Mason - 13 months!

Mason is 13 months old! What do you know...another late post.

This stage with Mason is challenging, but it's so much fun. He throws tantrums probably daily now, but I know it's just because he's learning to deal with his emotions. He's getting better about using baby sign when he wants something, he's getting around great, though he's not quite walking yet. He crawls, cruises and pushes thing to get where he wants. He used to just run his walker into walls, etc, but now he's starting to turn it around. He climbs the stairs like a champ and he's pretty good at getting back down the right way too (but sometimes, he still wants to sit down mid-descend). He makes us laugh every single day and I can't imagine a world without this little guy in it!

Some of his favorite things right now are food...(he is not a happy camper if there's food in sight and he can't have it), Bailey, bath time, pushing all of the things around and being outside.

 He's into everything and loves to try to help us.

 He loves going for rides

Speaking of rides, he got a wagon this month, which he absolutely loves! We can't wait for the weather to be nicer so we can take more walks!

He looks so much older!


He got to go on the boat to celebrate Dada's birthday.

He took his first trip to the West Coast! Josh had a conference in San Francisco and we met him out there afterward. I was SO nervous about going on such a long flight with a 1 year old solo, but it went well. He got restless a couple times on the longest leg of the flight (5.5 hours), but I was able to entertain him with books, snacks and nursing. The trip was a lot of fun, but so exhausting. He was a little confused with the 3 hour time difference, but overall, that went better than expected.


He was excited to help pack


We visited a friend's brewery and he gave Mason a private tour.


He got to see the most curved street in the world.


He got to see the sea lions at Pier 39


He got to ride on Daddy's shoulders


Stretching his legs at Golden Gate Park


Learning about bioluminescence


He took some AMAZING stroller naps while we were out and about in San Francisco. I was even able to pick him up from his stroller, hold him for a bit and put him back in the stroller all without him waking up. My child does NOT transfer while sleeping, so this was a huge deal!


Walking back to our room after having dinner in Chinatown. He was so tired and cranky, then we let him play with a fortune cookie package and he was good to go.


Then we got on the cable car and he passed out immediately.

 Munching on an apple on the plane.


Stretching his little legs during a layover.

 Story time with daddy while we wait to get off the plane.

It was challenging at times to be 3 timezones over with a toddler, but we had a great trip!


He loves getting to wake Daddy up and snuggle him in the mornings. His face seriously lights up when he sees him and it makes my heart melt!

Mason's First Month

Y'all, we have a one month old!!!

At our appointment (which we actually had at 5 weeks), Mason weighed 10lb 6oz and he was 23in long. He's growing so fast!

I haven't blogged much since he's been here. I've really been enjoying my time bonding with Mason - and really with Josh and Bailey too. We're all adjusting well and I love our little family! Here's an update of our past month together. 

Daddy's Lion King intro of Mason - he was just a day old here!

Week 1 

For the majority of our first week, we had one of our moms staying with us. Josh's mom stayed the first 2 nights and my mom stayed the next 2. We weren't sure if we would want to have anyone staying with us at first, but in the end, we were really grateful to have someone around to help out. It gave us both the time to focus on getting to know our brand new baby! The first week was interesting. It was so much fun! Even though we were tired and exhausted, it was so exciting to take care of Mason...even in the middle of the night. We were waking him up every couple hours to feed him and change his diaper. He slept in the rock n play beside our bed for the first couple nights. The first night or 2, Josh had to wake me up. I didn't hear any of Mason's noises or the alarm clock. I was surprised that Josh heard so much. I've watched him sleep through a fire alarm before, so I never thought a little baby noise would wake him up. Haha. Josh would get up and change Mason's diaper, then bring him to me so I could feed him. He would bring me snacks and make sure I had water. He even brought me breakfast in bed one morning (we don't eat in bed...ever - so that was actually kind of weird) and fed me while I fed Mason. lol. We had our 2 day visit with our nurses from the birthing center. Mason and I were both doing great! Mason ripped his umbilical cord out when he was 5 days old! It was scary, but he was fine. We had some newborn pictures taken and I love them! Here's a link to Tristin's website with his pictures.

We had some latch issues to work on and one of the midwives at the birthing center recommended trying a chiropractor. Mason had a high bite and his chin was set kind of far back and she was able to help us out SO much! Once we got the latch issues taken care of, breastfeeding has gone pretty smoothly.

Later in the week, we had Mason's first appointment with the pediatrician. That also went well.

On his way to the pediatrician. He was 4 days old here.

Here are some of my favorite newborn pictures

Week 2

We started getting out a little during Mason's 2nd week. We had a 2 week appointment with his pediatrician. Since it's right across the street from a shopping center, we decided to grab Chic-Fil-A for breakfast and stop to pick up some clothes for me. I didn't plan postpartum clothing as well as I thought I had!

First walk in the neighborhood

Mason had his first real bath this week!

Pre-bath...not so sure about this...

 Post bath. He did great!

Week 3
We continued to get out a little during Mason's 3rd week. When he turned 3 weeks, we celebrated by going to Lake Johnson for a walk and getting ice cream.

Milk coma

Daddy with his mini-me


Mason's first trip to NC State (outside my belly) and Bailey's first trip back since she was just a puppy!

Week 4
Week 4 was daddy's last week at home. We tried to make the most out of it, but we also relaxed a lot. We went to the beach for the day during this last week. We stopped by Ferguson's in St. Pauls on the way so we could get some food and Mason could meet some old friends. Mason did great on the ride to the beach and didn't get fussy unless he had a dirty diaper or got hungry. We went to Carolina beach and walked on the boardwalk, relaxed on the swings a little and walked on the beach. Mason slept through all of this. We grabbed a late lunch/early dinner after this and Mason stayed awake to stare at the fans the whole time. On the way back from the beach, he was a little fussier. I think he was just tired of being in his car seat. He was also starting to get hungry before we made it home. We enjoyed ourselves, but we were exhausted!

We went to visit Josh's co-workers and go out to lunch with them later in the week. Mason was great and he enjoyed his first trip to Daddy's office!

Mason also started sleeping in his crib through the night this week!

 This little guy just melts my heart!

Date Night and fun weekend!

Josh and I decided to go on a date night the Friday before last. We don't know how much alone time we have left, so we thought it was a great opportunity to take advantage of kid free life for possibly the last time before needing a babysitter! 

I was off, so I used the day to run some errands. After a few hours of errands, I needed a nap, so I came home, napped, then got ready for our date. I picked Josh up and we headed out for our date night! First, food. Duh. I wanted some fried seafood, so we went to the seafood restaurant at the Farmer's Market. Not fancy by any means, but so good! After this, we were stuffed, but I really wanted some Howling Cow ice cream. We decided to go to Boxcar (it's a barcade downtown) to wait for our food to digest some. We played a few games of skeeball, then went over to Videri, a chocolate factory in downtown Raleigh. We were going to do the tour, but there was a lady and her 3 kids and they were all smacking gum. If you know Josh, you know this is a deal breaker. Heck, they were smacking so hard, it was a deal breaker for me. I couldn't even hear the lady talk and they were the only other people on the tour! So rude! Anyway, we grabbed a sample of chocolate and headed over to State's campus. My feet were hurting at this point anyway. We stopped in for our ice cream and found a comfortable place to sit and enjoy it. SO good! 

By this time, I was tired, but we knew Harrelson was completely gone, so we wanted to see what the brickyard looked like without it. It was also finally starting to cool of (just a little), so it was a decent opportunity to get a walk in anyway. On our way over, we stopped to look at the wolf statues and the brickyard preacher (for any State people, not Gary, the nicer one who didn't tell everyone they were going to Hell - Gary would have told me I was going to Hell because of the dress I was wearing) asked us if we wanted him to take a picture of all 3 of us and he said a quick prayer for Baby K. So nice! 

We made it over to the brickyard afterward and it looks SO different without Harrleson there! We walked around a bit, snapped a few pictures, and headed back to the car. By this time, we were both super tired with super full bellies. 

Where is the UFO?!?

We stopped and picked up a movie to watch at home and spent the rest of the night being lazy. We briefly talked about going to the movies instead, but quickly decided against it. I pee so often now, it would probably just be annoying. We watched at home where we can pause as needed. It was absolutely delightful.

The next evening, we had dinner with Andrew and Kristian and we went out on the boat with them on Sunday. It was an exhausting, but very fun day!

THEN, since we were still pregnant, we went on another "last" date night the following Saturday. A new restaurant opened on Hillsborough Street and we really wanted to try it out, so we did! In terms of comfort, Saturday was not a good day. It was probably one of the worst I've had in a while, so I just wanted to go home and watch a movie, so that's what we did. If you get a chance, definitely check out H-Street Kitchen. SO good!

 Maybe one of my new favorite restaurants. :-)

I had been craving poutine from a place I love in MD and this was as close as I could get. It wasn't quite as good (but we're not comparing apples to apples here - these were good fries, but duck fat fries are just on another level), but it satisfied my craving. I tell you, this might be the way to this pregnant girl's heart.

While we're very much looking forward to our new addition, we're making the most out of the time we have with just the 2 of us! Yay, dates!

Non-Baby Updates

Although it already looks that way, I swear everything isn't about baby these days. I've just slacked so much on blogging that that's the only thing I've made it around to blogging about. I REALLY fell behind on Friday Favorites. What happened to those?!? I love doing those, because it helps remind me how awesome things are actually going when my mind starts to pick out all the negative stuff. So, I decided to do a quick recap!

Since the last non-baby post, which was in FEBRUARY, we've had some pretty dang good times! Unfortunately, since I didn't blog about them, I have forgotten many of them, but I'll do what I can.

Josh and I celebrated our 15th dating anniversary! That's over half our lives, y'all. I feel so blessed to have found my best friend so young! We did find out that our dating anniversary happens to fall on National Meatball Day. One of our favorite restaurants happens to be a little meatball shop downtown and they had all you can eat meatballs for $15. That didn't really appeal to me at the time, so Josh went with some co-workers. He ate 14 (massive) meatballs and proceeded to lose 2 pounds. I mean...HOW?!?

We had some great friends visit us!

We went on our first cruise!

We've gone to a couple weddings to see some amazing friends tie the knot!

We got to spend a night in Greenville, SC on the way to one of the weddings. I love that place!

Such a cool tree!!! These are the roots that are growing down the side of a huge hill.

We completed some pretty exciting projects around the house!

Added more shelving and organized the pantry.

All of the shelving at the back of the pantry and the entire top row of shelving is what we added. SO much more storage space.

After we got all of our stuff in there.

We added a little flower bed to the back yard between the house and patio.

This is right after our patio was put in last Fall - with no flower bed.

 Yes...pressure washing is high on our to-do list

This used to be just weeds

I love my little bird hose guide!

I organized the coat closet.

We went to MD to visit some of our favorite people and eat some of our favorite foods!

Nom! Poutine! Duck fat fries, smothered in duck, gravy and Gruyere cheese!

We went to see Willie Nelson in concert!

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! Since traveling hasn't been super enjoyable for me later in pregnancy, we decided to stick around and just enjoy each other's company locally. This was a very good decision and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.