

 I'm gonna chew on this, mmk mom?!

He's a full fledged wiggle worm and will hardly let you hold him.  Changing his clothes and diapers has become interesting too.  Sometimes he'll sit still but when he doesn't want too; good luck trying to coral him.  He loves his bath time, but we're also having a hard time getting him to stay seated during his bath.  It can be tiring, but it's so cute to see him playing with his bath toys.

 I'm gonna crawl to you!

I'm not sure I've mentioned food in the last few updates, but Micah has been eating baby food for awhile.  He does NOT like peas or green beans (but neither do I) so other than that, he's good.  I'm not sure he has a favorite food yet.  He doesn't really enjoy solid foods, he doesn't like the texture.  I've tried the Gerber puffs and NumNums that melt in their mouth and he gags.  I've tried mushed bananas and he gags.  Basically, anything off our plates, he gags.  So, the solid food thing may take us awhile.  But, until then; he's doing good with baby food.

 Oh Hi!

What else? . . . He's still sleeping great.  He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8, unless we get off our nap schedule for some reason.  Either way, he'll sleep until about 8am, so I'm loving that!  He usually takes about an hour nap in the morning and a really long nap in the afternoons. . . usually two hours.  If we miss a nap, it's usually the morning one and then he is one tired boy and sleeps forever in the afternoons.

 Cutest Boy!!

We keep ourselves pretty busy with lunch dates and play dates.  I usually try to keep at least two days where we stay home and we'll sometimes go for a long walk at some point.  Well that's about it for now.  I'm getting close to my 9 month update so I'll leave some info for then.

Here are some more pics from 7 and 8 months old.  Enjoy!


 Four Generations


 Aunt Sarah came to visit
 
Happy Boy

7mo - Happy!

 7mo - Grabbing mommy's camera
 
 7mo - When mommy could walk away for a minute and I'd stay put

 Playing with Dad

 He's a major thumb sucker - It's adorable. . . for now


7mo - Bath time is wrestle baby time