9 Months

Justace still stands up a lot and cruises a lot but I haven't seen him stand on his own yet. Josh said he has for a few seconds before but then he falls over. He loves peek a boo but will not play games with me of rolling balls or anything like that. His favorite newest game to play is I give him a toy and he drops it on the floor then I pick up the toy then he drops it on the floor and stares at it until I pick it up again. He also has started trying to get ahold of my purse if I leave it lying around and he loves emptying it of everything and playing with the contents so I have to constantly make sure I put it up somewhere or at least it has nothing dangerous in it. He loves tearing paper towels off the roll as well. Still no teeth yet. He won't be going in yet for his 9 month checkups just yet because he's been sick. If his cough doesn't get better in a few days I'm going to take him in anyways to have him checked out because that'll be a little over a week he's had this cough. It kills me seeing him sick like this.

Beauty

One of my goals this year was to focus more on myself and taking care of my looks. I think my biggest problem in this department is mental. I don't think I'm pretty or can be pretty so I don't try. I'm not saying I think I'm ugly. More like a plain jane kind of look and boring. So, first of all, I need to see myself as beautiful and then I can focus on actually doing things like hair and makeup and stuff to enhance that and have fun with it. My little sister is a huge beauty/fashionista girl. She's always dressing so stylish and she always keeps herself looking supermodel gorgeous with hair and makeup and what not. Just because she's a big city single younger gal and I'm almost 30 and a country mom doesn't mean I can't at least put a little effort into my looks. Maybe not as much as she does but at least some. So for this week I'm going to post photos I have of myself where I actually think I look pretty to remind myself of what I have to work with over the next year.

 This was taken quite a long time ago when I used to be skinny - before pregnancy, before the military. I was practicing taking self photos with my camera and I liked this one. I used to like anything dark or gothic which explains the necklace as well as the dress in this photo and of course the teddy bear is cute, much like my personality. I'm super white but I think it actually works for me in this photo instead of against me like usual.

This was taken when I was in tech school in San Angelo in the Air Force. This is one of my classmates during her 21st birthday. We all went out to a local bar to celebrate with her.

This was taken New Years Eve night before Josh and I headed out to a local club in Las Vegas when we were vacationing there. I was actually extremely self conscious about my looks going out to party in a club on New Years Eve in Vegas. I felt I wouldn't fit in at all since I'm just a plain looking girl amongst famous people but I actually think the dress and shoes really worked for me. I couldn't walk in the shoes so I spent most of the night sitting while Josh got me things but hey I'm a girl. Isn't that how it should be? ;-)

This was taken in high school in Texas at the Renaissance Festival. To my left is my future husband Josh. To my right is my high school best friend Sam.

And this one I took on the computer at work one day and then played with effects to make it black and white and kind of blur my face a bit. I think it turned out well.

Work Out

Several excuses are always less convincing than one. - Aldous Huxley

Having failed over and over again at trying to stick to a workout routine I have come to the conclusion that the problem is my goal. I have to change my focus from I must lose weight and get fit to simply I must stick to this. So, at least for right now, I am not going to log my weight or my progress. I am simply going to start making myself go to the gym. Once this becomes second nature perhaps I will set more specific goals.

So for now I plan on only working out at the gym on work days. I figure I'm in town for work 4 days a week and I can do cardio on the treadmill every day I'm here and pick 2 days of the 4 to do strength traning. This will begin on Monday. I'm still recovering from a cold so I am giving myself today off and tomorrow I will be off work so Monday through Thursday of this coming week will be my first week at the gym. I will go after I get off work each morning before I head home.

I have to do something. My job requires me to sit in a chair for 12 hours at a time which is not good. To be fair I'm not eating hardly anything anymore but that's also not good since I'm not getting the nutrition I need.

I am going to pack a gym bag and leave it in my car. It will have a sports bra and tennis shoes and shorts and a tee and pants and a coat to wear over this on my way to the gym since its freezing outside. No more excuses. I will do this! I have to just start and make it a habit.

Photos

For Valentines Day Josh was planning on taking me out to this really nice really beautiful restaurant in Idaho Falls we went to for our anniversary. However, neither of us wanted to drive an hour back late at night and whoever was driving would have to not drink anything as well. So instead, he cooked this amazing meal for me. He really went all out. He made me chocolate martinis. He even went and bought us martini glasses and a cocktail shaker and he melted chocolate to rim the glasses with. They were delicious and of course we all know my favorite thing in the world is chocolate! He also made a raspberry souffle for dessert and for the dinner we had steak and mashed potatoes and asparagus. All were above restaurant quality in my opinion. After this we dropped Justace off his my in-laws who happened to be here that day and we had his uncle drop us off at the local bar. I haven't been out in about 4 years so it was nice to get to go out alone with Josh and no baby and enjoy some beers and a couple of shots at the bar. His uncle picked us up when were ready to come home and we went off to bed. A very nice day I think.

For the celebration of the beginning of Lent Josh cooked this shrimp and sausage po boy sandwich which was delicious. I attempted to cook a mardi gras cake and it turned out OK but didn't look as good as I'd hoped. Not bad for my first time however. Perhaps next year it will turn out better.

No, I did not feed my son chocolate. He put his face on my martini glass and got a big joker smile full on his face. I'm sure that tiny amount won't hurt him but mostly I couldn't stop laughing at how silly he looked and Josh snapped this photo.

This is Justace just before our friend Shay cut all his hair off. We figured since he had so much crazy hair up front and very little in the back we should even things out but seriously this is how long his hair was!

And here is Justace after his haircut. Don't worry. I kept a lock of his hair which will be going in the baby scrapbook I've been working on.

36 Weeks

Justace is pretty mobile. He doesn't crawl very much but he will if he really wants something on the other side of the room. Mostly he loves standing up. If you put him down he will find the nearest piece of furniture and use it to pull himself up and stand. He also walks around using furniture and adult legs as a guide. He attempts to stand on his own but can't quite do that yet.

I plan on hopefully taking Justace to the baby gym tomorrow morning. Haven't been yet but I figure we will try it and if he likes it it would be a good place for him to go play once a week.

I'm not sure why...it might be teething or maybe his new standing skill...but after months of wonderful sweet hours of sleep at night Justace has regressed back to waking up every night. Usually if we're lucky he only wakes once but it takes 30-45 minutes for him to get back to sleep again and if we're not lucky he won't go back to sleep at all or he wakes every hour or two and whines. I've taken to sleeping on the couch with headphones on when he awakes at night so I can get some sleep on nights I have to work in the morning.

I love animals but I think we may have gone overboard. They are driving me slightly crazy. Between Justace screaming, Frankie tearing up every box in sight and getting into everything, Aspen peeing and pooping all over the house and Pip suddenly running off every time I open the door because I think he has a new little girl friend down the street I'm about to lose it. The dogs need outside play time to get their energy out but they are cooped up inside because of the cold. Bella I think has decided to voice her disapproval of the new puppy by peeing. I went to grab a pair of pants for Justace today and discovered all his pants soaking wet with piss. My patience is wearing thin.

Josh celebrates his birthday tomorrow but we went out tonight to Buffalo Wild Wings. It was delicious. Good food and good friends and the babies even behaved for the most part. We gave Justace a small hot dog bun a piece of celery and he was good. My plan was to buy Josh a gun cabinet but apparently they were almost all sold out at all the local stores and didn't have any in my price range so we will have to wait for that. Instead we both got concealed carry permits for our guns and holsters to wear them as well as a gun cleaning kit.

We got our taxes back and are going to be using it to pay off some of our debts. Once we do that we should have $300 less a month we are paying toward debt so that will help a great deal I think in slowly allowing us to get back on our feet financially again.