What a year 2013 has been! A year ago we rang in the new year with a few other very pregnant friends. This year we had an early get together with the same friends, played dominoes while our boys crawled (and one of them walked!) around and we called it a night by 7 (because you don't mess with the bedtime routine). 2013 has been incredible, joyful, challenging, rewarding, and full. I'm so thankful for and proud of all that it held. In 2014 I'm crazy excited to watch Dashiell grow and learn, to get to know myself as a... Read more →

Playing catch up a bit after a busy and festive Christmas week. I've been wanting to share details about the refinancing of our mortgage, et voila! The day before Thanksgiving, Chris stopped in to a local credit union to get details about the possibility of refinancing our mortgage. It's something we've been wanting to do for a while. Within an hour, Chris was sending me excited text messages about our options. At that point we had started leaning towards staying in our house, as opposed to doing something radical, but hadn't made up our minds. As we weighed all the... Read more →

{Blurry photos as a result of taking photos while a certain grabby baby was pulling up on the table and my legs.} Our 2013 Christmas cards are here! They're ready to head out the door and bring holiday cheer to mailboxes near and far. I'm super proud of these cards not only because I designed them myself but because I saved so much money compared to the past two years. After seeing Elise design her own adorable cards on the cheap using Overnight Prints I knew I had to try it. To get ideas for the card design and layout... Read more →

After a lot of thought we decided to...stay in our house! Not only are we staying, we're staying because we refinanced! (Also: how many people do you know that put an exclamation point after the word "refinanced"? Aren't you glad we're friends?) Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback on my post considering our options. You guys rock! You brought up some important points and alternative situations we hadn't considered and gave us a lot to mull over. While we decided not to do anything radical (at least right now!), for a while I seriously thought we would either... Read more →

Exhibit A. Exhibit B. After a tough week last week this one was thankfully pretty great. We are missing Drew but not so overwhelmed with sadness as we were last week. Other bright spots this week: Chris and I were able to carpool three days this week. It's so much easier (emotionally and logistically!) to drop off and pick up Dash together. Plus, I get delivered right to front door of my building; such service! At work I'm focused on getting a big report mostly wrapped up before the holidays. I'm enjoying managing that project although will be relieved for... Read more →

Recently, I had another opportunity to guest post at Green Mom Guide. This time I'm sharing our approach to solid foods and talking about how we make and store purees for Dashiell AKA The Hungry Hungry Baby. Here's an excerpt, if you care to read; check out the full post at Green Mom Guide: Both my husband and I are passionate about cooking and eating, so we were eager to give our son his first tastes of solid foods. Making our own food seemed an economical approach and I liked the idea of knowing exactly how the food was made... Read more →

Now that we've identified our ideal life, Chris and I have been thinking a lot about our finances and how we can shift money allocations to achieve that life. Your feedback on our budget also gave us a lot to consider - thank you so much! That's why I love sharing our finances. A few of you commented that you don't have a huge "emergency savings" because you know that if something significant happened you can use money from other budget allocations, such as travel, entertainment, and savings, to get by. We realized that this is also the case for... Read more →

Oh, boy, Dashiell is on the move! He's crawling his one-knee and one-foot crawl (it's so funny but effective!) and is across the room and trying to eat the Christmas tree in the blink of an eye. His new mobility has certainly changed our morning routine. I can hardly believe we used to be able to leave him on the bed while we got ready. Dash pulls up on everything and is learning to sit down but isn't very graceful yet. On a few occasions he's has been able to stand upright unassisted but just for fractions of a second.... Read more →

Thank you so much for your comments, emails, and thoughts on saying goodbye to Drew. It has meant so much to me, to us. On Thursday night Drew was having such a hard time we felt that we shouldn't wait and we went to the vet on Friday morning. It was peaceful and also so hard. The house has an emptiness and silence to it without Drew. But we are doing OK and when missing Drew starts to overwhelm us we tell each other a funny memory about Drew and we can smile and remember what a crazy beast he... Read more →

Ah, friends. My heart is so heavy to share this with you. Chris and I have decided to have our dear beast and friend, Drew, put down this Saturday. I don't feel like writing about it but it didn't seem right to let this pass without sharing. I've never had to make this decision about a pet before. It feels very surreal. But when we look at Drew's life now compared to several months ago we can see that the quality of his life has greatly diminished. He's become plagued with arthritis and, although he is on three different pain... Read more →