2012 ... Year In Review

Every year I try to do a recap of the entire year, mostly in pictures. I'm afraid this one is going to be VERY baby-centered!

January



After a very quiet New Year's Eve/Da (home watching Twilight Zone) I took my birthday off and went shopping. My boss and friend, Emily, was moving to Berlin this week and we had a party for her ... she will forever be known as the one who ruined my birthday.




With a itty baby at home I also didn't get to go out for my birthday dinner. The Ravioli and chocolate mousse cake was pretty good though.




Rowan continued to be adorable.


Baby got all four top teeth in the same week.


Then we all got the plague. Over MLK day my parents came down to visit, and immediately after they left I began puking, et. al. That night Chris got it, and while the plan was for my parents to come back down and take care of the baby while we recovered, they called in the morning and said they were both sick too. The only one that didn't get sick was the baby.


Baby started crawling and climbing on everything, and so his side-car crib got an adjustment so he couldn't climb out.



February

We hosted our annual Super Bowl party with friends from the neighborhood.










Baby had his first bleeding incident! And it was my fault!!!

I may have cried more than him. Bright side was we were at a friend's for a playdate, and their kid had just been to the ER at least once in the last month for way worse injuries, so they were not phased when I cut his lip with my thumb-nail.

Another bout of Mastitis had me bed-ridden fora  few days, and Auntie Stephanie was great and came over in the morning and brought baby to daycare.

On President's Day we met the Forest Hills gang at the Bowling Alley! Babywearing Bowling!




Standing baby!



March

Baby got really good at going to brunch.

Georgio's


5 Burros


Tower Diner with Grampa

We started topping off the bottle with Cow's milk. A few weeks short of my 12-month goal, but this child has never had a drop of formula in his life, so it was worth it.


I got to start planning for the R's First Birthday!!!


Happy St. Patrick's Day!


Apparently he really wanted to walk in the parade, because the morning of March 17 we had our first steps!

Emily was far away but we kept in touch.

And big boy moved into his own room! We all had been having some trouble sleeping; he was nursing on and off all night, but I could no longer dose off while he nursed, so we were both up all night. After about a week of very long nights, he was sleeping like a champ!


March also found the first of FOUR throat infections in FIVE months. I was on a Jamba Juice liquid diet for several weeks.

April

R is great at helping!

We took the train up to Gramma's to set up for the Birthday Party!

We went to the annual "Margar-Easter" party in Otis.

Happy First Birthday, Rowan!!!

(fun fact 1: when you feed a 1-year old rainbow cake, his vomit will also be rainbow colored.

fun fact 2: when your 1-year old vomits all over his PJs and you have to use the 6 month-size PJs leftover from Christmas, don't let him walk on the newly-waxed hard-wood floors. 6-month PJs don't have grippy feet because 6-month olds can't walk, and 1-year olds aren't supposed to still fit their 6-month size PJs.)

On the baby's actual birthday, Mom and Dad celebrated having survived a whole year with their own special party.

R continued to be a little too advanced for mommy's comfort

Daddy finished his MA at Columbia! No more (new) school loans!!!

May

Daycare had a (totally necessary since baby can't sing or dance?) Mother's Day concert.

Gramma and Grampy came down for a Mother's Day visit. All went well until they were about to leave and someone broke into their car. boo.

In May we took baby on first first airplane ride!!! We flew to Indianapolis for Polly's wedding!

Indianapolis Children's Museum

June

I got to see the Space Shuttle out my office window!

Another wedding!

The price-per-wear of all our fancy clothes went really low.

In June I got my first Tattoo!!!

We spent Father's Day at the Queen Zoo. Ro loved pointing at all the animals.

At the end of June Chris and I went to Ohio ALONE for Chris M's wedding, leaving baby home with Gramma and Grampy.

We saw Stanley Hudson at the airport.

We did amazing things like relax and eat lunch together in peace.

I even got my nails done.

We got to witness mid-west weather.

Gramma and Grampy had lots of fun with the baby.

July

Happy Birthday, Gipper!

And Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Headed up to MA for Kerri's baby shower!

Baby came to work with Mommy

Headed up to MA again for ANOTHER baby shower for Kerri!

We also got to meet Great-Grampa Chamberland

Four Generations of Chamberland Men!

August

Happy Summer!

Baby was in desperate need of a hair cut

September

Our "Summer" vacation to New Hampshire.
















We started prepping for Halloween!









October

Happy Halloween!








Hurricane Sandy

November

Election Day!

And then a random snowstorm ... a week after a Tropical Storm

Kids' Day at Work

Happy Thanksgiving!

Date night!

Heismann!

Small-Business Saturday shopping

Setting up for Christmas!

December

Advent, Day 1!

Christmas Card

Grandparent Gifts

Kid Gifts

Chris gave me an early Christmas present ... a night to myself!

Skyping with Emily

Dinner with Stephanie

Rowan continued to be adorable

Daycare Christmas Party

Really, other kid's mom. Really?

I had vetoed "sitting on Santa's lap", as his age plus naturally occurring, evolutionarily appropriate fear or strangers would have actually traumatized him this year. Holding and waving worked out much better.

Packing to leave for Gramma's!

Merry Christmas!

Big Happy Family Christmas XIII

Cheers!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Morning

Best Gift for me - a cappuccino machine from Chris's mom

Best Gift for Rowan - a Cabbage Patch Doll we've named Max. He has a belly button that looks like a cheerio, and R insists on chewing on it.


Best Gift for Chris - a trip to Miami for the National Championship game! (he also doesn't get a birthday present, or probably a christmas present next year.)


Getting ready for the new year, it was time for our annual "get this crap out of our house" cleaning spree.

Here's what we did this weekend:
- Cleared out my magazines (because I can read them on my new iPad!!!)
- Cleaned out and wiped out all the drawers
- Wiped down all the cabinets
- Took out the shelves over the sink, cleared out unused classes, turned shelves upside down (to fix warping)
- Cleared out the fabric I'm never going to use
- Donated 5 bags of clothes (some of those from the "fabric" bin)
- Cleaned out the hall closet, getting rid of a bunch of canvas bags, a rolling suitcase, a swiffer sweeper (no more hard wood floors)
- Pulled out the shelving in hall closet and re-installing shelves that actually function as shelves
- Put away christmas decorations and got rid of the tree

Closet Before:


Closet After:




New Year's Eve

I spent new year's eve at Jenn and Elvin's house, playing games and generally making a ruckus.










Chris was so good to stay home with the baby ... and also to deal with my slightly hung-over self the next day.



Happy New Year Everyone!

Baby Sweaters!

So many babies lately! Baby Caleb (Troy+Becky) was born right before Christmas and Baby Dominick (Andrea+Ricky) was born just before New Year's.

   

It was a good thing I was trying to get all my knitting projects before the New Year (new, bigger, non-knitting project on the horizon!), because one of these babies came early!

For baby Caleb, I nixed the idea of combining Packers and Vikings (a little too complicated) and went with a simple Notre Dame jacket. The special touch is the shamrock applique, which is SO CUTE!!! They also got a simpler Golden Dome hat ... I didn't have the patience to do the brim fanciness.









Baby Dominick got the real prize. Ricky is a huge LSU fan, and his nursery is completely decked out.








Of course I went with a Letterman Jacket (I can practically do this pattern in my sleep now).



Oh, it looks like an ordinary sweater in the LSU colors, right?


Wait WHAT!?!?!?!

I took the LSU logo and gridded it up!




This was so complicated, but I came out so good!







I had to have so many balls of the same color, or else the back would have been even crazier! Also, this was a great time to learn to weave in ends correctly!

I really liked doing this more complicated pattern, and there MAY be another Domer baby headed someone's way soon (not me, keep your panties on people). Maybe a little leprechaun?

I grew that from nothin'!

I feel like everyone I know has been on this whole "eat locally", gardening thing lately. They're all "Hey! I grew green beans!" I'm jealous for several reasons:

1) I hate paying for things I can just do myself (I really should have named this blog, "Hey! I can just make that myself!").

2) I am all for vegetables and herbs and stuff. We've been good about cooking at home and having veggies at every meal.

However, there are some very serious challenges to the whole "growing things" goal:

1) I kill everything. Like, everything. I've had one plant survive my attempts at cultivation, but even that one is looking pretty sad.

2) I live in an apartment in New York City, so gardening is tricky.

However, the internets abound with ways to have pretty, indoor, useful gardens.

I got a window box from Home Depot and some seeds from Amazon (the lady at Home Depot gave me a snide "Um, no, it's a little late in the season for herbs" ... yeah, that's why I'm doing them inside my sauna of an apartment). 

For my first attempt I used old plastic cutting boards to divide up the window box into 10 sections and planted a different kind of seed (in alphabetical order of course ... Basil, Chives, Cilantro, Dill, Lavender  Oregano, Parsley, Rosemary, Stevia, Thyme). 

The internet told me it could take WEEKS to sprout anything, but probably within 5 days I had my first sprouts! They were so cute!

I think that's the basil 

I let those grow, and after a few weeks I had sprouts for basil, chives, cilantro, dill and parsley. The rest had nothing. I transferred the growing ones into their own pots, which did NOT go well. Everything except the cilantro and dill died, almost instantly. 

For my second attempt, I replanted the basil, oregano, and parsley seeds straight into their own pots; I didn't want to deal with replanting them. It worked much better.

The parsley and basil sprouted immediately, and the oregano is weak but growing. I replanted the others in the window box again, and again, nothing. I have to do a little more reading and see what I'm doing wrong.

Then Chris surprised me with Pepper seeds! I planted those in the window box, and look what was waiting for me after we got back from Christmas?!

On New Year's Day I always have to eat beans (thanks to Nana, who gives everyone baked beans for Christmas, even though my mom is the only one who eats them) -- Eat like a Pauper on the first of the year, and you'll eat like a King for the rest. This year we made fajitas (chicken for Chris, black beans for me), and tried to make them taste as close to Chipotle as possible. And for the Cilantro Lime Rice, I used the cilantro from my window!!! I was so proud!!!

Problem:
The clay pots really dry out the soil, so the ones in clay pots are bone try but the ones in the plastic pots are getting moldy! I read here about soaking the pots in water from the bottom instead of watering them from the  top (which could flush the nutrients down and out the bottom).



They look so much better! The internet said I wouldn't have to water then again for weeks ... I don't quite buy that, but we'll see.

Green ... ish

I spent the morning stashing some yarn. It's been a while (shakes fist at baby!), and after a few big projects our bookshelf was covered with about 30 partial skeins of every color I have.

Then I realized I didn't know which yarn was which. Is this White the Vanna or the RedHeart? And these two white don't look like the same white. 

And then I came across this ...

How many greens does one person need? And mind you, these were only the greens that sort of looked similar (in my dimly-lit living room) ... there are WAY more on the shelf.

I realized I had to do a better job keeping track. But how to do track a little ball of yarn?

With little scraps of paper of course.

Now my yarn shelf is all pretty.

Reds, Oranges, Yellows, Pinks, and Purples

Greens and Blues

Whites, Browns (which still need a little organizational love), Blacks, and Grays

Odd Sizes, Weights, and Textures

The husband is much happier now.