I have peppers!

Remember my big plans to plant a garden this summer?  And then about half way through the summer my pepper plants and basil had grown, but the peppers still didn't have any fruit.  My cherry tomatoes did well, but my squash and zucchini had failed miserably, remember?

Well come the beginning of August the pepper plants were huge!  But still no fruit.

Pepper plants & Basil end of June

Pepper Plants and Basil now

I must admit I was a bit down-trodden towards the end of the summer as well.  It did not flourish as I would have liked.  I've never really had a green thumb, BUT I had high hopes.

Well towards the end of August I noticed that I had 2 peppers on one of my pepper plants!  Needless to say I was ecstatic!  If nothing else, I had succeeded at growing SOMETHING.   And then as the month of September came and went, the peppers multiplied!  And a couple even turned red!  I love red peppers!

Also in early to mid-September Chris pointed out that I had a cantaloupe growing!!  How sweet is that?!?

The super sad thing is that I went out a couple days ago to again admire the one piece of fruit my plant had yielded- AND IT WAS GONE!  Something ate it!  Talk about disappointed.  I have no idea what happened, but the whole thing is gone!  No evidence of anything.  I'm guessing a deer?  Gardeners always seem to blame things on deer and bunnies, but this job seems to big for a bunny.

And then my sweet potatoes are underground, but at least the leaves on top look pretty good.  I'll dig them up in a couple more weeks.

So I had had big plans for the Fall.  I was going to continue with a Fall garden of lettuce and broccoli.  (I don't really like collards and some of the other greens, so no point in trying to grow them.)  I had actually started some lettuce and broccoli inside in our sun room, but guess what?  Yep, they died; they sprouted and were looking good for a couple weeks before I managed to kill them.

And then the more I thought about it the more I realized I really don't want to be hauling the hose out the back of the garage and around the corner to where the plants are all fall.  Its a huge pain and since it will be getting dark earlier it will be more challenging for me to go out and water after I put Phoebe to bed.  I'm going to take a break this Fall.

But next Spring and Summer I have big plans.  You see Chris is going to help me build 2 square raised beds that we will put in the small grassy area directly behind the garage.  This way I won't have to haul the hose out quite as far AND there will be plenty of sun.  (Some of my original planting areas this past summer did not end up getting enough sun.)  And I'm starting a compost pile.  I keep reading and hearing that good soil and good compost are the keys to a successful garden.  We try to do most things green around here (recycle, cloth diapers, cloth napkins, and I try to be mindful of packaging and what types of cleaning products I use) so why not compost as well?!?  I will tell you more about our attempts at composting later on.

But now that you've seen my mere little garden let me show you my inspiration!  This is what some good compost can do for you :)

Well good compost, some land and a little red barn.  Every garden is going to look better with a little red barn.


This is the garden of a lady at church.  She is an avid gardener and LOVES teaching and educating school children and just about anyone about organic gardening.  She has been a great resource and her garden really is an inspiration.  Phoebe and I have taken several field trips over to her garden and she has even allowed us to come over and pick fresh produce when she is out of town.

Check out these trellises they have made for peas, and beans, and anything else that you can grow UP!

I just LOVE sunflowers.  How amazing would that be to have a row in your garden?

She's got a few more sweet potatoes than I do.  Yeah, that's a lot of sweet potatoes.

And how cute are these peppers?!?  I think they are called Christmas Bell Peppers, or something like that because they are in the shape of a Christmas bell.

And if the vegetables weren't enough they even have bee hives to make their own honey!

I will keep dreaming (and practicing)...

The best gardening advice I've ever gotten: There's always next year!!

Second Pregnancy

I know it is still early, but first 15 weeks of this pregnancy has been a very different experience from my pregnancy with Phoebe.  And don't get me wrong- I am not complaining at all!  It really has not been bad at all- just different.  My pregnancy with Phoebe was almost so picture perfect that of course it couldnt' be repeated.

• When I found out I was pregnant with Phoebe I was SO anxious and thought about the baby ALL THE TIME.  I was so worried something would go wrong.  So worried.  I thought about the possibility of horrible very frequently throughout the entire pregnancy.  I did multiple ultrasounds of myself at work and listened to the baby's heart rate at least once a week before I was feeling regular movements.  I immediately wanted to know what I could and couldn't eat and do.  
• This pregnancy I have barely thought about it.  I really have not been anxious at all.  I have forgotten that I was pregnant many times and haven't followed those "dos and don'ts" very well at all.  I have not done one ultrasound on myself or listened to the baby's heart rate.

• I started taking pre-natal vitamins when we were just thinking about maybe having a baby last time
• I didn't even think about taking pre-natal vitamins until 2 or 3 weeks after I knew I was pregnant.  And even then I'm embarrassed to say I didn't think of it on my own.  Someone else was talking about me taking them (assuming that I was) and I thought "hmm, that would probably be a good idea"

• I was not nauseous when I was pregnant with Phoebe.  (I could count on one hand the number of waves of nausea I had)  I did not have headaches with my first pregnancy.
• Although my nausea was not near as bad as it could have been and it certainly didn't last the whole first trimester, I had about 3 weeks of feeling nauseous and it was not fun.  And the headaches- I get them all the time!

• I had no food aversions at all
• Coffee, yogurt, and nuts I couldn't eat for the longest time  (I still can't do yogurt, but thankfully coffee and nuts have made the good list again)

• My abs held that baby pooch in so well the first time.  I wasn't showing for the longest time
• I certainly started showing much earlier this time.  I was bigger at 14 weeks than I was at 17 weeks last time

(And yes I remembered what shirt I was wearing when I took my first belly shot last time at 17 weeks and I put on that same shirt again)

14 weeks
9/14/12

17 weeks
March 2011

Phoebe's excited...

Yep, God-willing another Baby Bowen should be making its appearance mid-March

The Garage

I really wish we had taken some before pictures of our garage.  It was a mess!   Stuff piled everywhere!  Over the summer we bought some shelving and organized a lot of it.  Then when my dad came in July he made a "tool hanger" out of a 2x4 and some large nails so that we could get even more stuff off the floor.

We normally have some camping chairs hanging up here too...  I guess we were sitting on them this night

And then a few weeks ago Chris and I bought a roof-top carrier for the car.  Thanks to some Kennesaw State reimbursement money for RUF scholarships and an REI credit card Chris had a pretty nice REI reward from last year.  We had been planning to put that reward toward a roof-top carrier and roof rack.  Then when we were walking around REI one day they were all 20% off so we went ahead and did it.  We probably didn't need it quite yet, but in the future we will be driving more for family vacations and it is amazing how much more stuff a kid requires.  It was clear that at some point in the near future we were going to need some extra cargo space.

So great!  We bought our roof top carrier, but then we had to figure out how to store it in our garage or townhouse where the walls are quickly closing in on us.  I am so proud of my husband.  Look what he concocted!

He used a closet hanger and closet rail to hang our roof top carrier on the wall of the garage.  Thanks baby!

Final Birthday Post

Just wanted to post a few more pictures from Phoebe's birthday celebrations!  Her actual birthday was Friday, August 3rd.  My parents were here, so she opened presents and we went out to dinner.  She actually did quite well opening her presents- better than I expected.

Chris and I gave her a pair of shoes, which was quite the ordeal.  We wanted to get her some shoes in anticipation that she would be walking or at least cruising soon and would need something on her feet when she's not at the house.  I had searched through boxes of shoes at Once Upon a Child and I kid you not could not find one pair that fit!  Her little feet are so narrow that there were gaping holes on the sides of her feet and the poor girl would just walk right out of them.  So we ended up at Stride Rite paying as much (if not more) for a pair of shoes for my one year old than I would for myself.  But she got some cute pink sneakers that she wears ALL the time now, so it was well worth it.

We also gave her a bubble machine and toy house, which she loves!  And an antique letter box so that Chris can write her letters every year and we will probably give them all to her on her 16th birthday or something like that. Both Chris and I have antique letter boxes with letters from each other from when we were dating (and some since) and plan to do this for each of our children.

My parents gave her a book (which is always a hit), a giggling monkey (which she thinks is hilarious), a singing ball, and a rular/measuring stick.  I had seen these on pinterest and thought it was an adorable idea for recording kids heights, instead of using the old fashioned door frame- especially since we currently don't own our townhouse or plan to live her forever.  I believe Leah and Kyle had made one of these for their daughter as well, if I'm not mistaken.  Anyhow, Dad made it for Phoebe and it looks fabulous!  Thanks Dad!

Then on Saturday Chris' family came down and Phoebe got to celebrate again.  Among other things she got a Radio Flyer wagon that she loves to be pulled around in outside, and a little mini-wagon that she also loves.  She crawls into this in the family room and just sits there waiting for you to pull her around through the house.  Knox always follows, so we have a mini-parade.

The Cake

So I had heard around the rumor mill that lots of kids do not like their first birthday cake.  But almost ALL of my friends kids have devoured their cakes and loved them!  Well, we all know how Phoebe is with food and she was not about to put something new in her mouth.  And she cried when we tried to feed it to her (story of my life)

Getting excited.  She knows there is something headed her way...

Needing a little help blowing out the candle

She played in the cake much more than eating it 

Here is a two minute video of her cake extravaganza

The Party

If you were around when Chris and I got married you might notice that this birthday invitation looks slightly familiar.  Yep, we used the exact template we designed for our Save the Date.  We already had it and it was easy to drop in new pictures and new text.  I had found several birthday invitations I liked on Etsy, but of course they were super expensive.  And there was nothing I really like on Shutterfly or Snapfish that I liked that was in our budget. For the record, if you ever have printing needs,  Overnight Prints is fabulous and very affordable.  We designed the postcard (also cheaper postage) using Pages on the Mac and then uploaded the design to Overnight Prints.  They cost us .17 cents a piece for custom invitations.  Now, when we did our Save the Dates, we ordered enough to qualify us for free shipping, but of course we didn't need as many birthday invitations so we did have to pay shipping (which I hate) but they still ended up being less expensive than any other option we had looked at.  We have used Overnight Prints for a couple RUF mailers and events and have always been very impressed with the quality.  We will probably use them for Christmas cards this year.

I didn't really have a party theme, just more of an informal BBQ to get friends together to celebrate.  Honestly, it was more of an excuse for us to see and hangout with some of our friends and neighbors we hadn't seen in awhile.

I decorated mostly with tissue paper balls (not super original these days but cute, cheap, and easy) and a pink birthday banner that I made.  I had goals of making some paper or fabric triangle banners as well, but what can I say- it didn't happen.  I had made the tissue paper balls and banner about 3 weeks early and then things seemed to get busy so not much else got done.  There were a ton of tissue paper balls though!  When we went to put them all up the night before the party I was quite surprised at how many I had made.

I had also printed out all of Phoebe's monthly diaper pictures and hung them around the french doors out to the Florida Room.  It was fun to see how much she has changed over the past year!

So I majorly failed taking pictures at and before the party. I'm sad I never got a picture of the food table and decorations.  They were cute.  We had a fruit and veggie platter, chips and bean dip.  And then we served the burgers and hot dogs before cake.

It was a fun afternoon!  Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with us.  We probably had about 25 people here (which is about at max capacity for our little townhouse) plus several kids running around.

Check back on Friday for the infamous cake pictures

13 Months...

Yep, our baby is now 13 months old.  I completely missed the 12 month update.  That one year mark is certainly one of the big milestones of childhood.  But don't worry I'll catch you up.  It has been a busy month and I haven't been feeling great so I apologize for the silence.  My parents were here for a couple weeks before her first birthday so it was fun to hangout with Cece and Grandpa for so long.

12 Month Stats
Weight- 16lbs 8oz (still below the growth chart...go figure.  Some day we will hit the bottom line)
Height- 28.75in (25% percentile)

Eat- Phoebe has been eating a lot better this past month.  It just takes lots of time and lots of patience. She is eating more finger foods, but still has a very limited palate: cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, strawberries, banana (sometimes), grilled cheese, crackers, frozen peas (sometimes), and freeze-dried fruit.  She probably eats 50% finger foods and 50% pureed baby foods still.  It must be a texture thing because I can mix in Spaghetti-Os, mashed up sweet potatoes, and rice etc. into the baby food, but she won't eat those things alone.  She also has a weird habit where she has to have her own small food container and lid to play with while she eats.  Basically this keeps her distracted and occupied while I shovel food in her mouth.  Really, she won't open her mouth unless her hands are occupied.  It is most definitely a behavioral attempt at control and I won't lie- its working.  She is totally playing me on this one.

I feel like meal times are quite monotonous.  Every morning she eats oatmeal with fruit mixed into it, yogurt, and cheerios.  Then she has a little morning snack- normally some sort of cheese or peanut butter crackers.  For lunch cheese, a bit of a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich, and some sort of veggie baby food, crackers, freeze dried fruit (whatever she will eat).  She might even get some strawberries if we have them and she's lucky.  And then her afternoon snack and dinner look about the same.  Hopefully she will start eating some more variety soon- like all those veggies I put on her tray that currently get tossed onto the floor...  What are other toddler friendly food?  Any suggestions?

So our big milestone this past month was transitioning away from the bottle.  Phoebe did not learn how to drink correctly from a sippy cup until she was 11 1/2 months old.  The speech therapist recommended a different couple cup options for us to try because we had gone through all Caylee's old cups and whatever cups we had gotten from baby showers with no success.  The Born Free training cup was finally our winner.  Before this cup she would only drink from soft spouted cups by biting the spout.  She would not use her lips to suck.  (And only water- she would never drink milk out of a sippy cup)

I think the long "nipple-like" spout helped

So anyhow when we went for our 12 month ped visit the doctor said "no more bottles; stop cold turkey".  She said no water in her sippy cups either- only milk.  She said Phoebe won't drink much milk for a couple days but that she would get the hang of it after a few days.  Well, we stopped the bottle completely and it took about 2 weeks for her to start drinking milk out of the sippy cup.  The doctor said she should be drinking between 12-18oz of milk daily.  We MAYBE got in 1/2oz during that first week.  I kept calling the doctor because I was nervous about her drinking so little (remember she's not getting any water either...)  But Phoebe didn't seem to mind.  Taking away the bottle was not hard; she really didn't miss it at all and had no trouble falling asleep at night without it.  I was worried that she would start waking up hungry in the middle of the night, but she never did.  And finally after about 2 weeks she cracked and started drinking her milk- probably between 12-16oz/day.

She still only drinks milk out of that Born Free cup, but she can now properly drink water out of various kinds of cups.

Sleep-  Phoebe goes to bed at 7:30pm and wakes up between 7 and 7:30am.  She naps for an hour in the morning around 10am ish and then an hour to an hour and a half in the afternoon around 2:30.  I wish she would sleep longer sometimes, but I guess so does everyone.

Phoebe has never been one to sleep anywhere.  She pretty much sleeps in her bed or in the car seat.  Anywhere else there is too much going on for her to fall asleep.  But when Mom and Dad were here we went out for brunch after church one Sunday and yes, she fell asleep in the highchair.  I was SO surprised.

Play-  Well we of course have many new toys now from her birthday.  Her favorites are a little toy wagon that she crawls into and likes to be pulled around in, and an interactive Fisher Price house.  And she LOVES her books.  She could sit and look at books for hours (okay, maybe minutes, but lots more minutes than she will sit doing any other singular thing)  She really likes Violet, a Leap Frog Dog Aunt Carol gave her last Christmas.  And a little shopping cart we are borrowing from Caylee.  She walks behind that cart a lot!  She just needs a lot of help because she can't turn it yet, so she inevitably runs into lots of obstacles and fusses until you come help clear her path.

So yes, she is cruising well now!  And bending her knees to lower herself to the ground!  I'm so proud of her.  She loves grabbing your fingers to walk (and walking behind her shopping cart).  Her balance still isn't great, but she will get it.  I had said from the beginning I thought she would walk around 14 months, but I think I'm going to be wrong.  I think it will probably be closer to 15 or 16 months, but we will see.  She has gotten quite good at climbing stairs- although I still like to be right behind her.  She really never ventures up the stairs by herself at our house.  But she has followed some older friends up the stairs at their houses- and the good news is she didn't fall because I assure you I was not around.

Knox is so tolerant

Loving playing with Grandpa's computer.  Phoebe has made our computer do things
we didn't even know they were capable of.  Unfortunately we've never been able to
reproduce any of her key strokes

Random thoughts-  We do still love our cloth diapers, but as she has gotten older she has also started peeing more at night.  She started soaking through her diapers and so for awhile we were double stuffing her diapers but finally we switched back over to disposables at night, until I broke down and ordered some hemp inserts.  Hemp is much more absorbent than cotton and a lot less bulky.  We have 2 Joey Bunz hemp inserts and they are wonderful!  I wash the diapers every 3 or 4 days so we do two nights with the hemp inserts and 1-2 nights in a disposable.

Her hair gets more and more curly every month and I love it!  This Atlanta humidity suits her well.

She is a Daddy's girl through and through!  She loves that man!  She will crawl and reach and cry for him about 100 times more than she will for me.  She cries when he leaves and gets so excited whenever daddy comes home (again if I have left she could care less when I return home)

She loves playing with Daddy's hats

Phoebe still does not have very many words.  Well to be exact, she has one word- "daddy".  But she definitely understands what we are saying and follows directions well.  It has been really fun to see her start interacting more with us by following directions.

So I must admit we never did a lot to "baby-proof" our house when Phoebe started crawling.  But we did put those little plug protectors in the outlets.  I'll be darned if this child can't get those things out in 2 seconds flat.  Honestly, they were a bit of a waste.  She would probably spend less time playing at the outlets if there wasn't anything for her to pull out...

Again I'm so sorry its been FOREVER since I've posted, but I'm back in the game and promise they will be more regular now.  Keep checking back for pictures from her 1st birthday party, updates on her hearing loss, and other exciting Bowen family news!