Stranger danger has not yet set in

At least not when Holden has a full tummy and is kinda sleepy. Or possibly as long as he has some hair to tug on. Because our first meeting with Santa went extremely well!

We went to the Santa at Shops of Legacy out of pure convenience since we had a birthday brunch for Craig at Jasper's on Sunday morning with his mom, and this particular Santa was about a three minute walk away. And yes, we're those people who shelled out $50 for a sheet of photos and a digital copy of the image, but it was SO EASY. Minimal wait, happy helpers, and a generally pleasant experience. Yay!!

Holden was just so cute with him - he sat there and gazed at his face, then nuzzled in like he wanted to take a nap in all that fluff. You'll notice Santa kinda has Holden's right arm tucked down - yup, there was some serious thumb sucking going on (sleepy baby!), and we needed to try and get a smile. So out of frame is mom playing peekaboo (currently the hottest game in town) to encourage grins, and it actually worked.

Oh, and rest assured that beard is legit - Holden gave it a mighty tug for us.

Happy holidays, little bug - can wait to create all of these memories and start new traditions with you. This whole holiday season business has me feeling pretty mushy this year.

Do you know how excited I am about this?!?

Baby's first Christmas!! It's going to be the utmost of adorableness, even though Holden will probably just be really confused. And while I'm late to the game on getting personalized Etsy awesomeness I was planning on for Christmas gifts ("no longer accepting holiday orders"...oops, I should have started these projects before Thanksgiving), I was totally on the ball with ordering Holden a really cute first Christmas ornament. Now it just needs the perfect spot on the tree.

So, I disappeared...

...into a world of busy season and baby and LIFE and heeeere I am, alive and well!! And in the spirit of playing catch up, I'm going to try to blog every day in December. Just putting that out there while I'm feeling a small burst of optimism and motivation. So it may not actually happen, but I'm going to try. Some days it may just be a picture of Holden, which is probably all you really want anyway.

And in the interest of not trying too hard right off the bat and hurting myself, we're going to start on a light note with some silly faces. I like to call this Holden's "little old man lips" look; he's been sporting it quite a bit these days, probably as a side effect of figuring out these two teeth he has. He's entirely too much fun and giggly and happy, so I try to soak up as much of it as I possibly can. Rock on, little old man lips - I love you.

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!

Operation Nursery...complete!

It's definitely been a work in progress, but now we finally have what is probably the only "complete" room in our home.  Holden, I hope you like it!

He really does have an army of puppies in there!  Quilt by my wonderful mommy, crib skirt by me, puppy prints from Etsy, crib from Pottery Barn Kids, crazy wall camera to watch him sleep installed by Craig.

All ready for changing!  Dresser and mirror are from Ikea, and random assorted things are from random assorted places.

The giant alphabet wall!  Alphabet decals are from Etsy, chair from Buy Buy Baby, storage ottoman from Target.  Learn your letters, Holden.

The tiny clothes await!  Itty-bitty plaid shorts, I die at the cuteness.

Lots and lots and lots of tiny clothes...and diapers and toys and books.  Thank goodness for plenty of storage space.

Cute things on shelves, yeah yeah!

Alllllll ready for lots and lots of reading, courtesy of wonderful friends building his library at the baby shower.  Yes, we probably need an actual bookcase or something, but for now a basket on the floor works for me.

All ready for you, Holden!  Curtains by me

See, we at least appear to be ready for a baby...

I love the "little man" banners from the baby shower, so they're on the wall now!

Here's your cozy place, Holden.

The puppies are waiting!

Mustaches and bowties

A month ago (a whole month ago!) my dear, wonderful, amazing friends threw an adorable "mustaches and bowties" baby shower to celebrate Baby Holden, yay!!  In the midst of the tax crazy, it was so nice to just take 48 hours away from my desk (ok, really more like 44.5 hours...a whirlwind from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon when I was back at my desk around 4:00, blech) and spend some quality time with family and friends getting ready for the little guy's arrival.

I'm such a lucky gal to have such wonderful friends - love you girls!!  A few pictures from the festivities...

Me and the mommies...well, the grandmommies-to-be!

little man onesies

My cravings!  Clementines and...sugary little kid cereals. :) Transformed by Kami into delicious Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal bar treats.  SO GOOD.

The wonderful hostesses and party-throwers extraordinaire

Everything's more delicious through a mustache straw!

Piles and piles o' wonderful presents and the great start to Holden's library

My wonderful mom made Holden the most adorable rocking horse quilt - I love it!!

The name game

After much debate and flipping through baby name books (the Craig method) and keeping of spreadsheets (obviously the Erin method), we finally decided on a name for our kid...

Holden Michael Pendarvis

There's his sweet little face from FOUR MONTHS AGO (dang, how did that happen?!?) when we first found out we're having a little boy.  He's certainly changed quite a bit in the last four months - I mean, he's gone from the size of a banana to a head of romaine lettuce.  Approximately.  Since it's kinda hard to see what's going on in there.

And actually, we decided all of this awhile ago...but I thought an official blog announcement was in order!

Can't wait to meet you, Holden!  Actually, I can wait a little while longer - keep on baking in there, ok? Watch, after all of this careful deliberation we'll totally change our minds when we meet him.*

* Ummm...probably won't change our minds, actually. That goes against my planning nature.

Oh HELLO third trimester, where did you come from?!?

Hello at 28 weeks, baby!  Which was about two weeks ago...details, schmetails...

The beginning of this baby adventure was all anticipation and wondering and waiting...and now the days and weeks are just flying by and I feel like our little guy will be here before I know it.  How does that happen??  At any rate, here's what's up with us these days:

• Physically feeling pretty good, other than the fact that I keep waking up in the middle of the night - I think he likes to throw raging dance parties around 3 AM, which I'm sure is fun and all, but not for mom.
• Baby had the HICCUPS last night, which was both adorable and completely freaky.  It's been so incredible to feel his movements go from the tiniest little flutters to full on "yeah, I'm in here!" motions all the time.  And have you ever seen your midsection just MOVE because something INSIDE YOUR BODY IS MOVING?  O. M. G.
• I'm not exactly craving ice cream, but Craig keeps buying it for me, so I keep eating it.  I'm not too sad about the way this is working out.  Thanks, honey!
• Actual cravings?  I went through a clementine phase, which was great since I was feeding myself and baby healthy things, but now I've moved on to carbs carbs comforting carbs.  I'm not going too crazy with the food, though, and weight gain is right on track. Phew.
• Doctor appointments have gone from being every month to every two weeks...which just drives home the point that we're in the home stretch, making this both incredibly exciting and mildly terrifying.
• Right after we found out "it" is a "he," I may have gone on a bit of a clothes-buying bender. Which means Craig has banned me from buying any more baby clothes.* Yes, I know people love to buy tiny cute things for the baby, so I really don't need to...but I love buying tiny cute things, too!
• Did you know I'm a worrier?  Who, me??  Yeah, so basically I'm worried about everything ever.  Although I took my glucose screening test a week and a half ago and haven't heard anything back on the "no news is good news" kind of test results, so I'm actually NOT worried about potentially having gestational diabetes.  Woot woot!
• At this point I've worked my way through an entire little tub of Burt's Bees Mama Bee Belly Butter, mostly because I had this month or so in trimester #2 where my skin (we're talking arms, legs, WHOLE BODY) was crazy itchy.  I think that one was a combo of winter skin in general + pregnancy heightening sensitivity to basically all things that could cause problems.
• I've switched to flats for the remainder of this "carry a growing baby around" business - a little bit of pain/swelling going on in the leg/ankle area.  Highly recommend these Gap maternity pants for work - I actually bought two and hemmed one for heels and one for flats. I haven't worn pants that actually buttoned since early January...this could be hard to go back to...
• I'M HAVING A BABY, AND CRAIG AND I ARE GOING TO BE ACTUAL PARENTS OF A HUMAN BEING.  That's all.

*Theoretically. What he doesn't know won't hurt him on the baby clothes front...how do you resist this??

Fear the machine...wait, don't

For Christmas Craig got me an awesome serger, which I said I wanted but I was also a little afraid of because it has KNIVES that cut fabric and you thread it with four giant things of thread and I didn't really understand how the whole thing works...but yeah, I wanted one anyway. :)

So yesterday I actually pulled it out of the box and made sure I wasn't going to injure myself with it - boys may get excited by things like miter saws and robot vacuums, but I'm pretty excited about this kind of machine.

Successfully threaded and ready for action!

So I didn't actually do anything with it besides obsessively read the manual and thread with new colors and do a test round of serging to make sure I could actually operate this thing.  Ta da!

Yeah, I know, it's not that exciting, but it's exciting for me

In related fabric news, Craig fell in like with some puppy dog crib bedding at Buy Buy Baby (I would say "fell in love," but Craig would tell you that it's impossible for him to fall in love with something like crib bedding), and while I could appreciate the adorableness of the playing puppies, I was way less in love with the plaid...situation...that dominated the colors and style.  So in typical Erin fashion, I decided it would be smarter AND more economical to just make something cuter with even adorabler puppy dogs. In non-typical Erin fashion, I'll actually make this happen before the baby shows up.  I'm a major project procrastinator overanalyzer.

Project #1 - crib skirt.  I'm going to use the fancy new machine to serge the edges and then flip under for hemming with the other cool machine, use a TBD combination of these guys (imagine me, buying excessive amounts of fabric and bringing home options instead of just committing...):

...to appliqué adorable little puppy dogs in the shape of this super cute guy...

...onto a solid grey background. Undecided on whether to throw in a box pleat on the front skirt or not. Let's see how it turns out.  And if the entire thing turns out nothing like what I have pictured in my head, then we'll throw down $60 at Pottery Barn Kids for the animal alphabet version and I'll have a lovely pile of scraps.  Actually...it would save a lot of time to just spring for that whole set and be done with it...hmmmm.  We'll see how today goes.

Off to go sew!  You know, AND watch the Olympics.  Oh, and one more nursery update - we're paying a qualified professional to install crown molding in this particular room where the ceiling slopes onto the wall at a funky angle and we almost lost our minds trying to figure out how to work all the angles.  Worth every penny, should be done in a couple of weeks.  When the magical carpenter man also comes to install the new built-in bar and wine fridge for the kitchen/breakfast nook area...yay!

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!

Wrap it up

I genuinely LOVE wrapping presents.  Using excessive amounts of tape (although I think I've really toned it down in recent years - people were actually able to open their gifts this year without using pocketknives or excessive amounts of force) and folding corners and making all the shiny things go together just gives me great joy.  Most of this wrapping has been destroyed by now, but fortunately I have just a little more wrapping to do tonight for friend festivities tomorrow night - yay!  Shiny shiny shiny...

Yes, I'm insane and ridiculous and who actually enjoys spending hours wrapping presents?  This girl!!

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.

Wordless weekend

Pie season is upon us

It's pie season!!  Or what normal people might just call "fall" or "November" or "the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving" - but no, to me it's definitely pie season.  Last year I made four pies for six people at Thanksgiving.  Excessive?  No, not at all!

Apple, pumpkin, coconut cream, and pecan. Dig it. And dig in.

I. love. pie.  Happy pie season, y'all.

Wordless weekend, part II

Happy anniversary eve!

Holy jeez, where have the last two years gone??  And yes, it's only anniversary EVE, not actual anniversary, but I needed something to write about tonight and was feeling a little mushy.  To celebrate two whooooole years of marriage, we took off to Seattle for a few days to celebrate (which I'll tell you all about in this month o' blogging), a little before our actual anniversary to make time for important things like University of Washington football games.  Last year at this time we were having red rocks adventures and relaxing in Sedona, celebrating one whooooole year of marriage...

...and then two years ago I'm certain I was having trouble trying to wind down and go to sleep because I was just a little excited about the whole "I'm getting married tomorrow!!" thing.  But it was all worth it for this.

Happy almost anniversary, husband!  And just when Craig is FINALLY HOME from the Great Houston Adventure, he's out of town again this week for work training in Orlando.  But I have some really wonderful friends who are going to celebrate birthaversary with me tomorrow (birthday dinner on the anniversary, of course), so I think I'll be ok.  Two down and many, many more to go.

Let's stay at the beach. Forever.

** Public service announcement...please pretend this post happened EXACTLY EIGHT MONTHS AGO as originally intended.  Thinking about where the gals and I should journey this summer, so I went back to read about last year's trip, and I thought my posts felt very unfinished...and I'd forgotten I had this one almost ready to go before life happened and I just forgot about it.  So let's just pretend, ok?  Thanks so much, and let's go back to Edisto... **

You know what's wonderful?  Easy beach lunches, all courtesy of King's Market, an adorable roadside establishment filled with loads of fresh flowers...

...and beautiful heirloom maters...

...and all kinds of crazy birdhouses...

...and Cheerwine, which has absolutely nothing to do with wine but is very much like Cherry Coke and is just darn tasty on a toasty afternoon...

...and a plethora of salads and dips and delightful homemade casseroles (granted, mayo was a key ingredient in many of these, but we weren't really complaining - that's what vacation is for!), and we made lunches out of fresh melons and crab dip and pimento cheese and chicken salad and it was just so good.  Best eaten on a porch overlooking the ocean.  Really, you can't beat it.

There's a lot to be said for relaxing beach afternoons.  We had quality time on our floats out in the ocean AND explored the reach of the beach in both directions AND enjoyed a delicious cooler full of sangria (and water - we hydrate!) AND just sat. And listened to the waves and were just there.  So wonderful. For two afternoons in a row. For hours. More, please.

We come prepared.

Sweet, blessed provider of shade for pale, pale me.

One night for dinner we headed to Dockside, where the service was a little questionable, the food was darn good, and we had a great view of the sunset over the water.

And where did I spend just a whole lot of time?  Oh, hello, fantastic rocking chair on wonderful screened-in deck. Come home with me. I love you.

Our other post-beach dinner was at The Old Post Office, which was just awesome - I mean, this is about as fancy as you can get down in Edisto.

Dessert Triumvirate #2 - so much deliciousness...and it's even by candlelight, awwww.

Oh, hi, Edisto sunset, you're pretty

We did some exploring and found crazy old churches...

...and dolphins!!!  Ok, so the sleeper in me kinda missed the early morning dolphin activity while Kami and Carolyn actually woke up and did things that are good for you, but on our last morning we made an Erin trip to see the dolphins...and it started to rain.  And we only kinda saw the dolphins.  But I know they're there.

Back to Charleston we go, with one more walk along the water, and then time to fly away home.  Why can't vacations just last forever?