VISITORS, IN SQUARE LITTLE BOXES

So... I finally started using this app on my iPhone called Diptic which allows you to make collages with several of your photos, and now I can’t stop won’t stop. Here are a few photos of such shenanigans capturing some visitors that Sloane has had over the past week and what she did with them:

 nibbling on fingers with hilz

riding a dog with sharon and paul

that time sloane laid down a big one while sitting on laura

Other photo editing apps that I use often: VSCO CAM, Camera+, Phonto, Squareready, Afterglow, Over, and of course, Instagram.

SISTERS

I took so many photos this past weekend that it’s taking me a while to wade through. But here one here is one of my favorites, for obvious reasons. My sisters and my bebe all together in one frame: happiness.  

WHEN IT'S WORTH IT, IT'S WORTH IT

Today is Monday, which means it’s been four days since Thanksgiving, but it feels like it’s been a month! A month of awesomeness, to be sure, especially because it was also filled to the brim with activities that involved family. But I would really love another weekend to recover from this past one. This is how the holidays go, though, and you just gotta dive in, knowing that you will probably come up exhausted at the other end...because the time you get to spend with those loved ones is worth it.

We went down to Virginia Beach for a couple of days to visit with K’s family, and then we came back up to Richmond to meet my sisters and celebrate a birthday. I will probably share a few photos from what went down this past weekend over the next few days, but for now, I leave you with a photo of our little dragon.  She slept wonderfully when we were in VA Beach, but when we came back home, she decided that she would stay up all night, two nights in a row, getting herself all worked up. It was rough, and my body may or may not have tried to shut itself down at one point, but the morning after the second night, she fell asleep in our bed with my hand on her stomach. We lay there like that for about an hour. She would wake up suddenly to make sure my hand was there and then fall asleep again. It was sweet, soothed my weariness, and somehow, made those long nights totally worth it.

VISITING THE ROBINSONS

it stinks when good friends move away. but you know what's awesome? when they don't move that far away, and you can visit them in their new situation, their new lives, and see that they are doing more than just dandy. we did such a thing this past weekend with our good friends martha and ian when we were in their area, and boy was it good to see little simone running around (on her two little legs! all by herself!). we picked up dimsum for lunch and marveled at how big (simone) and chub (sloane) were getting.  

HI!

dino baby 

you gotta love the faces

peeks of martha's beautiful home

i could have pored over that atlas all day 

the little lady

she's on trend with her monochrome outfit

that face! and sloane's double-chin face

group hug 

the gals 

tending.

rockin the side swept look

THAT TIME A BABY WENT TO GO WATCH AN NBA GAME....

...she was pretty impressed. 

a baby (15 weeks!!) fan

she stayed up during the entire game! and then passed out afterwards. 

our little trooper.

TO KICK OFF THE WEEKEND.....

hello from the lu family, 

and from sloane's cheeks. 

because they are an entity of their own. 

we are going out of town this weekend - 

i am looking forward to hanging out with friends, and taking sloane to her first basketball game.!

hope you all enjoy your pre-short-week-at-work-cause-of-thanksgiving weekend!

and some more, cause they are just that delicious..

PAGE CXVI

last tuesday, our church got the band, page cxvi, to share a concert at The 400 building and it was wonderful. they are a band/project/trio whose goal it is to revive some of the lyrics of hymns, making it more accessible to the modern ear, and sing and play the heck out of them. it was rest for my soul. you can check them out here.  they have some youtube videos on their site, but also make sure to check out their new 'lullabies' album...
i love it.

you know what else i love? c.s. lewis' chronicles of narnia. 

it relates because the name, page cxvi, comes from a reference to page 116 of their copy of 'the magician's nephew'. it is the passage that describes aslan singing narnia into existence: 

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.” 

OATMEAL DON'T GOTTA BE SWEET

recently, i discovered that YOU DON'T HAVE TO EAT OATMEAL SWEET!

if savory oatmeal sounds strange to you at first, it's understandable. but know this, it works. it works well. 

this is my favorite breakfast these days (and sometimes its dinner).

using some chicken stock helps boost up the flavor,

 and something about the texture of the oatmeal, and the salt + cheese + egg combo on the top makes this hearty and delicious.

ingredients:
2 c. rolled oats
1 c. of water + 1/4 c. of chicken stock
salt & pepper
shredded parmesan cheese
olive oil fried egg
cut up scallions or green onions

directions:
1. cook oatmeal in water and chicken stock for 5-10 minutes, until oatmeal is cooked.
2. heat up some olive oil, fry up an egg.
3. place egg on a heapful of oatmeal, sprinkle salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese over egg and oatmeal, top it off with some scallions.

so easy, so good.

MODERN MONOCHROME

dark wall + wood + copper = i could look at this photo all day.

from house & garden

BRUNCH, SCENTSY AND BABIES

the remnants of a harvest brunch

I love brunch.

 Breakfast and breakfast foods are my most favorite meal of the day, so the idea of an elongated meal that happens mid-morning because you got to sleep in that morning and includes the possibility of spiked drinks, makes me a fan. If I have a good reason to throw a brunch, I’m probably gonna do it. 

My sis-in-law has recently took up the side gig of being a scentsy consultant, and when she said she’d come up to share the scentsy love at a home party, I decided brunch needed to be involved. We ate, we sniffed (scentsy products), and we exclaimed over babies. My friend Andrea brought over her little one, Max, who happens to be Sloane’s buddy at daycare.There’s something about two little lumps sitting next to one another with their chub hands reaching and grabbing for each other that makes me giddy.  

i love the light that comes through that window/door

amy doing her thang

emily and diane with max & sloane

chillin'

and diane and addie got sloane this adorable hat from peru. it has llamas on it!

also, if you want to pick up some goods 

- scents & warmers that also act as decorative pieces - 

for your home, do it here.
this one is my favorite, this and this one is also really cute

AFTERNOON WITH PAPA

on sunday afternoon i had to run a few errands so sloane and ken had the afternoon to themselves. 

while i was out, i got the following picture messages. these are pretty much the best.

1. 'ready for a sunday afternoon stroll'

2. no caption..... (yes, that's sloane, in the garage)

3. 'attempted to put on the bjorn by myself...success!'

4.  andwhat i found when i got home: pleased papa, sleeping baby

FIVE THINGS

 spotted: handsome mustached husband rocking the bjorn with baby inside.

 close up: strawberry-topped baby snuggled into papa's chest

 what last saturday looked like: we took turns sleeping with sloane all day

what today looked like: haven't-showered-for-a-couple-of-days hair

victory: scored a sweater for sloane for 99 cents

HOT NOODLES

i’m dragging this week. it happens. there’s nothing wrong and Sloane has been sleeping so much better (double celebratory fist pump to the heavens), but i feel somewhat muted, and have been feeling a little bit like i sobbed for hours the night before (i haven’t) – u know that drained feeling where you also feel like your face is puffy...? mayhaps it’s fluctuating hormones, maybe it’s wanting to spend the day with S. instead of being at work, maybe it’s want of sleep, but most likely it's the colder weather. or a combination of all the above. i'm not complaining, i'm just telling it like it is. and i'm also serving up some context for this super easy noodle recipe that i want to share.

a shout out to my mother-in-law who taught me how to put this little number together. it's perfect for cold days, especially after a long day of work, when the last thing you want to do is slave over the stove. it's quick, hot, and fills you up in all the right places. we already had this for dinner twice this week. it was just that kind of week. 

hot noodles with pork and spinach, serves 2

i eyeball/taste-test everything as i go, so this is an approximation. also, it's super flexible... this recipe is not really a recipe, it's more like a suggestion. as long as you have some sort of broth + noodles + meat + vegetable combination, it works. 

ingredients: 2.5 cups of chicken broth, 2 cups of baby spinach (watercress also works really well), 1/2 cup of pickled vegetables (i found some at the asian market - if you can't find them, just use some onions), 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, 2 tablespoons of minced garlic, olive oil, 1/3 lb of pork (chicken or beef could work too), noodles (i use asian noodles, but you could also use any kind of flat noodles, maybe linguine)

directions: 

1) boil water for noodles and cook them al dente

2) cut up pork into small pieces. combine soy sauce, sesame oil, corn starch and garlic together in a bowl. put the pieces of pork in the soy sauce mixture and set aside.

3) cook the pickled vegetables in some hot olive oil for one minute. set aside

4) heat up another tablespoon of sesame oil, and saute the pork in that until pork is cooked all the way through. combine pork and pickled vegetables together.

5) bring chicken broth to a boil. add spinach to the broth and let cook for one minute. 

6) put noodles in bowl, pour broth with spinach over the noodles, and top with vegetables and pork. 

enjoy and then go to bed early.

LISA CONGON'S 365 DAYS OF HAND LETTERING

i found this project really inspiring - i totally believe in the advice of 1) try, 2) be open, flexible and move on when necessary, and 3) find what you like and go with it - when attempting a creative endeavor. 

browse through her stuff, it's wonderful.

AN UPSIDE DOWN ODE TO SLEEP

This morning when I got to work K. called me to say he couldn’t find his car keys, so I checked my pockets and found them in there. Luckily he had a spare, and no one’s life was deterred, but after I got off the phone, I sat there, at work, unable to stop tears from leaking all over my face. Dammit! I thought, this is ruining my much-needed concealer strategically placed to hide the purple-patched indicators of how much sleep I didn’t get the night before.

Forgetting to leave the keys on the counter isn’t that big of a deal as an isolated event, but this is on top of a week where I’m feeling like I can’t catch my breath. Do you know what I’m talking about? And for some reason, this week, it’s forgetting to do the small but really important things of life that make me really mad at myself. Small but important like how this past weekend, when we were out of town, I locked my keys in the car and had no memory of doing so. It was embarrassing, and frustrating. And this all is eventually turning me into having characteristics of a person with OCD. I have to double or triple check everything, because either I can’t remember or even if I do remember, I think I might be wrong. So I do things like go downstairs after dinner has long been over to check the stove 2-3 times to make sure I did in fact turn it off, drive back into the garage after I’ve driven out to make sure I’ve turned the light off, look through my purse over and over again to confirm that I have keys, purse, phone. I mean, which is all fine. If that’s what I gotta do, that’s what I gotta do. But I try hard to keep this up and when I forget the littlest things, it makes me feel like a big fat giant failure. Go figure.

Can I blame this on being a new mom? Maybe. Can I blame it on the fact that my mind is constantly trying to maintain several lists in my head of things I have to get done for home, work, baby, friends, family, & myself, and sometimes things slip through the cracks? Probably. But so what? I’m so lucky in that almost (almost) everything that is on my to-do lists are things that I WANT to do. And they are all things I CAN do. I’d like to think I’m realistic about trying to achieve goals/dreams/balance. But the thing is, even the best-intentioned and able-bodied need sleep.

I’m not getting a lot of it. And while it’s amazing to me that I’m up and running these days, some days, like this week, I’m running on really low fuel. So if this post doesn’t make sense, you know why.

I got sick last week – which is rare for me– and it probably had something to do with my body not being able to fight off sickness as well due to lack of sleep. Sloane had been all over the place with her sleeping schedule last week, and by the end of the week, I was feeling it in my bones. Then we went out of town, and while it was a great weekend, I definitely didn’t get enough sleep during the weekend either and by the time this week was about to start I was already feeling a little burnt out. Earlier this week, Sloane went back to sleeping through the night for about 6 hours, and K. and I gave each other figurative high-fives and got all excited about having a couple more nights of 6 hours of sleep, but we got pumped a little too soon. Last night, the baby dragon was all in an uproar, for reasons unknown and even though I decided I should start letting her cry it out once in a while, her crying wasn’t letting me go back to sleep so I selfishly brought her into bed with us, which meant all of us were able to fall asleep. We’ll try again tonight. Some nights are definitely better than others.

You know how they say if you starve yourself your body will go into preservation mode and hoard the calories you do eat? Well, I’m finding that it does that for sleep as well. Even though I was getting an hour or two more of sleep each night, I found that I was even more tired than usual. My body was all, ‘Whoa whoa, are we doing this, getting sleep now? Let’s do it up!’

If I had to dish out advice for other new moms who were going to go back to work, it would be to make sure your babe will take the bottle. If it doesn't happen, you will still survive, and it'll all be fine. But it's one of those things that would help the transition a whole lot. The other advice I have to offer is to plan a lot and pray even more. Being diligent about planning and making lists really does help. Along with planning though, make sure you pray it out. It relieves the pressure, puts things into perspective, and you learn how to ask for help.

Boy this post is all over the place. Basically, I’m just writing my feelings. This is what I do. Some people eat their feelings, run their feelings, yell their feelings… I write my feelings. If you want the thesis of this post, it's that I'm tired.

If I squeeze my eyes shut and wish really really hard for time to stop, will it?

This morning, after that long night, I woke up, pumped, nursed and changed S., and then put her down on our bed next to K. while I got myself ready for work. And she followed me with her eyes, smiling big smiles at me the whole time. Love.