So the "every day" thing didn't work out...

...you know, posting every day? optimism and all?...but we're back on track! I got thrown for a bit of a loop on Monday when I officially became a person not obligated to go to work at around 4:30 PM. Whaaaaaaaaat, you say? Well, after going back from maternity leave right into busy season and getting a true reality check in "nope, this is not for me anymore EVER," I worked on finding a new job where I might actually have a life and DID and put in my notice and then found out that notice = leave pretty much right now, so that's that!  And my new gig doesn't kick off until January 5th, soooo...I'm currently not working but still getting paid and it's basically amazeballs.

Totally productive things I've accomplished in the last five days:
 - Finishing up Christmas shopping...mostly
 - Wrapping a chunk of that Christmas shopping into pretty packages
 - Going to the grocery store and buying things that enabled me to cook a real dinner in the form of chicken pot pie
 - Baking banana muffins
 - Baking milk chocolate-dipped hazelnut sandies for the 2014 Cover-to-Cover Project: Holiday Cookies
 - Excessive loads of laundry
 - Successfully shoved approximately 25 pills down Cleo the kitty cat's throat and kept her alive while Momma Dale was out of town

Totally self-indulgent things I've blissfully enjoyed in the last five days:

 - Took myself to the movies at 10:15 in the morning - Mockingjay and a giant bag of popcorn for the win
 - The aforementioned baking is also because I just like to do it
 - Starbucks grande latte pretty much every day
 - Friday lunch with Carolyn with no care about how long we sat and chatted because there was no job to hustle back to

And the ultimate combination of productive/indulgent = EXTRA HOLDEN TIME.  He's still kicking it at daycare for a chunk of the day so he can maintain some kind of routine while I run around, but I've been picking him up early and enjoying every extra minute I can steal with this sweet baby. They allllll say it, but of course he's growing up too fast.

And the ULTIMATE indulgence that hasn't happened and just won't...sleeping in. I have a baby now, so that's just not in the cards, and for those of you who really know me, you know how I am about sleep.

Ummmm...I could get used to this. Which is dangerous. But I'm also excited about my new work path, and so I'm going to soak up every minute of the next three weeks and then jump into a fresh start. Happy holidays, y'all.

How?

How have the last twelve weeks just flown by? In the beginning, it didn't feel like time was flying - it felt like I was stuck in an endless eternity of sleep-deprived madness. But then we kinda got the hang of things and starting having FUN together...and now my sweet boy is hanging out in daycare and I go back to work tomorrow. During busy season. Which is its own kind of endless eternity.

I wish I'd written more. I have a million phone pictures, and I've jotted half blog posts here and there, and there's a rambling Word doc that kinda captures things...but I know there are little moments that have already passed that I may not hold on to.

I miss spending time with him already.

Hey baby!

One month ago, this tiny little person came into our lives and changed things forever.  Infinitely for the better.  Those first few weeks were anything but easy, but worth every minute when I remind myself what an important job this is - raising, caring, loving this little man.  Welcome to the world, Holden Michael Pendarvis.  Born May 29, 2014 - 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and 21 inches of perfect.

And I'm really not sure how we went from that little guy up there to this one down here who is already ONE MONTH OLD!  It's a bit of a blurry haze, really.

I'll try to capture some parenthood adventures here on the blog...but my boss is a little demanding these days and I tend to run a little short on time.  Priorities!

Oh, so THIS is what having a baby looks like?

Post-baby shower explosion of assorted baby awesomeness in the dining room as I attempt to organize...that's a lot of STUFF, y'all.

The Great Sorting of the Tiny Clothes!!  Why must alllllll of the tiny things be SO ADORABLE?!?  I think we're set for a while in the clothing department.

The epic "you get one shot to use the 10% registry completion coupon so let's go get all of the things" Buy Buy Baby shopping trip.  Phew.  That's also a lot of stuff, y'all.

Basically what I'm saying is that our home has exploded into a pile of baby stuff, and now that I actually have things like weekends and time to breathe I'm trying to organize it all and actually feel ready for the arrival of our tiny human child.  Going to Costco and buying 1,120 wipes will really make you feel like a mom.

Demonstrates improvement in social skills, although expect decline in coming week

Harrison is somewhat notorious for being...well...less than welcoming to visitors in our home. Or even to those who live in said home, although he and Zach have come light years from that initial meeting and the infamous Death Yodel.  However, he actually didn't cause physical harm or mental trauma to anyone during the last two social occasions at our house - huzzah!!

Event #1 - our annual Super Bowl party, which I'm also referring to as Dipapalooza 2014.  We seriously could have just made a meal out of chips and dips, although the giant piles of delicious smoked meat would have been sad and lonely.

Quite the spread...and yes, there was a Manning jersey and Denver Broncos supporter in our house for the Super Bowl party.  I'm surprised Craig let him in the door.

Harry mostly stayed in hiding and didn't scream at anyone.  After he and Grace literally had a run-in at a prior Super Bowl party, this was pretty epic progress.  I was really proud of him for basically just staying out of the way.  Maybe he was feeding off of Craig's happy vibes about the slightly lopsided victory for his Sea Birds.

Event #2 - Momma Dale came to visit last weekend, and he didn't yell at her ONCE, even when he got shocked on the nose due to excessive amounts of static electricity rippling through our air.  Just some minor nighttime stalking, but there was no screaming or death yodeling attached, and they even shared a chair (although this was really just Harry more standing his ground than willingly sharing).

While Dale was here we also did fun things like eat our body weight in fried chicken at Babe's (now THAT is how you celebrate Valentine's Day with a pregnant lady - it was amazeballs) and get Dale her Texas steak fix at The Keg and do some cutesy shopping for Baby P (I'll let you guess which two out of three activities Craig participated in out of that list).  Since it all flew by too quickly, can't weekend time move at half the speed of weekday time?  Or even if weekend time stays the same, then weekday time speeds up? Something feels a little off about this whole split.

And look, we progressed to utilizing a lesser degree of caution when in close proximity to the cat!  They played Candy Crush together by the end of the weekend!

However, I think all of this "progress" (which probably isn't even actual progress, just strange coincidences or possibly Harrison's decreased lack of giving a shizz as he ages) may go to crap when Uncle Wes comes to stay this weekend.  No love lost between those two, so any ground gained may go right out the window. Literally, if Harry traps Wes in a corner and he has to escape through a window.  It's possible.

I realize this entire post is sad.  The social antics of my cat.  Craig has requested that we get him a Prozac prescription before the baby comes...it's probably a good idea.  Sigh.

It's a...

Oh boy!!  Looks like I have a lot to learn in 2014. :) Bring on the all the little boy parenting tips - I think we're going to need them.  Actually, pretty much any general parenting tips are accepted, too - we have no idea what we're doing.  Which hit home yesterday when we tackled a first pass at registering for baby things.  There's just...so....much...stuff.  And I'm sure we don't need all of it.  But we'll learn as we go, right?

So excited for what this year will bring us!

Expecting the arrival...

...of some teeny feet to fill these shoes!  Baby Pendarvis is on his or her way (and yes, we're finding out boy or girl- dying to know!!), ready for a May 2014 arrival.  Eeeeekkkk!!  And if you're actually reading this, you probably already knew the news. =) But here are some tiny baby shoes to really drive the point home.

We couldn't be more excited.  And a little freaked out.  But mostly...excited, blessed, and ready to embark on this great parenthood adventure.  Can't wait to meet you, Baby Pendarvis - I think you're really going to rock our world.

Giant big deal #1 - we totally went and bought a house

Can you believe it?!?  Normally I'm a huge overanalyzer and delayer of doing and major procrastinator...but we just DID this thing.  We'd spent a few weekends with our realtor checking out houses in various areas to get a really good idea of what we really wanted in a house and where we wanted to be geographically...and did you know there are about a million things to consider when you're buying a house?  Things like square footage (Craig won this battle - his belief is bigger is better) and number of bedrooms and school districts and size of backyard and age of home and how much do you really want to spend and dear HEAVENS the commute time and so on and so on and so forth.  And imagine two people who both like to have their way making this decision together.  We made it through this - good pre-marital test, methinks.

And while I wasn't 100% really ready and totally on board with buying a house RIGHT NOW - it just worked out.  We both fell in love with this place, and it has absolutely everything we want, and I want to live in this house for the next fifty years.  I love it.  And Craig loves it, too.  And when that actually happens, you dang well better just buy the place.  Especially when the sellers are more than happy to do a sale-leaseback so the buyers (ummm...us) aren't stuck with rent+mortgage for a few months.  It just all came together.

So I crunched spreadsheet numbers and panicked while Craig told me it would all be ok...and it was.  I'm such a worrier.

Yay for our own little slice of Carrollton!!

That day we celebrated with lunch at Abuelo's (extremely close to our new home AND site of many fond A-town memories AND delicious Mexican food!!), and then we also had giant steaks and a bottle of bubbly for dinner.  Because food is really the best way to celebrate, you know.  A little anticlimactic since we don't actually live in the house (and won't be there until December/January, btw), but still really, really exciting.  And really, really real when we make that first mortgage payment here in about ten days.  Yowza.

I grabbed the pictures from the realtor website and tossed them into a Picasa album if you'd like a better look.  It's all perfect and wonderful in those pictures (except for the color of the dining room - I'm dying to paint, and other than that it's pefect...and maybe some more painting, because I'm demented and actually really love to paint walls), so it might look a little more sad when we move in and have less furniture (fact of new home ownership, right??  there is a dining set in our near future...), but it will be our home.  For a very long while.  And I'm so, so happy about that.

Oh?  What was that you said?  We're totally insane for adding "home purchase" to the list of life events occuring over the last month or so, especially with the wedding coming up?  I totally agree.  Hoping my stress levels at least burned some calories.

Let's get on this whole wedding thing

Did you know that getting engaged is a little overwhelming at first?  There's this great sense of euphoria that comes over you...and then everyone you know immediately asks what day you're getting married and where you're getting married and what your colors are and whether you've thought about using this person or that person for this or that and OH do you know what kind of dress you want, and it's enough to make someone contemplate getting married on the side of the road and just being done with it.

But then there are also really fun things like...

...going wedding dress shopping with your mom and one of your best friends and having a BLAST.  I think my mom was really worried that I was going to be stressed and indecisive and overwhelmed and basically freak out.  And don't get me wrong, I might have had those thoughts, too.  But we really had the BEST time, whether we were digging through piles of ugly dresses...

 
...or finding the winner and jumping up and down with joy.  Such a fun day!  Major props to the ladies at LuLu's in Uptown for embracing the fun and my ridiculousness.

...registering!!  Is there a little stress involved as you debate which flatware feels the best in your hand and which towels are going to claim a spot in your future life (I swear we touched every towel three times) and whether or not you really need this or that or this?  Yeah, a little bit.  But mostly it's crazy fun zapping things with a cool little gun and picking out things together.  We went to Bed Bath & Beyond on Friday afternoon (after having a couple of margaritas at lunch - my plan, as I figured Craig would be more amenable to my preferred options if I gave him a little booze, hehe) and spent about three and a half hours listening to the china spiel and making a lap of the store and heading back to the desk three times to get our gun fixed.  It was so much fun!! 

I think Craig started losing steam somewhere in the middle of towel selections...notice my beaming energy and his desire to just move on with the process.  Ahhh, memories and moments.

Scanny guns are extremely fun!!

And then we came home and promptly put together another registry on Amazon.  And next Sunday morning we're hitting up Crate & Barrel before the store opens for one of their special registry events.  A glass of champagne AND a scanny gun?  Don't mind if I do!

...planning the honeymoon.  We're going to Costa Rica!!  And staying at amazing places like the Xandari Resort and Spa and Arenal Nayara and Pranamar Villas and doing amazing things like zip-lining through the jungle and staying in an ocean-front villa and hiking around a volcano and just sitting in a hammock and reading and relaxing in hot springs and generally just enjoying life.  I can't wait for this part.

...figuring out fun little details instead of the big, budget-busting items.  Fun little details include paper products, which I'm totally obsessed with, as well as cool things like the wedding cake.

For everyone out there who wants to stay up to date with wedding news, I even busted out a wedding website.  Nothing crazy, I exercised some restraint - just some info for the curious types and out-of-towners.

Weddings are 100% absolutely crazy.  But also kinda fun.  Plus there's that whole "I do...for life" bit, which seems pretty awesome to me.

You might be moving REALLY soon if...

...the only things in your fridge are Diet Coke, milk (for cereal in the morning, obviously), and half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Don't ask why the chocolate chips made the cut (have you met me?) OR why they're in the refrigerator.

...your walls no longer have anything on them.  They look so naked and sad with their gaping nail and anchor wounds.

...you think "whatever!" about random carpet stains rather than try to actually get them out.  That's what the deposit is for, right?

...the DVR is only 16% full because you've been cleaning it out, trying not to miss those INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT shows you've had recorded for the last six months.  Which obviously weren't that important.  Oh, wait - I disconnected everything an hour ago, those shows are now GONE.  I think I'll live.

...you WALKED home from work for the last time on Friday.  Time to go back to the land of plentiful highways and gaz-guzzling cars.

...the thought of not sharing walls with ANYONE is consuming your every thought, given the noisy new neighbors who've moved in next door.  WHAT are you people DOING?!?

The movers are theoretically showing up at 8 AM tomorrow.  And I'm giving them a walkthrough, a rundown, a once-over, and then hustling Harrison over to the vet for a round of shots and a couple of days of boarding, which I'm sure he'll be THRILLED about.  So hopefully a lot of my stuff will magically disappear into a giant truck during that time.  Yipes.

One-way flight back to Dallas on Wednesday - a lot sure has happened in the last two years.

The most ridiculous meal ever

That guy I'm going to marry (hmmm, maybe I'll just call him that instead of "the boy" or even "Craig") had a birthday last month, and because I'm such a delightful girlfriend-now-fiancée who wanted to plan a wonderful birthday dinner and eat dinner at this place myself because it's supposed to be basically the most amazing dining experience in the entire D.C. area and possibly of your life, I hit redial for the reservation line at Komi on November 18th from 12:00 to 12:45 until I finally got through to a human being.  You see, they open up reservations at noon one month to the calendar day before your hopeful-please-let-us-get-in dining date.  Ridiculous.  It's a tiny, tasting-menu-only, highly revered restaurant with only 38 seats, and yes, I managed to snag us a reservation.  Phew.  Craig's excited for this dinner...(trust me, that's his excited face - he's pretty even-keel the vast majority of the time)...

Dinner was...deliciously amazingly delicious.  And LONG.  We were there about 2 1/2 hours.  And we had five different people explaining and pouring and serving and taking care of us all night long.  My only other tasting menu experience was on engagement night when I was too "eeeeeeeeekkkk!!" to really appreciate it (and I'll tell you about it anyway, I promise), but this was pretty wonderful as far as dining experiences go.  Overall verdict:  1000x yum.

I "interviewed" Craig (less than a month later...not bad for the blog considering Spain hangs over my head) for some of his favorites from dinner, and here's what I got:

• spanikopita
• it was all good except for the brussel sprouts

What can I say - he's a man of few words and FAR LESS reactive/over-the-top crazy than I am about...pretty much everything.  Oh, the food...

I interviewed myself and found out I LOVED the following from the Greek/Mediterranean-influenced menu:

• the slightly-salty-but-in-a-good-way crudo course (pictured above), especially the one with the crispy caper berry garnish
• tiny, adorable lobster rolls
• the teensy half-smoke served with an IPA as part of our wine pairing - it was so D.C. and SO tasty
• mascarpone-stuffed Medjool dates - it sounds really simple, but it was kinda amazing
• our "main dish" - roasted goat with house-made pita and a host of garnishes, including tzatziki, hot sauce, and oregano sea salt that I couldn't stop sprinkling on every bite.  Yeah, and I asked for more bread.  It. Was. SO. GOOD.
• frozen, tiny baklava for a dessert tasting

And after all of that and much, much more...we were incredibly full.  With very happy tummies.  And we had a fantastic wine pairing with all of this, which only made it that much better.  Everything's better when you start with bubbles and finish with a dessert wine that's actually delicious and not crazy-sweet.

OF COURSE I had my camera perched in the seat next to me, discreetly sneaking in shots here and there so I could attempt to remember what we were eating since we ate about eight million things...and then I was politely informed by one of our many attentive waitstaff that Chef Johnny would prefer that I enjoy his food the moment it hits the table.  Basically - please don't take pictures.  Ok, that's cool by me, even though I seriously doubt the food loses any of its deliciousness in the two seconds it takes for me to capture it for posterity and memory's sake.  Upon voicing this ("I really just want to remember everything we ate!"), our kind waiter had Chef Johnny write up the evening's menu for us.  Which doesn't quite cover it when everything is described in one word, but it definitely helps.  Thanks, Chef Johnny!

That's one way to kick off the holiday season

So...I got engaged on Saturday night to a wonderful man who loves me more than I ever thought possible.  If only I had recorded myself telling the amazing story of how this happened so I could post an audio clip and just let it play on the blog.  Can you even do that??  That would be awesome.  I'll tell you about it soon, though, if you haven't already heard me crying and babbling on the phone.  SO EXCITED!!!!

And yes, I'm still moving back to Texas.  Just bringing someone with me, that's all.  Yes, Zach the dog!  And Craig, too.