• arlo : 10 months

    2 months shy of a year! so crazy how time has flown by. arlo is doing all sorts of new things this month. he is officially crawling on all fours and can get around way too fast, it’s definitely time to start baby proofing. i honestly can’t believe we got this photo because he did not want to lay down for it whatsoever.

    he is still favoring the letter “B” but has now basically said mama! a very happy day for me.

    he eats all soft finger foods now, and i can actually give him his own plate of food and he will mostly eat it (a good amount still does end up on his tray and clothes). he will try any food and pretty much eat whatever we give him. i’m still nursing but plan to start the weaning process this month and feel lots of feelings about it. i’m excited to take my sleeping pill again and stop wearing dumb nursing bras, but there is a part of me of that is nostalgic about it of course. he also drinks water now from his sippy cup! he picked it up in a few hours and we were gushing about what a genius he is. now we’re going to try to teach him to drink from a straw too.

    he still waves to everyone, but now he can do it whenever we tell him, even when i say “can you wave?” it always wins over all the girls, and he knows for sure because he looks so proud the second he starts. he also shares now, sometimes puffs and sometimes toys, he will hold things up and hand them over or stick them in our mouths (before taking them back and smiling). it’s the best.

    STILL NO TEETH.

    he’s in the 98% for height so i guess he’ll be a basketball player or runway model or getter of things from cabinets. we switched car seats to a big kid seat and i think he’s definitely more comfortable. he still cries during most of our car trips but i’m trying to keep him as entertained as i can back there. i know once we flip him around, he’ll find it way more fun… in like a year ugh.

    he is still incredibly clingy. i can’t tell if it’s getting better or worse! it’s been so challenging because when we’re out with my mom or i have someone over, it would be so nice to hand him over to them for a minute to do something or go to the bathroom, but he just won’t let anyone hold him besides mom and dad without hysterically crying. i know it’s a phase, but it’s a tough one. i’ve also heard that i should reinforce that it’s ok and i’ll be back and let him cry, but like most moms i’m sure, i try to avoid his hysteria as much as i can. any tips you guys have would be so appreciated!

    i can’t believe how few of these updates are left… i’m getting so sad! my baby is almost a toddler. WHAT?

  • 25 chic one piece swimsuits

    you know me, i was looking for a stylish one piece swimsuit, so i rounded up 25… while normally i am pretty frugal when it comes to clothes, i do think a nice swimsuit is a good investment. Read More

  • DIY match striker

    this post is in partnership with aveeno

    i love burning a zillion candles and palo santo sticks and just generally getting our house to smell nice (i have an intense paranoia it smells mostly like cats) and i also love the cozy vibe it adds. so when aveeno reached out again this year to upcycle empty product packaging for earth day, i immediately thought of creating a cute match striker for my coffee table. Read More

  • how to host an effortless spring outdoor dinner party

    this post is in partnership with tuesday morning

    i love spring and summer entertaining, and it seems so much more doable now that arlo is getting a little older and everything in our backyard is blooming away. tuesday morning reached out to task me to go to their store and get everything i’d need for a beautiful outdoor dinner party, and i am so happy with what i found. i have to be honest, i had never even heard of tuesday morning before — but it turns out there are a bunch of locations just in southern california alone. it’s name brand home goods at amazingly low prices. within 20 minutes i had a cart chock full of stuff, and then found gid with 8 pounds of luxury candy a few aisles down that he said he desperately needed. i also got 4 bottles of maple syrup… for the party.

    i love to entertain and host dinner parties and set a pretty table, but i make it a point to never be covered in sweat or all stressed out when friends show up. the key to entertaining for me is to make it appear effortless (even if you’re stressed an hour prior). i don’t want to entertain if i’m not going to be able to enjoy myself! so i wanted to share some of my tips for making it “look” easy… Read More

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    our guest room : before

    source

    we never took the time to make our guest room too cute when we moved in, we just put our old bedroom furniture in there and called it a day. i never felt happy when i walked through the hallway and saw it, so i knew someday i’d want to make it better. does anyone else walk through their house and look at every room and base their level of happiness on it? oh ok good, me too. Read More

  • where to shop for hip baby boy clothes

    i get asked constantly about where i buy arlo’s clothes, i know it can be really hard to find cute boy clothes when it feels like alllll the cutest clothes are always for girls. its definitely more of a challenge to dress a boy well, but a fun challenge! i have a little bit of an addiction to shopping for arlo, way way more than myself these days, so i kind of always am on the lookout for cute things for him and that might help. i also always have a cart full of clothes on the h&m and zara apps, and if i really love something, i’ve learned to pull the trigger asap.

    it’s funny because we kept arlo mostly naked for the first few months of his life and just always had him wrapped in swaddles (i’m not sure why, i think we were just lazy and didn’t want to keep changing him over and over since he was having like 10 blowouts a day lol), so when it came time to start dressing him in clothes, i was kind of lost. it took me a little while to kind of figure out what looked best on him and to establish “his style” (lol again). and now i am pleased to say he is a style icon, mostly for his own dad who has been inspired to wear more patterns himself.

    i’m not sure how you would describe arlos look, but i always think of him as like a modern 90s skater — others might call him a miniature hipster. they’d be wrong probably. basically he just looks cool. our rule of thumb is — we try not to dress him like a baby. whenever i’d dress him in onesies (or even put the occasional bonnet on him for a laugh), he didn’t look like himself really, so i eventually decided to just dress him like a miniature guy instead. except not an old man! a baby dressed in a suit or vest or bowtie or anything like that wigs me out. it reminds me of a ventriloquist’s dummy and i don’t like it one bit.

    a piece of advice is to buy multiple sizes if you are truly in love with an item, so that you won’t have to say goodbye to your favorite things. i also bought things in all different sizes when he was in the womb/a tiny newborn so i’d have a variety of sizes for him to grow into. i still buy things that are too big for him because it feels somehow gentler to accept his constant growing. we’re unlucky that he is so big and didn’t get to wear a good amount of the smaller sizes, but we’re lucky that he gets to wear toddler sizes and i feel like there is more to choose from sometimes.

    in terms of high/low, i do own some expensive items — some i’ve splurged on, some i got as generous gifts or hand me downs. when i do decide to splurge, i always get it in a size that has a big range like 12-18 versus 9-12 so that he has room to grow. i usually can’t justify an expensive romper but i know he’ll get more wear out of a graphic tee i love.

    so i put together a bunch of arlo outfits, and unfortunately a lot of these specific items are out of stock, but i still put them together to give you examples of how he dresses and where things came from! hope this helps!

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  • arlo : nine months

    he is so big now! he didn’t even fit in the 18mo onesie we had him in for these photos, so he’ll be in a t-shirt from now on.

    arlo can do so many new things this month. he loves rolling his tongue, his favorite consonant is B for sure, but he also likes an L and soooometimes very rarely… an M! but he sees how excited i get when he makes an M noise and then he stops because he plays hard to get. he babbles soooo much sometimes.

    he’s pretty much learned how to crawl, in his own way, and now he’s pretty much obsessed with moving around (it is getting way harder to take these monthly photos!). he loves scooting around the room and it’s getting obvious we need to baby proof really soon! he still loves standing and walking around but he doesn’t seem to have the balance it takes yet. and doesn’t have that much interest in pulling himself up, he only likes when i pull him up.Read More

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    11 attractive solutions for plugging things in

    cords can be pretty too! well if you really hunt for the pretty ones. most of our cords are concealed in our furniture (i even have a media console in our bedroom instead of a dresser so that it can conceal cords for our TV), but we still have the annoying tangled plugs everywhere under our nightstands and our couch.

    so if you also hate an eyesore cord explosion, here are some cute ways to make them “disappear”… well not really, but disguise the ugly.Read More

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    our dining room : the reveal

    (UPDATE: our dining room has had a fewww makeovers since this post — see what it looks like now!)

    excited to finally be sharing how our dining room turned out! it was quite a while ago that we posted the before, but things take a little longer when you have a baby, it turns out.

    anyway, in case you need a refresher of what the original space looked like…Read More

  • 2018 reader survey results

    bet you forgot all about that reader survey you guys graciously filled out for me, so did i! but i finally got my act together to write this post and answer your questions!

    Read More