Play by Play: Mon-Wed

monday:

-met marisa, preston and claire at the fountains in tower grove park.

-noah crawled around a bit scraping up his little legs and feet on the concrete.

-no more crawling

-he liked running his hands through the streams of water.

-he didn't like the crazy foreign children who were running past him and screaming at ridiculous decibels

-we ate cheddar goldfish and took some pictures on our beach towel.

-noah got all up in claire's personal space

tuesday:

-noah didn't want to eat his strawberries, pineapple and cheerios for breakfast.

-noah played at gina's, with will and eva while mommy got her hair did.

-noah and I went shopping at jo ann fabrics, only to find old fashion prints that I'm way too snobby to buy.

-mommy made chicken and yellow rice for dinner.

-daddy and noah played hard after dinner and then daddy went to his second job.

wednesday:

-debated on zoo or pool

-chose pool

-met erin and yuri, gina, will and eva, and marisa, preston and claire at said pool.

-swam/crawled/walked around the most rockin' baby pool in the history of baby pools. we will go back, many many times.

-had lunch at sams. don't judge us. we're stay at home moms, and we have little money.

-made a burp cloth that no one in their right mind would pay money for. i will get better!

Kennel Lover

My son...the dog kennel-lover.

This Weekend...

Last Tuesday, Matt's grandfather had a major stroke during what was supposed to be a surgery to make him more functional. This stroke has left him unable to do anything for himself including simple tasks such as swallowing. He's in rough shape, and we're keeping him in our prayers. Steve and Debbie came up on Saturday, and Brian, Janet and the boys drove up on Sunday in order to visit and support him and his wife. The boys were able to spend some time together and we got some cute pictures. Parker and Tyler truly love Noah. They are so sweet to him.

The following two photos are ones that I took off of Janet's camera. I thought they were too adorable not to share! I hope you don't mind Brian and Janet!

Rooftop Evening

Last night we had Michael, a very pregnant Erin, and their gorgeous, hilarious little girl Yuri over for dinner and swimming.

Memories from the evening include:
-noah holding and eating a whole cracker...whole meaning, I didn't break it up for him.
-yuri holding 'herself' (in michael jackson fashion) while she "shook her booty"
-watching matt swim with noah in our pool for the first time
-malone's noticing my backward books on our bookshelves
-my astonishment at erin's desire to go through labor and birth minus an epidural
-noah zipping across the pool deck...he just wanted to go, go, go; we were not allowed to pick him up. no worries to the grandmothers reading this...we were always in close proximity.
-yuri licking her daddy's frosting off of his cupcake before handing it over to him

It was a super chill evening. Good friends, good times. I was a little picture crazy (shocker, I know), and after being inspired by my sis-in-laws mad photo skills (http://marseilleandben.blogspot.com/), I had some fun editing my pictures in Picasa. I got some sweet ones of the daddy's with their little ones.

Goodbye King of Pop

Michael Jackson died today. Every nightly news station is covering this story. I've never been a huge fan, although I do enjoy several of his songs, and I can certainly recognize is legendary status in the music world. He's being compared to Elvis.

Although I have no evidence, I hope his soul belongs to the Father God.

Goodbye Michael Jackson.

Cabinet Safety Evie Style

This is my newest effort at keeping Noah out of the cabinets. I can almost guarantee that Matt will not be happy with this solution!

Another Loft Experience

Matt's working, Noah's napping, Teagan's hanging in his kennel, and I'm wasting time online. All in all a peaceful morning here at the Stark home. This peace was suddenly interrupted by two men hanging outside of our windows (that actually look a lot like the ones in the picture above...in other words, they are big and there was nowhere for me to hide). Me, bed-head hair, no bra (shirt, just no undergarments...I'm not naked), lounging on the couch with my laptop, and then men literally feet away from me. It was a disturbing moment. I quickly ran to the windows to pull the blinds. I felt rude, which is kind of funny considering two strangers are looking in on my privacy. Why should I feel rude? I quickly brushed aside that feeling, shut the blinds and swiftly regained a little comfort. Teagan however got all crazy over the shadows and banging that made its way through the blind barrier. This has happened a few times since we've lived here, but it gets me every time.

Ten Things That Make Me Insanely Happy

1. john mayer's live album
2. matt's smell
3. passionately romantic movies (not dumb ones!)
4. my anthropolgie tea cups
5. funky scrapbook paper
6. my kitchen aid mixer
7. walking with a stroller and a dog downtown
8. flowers
9. any beach, any where, any time
10. watching noah's face when matt gets home

What makes you happy?
This was inspired by http://taza-and-husband.blogspot.com/. (I've got to learn how to do a text link for the love!)

Big Business Starts Small

A few months ago I called Sarah upset about the lack of good-looking baby clothes in my price range. Why does everything have to be in primary colors with cartoony characters and letters? I don't get it. So, in my raving, I told Sarah that we needed to start our own line of non-embarrassing baby clothes, and Sarah's immediate response was that she had already thought of doing the same thing, and she had even already made several items for Lula (her 2 month old). Sweet! Well, a couple of months rolled by without much further investigation or progress on this idea, and last week Sarah informs me that she is going to apply for Cider Days (an art/craft market in Ozark, MO). She wants to make clothes and burp cloths and bibs, and wire letters, and decorative boxes...and was I in? Leave it to my driven friend to be the one to take the bull by the horns, and YES Sarah, I'm in. We've put together some samples of items that will be sold. Sarah has done the sewing, and I've done the crafting. I will be making burp cloths, bibs, decorative boxes, banners, and cloth covered wipes cases, while Sarah focuses on the actual clothing items, since she can sew. I plan to look into sewing lessons, but at this point my abilities only allow me to conceive ideas. It's very frustrating to not know how to execute them. Anyway, hopefully we get accepted to be a part of Cider Days (I don't know why we wouldn't), and we'll see if people are interested in what we have to offer. Our line in going to be called "Lula in London." Lula is Sarah's daughter, and I've wanted my future little girl's name to be London for a good 8 years now. Hence the combo.

What do you think of our products? Feedback is good! Be honest.

Today...

-noah danced to one of his musical toys.
-i laughed really hard watching noah shake his tail-feather.
-the wind blew my beach towel into the pool.
-i priority packaged my dad's father's day card.
-i sent my mom, my mother-in-law, and my brother a text picture of noah.
-noah got stuck under his high chair.
-matt worked a 15 hour day.
-my mom sent us a package that included 2 seasonings, a new computer camera, electirc toothbrush heads, and a father's day card for matt.
-i did not mop my floors
-i chatted with Shanna about photographers
-i prayed for extra patience to show towards my teething, fussy little boy
-i sang my baby to sleep

The Weekend

This weekend we…

Hung out at Nicole and Jason's for Kadyn's 1st birthday party. It was a good time...we watched the kiddos play and caught up with each other.

Look at this precious little girl...

Mmmmm, cupcakes...
Jason tickling Noah...
On Sunday we road-tripped to Wentzville to hang with Jenn and Joe. I think Noah likes the burbs...

The guys spent most of their time in Joe's "man cave," watching the game and drinking specialty beer. They did occasionally grab the kids...Noah got to swim...

And swing...

Another fun summer weekend...

A Week of Emergencies

Emergency #1: On Tuesday, June 9 Noah fell on our concrete floors and hit his little head pretty hard. A few minutes later, he vomited twice. My doc tells me to take him to the ER because he could have a concussion. We arrive at the #5 Best Children's Hospital in America, and Noah is escorted to the back, checked out and given the all clear. Right after the doc stepped out of the room, Noah begins to gag again as if he is about to vomit once more. Matt happens to notice something shiny in the back of his throat, and he ends up pulling out two pieces of my Kashi bar wrapper. No concussion, he just swallowed some wrapper. Way to go buddy.

Emergency #2: Early Friday morning, 12:45am-ish, we hear a knock on our door. Teagan goes nuts, as we rarely have anyone come to our door without prior notice, due to the immense amount of building security. It's our neighbors, and they inform us that fire alarms are going off, and there is smoke coming from one of the stairwells. We hurriedly dress and grab Noah and Teag, and head to the opposite stairwell. Soon after, firetrucks lined our city street. We were outside for about 45 minutes or so before allowed to go back in. We still don't know what happened exactly, but our guess is a simple food burning or candle burning incident. Noah was so chill on the street though. He just stared at everything going on around him.

Emergency #3: OK, so for this one, I use the term "emergency" loosely, but it definitely falls into this category to me. Today I put Noah down for his normal afternoon nap. He babbled a little to himself, and then became quiet. I assumed he had fallen asleep. 20 minutes later I hear him crying, so I step into his room to check things out. As I move aside the curtain (our makeshift door), a strong smell of poop slaps me in the face, and I quickly ran through a couple of possible scenarios as to the cause of this smell as I walk to his crib. I reach in to pick him up, and notice that his arms feel grimy. I pause before continuing to lift him to turn on a light, and that's when I see the mess. Noah had removed his diaper, pooped, and then played with his own nastiness. Brown goo was all over him...his fingers, toes, hair, legs, arms...everywhere. He had also wiped it all over his sheets, bumper and crib. It was neither of our best moments. As sickened as I was however, I could not help but laugh, knowing that this was one of those moments I would never forget and Noah would never live down.

Little Lula

Why is it that I live so far away from the people I love? I wish Sarah and I lived closer so that we could share our stay-at-home mom experience a bit more intimately. You know, weekly lunches, shared errand runs, meetings in the park, mall walking when it's cold and rainy... At least we have email and cell phones now. When we first met, those were fairly new technologies! Love you Sarah, and I miss you!

Matt and I did stop by on our way back to St. Louis on Sunday. Lula has grown so much in just 4 weeks. Her face isn't smushy anymore, and she has gotten quite a bit longer. SLOW DOWN Lu! She's a beautiful baby.

Ski School Reunion

Matt was involved in competitive and show skiing when he was in high school, and this past weekend the ski school he attended every summer had a reunion. Brian, Janet and the boys, Steve and Debbie, along with Brent, Ashley and Olivia met us in a very small town that held a beautiful private ski lake. We watched some cool skiing, ran after our kids, and grilled out around a bon fire. It really was a good time.
The next day, we all convened at Steve and Deb's lake house, where we spent another afternoon boating, swimming, and skiing. We stuffed Noah in an infant life jacket and then in his swim floaty. He looks absolutely hilarious. Very reminiscent of the kid in a Christmas Story. OK, enough writing. Here's the good stuff...

Janet, Parker, Brian, Tyler, Ashley, Olivia, Brent, Matt, Evie and Noah

Matt is trying to make Parker smile.

Ashley and Brent have the cutest little girl!

Nana and Papa with the boys

Miss Diva