Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Unlikely inspiration


I will admit to you, though not proudly, that I watched The Hills religiously up until this last season. I felt I'd met my own threshold of ridiculousness and immaturity by that point and I quit cold turkey right then and there.

But, one thing I loved about watching the show was LC's (Lauren Conrad's) outfits. She has a very easy, effortless, very California-girl style that I just thought was so cute.




(images courtesy frugal fashionista dot com)


Well, imagine my surprise when I found out she was designing a budget-friendly line for Kohls! Now before you start to judge..the line is for misses (not juniors) and yes, I do realize that I am 28 years old. Now that that is out of the way...

The Spring 2010 collection is super cute. So cute in fact that I picked up a few items today :) Since I am now quite a bit smaller than I was before having Madelyn I pretty much get to re-do my entire closet with new items that fit me, so what better place to start than with the basics. I picked up this great boyfriend blazer that has 3/4 cuffed sleeves and the cutest striped lining. It fits like a dream and I'm very impressed with the construction.

I also got this great high-waisted ruffled mini skirt that has an elastic waistband so it is super comfortable And flattering, but I couldn't find a picture. I would have gotten this dress but they didn't have my size:

You can also purchase the line at Kohl's.com or find it in "select" stores. I can't believe my little Fayetteville branch actually carried it. No surprise that the line was fully stocked as these types of fashions aren't very popular in these parts. The fact that I wear skinny jeans pretty much makes everyone think I just walked off the Fashion Week runway. Seriously, not kidding.

Oh and p.s. I have no idea why the spacing is always weird when I publish my posts. When I preview them they look fine, so know that I'm not doing it on purpose!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Did I forget to mention...??


That a certain someone has begun saying "mama"?! Yes, it is true. Madelyn now says "mama" and "dada" and many many other words we have yet to decipher.

Also, her new favorite thing to do is open her mouth as wide as she can and then come at my face like she's going to eat my entire head in one foul swoop. I call her baby Jaws. She thinks it's hysterical. She is cute but don't let her kid you, she will bite you and it hurts.
Oh and one more tiny little thing--last week while she was with Matt's mom she took her first few steps!! She has yet to do this for us, but we are anxiously waiting with baited breath.

Also, I recently saw this picture posted in Brynalexandra.com, an interior design blog I like to follow and I fell in love. I'm such a sucker for a room of neutrals.



What I should have said was "did I forget to mention...this is the most random blog post ever". Can you tell my brain is all over the place? Too many anti-asthma medications.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

What goes around...

...Comes around, and unfortunately I'm not talking about karma, I'm talking about the beloved fourth member of our home for the last two weeks, RSV. We've come to affectionately refer to RSV as "the crud". He doesn't seem to mind. He's taken us out one by one and seems so happy in our home we're having a hard time getting him to leave. His welcome has been worn out for quite some time now.

One week after Madelyn was diagnosed we went back to the doctor to find out she also had pneumonia. Approximately two days after that Matt and I both got sick with the adult version of the virus and are still fighting it. Luckily Madelyn has been 100% better for about 4 days now and I swear I've never seen her so happy. She just shouts and squeals with joy all day long. We should all be so happy! Matt is feeling better, just dealing with cold-like symptoms. Unfortunately I have asthma and it's completely attacked my lungs, so I have been having a full on asthma attack for about 5 days now. I'm now set up with strong steroids for the next week, inhaled breathing treatments three times a day with a nebulizer, and other misc medicinal treatments and should be good as new in no time.
Here are a few pictures of our weekend and how we've spent the past 10 days. Madelyn got to "play" in her first real snow and Matt got to dress her in head to toe camoflauge (his dream come true). Life is good :)
Before: sick baby girl
Feeling better but getting a bit bored stuck at home with mommy all day:
All better! Now let's play!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

You know you're a mom when...



  • You can recite Goodnight Moon in it's entirety completely by heart

  • You have to put things like "pluck eyebrows" on your to-do list otherwise you'll never remember

  • You eat most of your meals standing up, and while doing three other things at the same time

  • You don't buy silk because let's be honest, it's not exactly "kid friendly"

  • Your social life ends at 7:30 p.m. because that's when someone goes nite-nite
  • You continue to be amazed by the fact that you don't mind being home at 7:30 every night

  • You spend hours pulling carpet fuzz out of your child's mouth, and smooshed food trails off the floor

  • You realize you can't remember the last time you had a really good, solid night's sleep

  • You drive like a senior citizen

  • You forget what it was like to have control over your own life

  • You love that you've given complete control of your life to this little person who reminds you everytime they reach up for you, or lay their head on your shoulder, how lucky you are

Thursday, February 4, 2010

RSV(P)

I wish I could say this post is titled RSVP because Matt and I have reservations for a fancy restaurant, or plan to attend a super fun party this weekend, but alas, no. The RSV in the title stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which Madelyn has been incubating for the last 48 hours. It's very serious, so we're lucky we caught it early, and ensures we'll spend the next 4-5 days cooped up at home hoping she recovers quickly.

What's strange is that she's just getting over an ear infection, and wasn't acting abnormal at all. She ran a small fever Tuesday night and started getting a bad cough but was still eating and sleeping well, which led me to believe she was fine. Yesterday about 5:30 p.m. I just had a feeling we needed to have her looked at. I call it divine intervention. Matt thought I was a little crazy, so I started to think maybe he was right, went upstairs and came back down 5 minutes later and said "we need to go". He looked at me like a loony, but started the car.

Sure enough, they diagnosed her pretty much as soon as we arrived, but we waited for the test to come back and 15 minutes later our suspicious were confirmed. RSV is essentially very advanced bronchitis, and it's the filling of the lungs with mucus sacks. It causes high fevers (highest so far around 102), tons of mucus in her head and chest, and other misc. breathing difficulties like wheezing and shortness of breath. She basically constantly breathes like I would if I just came back from running a few miles. Ok maybe A mile (it is winter and I'm very out of shape). It's also highly contagious, so the doctor guaranteed us that we're both in for it in the next few weeks. Yay. Luckily in adults it manifests itself as a cold, but for an asthmatic like me, it's sure to be loads of fun.

So far we've spent lots of time cuddling, watching Finding Nemo, taking steroids and asthma medicines to help the inflammation in her poor little lungs, not sleeping (that's just me), and then really getting our money's worth out of our Keurig machine as I compensate for the lack of sleep. We are so blessed that she has such a calm, sweet disposition, because even with raging fevers and the inability to breathe she's still just as wonderful as ever. And that's not just mom bias, it's true.

Please send lots of prayers our way because for a paranoid, neurotic mother like myself this is a bit difficult to handle :)

Monday, February 1, 2010

Nerd Alert

Saturday I was at the Atlanta airport picking up one of my dearest friends, Dai, and who should walk off the escalator but Rebecca from my absolute favorite show, Brothers and Sisters!

I. Die.

So, I play it cool, feverishly looking around to see if anyone else recognizes her but no one seems to care. Granted, she has no makeup on, hair in a bun, pretty inconspicuous, so unless you were a die hard fan like myself you probably wouldn't even notice.

I called Matt, who gets a little bit of a "I'd leave my wife for you" face everytime her character appears onscreen (kidding. kind of) and he immediately insisted I go talk to her. All the while she's walking further away from me and I don't do anything at all.

She goes into the bathroom, Dai appears, we hug, I stall a little bit in hopes that she comes out of the bathroom and I can just tell her I love her show and welcome to Atlanta, but she took quite a bit of time in the loo and thus we had to leave. I mean, I didn't want to seem too desperate. But truth be told, was dying to talk to her. Serious nerd alert.

I'm starting to think I have Atlanta airport celebrity super powers, because I also saw Mary Lou Retton there a few years ago. She was way shorter than I imagined. Didn't talk to her either. I am really So lame.
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