This is just a random mish-mash of a little bit of everything

Things seem to continually get a little wilder around here day by day. It could be the fact that Sam crawls everywhere.

Or that he figured out how to open up cabinets and drawers (I could not possibly count the number of times he's pulled Steve's thin mints out of the pantry and got caught chewing the box).

It could be that he pulls up on anything that looks relatively stable to him (generally speaking, he is not good at eyeballing stable objects).

I also caught him climbing UP THE STAIRS this morning. (I caught him doing this one other time. He made it onto the first step, got distracted by my screaming when I saw him, and konked back and smacked his head on the floor.) Looks like I gotta buy that second baby gate.

In other Sam-related news, we are pretty confident that he has a gluten allergy/sensitivity/intolerance/WHATEVER. While I have not had this confirmed by a certified, licensed physician, I have done my homework, as well as some very elementary trial-and-error food testing and ruled out all other possible allergens. Gluten free is going fairly well. Breaking him of his Cheerio addiction was probably the toughest part. Luckily, Chex is gluten free as well, and since the Cheerios essentially taught him how to chew, he is pretty awesome at not choking on Chex.

He has also started giving me these half-ass smiles whenever I pull out my camera, thus the lack of Sam pictures. What gives, small person??

We finally painted our front door! I meant to take pictures of it when I had my two trial blues up there, but Steve got very motivated and started painting it the final blue before I could snap a shot. The first two blues were WAY too smurfy. I was afraid that a darker blue would make our doorway look like a black (or blue) hole and be too dark. Now I am really liking the color. I just gotta make a nice orange-Auburn-fall wreath to compliment its lovely hue.

Please try not to be too jealous of our need-refinishing-rockers and our lovely landscaping. We're what most folks would call "slackers."

I have somehow managed to cook dinner every night this week with things that were already in my pantry/fridge/freezer and pass them off as true dinners. Either I had a lot of good "staple" ingredients, or I'm a heck of a salesman. I'm leaning more towards the salesman. When Steve asked me what was for dinner last night, I replied, "Well, I'm roasting some sweet potatoes in the oven and I thought I'd also add a toasted slice of sourdough bread (totally the day-old stuff that was on sale) with some Italian meats with cheese sprinkled on top." Ding! SOLD. I basically put sandwich meat on top of some day-old-sell-it-now-or-throw-it-away-bread and grated some cheese on top of that, slid it in the oven for ten minutes and called it awesome. I have a feeling that Second Baby is going to throw a total kink in my plans of being this slide-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-housewife.
What's for dinner tonight, you ask? How about some hot dogs that I just defrosted, rolled up in crescent rolls that I almost forgot about and grate some cheese on top of that? HAH! BAM!

In other news, we sent out birthday party invites for Sam's first birthday. We did this not because we think anyone from Georgia or Alabama or Pennsylvania or California (yes! We know people that far away!) is actually going to drive all the way to the middle of nowhere (our current residence) to go to a first birthday party, but more so to give our family and friends a picture of Sam and let them know that he's survived his first year with us as his parents. Come to think of it, this party is definitely more for us than him. Yes, he survived infancy with the two of us, but WE survived his infancy too. And changed countless diapers. And had sleepless nights. And totally loved it. He is so worth it.

GOSH he loves his daddy.

Also, baby's first black eye!

Luckily he didn't acquire this lovely shiner in a moment of parental neglect. He was wandering his way into the fridge while I was putting breakfast items away, and his arm slid out from underneath him, causing his face to break his fall into the bottom lip of the fridge. Nice. Of course, being the overprotective parent that I am (hahaha), I immediately picked him up and told him to shake it off, it was nothing but (yet another!) fall into the floor. But then I noticed the blood and felt preeeeeetttyyyy bad about all of that. So. I'm hoping this clears up in time for his birthday. (It totally should, right? Right?)