Happy Friday, Phun in Phoenix, & Orange for Stellan

Happy Friday, everyone! This is coming to you from sunny, SUNNY Phoenix! Ian came for a conference and the Kumquat and I are freeloading keeping him company on his trip. We've been having a great time (packing/traveling fatigue & killer virus aside). So, here are a few Happy Friday à la Noob Mommy, notes for you!

1. K finally got to meet her buddy, Double D. His parents went to college with us, but the daddies didn't know each other. Double D's mommy and I were friends in school, but lost touch after graduating and moving away. Imagine our surprise & delight when we discovered her husband matched to the same residency program in Chicago as Ian! It was lovely to get back in touch with her and Ian & DD's daddy became great pals, too. Naturally, our kids would love each other. And they do. We've had lots of fun hanging out with him, including...
2. We spent a fun afternoon yesterday at the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, thanks to a great recommendation from Tita Naomi. DD is going to be 2 this June and, seriously, what is better for a little guy than a train park? He was so excited he was running around in circles. Sweet boy! We followed that up with a tastee margarita dinner at a local place called Tee Pee, also recommended by Tita Naomi. It was delicioso!
3. Oh, and while we were at the park, K got to swing outside for the first time! She has some pretty sweet shades, huh? The Phoenix sun is intense!(And I promise I was right next to her, in spite of how it looks in the pictures! Daddy's fancy trick photography...)
4. Last night, K and I had dinner with a couple friends from Chicago that I haven't seen for FOUR YEARS! Who knew? I honestly would have said it's been 2. I can't even believe it's been that long! Anyway, they are expecting a little kumquat of their own to arrive around the end of May. Besides the fact that it was wonderful, they were so attentive to all of my endless stories of my baby helpful tips for life with a kumquat. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture with them! This is extra-sad because the silly girl has yet to post any belly shots on FB and, naturally, there are rumors that the pregnancy may not be true. :) I promise I saw the belly! It's legit!

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In other news, we did our best to participate in the Orange for Stellan Day. It was a little tough since we were traveling, but apparently, like MckMama, I love the color orange. I never thought about it specifically, but once I was thinking about orange, I noticed that the stroller AND diaper bag both are orange! Anyway, here are a few pics of our orange travels...

Praying for Stellan in Kansas...

In the air...

And in Phoenix.

Thankfully, Stellan made it safely through his surgery on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the ablation seems not to have been successful, so we are still praying for sweet Stellan and his MckMama.

My Kumquat seems to be waking from her morning? afternoon? (Pacific Time is confusing us!) nap. We've had a great time here, but we're looking forward to heading home tomorrow. I think we've both had enough jet-setting for just now. :)

Happy Earth Day... a bit late

In honor of Earth Day, I'd like to encourage all of you to look into ways to increase the amount of recycling you can do in your life. In January, our waste management company started a new recycling program, so now we can track how much we recycle. They have a little widget that shows the total accumulation of your recycling, so I thought I'd post it as a reminder of how much of a difference we can make!

A Thousand Words Thursday

I agree with The Mom Jen that a picture is worth a thousand words. This was one of my favorites from Easter. What does it say to you?

Mega Post

Ha - I thought of that title because I'm going to try to combine about 18 posts into one, but that was also the name of a product we sold back in the day at Careerbuilder. Oh, the memories... :)

Anywho...

So this is my mega-catching-up post. Please forgive the insanity. I don't know where the past month has gone, but I've written so many posts in my head that I thought I'd at least try to share a few of them with you. :)

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♥ 5 Months! ♥
So the Kumquat is already 5 months old! Can you believe how big she looks with her elephant? Since I've been taking monthly pictures, I added a little slideshow at right that just has those, so you can really see how much she's growing.

Some 5 month highlights include rolling over like a pro, starting solid foods, making friends with the Big Kitty and taking her first flight. She's been rolling back-to-belly for ages, but has had a lot of trouble figuring out belly-to-back. Thank heaven, she finally worked it out when we were in Midland! She's become more mobile and rolls ALL OVER now, which is not so great for her mama's life of leisure, but I'll happily take that over the continuous screaming when she was stuck on her belly. :) The girl ♥ solids! I wasn't sure about starting them so early, but she really seemed like she was ready. I'm sure now that she was. I remember my SIL, Mandy, talking about how my niece would eat but didn't seem to initially associate solid food with alleviating hunger. K didn't really seem to do that. From the first try, she eagerly ate her rice cereal (good Asian baby!) and now gets really fussy if I try to give her a bottle instead of solids at her usual mealtime. I've been following this great book called Super Baby Food, which was recommended by a couple of mama friends. Making her food has been a really nice thing for me. I've still had some residual guilt that the whole breastfeeding thing didn't work out so well, but it's helped to know that I can do things now to make sure her food is as natural and healthy as possible.

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♥ Crazy Weather & Zoo ♥
At the end of March (yep, blogs are THAT backlogged!) we had some crazy weather! One day it was a beautiful day in the high 70's and this is what it looked like here just a day later...



So that was on Friday & Saturday. On Monday, we went to the zoo. It was a gorgeous day! Nuts. Ian got finished with his day early, so we headed out to enjoy the nice weather.
It was a lot of fun. It was the first day the baby really paid attention to some of the animals.
She enjoyed the birds most of all. Interesting... I liked the chimp snacking on a chunk of snow!
It was neat to see the little green plants still holding their own in the middle of the melting snow.
I'm glad Spring wasn't giving in! Naturally, the beautiful, sunny day was followed by a day of Spring showers.

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♥ Naked Baby! ♥
So, she'll probably hate me for this later, but isn't K too cute??

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♥ Our 5 Year Anniversary! ♥
So, by request, I'm posting a couple more pics from our wedding. (Like it, Sarah??)

Mostly, I'm posting these because I want you to notice the flowers and then look at the lovely flowers my husband gave me for our anniversary. See any resemblance? So sweet!

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♥ Easter, II ♥
I uploaded the rest of our Easter pics. You can see them here!

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OK, so that's it for now. Not quite caught up, but the baby and my to do list both say that's enough blogging for one day. Tomorrow, we're going on another trip (yay & blah), so I have a lot of cleaning and packing to do!

Happy Friday!

This is going to be a quick, little post because Ian & I [I've decided just to use our names - not baby's - on the site unless I think of something clever. It's too confusing!] are *GOING ON A DATE!* But, I have a lot of things that have made me very happy this week (in addition to the date night) that I wanted to share...

1. The baby has SUCH a wonderful trip to Texas! Little K was great on the plane and with all of the new people she met. All together now... PHEW!!
2. I found my camera! I thought I left it in Texas, but it has been found... in my purse. *blush* For the record, Ian put it in there, so I didn't know and the camera case & lining of the purse both are black, so it was hard to see!
3. Most importantly...Today is our 5 year wedding anniversary!! It has been 5 great years. It's hard to believe how much has happened in that time and also how quickly it has gone by. So, we're going out for dinner tonight to celebrate. It's our very first night out with just the two of us. (Thanks, Sarah! Well, thanks, Dustin, but I'm not sure that he'll read this post.) :)

So that's it! I have to go get ready and get K ready to play with her buddies Bubs & Chubs!

Catching Up

My goodness, things have been busy lately! It seems like we keep going through phases where life is a crazy shuffle of scurrying around to attend to this and that. Unfortunately, blogging has fallen by the wayside in these busy couple of weeks. I'll have to go back and fill in some gaps later, but here are some pics of our Easter journey. (I can't find my camera at the moment - maybe we left it?! - so these are just the pictures I had on my phone. Hopefully, I'll be able to post better ones soon.) We took our Kumquat to Midland, TX, to visit her daddy's family for the holiday. Among other highlights, it was our K's first flight! K and I left on Wednesday by ourselves, since her daddy had to work until Friday. I was so nervous, but she was awesome... slept a ton and made lots of new friends. We had such a great visit and can't wait to go back. (Although I can wait to go through the hassle of packing and unpacking again!)

Waiting at the airport for our first leg of the trip
Ready for takeoff!
Sweet girl fell asleep during takeoff and
slept straight through the landing. Phew!
We had a 4 hour lay-over in Dallas,
so we found some creative ways to pass the time...


Back on the plane and back to sleep.
Am I the luckiest mommy ever or what?
Once we arrived in Midland, K had a great time playing with her Lola

Thursday, we went to the mall, to church and then
out to dinner with Lola, Lolo and Tita Aileen

Friday started off so well, as we eagerly awaited
the arrival of Daddy, Tita Kit and Tito Michael...
...but ended with a poor, sick baby who had a 103.6 fever and had to make a visit to the pediatrician.

Fortunately, a little Tylenol, a good friend, and
a new jumper make for a much happier baby girl.


Saturday was mostly resting for K. She was feeling better,
but still had a fever of 102.3 by Saturday night. Poor baby.
By Sunday, she was feeling much better! Sadly, most of my Easter pics are on the camera, so you'll have to wait for them. Lola & Lolo had a big party to celebrate the engagement of Tita Kit & Tito Michael... and to introduce our Kumquat to all of their friends.
Oh, and to celebrate Easter. :)
Being the diva that she is, K naturally needed a full
wardrobe change from her church clothes to her party clothes...

All too quickly, the fun times were at an end
and we had to head back home...

Fortunately, K was in a good mood and ready to fly!



And before we knew it, we were back in Kansas!
We had a great trip! I'm so relieved that K traveled so well... Especially since we're going to Phoenix next week! Crazy. Daddy has a conference there, so K & I are tagging along. We're super-excited to get to see some old friends we've missed like crazy! I have to confess, though, that I'm not so pumped to be traveling again so soon. Really, I'm pooped!