I just realized I never posted about Valentine’s Day. Derek and I aren’t really into the whole V-day thing over here. Don’t worry ladies, he didn’t trick me into it. I came into this relationship with this mindset. Big romantic gestures make me feel awkward. So awkward in fact that when he proposed I sprung a nosebleed. That’s how much my blood pressure shot up.

Like I said, around here we keep iheartyou day pretty low key. Since we have a little one around I don’t want to give him the wrong idea about Valentine’s Day, and totally ruin him for his future wife, so I stepped up my game.

Check out how blonde this kid’s hair looks in the sun. I love it. Coming from a family of brunettes blonde hair is totally foreign to me. And I love it. I can’t wait to see how light it gets this summer.

To show my tiny tike just how much Mommy and Daddy love him I made special animal crackers for him. Basically, I just dipped them in white chocolate. I also filled one of those cute little mailboxes from the Target dollar section with other fun little goodies I found in the dollar section. The crayons I’ve had for months, but never pulled out for him to use. I figured he could use them to draw on his cute little robot pad.

In his mailbox I put some suckers (he was only allowed to have one sucker and it was his 2nd sucker ever…you could totally tell too), a toy clacker, and a squeeze ball.

For Daddy, I made some kiwi dipped in white chocolate, and Grayson drew a Valentine. I threw in a few suckers in there for good measure. I decided to make Derek something too, because I didn’t want him to feel left out since I decided to and will continue to give something to Grayson.

It just so happened I found something at the Pottery Barn Outlet a few days before, and mentioned it to Derek. He walked in the door on Valentine’s Day with it in hand. So I ended up getting a gift that day too.

Does anyone else out there not do much for Vday, or are we the only anti-Vday folks out there?

I don’t use this acronym much, but OMG!!!! Child, you are HUGE! I took you in for your 18 month check-up and you are weighing in at 28 lbs, and are 34 ins tall. You are still in the 90th percentile for height and the 75th for weight. Sheesh! The doc did say that your weight to height ratio is at 50% so you are exactly where you need to be for how freakishly tall you are.

- You climb on everything these days. Seriously, you never stop moving. Seriously. You are an awesome kid. Not a bad kid at all, but I always have this constant fear that since you are always on the move and don’t like to sit still people are going to think that you are a bad kid, or a hyperactive kid. When all that it really is, is that you are a boy. 110% BOY. Many of my friends have little girls and their kids are just dainty and calm, and will sit still for more than 30 seconds at a time. I really hope they know that having a boy changes everything. I really love having a boy, but you little fellas have more energy than you know what to do with.

- You love playing in the pantry. And now that I’ve moved your snacks down to a reachable shelf you are constantly bringing me items that you want to eat. I honestly think that you would eat anything as long as you found it on “your shelf”.

- You have begun climbing out of your crib so we dropped the mattress down to the floor, and it seemed to stop your escape attempts for a month or so. Or so, is the phrase I want to focus on here. Just last night (at 1am mind you) you woke from a bad dream crying. I usually give you a few minutes to see if you can calm yourself down before I go in to check on you, but within 45 seconds of you waking you had made it out of your crib and were at the gate (your door) crying for “Momma!” Kid I am so not ready to transition you to a toddler bed yet. Please stay in your crib a while longer. Pretty please…with sugar on top!

- You L, to the O, to the V, to the E…..LOVE, trains. You now have quite the collection of wooden tracks and trains, and have gotten quite talented at putting the tracks together. At first you would get frustrated trying to piece the tracks together, but in the past month you really have figured the whole thing out. Your favorite part of playing with your trains are the bridges. You are constantly trying to balance your trains on the “hill” of the bridges, but they never seem to stay. I did notice the other day that you did get one to stay put, and you were beyond thrilled with your little train.

- You do really well at stores, and have yet to make me that totally embarrassed mom that has a crazy fit throwing child in her cart. You love waving at everyone you see. And I must say, the ladies love it. They eat you up. There is something about a wave and a smile from you that makes even the most bitter or sad looking woman/man just light up.

- If there is one thing that brings you massive amounts of joy it would be bubbles. We own so many bottles of bubbles, bubble wands, bubble swords, and other bubble paraphernalia I’m about to have an intervention for both of us.

- You are finally saying “Mom” and “Momma”. You’ve been able to say them for some time now it’s just that you would never use them to name me. Everyone else you would name them by name, but me you would just sit there with a blank stare on your face. It was weird. We knew you knew my name because you would say cry it when you were extremely upset or hurt. About 2 weeks ago you finally started saying who I was and it was like music to my ears.

- You chest bump the dogs. They hate it. I think it’s kinda funny, but as any good Mom would do…I don’t encourage it.

- You still hate being put in a car seat. I still hate having to put you in your car seat.

- You love laying on your belly while reading books and playing with toys. You saw Daddy do it one day and now it’s your go-to book reading position. It’s pretty much precious.

- You are finally getting a bit more hair on that head of yours, but not much.

- We just discovered Mickey Mouse Clubhouse around here, and I’m kicking myself for it taking this long. You love Mickey. When you hear that theme song come on you come skidding into the room and start shaking your hips and smiling bigger than I’ve ever seen. You even say “Toodles” when Mickey calls for him. I can’t wait to take you to see him one day.

You are just about as sweet as you can be. Thanks for being my tiny Squishy Baby.

Love,

Mum (that’s what is sounds like when you say Mom…so cute!)

Sunday :: Jan 29 - All three of us were feeling pretty under the weather, and we didn’t want to risk spreading whatever Grayson had to the other kiddos in his Sunday School class. So, we decided to stay home and play with his newly expanded train set. He has officially hit “the train stage”. He’s getting so good at putting the pieces of the tracks together. It’s so sweet watching him play choo choo and be totally involved in his own little world.

Monday :: Jan 30 – We pulled out the tent and spent the day running in and out of it. Even Cohen joined in on the fun.

Tuesday :: Jan 31 – We bought Gray a Learning Tower. One of his favorite activities is to feed the puppies his treats from up there. This is not such a good thing considering the last time we took the dogs to the vet they had gained a few pounds. Geez, I wonder what caused that?

Wednesday :: Feb 1 – It was rainy that day so we built a fort indoors. It lasted a total of 5 minutes.

Thursday :: Feb 2 – I love finding him in his room’s little reading nook. It’s so cute when he reads his books out loud to himself.

Friday :: Feb 3 - We went to Target for some groceries. I love him in this outfit. He looks Like he walked out of a jCrew kids catalogue.

Saturday :: Feb 4 – I found the cutest rain boots for Gray at Target. He loved them. He trotted around the house all day in them. There was only one problem. They were one size to big and they kept making him fall. Sadly, the boots had to be returned. Luckily, two days later I found some in the right size and he has been a happy boy ever since.

It’s that time of year again. The time of year when the masses gather together on the streets of New Orleans to let loose, and on occasion be a little loose, in the hopes of building their plastic beadcollection. That’s right, it’s Mardi Gras!

My family moved here from New Orleans when I was in elementary school, but went back to visit multiple times a year when we were growing up. To say the least, King Cake is in our blood. And every year when Mardi Gras rolls around I pray that either Derek and I get to make a trip down or my parents do, in hopes that I might score me some “real” King Cake. Yeah, a few bakeries and grocery stores in Memphis sell them, but it’s just not the same. The ones up here are so bland and jelly filled. Nasty.

As luck would have it Derek’s co-worker just happened to be in NO for a training seminar a few weeks ago, and saw my post on FB about wanting a King Cake. Erin is amazing, because when she saw my post she offered to buy me a King Cake and sneak it into her carry-on bag. That’s right, she smuggled one onto a plane for me. This girl is golden in my book.

My parents always talk about the King Cakes from Gambino’s Bakery, but since beggars can’t be choosers I didn’t care where she bought it from as long as I had one heading towards my belly. Erin picked one up at Rouses, and I have to admit…Rouses makes a mighty fine King Cake. BTW…this thing was filled with cream cheese! I was in love. All of those fruit fillings they put in there I do not care for. I tend to eat around that part.

When I opened the box I did my typical scan of the cake to scout out the most likely location of the baby. I didn’t have to look very long, because the baby appeared to be escaping from the center of the cake.

Of course, I cut my piece so the baby was in it. It’s not cheating. At least not in my rule book.

This cake made my day week. I can’t wait until Gray is old enough to bring to parades. Maybe next year.

I wonder if I still know anyone on a Krewe. That would be awesome! (reminder to self: call all relatives)

I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’ve been in a few Mardi Gras parades myself. Okay, so the float was a pickup truck, and the Krewe was my girl scout troop, and we were riding through my Great Grandmother’s neighborhood, but it still counts. I swear!

Guess what. You would think that frosting a chocolate cake with thick fluffy white frosting you would no longer see the chocolate cake. Wrong. All I saw was white fluffy frosting with little brown speckles everywhere! Then it hit me…Cool Whip! I slathered some on my speckled smash cake and got to shooting.

Go all in or go home. Am I right?

This one is Derek’s favorite photo of Gray. We actually just had it made into a 16″ x 16″ black and white photo canvas. I used Canvas People, and was very pleased with the finished product. Plus, they always have amazing sales.

Then he felt it was missing something….a foot. His. Foot.

Davis, Gray’s Uncle, drew a letter G in the smash cake aftermath. To be honest, he didn’t really eat much of the cake. Davis and Derek actually ate a good portion of the cake towards the end of the shoot. Grayson thought it was funny to feed the cake to everyone. Of course, the boys took him up on his cake sharing offer.

After his cake was all good and smashed it was time to hose off.

You may have noticed a super cute blue highchair in Grayson’s 1 year photos. Well, I think it’s super cute. I had been on the look out for a cheap wooden highchair for at least 3 months before Grayson’s 1st birthday. I searched antique stores all over the city, craig’s list, ebay, and a few consignment sales. I wanted to have a super cute blue highchair for Grayson to eat his cake in at his birthday party, but they were all to expensive or missing their trays. I thought I would never find one. The week after his party I was working at a consignment sale, and what did someone bring in? This bad boy.

Not only was it a Jenny Lind highchair, but it was only $30. Hallelujah! The only problem is that it had seen better days. Luckily for me, I was already planning on sanding and painting it.

I was able to sand most of the seat and tray with a palm sander, but all of those dowels with teeny tiny nooks and crannies…I got to sand those by hand. Ugh.

Once everything was sanded I used a spray primer since some of the wood was dry and because I was using a light blue for my final color. (BTW…I used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch :: Aqua in a satin finish)

And that’s how I took a worn, worked-to-the-bone wooden highchair and transformed it into this…

Pretty adorbs, right? I had intended to use it for Gray’s everyday highchair after I took his one year photos in it, and we did for a while. However, my child is super messy and likes to stab the tray with his forks. Even though I had Derek seal the entire chair and tray before I allowed Gray to eat in it; the dang thing still was getting stained. I also intended to use it as a photo prop for other client sessions, so to keep it looking halfway decent for paying clients I decided to move him back to his old highchair.

In total, the whole thing cost around $40 paint, chair, and sand paper. It turned out exactly how I imagined.

I mean, just look how much cuter it is when you pop a baby in it.