Accountability.

I'm putting this out there in hopes that by announcing my goals, I will have more motivation.. I will hold myself more accountable because there will now be people that will be aware of my success or my failure.

I started the Couch to 5K program last week.
I got a few weeks into it just after our wedding, then quit.
This time, there's no quitting.
Even if I have to repeat a week or two along the way..
Even if it takes me longer than 9 weeks..
Even if I come home from every run cursing the program..
I am going to finish this.
I am going to be able to run a 5K without stopping.

I have a few friends who have also recently started, so I am looking forward to the group mentality helping me along.

Wish me luck, friends! I'm gonna need it!
This mama is way out of shape, and the first 2 days of the program felt a bit like a butt-kicking!

Today should have been my third run, but we participated in a charity 5K this morning, so I'm going to bump it to tomorrow.

Here we all are just before the race. The three of us walked, but I'm glad to get a feel for the distance I'm aiming to run in the next 8 weeks. Camy fell asleep sometime during the second mile, so our finish line photo should be interesting. :)

the family that runs walks together...

We met up with our Urban friends, and were uber-impressed by their hardcore-ness.
Mr. Urban lapped us twice.. and Mrs. Urban beat the goal she had set for herself by a few seconds!
And we just adore the little Urban boys, so we had fun getting some playtime in with those kiddos before/after the race!

What a fun (albeit tiring) way to start our day!
Hope you all are enjoying some Halloween festivities with your loved ones today!
As soon as The Bean wakes up from her nap, we're headed outside for some pumpkin carving and then tonight will be her first Trick-or-Treating experience! Can't wait to share those photos!

Happy (and safe) Halloween!

The definition of 'October'

October - noun - the tenth month of the Gregorian calendar. or the month in which Camy decides she doesn't need to sleep. or the month in which Camy decides pooping on the potty is fun. or the month in which Camy's vocabulary explodes. or the month in which the fun never stops.

Holy Wow, October has been an adventure.
-We've got three teeth coming in - 2 top molars and 1 bottom lateral incisor. Oy. {Perfect timing for a teething tablets recall, wouldn't ya say?!}
-We've had a language explosion, with Camy's word count now exceeding 30 words. This seems to have happened overnight. I remember killing time on 10/4 at Barnes & Noble, flipping through a parenting magazine. I came across an article that said by 15 months, most children have 20+ words. I counted on one hand how many Camy had and got a little worried.. worried enough to talk to Andy about it when I got home. Then out of nowhere, it was like a light-switch went on in her mind and now she's learning new words at a staggering rate! It's awesome!
-Do you recall the "Code Brown" incident we encountered during our Day in the Life fun? Uh yeah, apparently somebody told Cam that all the cool kids poop in the tub. We had a scoop-the-baby-out, drain-the-tub, flush-the-poop, disinfect-everything adventure the very next night. On night 3, when I saw her tell-tale squatting, I scooped her up and sat her on the potty. And it worked. And she was just as thrilled about her accomplishment as I was about not having to bust out the disinfectants again! We started setting her on the potty before every bath, and having luck each time. After a few days we expanded it to pre-naptime as well, and whenever we could see that she was up to something. Its strange to say that she can use the potty at 1-day-shy-of-14 months, but trust me, we are not trying to ditch the diapers anytime soon. We have no grand expectations of potty learning at such a young age.. it was just something we stumbled into out of necessity desperation. And its going well. So we'll continue to reinforce it and talk about it and let her lead the way, and maybe, just maybe, we'll have any easy go of officially potty learning when the time comes.
-In addition to these developmental accomplishments, we've been quite the busy bodies in the month of October as well. So far, we've had 2 Fall Festivals, 2 pumpkin patches, 2 trips to the Children's Museum, 1 mall playdate and 1 park playdate with our BFFs, a costume party, and a visit from my sister and her family.
Quick recaps:
Fall Festival #1 was at Andy's parents' church. My dad was in town that day and Andy had to work (boo!), so Cam and I invited my dad, my younger sister, and her 2 year old daughter to tag along. The girls had a blast!

Fall Festival 2 was this past Saturday, at the local YMCA. My whole family came along - the three of us, my older sister with her husband and 16 month old son, my younger sister with her 2 year old daughter, and our mom. We all had so much fun! Petting zoo, pony rides, pumpkin painting, bounce houses, barrel train rides, picnic lunch... seriously, everyone was exhausted by the time we left.. not just the kiddos.

Pumpkin Patch #1 was a couple weekends ago, about an hour outside of town. We met up with a group of our Mommy-Toddler friends and sadly, Cam didn't have an awesome time. She'd had a really rough morning before we left for the patch, and we probably should have just skipped it. I thought being there with her friends in a new place with new, fun things to see would cheer her up, and it didn't. We only stayed an hour, but we came home with a few decent photos. {and yes, she was wearing the same outfit that I put her in for Fall Fest #2 - getting as many uses out of her Halloween ensemble as possible!}

Pumpkin Patch #2 was last weekend, just before we headed home from the YMCA Fall Fest. We really wanted a photo of the three cousins together in the pumpkins, but do have any idea how hard it is to wrangle three kids 2 years and under for a picture? It was comical. And this is what we came home with. Haha. Awesome.

The Super-Awesome Costume Party was just yesterday, and I was so glad my sister was in town to come along with Mr. Rylan. Most of the kiddos there were right around his age (Cam is on the younger end of the spectrum) so I was happy to bring them along to play! Sadly, I didn't get a single shot of her in her costume because the skirt kept tripping her, so we had to change her into real clothes pretty soon after arriving. But a friend of ours did get this great shot -- Camy's a lady bug this year, and lady bugs love to sing about spiders, especially spiders that get washed away when the rain comes down.

This is me on the left with my nephew, Rylan, and my sister with Camy.

And Camy with her Uncle Kevin. 

October - noun - the tenth month of the Gregorian calendar. or the month in which wonderful memories have been made. or the month in which my baby girl seems to have grown by leaps and bounds.

I :heart: Mommy Blogs.

I love 'em. 

I'm addicted to 'em.

I spend way too much time reading 'em when I should be folding laundry, 

or picking up toys, or loading the dishwasher.

Bean's Naptime = My Blog Time.

So how could I turn this down?

Super easy way to find new Mommy Blogs to stalk! 

Sweet!

Happy Friday, all.

A Day in the Life.. of the CamyBean.

We are playing along with this blog hop. You should play, too. :) I'm looking forward to seeing what other mama's do with their babies all day long!

Today was just me and The Bean, as Daddy was at work from 7am til... well, its 923pm now and he's still not home. Boooo.
But, here's how it all went down....

Remember yesterday, when I said it was "Shapin' up to be a pretty awesome Monday!"?

Yeah.

About that.

Cam woke up at 308am. She tends to have at least one night waking stirring each night, where she whimpers and rolls about until I place a hand on her, then she dozes right back off to sleep. When I glanced at the clock to see it was 308am, I was shocked she was stirring already.. its usually around 430am. But I gave her a little cuddle and waited for her to simmer down. Except she didn't. She poked my ears saying "esss", and stuck her finger in my nose... she crawled over me trying to get off the bed (floor bed, remember?). And she cried when I wouldn't let her. She threw her binkie across the room. She did not want to go back to sleep. But guess what, Bean? I may let naps slide if you aren't interested, or push bedtime back a bit when you are ultra-playful. But at 308am, Mama don't play. Its sleepy time. The last time I glanced at the clock before we both dozed off, 413am. Sweet Mother, what was that all about?!

754am: Woke up to Cam crawling over me. Ok, 8am is a suitable wake-up time. G'Morning Sunshine!

I tell her that her binkie stays in her bed, so she pretends to hand it to me.. but then always yanks it back before I can grab it. Silly.

Diaper Change for the bean before we head to the kitchen for our sustenance:

[Duuude, Mom! I can see my bottle. Lemme have it!]

I plop Cam on her bean beag with her milk, turn on a little PBS, and take the 3.76 minutes of distraction to check my email and such before she is done with the tv and wants my attention. The girl has never lasted more than 5 minutes watching TV. Which is good in that she doesn't get much TV, but some days I wish I could distract her for a weee-bit longer.

830am: Mama starts breakfast. Cam is still learning that she has to wait for her food to be prepared. Once she sees me pulling food out of the fridge... 

840am: We can finally sit and eat. Eggs, bagel with cream cheese, and sliced pears (not photographed.. sticky fingers).

Around 10am, Cam and I headed out to the park to meet up with our BFFs. 

[the girls inspecting the construction of the see-saw]

[Cam, love, those pants do little for your figure.]

[check out that crazy wind-blown hair]

[bet ya can't guess what happened .005seconds after snapping this one...]

11am: After playing a bit, we headed to Red Robin for lunch. {yummmm}

Our placement near the windows messed up the lighting in 99% of the photos (boo!), but we got these 2.

[does your little like to sit sideways in highchairs, too?]

[this is her "yuck" face.. after Tab told her "yucky" for licking the table]

We are working on a transition to one nap a day, which is going better than I expected, but still not easy on The Bean. She made it through the whole morning sans meltdown, but was passed. out. in the car before we even made it out of the parking lot. Literally 13 seconds after I strapped her in, lights out.

1230pm: Made it home, sleepily sucked down a bottle of milk, naptime at 1245pm.

[wow, her bed looks huge in this photo!]

215pm: My sweet little bean swung her bedroom door open and toddled out into the living room to find me. This is one of my favorite parts of having a floor bed.. her coming out of her room on her own accord, no tears, proud of her independence. Since she only slept for an hour and a half, though, I scooped her up and went to snuggle her a bit longer in hopes she might sleep some more. No dice, but it was nice to get the extra cuddle time. 

When we decided naptime was officially over, we stripped her sheets off her bed to wash everything.

Who knew mattress tags could be so intriguing?

While I was stripping the sheets, she discovered one of her shape blocks under the chair...

...and was not amused that I was taking a photo of her rather than helping her. Sorry, love!

Now, back to the task at hand! When she saw me put all the sheets into a laundry basket, she knew right where we were headed and led the way to the garage...

230pm: Camy knows that afternoons are when we open up her playroom... and we always start out with a little peek-a-boo action. She's really into opening/closing doors these days, until she accidentally shuts herself in a room and can't open the door herself.. which ended our game quickly today.

240pm: Part One of afternoon snack is usually her drinkable yogurt... yum.

300pm: Then we spent the bulk of our afternoon just tearing up the house...

...by taking DVDs off the shelf...

...or pulling all the food and pots/pans and utensils out of our play kitchen...

...emptying the bottom drawer of our dresser, and tearing up the play mat...

...and even by dragging all the diaper bags out of the closet.

We took pause at one point to make sure our belly button was still where it should be (it was!)...

...and to read the information pamphlet about our Bee Bop Band set.

But by 4pm, Cam was timing out on me. 

This whole one-nap-a-day business is not faring well so far, so we laid down for some snuggle time in hopes she would take a cat nap. Again, no dice. 

500pm: To ward off a pre-dinner meltdown, we headed out for a walk to the mailbox. 

Can ya tell she was sleepy? Poor bug.

She loves to try and help unlock the mailbox... 

...then look at me like, "Really, Mom? We go through this every time. I need your help here."

530pm: After our mail run, we headed home to make dinner. I gave Cam a sippy of juice (she's been a bit backed up lately) in hopes of keeping her occupied a bit. I may or may not have coordinated the cup with her diaper. 

At one point the dogs started barking, so she went to investigate..

...and tried to let Maya in. It scares me that she can reach the knobs already. Oy.

Apparently the sippy cup of juice couldn't quite hold her off til dinner.. she got into the pantry and raided the snack shelf.

600pm: Finally, dinner time!

[what a good girl, reaching for her broccoli first!]

[what do we have heeere?]

[after stacking her dishes this way, she lifted the bowl to try and take a drink. ha.]

[obviously this way's easier! Good to the last drop!]

645pm: Then it was straight to the tub.. where we had the mother of all bathtime debacles. First she peed on the big rug while I was checking the temp of the water. I tossed the rug into the hall to wash this evening, and moved the little rug over for me to kneel on. Then she pooped in the tub - which never happens! I scooped her out and went about cleaning it all up... when she peed on the little rug, too!!!! What? The? HECK!!? 

We wrapped bath time up quickly before she could do anymore damage, then went to do our lotion/pajammy routine.

715pm: Bedtime, little one. She gets her lovey, her 2 bedtime binkies, and a bottle of milk. We snuggle in the chair a few minutes, then move to the bed where she snuggles to sleep. Tonight, after such an adventurous day, she was out by 745. 

Good Night, Sweet Pea. 

[Disclaimer: I am sure you noticed my baby girl's lack of pants. Yes. If we are hanging out at the house, she can usually be found in a shirt with just her cloth diaper. But its okay, cuz CD bums are super cute, right?! And you've got to take advantage of the freedom to go pants-less while you can. Its not so socially acceptable later in life, y'know.]

[Another disclaimer: Usually her binkie stays in her bed, only to be used during naps and nighttime. This afternoon, however, she was struggling with having just one short nap so it was a battle I chose not to fight. Just thought I would point that out since the first thing out of her Daddy's mouth when he peeked at this post was, "Do you always let her have her paci all day?". Oops.]