Extraordinarily ordinary.

I'm not fantastically amazing at anything specific. Like cooking. Or cleaning. Or public speaking. Or athletics. Or creativity. Or studying. Or mothering. Even though I would like to be sometimes. 

I'm above average at many, many things and normally mediocre at some things. And terrible at plenty. 

I do like to try new things. Even though steep learning curves often freak me out about 2 days in and I talk myself into how it isn't worth the time or money to be trying that new particular thing. Sometimes it is hard to justify even trying new things if I know I'll never be incredible at any of them because my life now belongs (mostly) to another person. 

But nevertheless, my bank account can tell you that I have found too many fads and new obsessions that catch my eye. 

All of that to tell you that I'm thinking of expanding on an earlier explored hobby. I got a nice(r) camera, took a class (which coincided not-so-perfectly with the beginning of my pregnancy. Boo.), and am now moving on to making my extraordinarily ordinary photos just extraordinary. 

Stay tuned, folks because it's bound to last a week or two! 

:)

See below: 

⬆️Still one of my favorites. 

Four!

Happy Anniversary to the best husband and father!
You make me SO happy that I will stop writing sappy love notes about you on the blog today.
Let's celebrate by kissing our baby too much.

I didn't understand.

(iphone) 1 week before Noah decided to make me miss Thanksgiving dinner :)

I know there are many, many people who yearn so desperately to be parents. There are those who don't want that lifestyle. I, personally, always wanted to be a mother. Before Noah was born, all I knew of parenting was from the one-sided view of a child and being friends with other children who had parents. And I've only been a mother for 157 days so I definitely have a long way to go before I will even begin to think I have experience at all.

Before Noah, I didn't quite fully understand what people meant. 

I didn't understand when they said having a child is like letting a piece of your heart walk around outside your body. 

I didn't understand when they said baby things would take over your home and you won't really even care. 

I didn't understand when they said watching their child grow each day and learn a new skill was so much fun. 

I didn't understand when they said they stayed up late at night many times pouring over old photos of their child.

I didn't understand when they said this was the hardest thing they would ever do. And the best. 

I didn't understand when they said it is the biggest sacrifice they have ever made. 

I didn't understand when they said a part of them would never stop worrying. 

I didn't understand when they said they would do ANYTHING for their child. 

I didn't understand when they said it physically pained them to see their child hurt or crying. 

I didn't understand when they said pregnancy was one of the greatest experiences in the world (even with a bad pregnancy). 

I didn't understand when they said the best day of their life was when their child was born. 

I didn't understand when they said meeting their baby was like meeting someone they've always known. 

I didn't understand when they talked about the incredible amount of joy you feel.  

I didn't understand when they talked about putting their child to bed and then missing them afterwards. 

I didn't understand when they said they loved their spouse so much more after having a child. 

I didn't understand what it meant to have a child. 

I didn't understand what it meant to be a parent. 

I didn't understand what it meant to be a mother.

But now I do.

NOAH @ 5 Months

Can you tell what Noah thinks about me taking pictures? 

15.5 lbs and 25 inches. And those are purely guesses because his weight on the scale keeps going up and down depending on what time of day we weigh him. And I swear he has grown way taller but every time I measure him it says 24.75 inches. Maybe my tape measure is shrinking.)

NOAH:

• decided to kick off his 5 month birthday by rolling back to front. And kept doing it for probably another 10 minutes - back to front front to back back to front - while I gleefully filmed and texted the video to David. And then wouldn't do it when David was watching in real time. Stinker. He also is at the sitting like a tripod phase but can't stay up on his own very long or when he gets excited. 

• his face totally lights up when you go get him out of his crib. After naps too. It is one of theeee best moments of the day. Those sleepy huge smiles. 

• loves loves loves loves (LOVES!!!) bath time. No matter how tired he is, take him in the bathroom and turn the water on and he gets positively giddy and will squeal. And when we take him in the shower, will stare at the stream of water and put his hand in it and even will lean forward and put his face in sometimes. (I'm still not sure if this is intentional or not. But it happens and I'm not stopping it.) We also "dunk" him under the shower (very!) briefly because we are *those* parents. 

•is really good about putting himself to sleep for naps/bed IF we do his routine properly and IF we catch his tiredness before it's too late. And every time he does it we oooh and aaah over how proud we are of him. 

•is fantastic in his stroller. It is a sad day for us when we can't go outside because he is so content in his stroller. He will just stare at the world around him. It is hard to get a reaction out of him until we go inside. 

•absolutely fascinated by our Rubik's cubes. Those are the toys he gets most excited about. We think he just loves the bold colors. He is getting really good at picking them up with both hands too

•will give me [the best slobbery drooly open mouth face sucking] kisses sometimes. He has to be in the right mood but I adore it. He's not cuddly at all so this gesture makes me so happy. He doesn't do this with David, but he does do things for him he won't do with me. 

He will squeal and talk when David kisses him and will laugh when he blows raspberries on his feet. 

MOM and DAD:

• we are la-la-loving this phase of life. It is so fun to see his minuscule developments every day. He is generally really good when we go anywhere but we have yet to attempt eating out or anything extremely long. 

• still working on having him drop that last feeding but we sleep great and would sleep even greater if we went to bed earlier. 

• I am loving the warm weather and getting so excited for summmmmmmer!! [pool, vacations, MAINE, maybe the beach?, sunlight!!] we've been going on walks to meet David's bus almost every day and it has been fantastic. April has been good to is, here's to hoping May is even better.

We just love this little guy so much!

My heart is so full.

David gets Noah out of his crib in the mornings while I get 2 extra minutes of sleep. 

I decided to skip my 2 minutes and watch Noah on the video monitor for his reaction when he hears and sees his daddy. And I'm SO glad I did because I never would have seen this adorable face:

Watching the two people I love the most love each other. Theeeeee BEST. 

Life is so, so good in our little corner of the world. 

Lunch!

It seems like I have all these ideas for things to write about but I either 1) forget to finish the draft and never remember what I was going for or 2) forget altogether because baby brain is happening something fierce over here. [no joke. I was thinking about putting dishes away while making dinner last night and the tortillas got put in the cupboard and not the fridge....]

In light of all that nonsense, I thought I might as well write this one and post it while Noah is sleeping in the backseat of our car. 

David works in downtown Hartford. A 10 minute car, 20 minute bus ride from our house. So today we (I) got my act together and we met him for lunch! 

I did not do the following

 - take a picture of our sandwiches

 - bring our nice camera

 - get a picture of all of us. 

 - take a picture of the cherry blossoms

But I did get a picture of my two favorite people. 

And now the plan is to meet up for lunch every Friday! 

Definitely the best way to kick start the weekend. 

Solids!

We got the okay from the doctor to give Noah solids a few weeks ago. Noah has been watching us eat and definitely can follow along with the fork/spoon going from the dish to our mouths. 

Last night we randomly decided to start. 

Following the advice of a friend who said "Make sure you give them vegetables first or they will never eat them after trying fruits."

Green beans it is, my friend. 

HE LOVED THEM. 

He could not get the spoon into his mouth fast enough - even though he doesn't know to not push the food out yet. We were laughing quite a bit. 

And of course, we took pictures. 

(When you're not the parent, I know you don't care so much. So I tried to tone it down. We took 80, and I only posted 3! Are you proud of me?!)

4/14/2014

Our bed! (A year and a half later.....oops)

Found this in my drafts.... figured it was probably time to post it.  [And when we eventually move into a house, there are some other pieces of furniture from that website that I plan on making. They really are very easy to follow and you can (sort of) choose how much you want them to cost. I think after everything, we ended up spending $220 after we decided to get nicer pieces of wood for some parts.]
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Remember this post on how we started making our bed?
With David going out of town for interviews and a family trip to Goblin Valley, we finally finished it three weeks later and we are SO happy with it!
Definitely one of those things we hope we can pass on to our kids someday.
(We got the original plans from here and made a few tiny adjustments. And let's be honest. David and his dad mostly built it. I just sleep in it....)

It looks so big without the mattress/box spring and pillows on it.

Still working on finding other pillows that work because these red ones were from the living room.

An Untraditional Wedding Song

If I got married again, I would do things differently. Don't get me wrong, I loved my wedding! But, just a few of those decisions were made during a stressful semester and sort of don't really feel like they are "me" anymore.

I would have gotten the ice cream bar. (Which David reallllllly wanted.) I would have nixed the yellow. I don't know why I thought I needed purple, grey, AND yellow. But that's that.   I would have also had more dancing. 

Our grand plan was to do all the meet-and-greet stuff, eat cake, toss the bouquet, etc, do the First Dance, and then keep dancing and while other people were dancing we were going to slip away. Of course, we didn't realize that at your wedding you are always being watched. So we tried to make a quiet exit after a mere five songs. AND EVERYONE FOLLOWED US. (Like normal. I don't know why I thought our wedding would be different. oy.)

BUT. One choice I will always always always do again was our first song. 

David went on an LDS mission to San Francisco -- CHINESE speaking. So he spent a lot of his time in Chinatown, got to know lots of Chinese people and got pretty fluent. And of course, like all foreign missionaries do, they come home with some music that they might not have listened to otherwise.

Fast forward to when we start dating/are almost engaged. He shows me this video of one of his favorite Chinese songs. And being the baby that I am = TEARS. Seriously. It got to me. Because when you're in love, you can't possibly imagine your life without your other half. And this song got even better because he would sing me the words in my ear sometimes when I would force him to dance around the kitchen with me. I eventually learned the words from us singing it enough.

              

Because it's about how much they love each other and wanting to be the fairy tale they have always heard about.  TRUE LOVE, you guys. TRUE LOVE. I'm a sucker for it.

So of course, we decide to skip any traditional/normal song for our First Dance. Sometimes I go back and watch this video and get all fuzzy and warm. If it's really late at night, I might even be found weeping again over the love story.

I linked it here so you can watch it. 

Then and Now - mini version

I've been thinking about this all week and then I was inspired by this.  (A great blog!)

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, we were heading down to New York to watch General Conference with my family. It was also the day we found out about Noah.

I snapped this picture before we got in the car.

The next weekend we drove down again to go through the temple with my sister.

As I made David take this picture with me, I remember thinking that we were keeping a happy secret.

And now life is so, so different. In the best way possible.