Currently

I chopped about 8 inches off my hair and dyed it blonder. You like? I promise to do a proper post on it with non insta pictures.

Today I am linking up with Harvesting Kale & This Amazing Day for their new currently link-up.

This is what I have been up to:

Cooking: Healthier. I was doing really good for awhile about eating healthy and then I fell off the past couple of weeks. I am trying to cook with more veggies, which is kind of hard because my husband isn't a fan of fresh tasting food. Isn't that the weirdest thing you've ever heard? Last night I made The Pioneer Woman's summer stir fry from her cookbook- it was delicious.

Wearing: Like Randalin, I have been wearing a ton of skirts and dresses. I'm starting to get very very pregnant and the jersey maxi and knee length skirts from Old Navy are sooooo comfortable. I am usually one of those girls who throws on sweats and takes off her bra as soon as she walks in the door but I leave these skirt on all night- bra is still off though.

Wanting: A faster metabolism so that I can eat ice cream on a daily basis. Yeah I know, not going to happen.

Listening to: Well this morning when the little one was at preschool I was listening to "Skinny Love" by Birdy and "Shake it Out" by Florence + The Machine on Spotify on repeat.

Watching: The Hubs and I are currently a little obsessed with Game of Thrones. We finished the 1st season and are about half way through the second. Could you imagine living during times like that? So brutal but I guess you know what you know. It's not like they could turn on the television or open the computer and see how the better half lives.

What have you guys been up to lately?

I know this is probably annoying but I am so pumped to be in the top 25. Could you please help us stay there?

Celebrating Life

Last month my husband's Uncle Dennis passed away unexpectedly at the age of 52 from a heart attack. The whole family was shocked to say the least. He grew up in and lived most of his life in New York so he was flown there for traditional services after his passing. Although they did all the traditional stuff up in New York we wanted to celebrate his life in way he would of wanted down here in Florida. Dennis spent the last four years here in Florida and absolutely loved going to the beach which he called his church. We decided that we would all spend the day at the beach to celebrate Dennis and scatter some of his ashes in the gulf. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we know that Dennis was there enjoying the sun and the sand with us in spirit.


























Also if you get a moment can you please click the banner below and then click the first owl to vote. I'm itching to get into the top 25. If you feel like being super awesome you can vote once a day. Thank you!

Would ya? Could ya?

Hi Friends! Top Baby Blogs has reset and I was just wondering if you'd be so kind to click on over and vote for this little blog of mine. Last time around I joined in on the fun too late and never got my rank past 130 so I am aiming higher this time. It's just two clicks. Thanks so much!

25 Weeks

Nothing much new this week on the pregnancy front. I guess this is when I regret not doing one of those little survey things everyone else does for each week of their pregnancy. I just feel like on a week to week basis, not much changes. What has been going on this week is that the reality that I am running out of time being a mom of one child is approaching and it's approaching fast. I don't think there is really any good way to prepare because no situation is ever exactly the same. When people ask me if I can believe that I am having another, my response is the same as when I was pregnant with Aubs, "It won't feel totally real until we bring her home from the hospital." Do you remember that feeling of walking into your house for the first time with a brand new baby? It all feels so strange. I remember my mother in-law saying, "where do you want me to lay her down," right after we brought Aubrey home and I had no idea. I mean Aubs had never really been in my house before, I didn't know where I wanted to lay her down. Sure I had plenty of options- crib, pack n' play, bouncer, anywhere really but I didn't know what she would like or what I would like her to be. Now it's almost time for us to go through that awkward beginning phase again.

I am also nervous about the amount of work that having two kids will be. I guess I'm not really nervous about the work really just how I am going to juggle it all. I want to be able to care for the baby as best I can while still being an attentive mama to Aubs. I feel like I will always be short changing someone. I suppose I will figure it all out as I go because I'm definitely not the first person to ever have more than one child and surely I won't be the last. I would love some advice from all my other mama friends of two out there. How did you manage it in the beginning?

I Went to Prom with my Husband

Well he wasn't my husband at the time but he became just that about 6 years later. Actually at the time he had only been my boyfriend for a couple of months. It's been 10 years now since our prom night which feels really strange. I mean I believe it's been 10 years because it seems like it was forever ago but on the other hand 10 years ago seems like such a long time. The hubs and I had an amazing time at our prom despite a very rocky start.

To start things on a sour note I was running late. My hair and make-up had run longer than I had expected and I knew that Joe would have been waiting at my house for me when I got there. I was right he was there waiting with his twin brother Billy but they weren't just sitting around. There was something wrong with their car and they had the hood lifted in my driveway tinkering around while wearing their rented tuxes. While I wasn't happy about the car, I was happy that they were occupied while I went inside to throw on my dress, shoes and jewelry. I felt like I was on stage and had to do a quick costume change in the wings. My friends Alexis and Megan literally put my dress on me while I got my earrings and necklace on. After I was quickly dressed and the car seemed to be okay, we took some pictures and were on our way.

We made it about two miles down the road on our way to pick up Billy's date up when the car broke down. Two miles away from my house wouldn't be so bad this day in age but this was 10 years ago and none of us had cell phones. Even if we had, we lived in the mountains there was pretty much no service anywhere until about 4 or 5 years ago. Joe had to run about 1/2 a mile down the road to the trout hatchery (yep mountain living) and call my mom to see if we could use her car and his dad to tell him what had happened to his car. My mom showed up pretty quickly but we had to wait a little while for Joe's dad who was pretty furious about the whole situation. Luckily we were taking a limo to the actual prom which was about 45 minutes away but we had to drive around the whole beginning of the day picking people up and taking pictures in my mom's Jeep Cherokee that had about 10 bags of cow manure in the back because she had just started her gardens for the season. We found out later that my ex-boyfriend had put sugar in the Joe's gas tank causing it to seize. Nice right?

Even with the terrible start to the day we managed to have an amazing night and an even more amazing weekend. It was kind of tradition for the kids at my school to drive to the Jersey shore the day after prom and spend the weekend at cheesy seaside motels- underage drinking at it's finest. This was also years before MTV came out with The Jersey Shore so there was much less hype about it then. Sadly because of the car situation I wasn't able to drive the four hours to the shore with my boyfriend, I had to ride with my friend Alexis. Looking back at it now, I don't think I would have had more fun getting there any other way. I mean two blonde girls dressed head to toe Abercrombie & Fitch jamming out to Missy Elliot and Lil' Kim- it doesn't get much better than that.



Getting ready chaos


With Joe's friends and their dates


The boys- everyone besides the two in the middle live down here in Florida now


Our official prom picture

Little Bits of Happiness V.4

One Monday we took Aubs to Magic Kingdom in Disney World again. We had a day left over from our passes we had back in March and it expired today so it was now or never. Aubs was really good- better than last time. The only thing that sucked was that it was soooooo busy. We figured on a Monday before school lets out for the summer wouldn't be that bad but we were wrong. It was busier than when we went on a Friday in the beginning of March. We had to wait a half hour just to get the ferry from the parking lot into the park. Seriously- I thought this was a recession people! Oh well, from now on we will try to take our Disney trips in September/October.

On to the happy part. It's pretty great to be a stay at home mom where we live. Yes I know I bitch all the time about the heat in the summer and the lack of mountains or even anything with a higher elevation than an overpass but it seriously has it's major perks. For example we only live an hour and a half from Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. How cool is that? That would pretty much be my fantasy when I was little. We are also only about 20-30 minutes from Busch Gardens, The Lowry Park Zoo & The Florida Aquarium. As far as free fun goes we are 10 minutes from the beach and only minutes away from some really cool parks. Hey it's great to be a kid in Florida!













Here is a little bonus for you. Aubrey is just a little obsessed with "Starships" by Nicki Manaj
Oh and my husband saying, "Oh my god" in the background is because we ran in to some pretty brutal traffic.

Beach Buddies

Check out these cuties having fun at the beach.
The only downfall of hanging with Kingston at the beach?
Aubs thinks he is going to be there every time we go.
















Linking up with my usual lovely wordless Wednesday ladies The Paper Mama, Baby Baby Lemon and Jenni from the Blog

Vote Once a Day!

Hell No, She Won't Go!

If you follow me on facebook or twitter you already know that we have been having a rough time with potty training. It's not that I'm frustrated that she isn't completely potty trained, I frustrated that she pretty much never goes on the potty ever. Let me start at the beginning. I bought Aubs a potty when she turned 18 months old. I had no real plans of starting to potty train that early, I just wanted to get her familiar with it and maybe have her sit on it occasionally. We didn't do much except talk about the potty until she was about 22 months. Then I decided to start having her sit on the potty more frequently. I would have her sit on it when she woke up in the morning and after nap time and then maybe one more time through out the day and then before bedtime. We lucked out and she peed on the potty once before bed. We celebrated this little victory with her and gave her a lollipop. Yes, a lollipop before bed. It was all I had and I didn't want the opportunity of rewarding her for her first time on the potty to slip by. It carried on like this for a couple of weeks or so without any success so I decided that maybe she wasn't ready yet. I still would sit her on the potty and talk about it but I wasn't as strict.

When Aubs turned two I decided to step up my game by getting a few potty books and having her wear underwear when we were at home. I also bought a seat to put on the big potty because I had some friends tell me that their kids preferred that over using the little potty. I basically did the same things as I mentioned above with the books mixed in plus an Elmo potty video. Again nothing really changed. She would either wait until I put a diaper on her to go or occasionally until she was out of my sight and then pee on the floor. Then about 3 weeks ago she started holding herself when she had to pee which I was so excited about. I figured now that I knew exactly when she had to go it would be so easy. Well, I was wrong. She would sit on the potty for 30-40 minutes and not go. Occasionally she would let out a tiny trickle and then freak out that she was peeing and hold the rest in. If anything this just made our potty training more time intensive. She spent two plus hours a day sitting on the potty singing songs and reading but not peeing or pooping.

Last week I decided that I would do a whole morning of hardcore potty training because obviously the slow approach wasn't working at all.`I tried to gave her a bunch of juice, water & milk which she wouldn't drink much of after an hour or two because she realized what I was doing. I followed her around like a hawk. We played together all morning, barely had the t.v. on and spend tons of time reading on the potty. Six and a half hours later and still no pee or poo I decided to wave my white flag and lay her down for a nap. If you're wondering if the six is a typo, it is not. My two year old held it for 6 1/2 hours.
I put a cloth diaper on her so that hopefully she would feel it more and then I put her in her crib. Two hours later when she woke up- her crib was soaked. I guess I should have figured it would be but her Fuzzi Bunz are usually really absorbent, I guess not for nearly 7 hours old held in pee. Yeah so basically potty training sucks.

What's the point of this post? I don't know I guess to vent and to let anyone else in a similar situation know that they aren't the only one. I feel like the only one in this boat right now. I have heard of kids being hard to train but not any who never go on the potty, like ever. I just thought that if I made the effort then it would happen or a least start to happen. She is such a smart kid in all other aspects of life. Maybe a little too smart and strong willed, I suppose. I am just going to keep leaving her in just underwear at home and on short trips out. I am going to keep talking and reading to her about the potty. I am going to keep sitting her on the potty when she holds herself and does the potty dance. I mean she has to get it at some point right?

***side note- she sees me "use the potty" all the time because she follows me in nearly everytime, lately she has been telling me, "Good job, Mommy" after I go.

24 Weeks

Yeah I know this isn't the best bump picture ever but we spent the day at Disney World today and I was too exhausted to take a picture when we got home. Fortunately my enormous belly seems to sneak into most pictures these days. Plus Aubs looks super cute dancing so I figured, why not? Plus it let's you see the full on effect of how large and in charge I am getting.

So things are looking up this week. If you have been following along you know that I had a little bit of a scare last week but then it turned out to not be as big of a deal as I thought it was. You can read out it here & here if you're out of the loop and curious. So as of right now- pregnant life is good and the baby became viable outside the womb this week. Not that I would want anything to happen where the baby needed to be but it is a sort of wake up call on how real this whole pregnancy thing is. When my pregnancy ends a real living and breathing baby will be here, yikes! So scary and exciting at the same time.

One little pitfall this week is that I have been wanting sweets soooooo bad. Mainly chocolate or ice cream which is pretty terrible for you. I have to kill the cravings so I don't end up gaining a million pounds because I have done pretty well in the weight gain department so far. I just have to stop buying it and stop making my husband drive to Dairy Queen for me a couple of times a week.

Do you guys have any unhealthy cravings? How did you deal with them?

Little Bits of Happiness V.3

The title of this post should really be "Huge Hunks of Happiness" because I have a lot to be happy about this week. Let's start with the Doodle because the picture above is of her so it seems only natural to start with her. Today was the first day since Aubs' first day of preschool that she didn't cry when I dropped her off. I know I haven't updated on this since I was super excited that she didn't cry the first day but she cried every day following. Even a couple of days she cried when I picked her up. I was going to give it a couple more weeks and then throw in the towel because her going to preschool was more of a luxury than a necessity. I didn't feel comfortable leaving her somewhere she wasn't comfortable just for a few hours a week to myself.
On Tuesday she only cried for a minute or two and then started singing "Old McDonald" with all of her little buddies. I took this as a good sign being that every other day I had left her there crying. Then today she walked right over to one of her little friends and sat down without any tears! While I was signing her in she even waved at me and said, "Hi Mommy!". I can't tell you how happy/relieved I am that she is finally getting in to the swing of things there.

The next thing that I am over the moon happy about is that things with the new babe don't seem to be as scary as I thought they were. I had an appointment with my midwife on Tuesday and I pretty much broke into tears the moment she walked into the room. She seemed confused and asked me what I was upset about. I told her about the ultrasound findings and she said that nothing that she saw on her report seemed alarming. She showed me all the charts and said that the abdomen wasn't measuring small, I must have heard them wrong or they must have mixed something up. The baby was measuring a bit small overall but that is completely normal at this stage in pregnancy. She actually looked back on Aubrey's 20 week ultrasound and saw that she too was measuring a week to a week and a half behind at that stage. You don't even know how much of a relief this was. I had been losing sleep and spending countless hours scouring the internet for information. So with that said, there is tons to happy about this week.

The Name Game

I love names. Just ask my mom, I have been telling her my baby names since as long as I can remember. She always said the same thing, "You will change it a million times before the time comes." She was totally right. It is one thing to say what you'd like to name your hypothetical baby and another to actually name a living breathing human being.

I think the reason I love names so much is because I love my name. Neither my first or middle name is very popular, Mallory Tyler. {Thanks Mom} I loved that I rarely bump into anyone with my name, it makes me feel special. My husband whose name is Joe thinks I'm crazy because I get all giddy when there is a character in a book or a movie with my name. I guess when I really think about it is silly but hey it's my thing.

I had always hoped to give my kids names that were a little bit different. Not completely off the wall just names that weren't over used. I failed a little bit on that with Aubrey. While her name isn't Olivia or Sophia, it's still a bit more common than I had hoped for. I guess I just didn't expect people to be so nasty about my name choices. I knew people would have opinions but I personally have always been sensitive towards pregnant women when they told me the names that they were throwing around. I wouldn't go as far as saying that I would like it if I didn't but I would politely say it wasn't my favorite name. I have found that I am nicer than most people when it comes to this. With Aubs, my husband really loved the name and it seemed like the name that I got the least amount of shit for from everyone else so I just went with it.

This baby is probably going to be my last so I am standing my ground this time. I was telling people what names I was thinking about when they asked but now I have decided to keep my choices to myself for the most part. The name that I absolutely love has turned out to be very much hated by my husband's family. My mom actually loves the name and most of my friends do too but all the negativity I got had me a little bummed out. While that name isn't my final choice, it is still definitely in the running regardless of the naysayers.

Okay ladies- tell me your favorite girl's names.

1...2...3...GO!

I am also linking up with my girl, Jenna. You should head on over and check out her blog because she is expecting a little one right after mine is due.

23 Weeks

As you know if you have been following along, I was a little bit skeptical about the original gender reading of my baby. I read online and a few people had told me that 16 week gender scans can sometimes be wrong for various reasons such as a boy's testicles(sorry for using the T word) not dropping yet. I just figured we would get our girl conformation at our 20 week ultrasound. Unfortunately at that scan the tech was unable to tell and she was also unable to get a good view of the brain so she had me scheduled for an upper level scan at a high risk doctor at 23 weeks. At that scan that were able to tell that she was indeed a girl- hip hip hooray!

Now back to the high risk doctor part. I would a complete liar if I told you that just being scheduled for an ultrasound at a high risk doctor didn't scare the shit out of me. I would also be lying if I didn't tell you that my heart was literally pounding out of my chest when the ultrasound tech told me the procedure of her doing the measurements and then having the doctor come in and viewing the scan with her to talk about any potential issues. Luckily nothing appears to be seriously wrong with the baby except that her head and her abdomen are measuring a bit small. They told me that my measurements are showing that the baby's growth is 9 days behind my predicted due date. This could mean a number of things. It could mean that my due date is off, my baby is just on the small side or she hasn't had a big growth spurt yet. It could also mean a handful of really scary things. I go back in 6 weeks to make sure that she is growing adequately. It was suppose to be 4 but the doctor is on vacation, how convenient. I am a little bit terrified but I'm trying to remain positive and hope for the best.

Little Bits of Happiness V.2

Like I've said before- my daughter is a handful but she also keeps us laughing constantly. Here are some of the cute things she does and says that make us happy.

~She is quite the dancer/jumper/fist pumper
~She busts out twinkle twinkle little star and her alphabet randomly
~She loves to help and after she completes a task she says, "Thank you, Aubrey."
~Every time that I ask her if she loves something she says, "Awe" and cuddles it against her neck.
~She says "I yuv you" almost every time she gives out kisses
~She thinks that anyone in a magazine that remotely looks like a person she knows that it is indeed that person.
~She yells, "Timber!" every time she knocks something over.
~This one is bittersweet but when she is in time out and the dog is watching her she apologizes profusely to the dog. "I sorry Ruby," followed by a whine cry.

I think that the only reason anyone really gets through the terrible twos is because they can just be so freaking cute.