Not too long ago, I wrote about how Saioa hates the daycare at the gym. I felt horrible leaving her there for my hour of working out, but it was a necessary evil in an attempt to shed holiday pounds. Well I’m happy to report that she now happily goes in without a problem!
I love that about kids, they are so great at adapting to new situations. It took her about a week to where she wouldn’t cry when I left. The first time it happened my heart melted because she went straight into the arms of Ms.Rhonda, the caregiver, and didn’t even look back at me.
I’ve been going regularly …
When I think of Disney, I think of childhood heaven, happiness, hugs, kisses, peace, love, and Mickey Mouse. Disney World, DisneyLand-the happiest places on the planet. Let us all hold hands and sing It’s a Small World and wear Mousketeer ears.
But that’s not really the case with Disney movies. Not when you really think about it.
We all saw Disney movies in the theaters as kids. I specifically remember going to see Lady and the Tramp and crying my eyes during the scene where they are dragging a pound dog to be put to sleep. I’ve tried to block the details of the scene out, but you only …
One recent weekend, we took advantage of some glorious weather to go exploring. This winter has been amazing for wonderful weather. Thank you, North Carolina.
Anyway, we decided to go explore one of the parks the area has to offer. We headed to the Northeast Creek Park, located on Corbin Drive in Jacksonville. We’ve been to the playground side before (very underwhelming, some older equipment, and not fenced in), and this time we decided to check out the nature trail along the water.
I’m a sucker for anything along the water. Being near the water, be it a creek, lake, or the ocean, just makes me happy. The kids were also excited …
My baby has learned to crawl. The moment she made that first shaky move on the tile floor before bath time, our collective sigh of relief could have been heard from the front yard. This is how we have reacted to most all of her major milestones, so far.
Lily spent her first week on this earth in the NICU at Pitt Memorial Hospital. She was born at Carteret General, so you can imagine how shocked we were to learn that they were going to put her in a helicopter and fly her away from me when she was a mere 24 hours old. It turns out she was having difficulty …

Teasing the dog
I’m not so proud to say that my daughter is a trouble maker and she’s just shy of a year old. How do I know? Well there are a couple signs.
1. She has an evil laugh. I’m talking like, if she could form the sounds it would be an erie MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
2. She purposely defies when she knows she shouldn’t be doing something. For example, she likes to play in our dogs food and water dishes. I tell her no and remove her from the situation. She immediately speed crawls back to them but purposefully stops half way, looks back, gives her evil laugh as …

The kid is cute, the bapi not so much
This past week, we finally got brave and started taking away Joshua’s pacifier, or bapi as he calls it. He had previously avoided having it taken away since he didn’t have any teeth to adversely affect with its presence. We also didn’t want to put Grandma and Grandpa through the wonders of weaning a heavily-pacifier-dependent toddler. We want them to want to come back and visit.Now that he has teeth and Grandma and Grandpa have headed home, it was time. As unpleasant as weaning is, with a dentist as a father, there’s no way Joshua gets to …

We definitely meet our dairy intake for the day!
Saioa has definitely turned a new leaf when it comes to eating especially during dinner time. This may be because she is copying her sister eating or because we make a huge deal every time she takes a bite. Whatever the case may be, I don’t mind one bit because it helps her realize she actually likes food!
One thing she is very good at is taking me to the fridge, making me open the door, then getting her favorite snacks out herself. The most popular snack right now is string cheese and she always remembers it’s in …

When Ben was a newborn, we used to sleep together all the time. He hated sleeping in his bassinet or his crib, and would just scream until you picked him up. If you wanted him to sleep, you pretty much had to hold him. Once he fell asleep, you could ease him into his car seat, and he’d sleep there for a while. But there were many, many times that he would fall asleep on my chest, and I’d just lay my head back and snooze right along with him.
As he’s gotten older, and happily sleeps in his own crib, those days of sleeping in the same room are long …

Well, Ben and I are back home in Jacksonville, North Carolina! After two plane rides and several hours of driving, we made it in one piece. The million dollar question, though, is how did Ben do on the plane?
We got to Wilmington last week, and the worst part ended up being getting my luggage, along with my child, from the parking lot up to the ticket counter to be checked. I was able to check two bags, and one of them needed to be Ben’s pack-and-play, so I had to fit everything for the both of us into one suitcase. That one suitcase ended up weighing around 80lbs, so I …
We all leave the hospital armed with the knowledge of the dreaded period of purple crying and hope it doesn’t happen to us. My husband and I didn’t even think twice about how we would handle such a situation, we were plenty busy ooh-ing and ahh-ing over our new little miracle.
We soon realized that we were that family on the video. I was clearly in denial. I felt that I could easily sooth her with my clever bag of tricks, but after about a month and some sideways looks from my pediatrician and husband, I realized that I had spent the past four weeks soothing a beautiful screaming bundle of …