"The Duke" and his boots

We received these darling crochet cowboy boots as a baby shower gift from my dear friend Anna.  They are from the cute Etsy shop Creative Pastimes.  

The Duke finally fits in them!  

He likes to feature them with a diaper and buddha belly.  

(i'm also loving my new outdoor rug for the side porch!!)

Love,

Chelsea

Back in Business

Lola Miren and Bobbie Lou's Fabric Factory are officially back open for business!  

I suppose I never really took a "true" maternity leave since I continued to work on wholesale orders starting a few weeks after Duke was born but it was nice to have a break from the daily sewing and fabric shipping for a few months.

This order recently went all the way to a baby boutique opening in Hong Kong!  It's amazing to me that little ones across the world will be snuggling with my handmade blankies.

Love,

Chels

365 Days of Duke - Days 127 thru 140

We just returned to hot, sticky Maryland from another (almost) two weeks in Colorado.  

Duke was officially 5 months old yesterday and just completed his third round trip flight.  We're getting him trained early!  He had his first full fledged plane meltdown last night to the point where everybody around us was giving us "advice" on how to get him to stop crying.  "Rub his temples", "lay him on his side", "give him an ice cube"(um....so he can choke??)...I drew the line when a lady ran over and grabbed his hand to pray for him.  I appreciated the "help" but I know that he was just over tired and needed to go to sleep.  He was only crying for 10 minutes tops but it felt like an eternity in such a small space with not many options for calming him down.  Whew!  Thankfully we don't have any more plane travel planned for a while.

I think i'm a week behind on posting his daily pictures since we were out of town so i'll be playing catch up the next couple weeks.

Love,

Chels

Oh yes I did.

Our latest adventure in parenting is that the little mister refuses, and I mean R-E-F-U-S-E-S to take a bottle.  While I love that he is a pro at nursing and I wouldn't trade that special time with my little boy for anything in the world, it is becoming a bit of a problem since I can't go anywhere without him.  Recently Duke and his dada have spent a lot of time circling the block outside of places I need to go.  They walked the block around where I get my hair cut, they walked around outside while I attended a wedding shower (which they ended up crashing due to baby boy needing to eat), they had tea and a snack with Grandma at a coffee shop outside of a wedding dress boutique where I was attending a fitting with a friend.  I have been dreaming of a Saturday morning yoga class for months but I don't see that happening any time soon given our current situation.

We've been giving him a bottle every single day with an ounce of so of breast milk, hoping that he will give in and have a taste.  He cries, swats, bites, gags and pushes the bottle away.  

I remembered seeing this mimijumi bottle in a magazine when I was pregnant.  After some internet searching I found it in this baby shop in Boulder (Weirdly I used to work in this exact same location in college when it was a little girl's clothing shop).  One $20 bill later and we are the proud owners of a bottle that looks like a boobie.

So far we've tried it twice and haven't had any luck.  He is slightly more interested but still looks at us like "do you guys think i'm a fool"???  

Lesson learned from this experience: give a bottle early and give it consistently.

We'll keep trying and hopefully this magic bottle will work eventually.

Love,

C

Happy First Father's Day

Watching these two become father and son has been one of the greatest joys of my life.  

This little mister has so many adventures in store for him 

and his days will never be without laughter.  

He is one lucky boy to have such an amazing father. 

Happy first Father's Day.

Not to forget my own Dad who is far, far away enjoying his father's day on a beach in Thailand.  Lucky guy!!!  

Working overseas does seem to have it's perks :)  

See you in a couple of months Pop!  

We miss you.

Love,

Chelsea

Adventures in rice cereal

We're not so sure about this eating with a spoon thing.  

Love,

Chels & Duke

St. Michaels

Memorial Day weekend we took a day trip up to St. Michaels MD.  It's where they filmed the movie Wedding Crashers.  It's about an hour and a half away and you have to cross the scariest bridge in the whole world to get there.  I'm always sure we're going to drive straight off the side.  I HATE it.

It was good to get out of the house and spend the day together.....but it was hot and crowded and overall just a so-so day.  Lunch was yucky but we made up for it later with ice cream.  Then on the way home we stopped at the outlets for some shopping.  Shopping always helps.  Until you step in dog poop.  In your FLIP FLOPS.  Oh well.  There's always next year.

(Duke's lunch was good, ours, not so much)

We took a time out from the crowds for some laying in the grass.  Poor little mister is so sweaty and slippery from his sunscreen.

(I don't know about this place you guys)

Oh well.  We tried.

Love,

C

Anniversary Dinner

For our anniversary we decided to go out to a nice little dinner downtown with just the 3 of us.  Our little family.  We sat outside on the upstairs patio at Blue Hill Tavern and watched the sun go down.  It felt good to get out.  Duke finally had a chance to wear his little pineapple Guayabera onsie from his Grammy.  

We shared a glass of wine (since i'm nursing...I will be kind of excited to have my own glass one of these days), some fried guacamole and each had a burger.

We usually go somewhere beachy and exotic in May so it felt strange to be at home.  Last year we were in Hawaii and the three consecutive years before that we were in Mexico.  We pretended we were at the beach and the ocean was just past these buildings.....it was sort of believable (if you squinted).  Some kids walked by below us speaking spanish and throwing around a soccer ball so that helped our little fantasy for a minute.  

Hopefully next year we'll be having burgers (or tacos!) after a full day of sand and surf somewhere in the world.  We'd better get this little fella a passport asap.

Love,

C

We are officially cloth diapering

And so far we love it!  We're a couple of weeks in and it's going great.  I was a little bit apprehensive and intimidated about starting but it's actually super easy and really no big deal.  So far we have 12 diapers and i'm doing a load of diaper laundry every other day.  We're still using disposables for night time and out of the house errands.  Honestly, the cloth diapers contain the poop a million times better than the disposables.  I had him in a disposable yesterday after running to the Post Office and he had a poop explosion up to his neck that required a bath.  I'm not exaggerating.  I am curious about what will happen once he's eating more solid foods.  Right now I can throw them in the washer (poop and all) since he's breastfed (and spitting out most of his rice cereal).  Once we add in veggies and fruit i'll probably have to invest in a sprayer for the toilet.  I'm mostly worried about hooking it up since our house is 80 years old and messing with the plumbing doesn't always have a good ending.  I suppose we'll cross that bridge once he has his first bite of avocado.

Even dada is on board and took a time out to learn how to snap them up the right way.

I'll update on our cloth diapering progress.

Love,

Chels

365 Days of Duke - Days 113 thru 126

Every day with this little mister is a new adventure.  

He is now a full blown chubby, gummy smiling, giggling, happy baby boy.  He is rolling from front to back and back to front.  He wants to crawl in the worst way and has just started scooting himself forward the last couple of days.  He absolutely loves standing up and it's tricky to get him in a sitting position.  My 4 month old baby is wearing size 6-12 month clothes and is growing bigger every day.  We were surprised at his 4 month check up when the doctor told us it's time to start solid food.  I thought it was closer to 6 months but based on his growth and development he is ready for it now (according to Mr. Doctor).  We started a bit of rice cereal in the evening about a week ago and it's going so-so.  He makes the funniest face when it goes in his mouth and spits most of it out.  He is still mostly interested in nursing.  We'll just take it slow with the solid food for now.  

Some days are harder than others.  Seems like just as we figure out a pattern and think we know what to expect it goes and changes the next day.  We are working on sleeping and establishing more consistent nap times and bed time.  Our baby boy is definitely not a self soother and has to be rocked, cuddled and nursed to sleep every time.  He also has a hard time staying asleep unless somebody is sleeping next to him or he's asleep on mama's chest.  This is wearing me out a bit (especially since he won't take any mama substitutes, including his more than willing father) but we'll get there eventually.  

He is all of a sudden not a fan of his car seat and screams in the car.  Since his car seat is essentially his stroller it's also made it difficult to go anywhere.  We usually end up pushing the stroller and carrying him or putting him in the Ergo.

He absolutely loves to be outside so we've been trying to take walks in the evening when Ritch gets home from work.  

He loves to take a bath, loves chewing on his hands or anything else that makes it way to his mouth, loves his little caterpillar, loves his muslin blankies, loves snuggling with his mama, loves playing and cracking up with his dada and loves looking up at the leaves on the trees.

  Baby boy's stats at his 4 month check up:

Weight - 14lb 12oz

Height - 25 inches

Head - 42cm

We continue to be amazed by him every single day.  We are so lucky he is our little man.

Love,

Chels