Wordless Wednesday

First of all, thank you all so much for joining us for our "A Day in the Life" Link up party! I've had so much fun reading your posts and meeting new friends! The link party is up until Friday night, so if you didn't get a chance to join us yesterday, please feel free to still link up! 

I was off work yesterday, waiting for Charter to come hook up our new internet and phone service. So I took advantage of the nice weather and took Jackson outside for a little photo shoot for his 1st birthday party invitations. I happened to get this super cute shot of him. I absolutely adore his beautiful blue eyes. I did some photo editing, but didn't enhance his eyes at all. Those baby blues are all natural.

I just love those few pieces of hair that stick up in the back.☺

And here is the same photo in black and white.

I'm linking up here,

here, 

and here.

Link Up: "A Day in the Life " [Via Instagram]

I'm so excited to be hosting this link up with my good friend Holly! I hope this helps us all get to know one another a little bit better and that we can all make some new friends!

We'd love for you to add our button to your post!

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So here goes...

My day starts out at around 6:20 a.m. (sometimes a little sooner, depending on if Jackson wakes up).


 On a normal day, Jackson has already had a bottle sometime around 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. and usually goes right back to sleep. So he will normally sleep during the whole time I'm getting ready for work, which is great!! ☺

I usually get up and get right in the shower. I shower, do my make-up, do my hair and get dressed all by around 7:15. In the mean-time Jake gets up and feeds the dogs and lets them out and gets ready for work himself. He usually leaves the house at around 7:00 a.m.

My mom usually gets to our house at around 7, so that she can watch Jackson for us while we're at work. I'm so thankful to have her watching Jackson for us. My mom usually puts on a pot of coffee in the morning when she gets to my house, so I always have a cup on the drive into work. :-) This is very necessary.


At around 7:20 or 7:30 I drive to work.
 

I have to be at work by 8:00 a.m. I work for the Federal Court of Appeals in downtown St. Louis. I really do love my job. Its not necessarily what I ever had planned for my life, but I do love it. I work with great people and my job is pretty low-stress.
 

This is the view from my office window.


One of the first things I do in the morning is send out the morning announcement. I work in an office of around 40 people and I'm the receptionist of the office, so I find out who won't be there that day and send out an office-wide e-mail saying who will be out. Through-out the rest of the day, I answer the phones (which is my main job). I also enter new attorneys into our database that want to be admitted to our court and I do a few other clerical type things when needed, like make copies, scan in documents and help people with questions that come into our office.

  I go to lunch from 1-2. I usually just grab something close-by.
 

And then at around 5:30 (usually a few minutes later) I finally get to go home. ☺ I work 9 hour days so that I can have every other Monday off! I love this schedule.


The favorite part of my whole day is getting home to see this little guy waiting for me. :-)
 

I usually get home at around 6:15. Jake has already been home with Jackson for about an hour by this time. Once I get home Jake will usually start cooking dinner and I'll spend some time with Jackson.

He sometimes helps me with a little laundry...
 

...and I often feed Jackson while Jake is fixing dinner.


Once dinner is done, we'll eat, and I usually give Jackson some little snacks.

After dinner, I will usually give Jackson a bath. He loves bathtime. ☺


After bath-time, I put Jackson's jammies on him and let him play for a little while. 

After a little playtime, I usually give Jackson a bottle and I rock him to sleep. ♥


He usually goes to sleep between 8 and 9, so that still gives Jake and I a little time together to relax and watch some t.v. before heading to bed ourselves.
 

We're usually in bed by around 10 or 10:30, (11 at the latest).

And that pretty much sums up my average day. Its nothing too exciting, but I enjoy it. ☺

Now its your turn. I can't wait to read all about your day to day routine and meet some new friends!

Best Buds

I snapped this picture yesterday afternoon with my cell phone. It was after church in our church dining hall, and we were trying to figure out where we were going to go eat for lunch. Jackson and my nephew Mason (who are only 12 days apart) were standing at the door, looking outside. :-) It was so cute!

I'm linking up here:

and here:

Show & Tell: Baby Talk

I'm linking up with Becky today from: From Mrs. to Mama for Show and Tell Monday. This weeks topic is Baby Talk.

1. Tell us your favorite baby names? Aside from your own babies, if you have some :)

My favorite girl name is Lily. If I had my way and we ever had a little girl, her name would be Lily Rose. One of my great-grandma's names was Lillian and another was Rose, so thats where I came up with the name Lily Rose. Of course, Jake doesn't like this name so we agreed if we ever did have a girl we would name her Lyla. We're not sure on a middle name yet but it will probably be Rose. Doesn't Lyla sound an awful lot like Lily?? Jake thinks Lily is an old ladies name, LOL. What does he know! I also like the names Hailee, Rylee, Savannah, Hadlee and Harper and honestly so many more. I feel like girl names are a lot easier to pick out than boy names.

As far as boy names go, I love the name Jackson, obviously. Jake and I had that name picked out for a boy for a long time before we ever got pregnant. And I also love the name Thomas (which is Jackson's middle name and was my great-grandpa's name). I love these names so much that I've even thought about if we had another boy naming him Thomas Jackson, joking of course but I really do love these 2 names.  I also really like the name Klay (which is my Papa's middle name) and I like the name Max. 

 2. Show me your "dream" nursery {can be your baby's nursery or one that you love}

 3. How many children would you like to have? How far apart?

We plan on having 2 children. I would love to have a boy and a girl about 3 years apart. I would love for Jackson to be potty trained before having a second child. I just feel like that would make things a little easier. :-)

4. Tell us what you think the importance of parenting is?

I'm so new to parenting that I'm not even sure how to answer this question. There are so many important things that go into being a parent and I don't think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to parenting. I mean every child is different so what works for one child may not work for another. I guess the most important thing would be to love them and be their biggest fan. Let them know that you support them and will be there for them.

5. Show us your favorite newborn photo {can be your children or random}

One of Jackson's newborn photos.

 6.  Tell us some things you promise to never do as a parent {and if you are a parent, did you stick to it}

 
I said I would never let my baby "cry it out" and have actually taken my pediatrician's advice and let Jackson cry it out during the night. He was waking up multiple times a night to eat and at his age, the Dr. said he should be sleeping 8 hours without a bottle. So I set a limit of only 15 minutes and he's never went past that. It only took about 3 nights of him crying for 10 or 15 minutes and now he's only waking up once a night for a bottle, usually around the 8 hour mark. 

P.S. Don't forget to link up with Holly and I tomorrow for our "A Day in the Life" link up! 

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Jackson's 45 Week Pictures!

Jackson actually turned 45 weeks old last Thursday, I'm a little late getting this post out. :-(

He was not very cooperative when it came time to take his picture this week. So I only got this one picture. LOL.

Jackson is doing great. He still has 7 teeth. Still eating 6 ounce bottles, baby food and some table food. He had some noodles out of my chicken noodle soup last night. :-) He's clapping his hands and saying yay when he claps. If we clap and say yay Jackson, he will clap too. :-) He also waves bye bye now. :-) 

He's had a real runny nose this week and a little bit of a cough. He doesn't seem like he's not feeling well, so I wonder if maybe he might be getting ready to cut another tooth. :-(

As I say every week lately, he's running around like crazy and getting into everything he can. He's constantly on the go, but we're having so much fun with him. He's so sweet. When we're lucky he will give us hugs and lay his head on our shoulder and say awww! Its so sweet. He will give kisses too when he's in the mood. We have to get them while we can cause they're few and far between. 

We love you Jackson!!

New Blog Design

So, I've been wanting to change my blog design up for a while now and finally got around to it. I LOVE the way it turned out. I'm really loving chevron these days and I just loved this colorful pattern!

What do you guys think?

Embrace the Camera

Before I get to Embrace the Camera today, I wanted to tell you more about our blog link up next Tuesday. 

As I mentioned yesterday, Holly and I are going to be doing a blog link up next Tuesday! We are really excited about it and I hope you will all participate! The topic is "A Day in the Life". We thought it would be fun to get to know each other a little better by posting about what each of us do in a typical week day. You can post pictures of your day to day activities to give us more of a visual look into your daily routine. It should be a really fun link up. I definitely encourage you to join in the fun and get to know some new blog friends! :-) If your unsure how a link-up works, my friend Holly has posted a tutorial on her blog today, so be sure and check that out.

Here is the button for our link up. We would love for you to add this to your post and encourage others to join in the fun.

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So now onto Embrace the Camera. :-)

  
Embrace the Camera is where you'll take a picture of YOU with your kids, spouse, friends, etc. The point of embrace the camera is to get in front of the camera and to document a bit of yourself.

I set up my camera last night and took several pictures of Jackson and I. I love these pictures I have with him and I hope he'll love them too someday. :-)

I'm also linking up here:

and here: