Home Improvements

Before Lenore was born, she had a mountain of toys. As she has gotten older, she has acquired more and more shit. Our entire living room has been taken over by her stuff. This has always made sense since this is where we spend the majority of our time as a family. Now that Lenore is mobile (and has been for quite awhile), Jason and I decided it was time to reclaim our space.

We started finishing our garden-level basement in January and guys, it is almost DONE! I am so excited. We painted it over the weekend and in two weeks will have carpet down there. We ordered an awesome Peter Pan wall vinyl from Etsy which I can't wait to see and put up.

Don't get me wrong, I'm super stoked to have my living room back. But I think I'm more excited for Lenore to have a space to play and run around that is HERS. Obviously she has her room, but you know what I mean. It'll be awesome for playdates and on the nights I don't want to clean up, I won't feel like I HAVE to.

We have taken photos through the entire process so, I'm looking forward to posting our before and after photos for all of you to see!

Time

I think I have probably said this before, but time flies when you have a child. Everyone tells you that you're going to blink and wonder where the time went, but you cannot grasp that concept until your child is with you. 

The last time I updated the blog was the end of December. Lenore was 5 months old. It's now almost May (only a few days away) and Lenore is 9.5 months old. Like I say every time I post, I haven't forgotten about the blog. I actually think about it quite a bit. But it's hard to find time to update when I'm relishing this special time with Lenore. She is hitting so many milestones right now and I feel like that will begin to slow down at some point. 

I really want to try and set aside at least one day a week to update. The weekend is probably my best option since I'm exhausted when I get home from work and really don't want to do anything except hang out with Jason and Lenore. I'm really, really going to try to get better.

First Christmas

Our little Lenny Lou is 5 months old (23 weeks to be exact). She is the happiest baby in the world. She is always smiling and laughing. No matter how shitty of a day I have had, her smile can turn it all around. One of my favorite parts is how her eyes light up when she smiles. They literally sparkle and it melts me.

Lenore's first Christmas was yesterday and it's safe to say that it was a success. She got so many presents (her favorite being a bouncer from Mommy & Daddy). We decided that one of our Christmas traditions will be to give Lenore a new pair of jammies on Christmas Eve (which we did). We hid her presents from her until Christmas, which I know may sound silly, but I want to feel the Christmas magic with her for as long as I can.

We hosted Christmas dinner at our house and it was a lot of fun. We made a completely gluten free meal and everything turned out pretty well. I made a Christmas Sangria (thanks Pinterest) that was delicious! I'll definitely be using that recipe again. After dinner and presents, we played some LCR and then everyone headed home for the night. Lenore did really well all day which was great. Sometimes she gets over stimulated and that makes her cranky, but she was golden all the way until we put her to bed, which made me happy.

With that, here's lots of pictures from yesterday. Merry Christmas!