summmmertiiiiime

we take staycations seriously around here. as in, i am totally typing this post before folding two, three, okay -- realistically, four baskets of laundry. it's true.

jeremy is off work this whole week, although it's sort of felt like vacation since last wednesday. grammie came to town that night, followed by papa, aunt sarah, and uncle drew on friday. we spent a few days together filled with date nights of grandparent-provided freedom, very brave big-tall-fast-jumps into the hotel pool in thomas shorts, delicious family meals, and the occasional bomb pop/ice cream cone/ummm cheesecake factory 3 rich birthday dessert selections that are still being finished. and now we get to have more time off to enjoy more of louisville in the summer! sigh. staycation. :)

here are some photos from the last few days. surprise! they're all of joseph.. hope you don't mind. :)


[best buds]


[eyes on the prize]


[icecreamcone -- sorry, strawberryicecreamcone]

hope you're having a great wednesday!

on the mend

a challenging week seems to be looking up with handsomes on the mend. not that i have to be so optimistic. we've had a tough last few days that began with that feverish little guy i mentioned in the last post and what came of the fever, a sickness usually in kids ages 1-5 that causes sores on the hands, feet, and mouth. the boy was a trooper with a couple of hard days and kicking nights, but he's much better now. and somehow it seems that joseph and i really bonded during our week+ at home, evidence of God's grace in the midst of the craziness for sure.

toward the end of joseph's sick week, jeremy camehome early from work, met by my exclamation/realization, "dada's home early! yay! oh..wait. oh no." after a few days of sleeping, medicine, allergic reaction to medicine, better medicine, and more resting, we now have popcorn-a-popping and a movie for tonight, so i'd say he's feeling at least a little better, too.

in other news, i baked scones for the first time. if you have never baked scones, or even if you have i suppose, i suggest this recipe. it took me from oh-i-could-never to oh-i-should-probably-purchase-cool-canisters-for-all-of-the-baking-i'm-going-to-do-from-now-on in about 45 minutes. so good. jeremy ate one and promptly fell asleep. success.

also other news, our little babe is in his (big-time boy vibes these days)third and final trimester. and moving so much! it's crazy to think about this little person and in a way, maybe i've said this on here before.. sorry, so much more tangible to envision a baby coming from all this pregnancy. is that weird? maybe because i've seen that a real-life new-smelling baby named joseph was born a few months after the last time i remember feeling like this. and by feeling like this i might mean feeling like the tell-tale pregnant walk is taking over again.. oh, boy. or girl.

final news, um... my son speaks in sentences. and i can understand them. this is so so so much fun. i love that he will run into kitchen from his room, exclaim "something-something-something-tall-garbage-truck-guy-fall-down-see-mama!" and i'll follow him into his room to find the lego guy has in fact fallen out of the big garbage truck. he gets an almost unnoticeable smile on his face when we communicate really effectively and i suspect it's as much fun for him as it is for me. probably more because i've been talking to him for quite some time.

how was your week?

my home feels still

i'm enjoying a quiet day around our home with sweet boy recovering from a feverish night and morning. it's funny how i feel almost as if i have to give in to these kind of days, and once i do, the normalcy of unloading the dishwasher, playing with trains, preparing and eating lunch, even (gasp) folding laundry becomes pretty enjoyable. also, this morning's addition of a mama-initiated finding nemo date wasn't too bad for on-the-mend joseph or me. :)

here's what we've been up to the rest of the week:


[father's day ice cream -- free ice cream for dada after a really odd request for a receipt by the cashier when we asked if the father's day deal was still happening.. like a receipt proving joseph is his son? somehow we still managed to get the no-charge cup of bourbon ball ice cream without this mysterious receipt.]


[big-tall-fast-swinging at the park grammie dawn discovered just at the end of our street -- joseph describes a lot of things (garbage truck, quesadilla slice, lego tower, etc.) with "big-tall" these days.]


[two of my first-draft creations -- i've found myself spending a lot of (too much?) time on very little things, namely tiny pieces of fabric cut into intricate shapes and sewn onto paper in little getting-more-even-with-practice stiches. so far, quite unsustainable greeting cards businesswise, but quite enjoyable pasttime wise.]

also, what i did and what i thought about while doing it attempt #1 -- i discovered that all but two of my son's shirts are red or blue or a combination of these shades while folding laundry this afternoon and then remembered being told during my freshman year of college by a guy on my floor that he knew me as red-tshirt girl. i suppose this makes joseph red-blue-or-both-tshirt boy. :)

i hope you're enjoying your tuesday!

happy father's day, dada.

love,
joseph bourne & mama

morning mulching

i'd write more, but i have an in-development project that i'm really (really) excited about, so tuesday hour is going to be spent developing this in-development project to further development. :)

i do, however, want to share a story of playgroup adventure from earlier today. joseph's been pretty into mulch for some time -- once i caught jeremy and joseph putting pretend mulch on a little car ramp for the lego guys to slide into -- but this morning was his ultimate in mulching. he and ian were playing in what i hadn't noticed until today is a pretend car at the playground, and i looked over just in time to see joseph release two giant handfuls of mulch onto his head, into his face & ears & nose, and down to the sticky scalp with the pieces of mulch that didn't stick falling onto the rest of him and into his shoes. when he looked up, his face was almost completely brown with mulch residue. i should have taken a picture of that moment, but at the time, removing mulch from his eyeballs took priority. i tried to shake as much off of him as possible and took him to the bathroom to splash water on his dirt-caked face, but he was pretty mulchy until his post-playground bath. these are the feet of this mulch-covered and mulch-celebrating boy right before mulch-removal:



and here's his exhausted in a good way about to fall asleep in the bathtub face watching the tub fill up:



the kid likes mulch.

happy tuesday!

this is not awesome

do you ever get to the end of a day/week/month and think, "hmm, that didn't work out very well.."? me, too.

i'm finishing up a week that started out not working out very well at all -- think (without boring you with details) thoughts of: all these moms at the playgroup should just.. um, be exactly like me? and oh, sweet almonst-two-year-old boy of mine, pleeeease go up the stairs or mama's going to go crazy, and i'm pretty sure none of the clutter in our home could possibly be mine, and the like -- which proceeded into a time of attempting to pinpoint what it was that was causing the working to not be so well (oh, that was me. being me-centered. and other factors too, i'm sure -- messy closets, life change, etc.), and ended with well, working.. the..not so well out? hmm. regardless, i am thankful for grace this week, and thankful that it seems to abound in the not so lovable that did not work out well at all even just a little bit moments.

annnnnd i made this card, ironically at the end of this week. (that might not actually be irony; i'm never sure.)

it's to give to my sister who is finishing up a year that didn't work out so well. just kidding. :) it's for her birthday. i'm going to include some dark chocolate that we used to "sample" (please, please imagine me doing quote fingers) at mustard seed back in the day.

among other entrepreneurial ideas, i have entertained hopes and dreams of opening an etsy shop someday with handmade cards like this one. oh no. on a birthday banner. i like it. it's inspired by a brian regan sketch on the science fair -- kind of scary to watch if you google but much more manageable as audio only. my other idea was birds with little speech bubbles coming out of their beaks that had rap lyrics, although i'm not sure they'd actually be classified as rap lyrics if they come from rappers (not sure he actually is a rapper by definition) like mase. i also gave meggie one of these for another birthday. i'm sure she really appreciates being the recipients of my bright ideas. if the store ever opens, which i'm not sure that it ever will -- first, because i get etsy cuteness overload and have to eat ice cream after browsing it, and second, because it's just probably not going to happen -- i'll have normal cards in there, too.

another bright spot at the end of this week, in addition to making my room look like this for the making of one card (no, that's not an oreo blizzard next to the sewing machine.):

jeremy, joseph and i visited two parks in two days -- cherokee and seneca, both within quick drives from our home. here are some pictures of the men in my life at these parks:

ummmm my son has been sleeping for three hours. it's 5 pm. happy saturday, y'all.

feeling bloggy.. i must have some more words to use up today. :)

joseph and i went for a walk this evening and met a woman in the neighborhood next to ours. i asked if she had lived in her home for a while and she said, "well...since 1963.. so.." me: "so, a while, huh?" yep. she proceeded to tell me about caves beneath the neighborhood and the stories surrounding this beautiful mansion that backs up to her yard that used to be a part of the underground railroad, making use of the caves. isn't that crazy? do you believe it? i do.

in the past month, we experienced our first of many kentucky derbys, which here is simply referred to as "derby," no "the" or anything. it takes some getting used to. as a part of derby festivities, we went to a balloon glow and a parade. joseph and his mama (probably more his mama) are realllly into parades right now, thanks to the library book, parade. and we had mint limeade (tastes better than non-alcoholic mint juleps?) while watching all two minutes of the actual derby. sorry, derby.

also in the past month, we experienced more consecutive rainfall than i thought possible. on one rare non-rainy afternoon (which turned out to be a non-rainy hour or so), i got joseph up from his nap and opened his curtains saying, "look, joseph, the sun!" and he stood up and said, "the SUN!" so, needless to say, walking to the park today was extremely enjoyable.

hmm.. i was thinking i'd have more to say. hmm. yep, think that's it.

oh! i'm reading the count of monte cristo. it's amazing. that's what i'm going to go do rather than attempting to dig up more blog-worthy thoughts.

happy thursday :)