Well, let me clarify: I’m doing a perfectly good job of documenting with my iPhone. And there’s something to be said for that. I love taking photos and videos on my phone…after all, they say that “the best camera is the one you have with you.” But here’s my dilemma with that: I like pretty pictures. I like great quality, beautifully composed, print-it-large-and-hang-it-on-the-wall photos. I can’t help it. So…I’m really thankful for our Dauphin Island (part one & part two) photos that we took in June, and I’m so thankful for the apple orchard photos we just took last week. And I am incredibly grateful for Amber Holritz’s thorough documentation for all of Sierra’s milestones, because without those amazing sessions, poor Sierra wouldn’t know that we love her as much as we love Alana

All of this to say, I decided that I wanted to do a little project and basically crawl around the house with Sierra for a day or two, just documenting what life looks like for her at 9 months. I love her personality, and I love how BUSY she is. She’s a lot like Alana was at this age, but a little less cautious and a bit more daring.

Sierra started pulling up on furniture at 7.5 months, so now at 9 months, she’s a seasoned professional. She pulls up on everything…which is part of what I wanted to capture with this project. We randomly find her standing all over the house every day. I began my little project in the morning time last week, the girls still in their jammies, and watching some Curious George.

Now that Sierra can stand and reach Alana’s table, she constantly tries to steal Alana’s food. So I am always rushing over to pry some piece of food out of Sierra’s fist while Alana is squealing, “Mom! Mom! Sierra got my food! She will choke!!!” Gonna have to figure out a solution for this…

After Sierra has watched a few minutes of cartoons and terrorized Alana a little bit, she moves on to create lots of messes for me. She has figured out that behind cabinets and in baskets, there are lots of things that can be taken out and thrown all over the floor  

She usually watches cartoons for a couple of minutes, then moves on to other things before getting sleepy and taking her morning nap.

Sippy cup! 

Then she got tired and cried and started to cry…

…and got distracted by her reflection in the coffee table glass  

But since it was naptime, I was a terrible mother and put her in her crib to sleep. How. Could. You, Mom? 

But see, I know what I’m doing, because the nap yielded a much happier, more content baby

I love this little face. She has the same red birthmark between her eyes that Rich had as a baby. The doctor said these marks usually go away by the time baby turns 1, but I think Rich had his longer than that. So we will see…either way, obviously, I love her little face to pieces!

This Skip Hop Owl is one of our favorite toys…completely adorable!

Play time in the nursery, with her singing penguin:
Baby parts…irresistible!

Sierra is just getting to the age where she can really enjoy playing with Alana. And Alana is all too ready to entertain her little sis. Alana can make Sierra laugh more often than any of us, and it’s to die for.

Like I said, Alana likes to entertain She wears this black ballerina dress almost every day. The other days she wears her bright pink ballerina dress or her princess dress  Playing with her toy box in her room…

Looking for a ball that rolled under her crib! Ha! So cute. 

She’s a little Tasmanian devil…zipping all over the house and creating mini disasters. Here she is untying her crib bumper bows…

She loves cords. Notice the lamp cord wrapped around her thigh. The problem with her affinity for power cords is that you can’t do anything different with them! There’s nowhere else to put them to keep them away from babies! I spend a fair amount of time taking them away from Sierra

It’s hard to be a baby…you fall down a lot

And she’s off to other places! I think crawling is insanely cute. It’s crazy to think she won’t be doing it much longer!

Lunch time! 

 Not getting food to her fast enough…

Going to run some errands! Since she is about to start walking, I am trying to gradually get her used to shoes. It’s not working. I put them on, and she spends all of her time trying to get them off

But baby shoes are so darn cute!

Here are some photos of Sierra eating her first teething biscuit for an afternoon snack. I snapped a few images and then heard her choke so I set down my camera, stuck my finger in her mouth, and pulled out a much-too-large piece of the biscuit. Okay, I hate these things. I am not buying any more of them. They are not supposed to break into pieces and choke the baby. What in the world?!?!

So these will be the FIRST and ONLY photos of Sierra gnawing on a teething biscuit. Way too scary.

Both girls LOVE balloons…so we always have a balloon or two (or three!) hanging out around the house. It’s Alana’s number one priority every time we go to Publix. A free balloon. So here is Sierra playing with a recent Publix balloon…

She recently discovered the dishwasher so now I can’t load or unload it while she’s awake or this is what happens…

She’s pretty proud of herself…

Hanging out in the kitchen…

Playing!

And getting sleepy again  

And more crawling…

Sierra makes this hilarious face all the time, and I finally captured it! She scrunches up her nose and breathes in and out of her nose really quickly. It is so very entertaining. Now to try to catch it on video! 

A blurry, technically imperfect photo, but a “Sierra moment” nonetheless! 

And being entertained some more by Alana! Tippy toes!

More balloon fun…

Rich is TOTALLY going to make fun of me for posting too many photos in this blog post in general, and definitely too many of this particular series. But I can’t help it. How do I narrow these gems down???

She has realized that when we put things in our mouth, she wants it too because it tastes better than baby food. So here she is, begging like a little puppy. Although, it’s possible that she just wanted Rich to pick her up. I don’t remember if there was food involved in this case. 

Evenings are tough for Sierra. She usually wants to be held, so putting her down encourages this kind of reaction: 

But we got her distracted with a new toy! I just bought this sit and ride car for her, since she is so ready to start “practice walking.”

She was tentative, but caught on pretty quickly.

And that concludes my little sierra project! I am SO excited about her ten month session with Amber Holritz that is coming up soon! And I think we are going to try to slip away from the insane busy-ness and go to a pumpkin patch as a family this weekend! So stay tuned!

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

So, I set up the photo booth in the living room and left it there for almost a week…taking photos between naps, feeding times, and errands. We just shot sporadically, since I didn’t want to upset her or exhaust her!

She’s growing and changing SO QUICKLY right now…and I wanted to remember her 7 month old expressions and mannerisms. I love the way the photos turned out, and I think I’ll enjoy them for years to come

Here are (too many of) my favorites!

Sierra will be five months old on Saturday, so I think I’ve waited a bit longer on the rice cereal than I did for Alana. It was a funny little event, and I was happy to have Rich here taking photos, Amber here taking an iPhone video, and Alana to be our entertainment.

I was the designated spoon-feeder, and here are the results of our collaboration!

I put Sierra in the bouncy seat because I am holding off as long as I can in bringing the high chair upstairs…baby stuff takes up so much space and I reeeaaaallly don’t like bulky clutter! Plus, Sierra isn’t quite ready to sit up yet, but soon – she’s so strong!

Here are a few images that I thought were funny.

Wondering what is going on…

She’s normally SO expressive but I think she was really confused and not sure what to think because she just stared at me like, “What???”

Pretty awesome what-the-heck face:

As is typical of a baby’s first spoon-feeding, way more cereal ended up on her face and bib than what was actually ingested  

Alana was pretty excited about the special occasion

I had to work pretty hard to pry her little fingers off the spoon handle. Every time I tried to give her a bite she just grabbed the spoon and wanted to play with it. Silly baby. 

Fun times. Love my little family!!!

This is a “before” image with bedding that I didn’t love and wall color that matched the bedding that I didn’t love

Because our bedroom is pretty small (our king-sized bed takes up almost the entire room), and the only window is a rather small one (off to the right of the photo), I wanted to open up the room by lightening the wall color and choose a bedding set that would give it a much more modern feel.

I painted the walls “Creamy” from Sherwin-Williams and chose the Ruffled Circle Quilt and Shams from West Elm (the place that makes me want to start from scratch and redecorate every room in my house)

I really loved the silver/grey color of the quilt but since I have brown wood/leather furniture in the room, the only way to make it all work together was to choose a decorative pillow that had both brown and grey in it. Kellie came through for me (as always) and found the Bull’s Eye Silk Pillow Cover, also from West Elm.

I love the way it all looks together and after a few finishing touches, the room will be done! I’d love to have some wonderful lamps for the night stands, and Rich had the idea to frame a series of 3 recent family portraits by Amber Holritz on the wall above the bed.

Here is the almost-finished master bedroom after my mini-makeover! Amazing how the paint color and light-colored bedding can open up the room and make it look fresher, bigger, and airier!

I’m excited about the changes and how much more versatile the room is now. I’m such a fan of whites, creams, and grays it’s ridiculous!

Next up on the blog is Sierra’s first experience with rice cereal Stay tuned!

This arrangement has worked out perfectly, and Alana loves her room.

About a month ago, when I saw that the organic bedding sets by Amy Butler were on sale at Bed Bath & Beyond, I decided to actually get a “backup” bedding set for Alana. Over the past few months, there have been a few times that Alana has gotten sick at night and thrown up on her comforter and sheets – or had an “accident” – and when that happens, we are stuck. Since comforters have to be washed and dried in large capacity machines, we have to find the time to go to our local laundromat and in the meantime, Alana has been without bedding! She ends up sleeping with living room blankets and gets all tangled up because they don’t stay put! So, because the bedding at BB&B was on sale and they honor their 20% off coupons on top of the sale, I jumped on this set called “Constanta” and Alana LOVES it!

I bought it to use whenever we are washing her other set, but of course when I got home with it, she wanted me to put the new set on her bed. So here are a few photos of Alana enjoying her new (backup) bedding set How pretty would this room be if the furniture was white? Kellie is trying to talk me into painting it but I don’t know if I’m up for such a major project. Someone needs to come paint this furniture white for me I would love the result but the process would be torturous! Maybe I’ll get around to it someday!

As always, thank you so much to Amber Holritz for the gorgeous large prints all over our house. This one is a 40×60  

And since I was already in her room taking pictures, here is Alana’s ever-growing Beanie Boo family. Thanks to my mom and sister, she has collected 12 of them. Meet Goldie, King, Princess, Fetch, Nibbles, Peanut, Waddles, Casanova, Clover, Safari, Bamboo, and Carrots. They’re a close knit group and they hang out on Alana’s dresser waiting to be the one that she chooses to sleep with each night. 

After the fun bedroom photos we spent a few minutes outside:And here are a few photos with her original bedding set that I took last week. My mom sent Alana the two Euro shams that coordinate with this set and I can’t wait to buy the Euro pillows we need and get them on the bed. They’re gorgeous! Thank you mom! I will be sure to take an updated photo once we get them on the bed!

I love this image. I love her sweet expression, the bright spring colors, her blue eyes, and her adorable new dress. Yummy colors.

And a few self-portraits, just for fun! 

For a VERY long time, her hair wasn’t long enough to braid and now that it is, I thought she might enjoy it that way.

So, I braided her hair for the first time a few days ago, and she got crazy excited and asked me to take some pictures…which was also a first She was actually giddy with excitement over her pigtail braids and ran around the house with some hilarious expressions.

Here are a few that I loved:

Randomly pretending to fit into Sierra’s car seat  

And my personal favorite: 

Now, with kids, I find that my blogs are very image-driven rather than text (content) driven. Sometimes I am fine with that, other times it really bothers me. Sometimes it makes me feel like I’m not using my blog in a really productive manner, but then I think about the fact that documenting my family’s everyday life IS productive.

Okay, so I might not have time at this stage in my life to use my blog for a profound platform, but for now, that’s just how it has to be. Most days I feel the pressure of many responsibilities and I feel happy just to take care of the kids, keep the house in order, shop and cook meals, and keep up with the books for the business. I’m usually content to snap a few photos of the girls once or twice a week, edit them quickly, upload them, say a few sentences, and call it a blog post. Writing anything beyond a cursory overview has started to seem unattainable.

Then there are nights like tonight, when I am more reflective, and decide to stay up too late blogging and will pay for it tomorrow. Thinking about life. Thinking about this crazy world that we live in. Thinking about how I have so much to learn and so far to go.

Parenthood is so much more difficult than I give it credit for. We had to discipline Alana tonight, and it really hit me. Having a newborn is the super duper easy part. No, believe me, I get it, it’s very difficult in it’s own way. It’s physically draining. Babies are so dependent. But honestly, this second time around, I’m learning that for me, Sierra is the easy one. It’s coming face-to-face with the reality that I am training and molding a 3 year old human being that REALLY gets me thinking about what “difficult” can truly be. My flaws seem to glare at me in a way they never did before. I worry that she will be less than the her best…because of me. I look into those amazing eyes and I worry.

I feel so unprepared some days. I feel so inadequate. It’s the notion of the mom who has it all together…this person who, in my head, is a much better mother than me. She wakes up early, before her kids do, so that she can spend quality time reading her bible, praying, getting ready for her day. She prepares a home cooked, healthy breakfast for her kids, and goes straight into some reading time with them or curriculum or something educational. The TV stays off all day. She purees organic vegetables for her baby while her toddler munches on carrot sticks for a snack. When aforementioned toddler disobeys, she always handles it with patience and grace. She has a perfect balance of authoritative presence and love. She plans meals for two weeks so that she only has to grocery shop bi-monthly. And she’s a fabulous couponer…she buys $350 worth of groceries for $67. She cooks healthy, delicious dinners that everyone enjoys, gives toddler a bath, then baby, then puts them both to bed and has a reserve of time and energy for her husband. She exercises and stays fit. She loves people well. She has many friends because she has been a good friend to them first. She’s not selfish.

The problem is that I feel like I am all of those things above…SOMETIMES. I have been ready for my day before, but I am not always. Most days I wait until the last possible moment, when I know Sierra will want to nurse, and I peel myself out of bed to get her. I love having my quiet times, but they are not consistent. Some days we leave the TV off and read, play and learn. But there are many days when she watches more Curious George than can be healthy. Many evenings I prepare healthy home cooked meals…but then there are the days when I didn’t even THINK about what we were having for dinner until 4pm. Sometimes I feel so triumphant to have handled a difficult situation with Alana with patience…and then there are many times that I feel at a complete loss as to how best deal with her. And I certainly need God’s help to love people and to serve them.

Since I really need to stop this stream-of-consciousness writing (lest I type all night), I will post a few random observations about my life as of late.

1) Having two kids is very manageable most days, but some days I actually think I will go insane.
2) Sierra is a very sweet, very smiley, very pleasant baby and we all love her very much. She brings laid back balance to Alana’s unparalleled energy.
3) Time is flying by faster the older I get. The newborn stage didn’t fly by at this rate the first time around. This strikes me as both good and bad.
4) Now when I go somewhere with only Sierra and Rich is watching Alana, I always feel like I’m missing or forgetting something because having only one feels so easy.
5) I can nurse anywhere this time around. I have my shawl, which I’m much more comfortable with now, and because Sierra is a rapid nurser, it’s a piece of cake)
6) I am so blessed and so thankful for the friendships in my life. God has given me a wonderful family and beautiful friends.
7) The bible study that I attend for moms on Wednesday mornings might actually be keeping me more happy and sane than I am even aware of.
8. Trying to run errands or shop can be masochistic in a way that having only one child could not have been. At the mall recently, shopping for a friends’ birthday gift, I literally gave up, in tears, and headed home, complaining to Rich on the phone about how difficult having kids is. I was annoying even myself with my whining.
9) I want to complain less and be CONTENT with everything in my life. The hard wood floors that I want, wanting the house exterior painted, etc. I want all of my wanting to subside. I want to be content in all things. I have so much to be thankful for. Life.is.so.not.about.stuff.
10) I want for God to make me who HE wants me to be. Not my own version of the story. I want His. But I’m often very scared about what that might mean – what kind of sacrifice it might involve. I fear way too many things.

And because every blog post is better with photos (even wordy, overwhelming ones), here are a few photos of my sweet, sweet little Alana, who is so much like me it’s scary. She’s easily frustrated, she’s impatient, and she’s gonna have ME to thank for those character flaws. Thankfully, God created her with about a thousand wonderful qualities, so we will take the imperfections and pray for parenting wisdom

If you have read this far, you must be a true friend. Comment so I know you’re here

She sleeps:

Has happy awake time:

And not-so-happy awake time  

And every day, without fail, generates lots of laundry for me to do. Both of my girls have been spit-up queens.

These photos depict a huge percentage of my life right now  

Happy Friday, everyone! I’ll be at home doing laundry

We got a super fun Valentines box in the mail this week from my mom…and as usual, her gifts made our day!

Here is Alana showing off her adorable new stuff. Some of the gifts were edible…

Also inside the box of goodies was a super cute new friend, Casanova! These new Ty beanie animals are too cute with their silly little bodies and big round eyes. 

I think we are inadvertently starting a collection I bought “Waddles” the penguin for Alana when she was potty trained because she’d seen her and loved her. Then my sis bought “Safari” the giraffe for Alana at christmas time and now “Casanova” from my mom joins the ranks. I’m a sucker for small cute things and I’m thinking there will be a few more of these to join our family yet.

Then sugar glider appeared the other day after Alana had spent an afternoon with Aunt Pixie and Uncle Nick. Adorable. But she’s bigger than the others, so she’s a loner.

This is Alana’s new silly face and she cracks herself up. 

And just a couple of close up photos of my medium-sized Valentine  

Tonight Rich is cooking dinner for me since we have little chance of an actual date with a six week old We bought some prime Filet Minon from EarthFare with baking potatoes and veggies and will be enjoying delicious dinner at home tonight. Even if Sierra is screaming her head off (as is a typical evening in the Smith home lately), we will be enjoying the tasty food. And to top it off, Rich made me (from scratch) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. This was a major feat, because he managed to substitute several ingredients to make them dairy free for me! So I might eat too many!

But again, Happy Valentines Day to you and the ones you love!

(I think the best way to embrace being 30 is to wear pigtails. Braided ones if you really want to go crazy)