Celebrating Baby Tolbert

I was able to throw a baby shower for Dana the other weekend. This is their first baby and she’s having a baby girl J I had a lot of fun planning the shower and decorating everything. It’s definitely more fun decorating when it’s a little girl. Before Kate was born I was kind of anti-pink. Well, things have changed and I love pink, especially little pink baby clothes and blankets. Dana got some super cute gifts and I’m so excited for her to be able to use all of them! October 16^th isn’t very far away!

The cutest ever mom to be

Our fancy table

The food that my Mom helped me make and Rebecca made amazing the fruit bowl

Strawberry Cupcakes

Dana getting ready to open all her gifts

The Guests

It was a mixture of girls Dana used to work with then girls from our Athens days at UGA. Thanks everyone for coming!

Robyn, me, and Rebecca

Good Bye Cable!

When Emily and I were first married and I was finishing up college we didn’t have cable, just some rabbit ears which picked up some fuzzy channels. For the last 3 years we had cable with over 300 channels, on demand, HD… the works. We always said when we had a child we would not have cable, so I canceled it. But we still have TV, just the kind you get over the airwaves, which in Atlanta is a lot! I really do feel like when you have less channels you naturally just watch less tv.

The more I thought about it the more it made sense. For all those years we would only watch about 10 of the 300 channels, many of the same ones available for free in HD over the airwaves. We were paying anywhere from $50 - $80 per month just for the cable, it just seemed like a lot of money to me for what we were actually watching. Now I get over 20 full (uncompressed) 1080p HD channels with a home made antenna made from coat hangers (see image above):

ABC
RetroTV
GPTV
GPTV Kids
GPTV Knowledge
NBC
NBC Weather
Universal Sports
Peachtree TV
FOX
CBS
The CW
2 Korean Channels (which are highly amusing)
A ton of Christian channels (which I block, they annoy me)
A ton of Spanish channels (which i also block, since I can't speak Spanish)
PBS (different than GPTV)
The Atlanta Channel

My ATL

For additional entertainment (weekend movies, documentaries,…) we joined Netflix, and got a Roku so that we could watch all of the streaming movies, TV Shows, and Documentaries from Netflix on our TV. So good bye to cables running to our house, the cable company, and the phone company. (we get our internet over Clear WiMax, which is great by the way). We’ve decided to spend the money we save from cancelling cable on travel. Why waste time and money watching people travel, when you can be traveling yourself?

Beach Trip

This trip was full of a lot of firsts. Our first family trip without friends or other extended family. Kate’s first time on a plane and her first time at the beach. Dana’s family has an amazing vacation home in Ft. Meyers that we stayed at (we really missed Ty and Dana and wish they had been there)

I was so nervous about flying with Kate and was seriously stocked up on juice, snacks, and new toys. She did great! I was really proud of how she handled the whole experience. Taking off didn’t even faze her which we found amusing since if you take a turn a little sharp in the car she says Wow every time! I was really glad to find out she doesn’t have sensitive ears from the pressure since my ears always bother me.

The house had a screened in pool which was really nice because Kate loves to get in the pool then get out and run around then get in the pool and so on. She also learned to jump in to us. I wasn’t sure if she’d like the beach or even care but she loves the ocean. Every time a wave would come she would laugh so hard. We really do have the happiest ever! She’s always smiling and laughing and babbling. She even walked towards the water like she would just walk into the ocean all by herself. Having sand on her hands wasn’t her favorite but she still liked digging in the sand with her shovel. We did learn that when you have a 1 ½ year old trips to the beach don’t last very long and you have to bring a ton of stuff for that very short period :)

We had so much fun everyday and the week flew by. Flying home was another story. We get to the airport and find our plane is delayed. Then they hurry everyone on the plane so we can make up some time but air control won’t let us taxi for another half hour. At this point it’s way past Kate’s bed time and she is definitely missing her bed. She only cried for about a minute towards the end of the flight (which was the longest minute of my life) but it took a huge effort on our part to keep her from crying. When she gets overly tired instead of lying down in our laps she gets extremely squirmy. Which means we were pretty beat up by the end of the flight. Then we land and our gate wasn’t ready and we had to wait even longer! There’s nothing more Claustrophobia feeling than being stuck on an unmoving plane. We made it home around 1AM and Kate feel straight asleep. It was all worth it though!

"I know I'm cute"

Trying to get the sand off her hands

Too Cool

This was right before some teenager came to play with Kate. So many people would stop and talk or play with her when we'd go to the beach or park.

Uh Oh

Daddy/Daughter

She was exhausted every night

No Fear

Such a good Dad

Family Portrait

Happily waiting for our delayed flight

"Can I go to bed now, please"

Video of Beach Trip

Here are some short clips from our trip to Florida. Pictures will follow hopefully soon!

This is my favorite. She's such a happy baby/toddler

Kate's very first time at the beach! She was giggling so much when the wave would come :)

Happy Father's Day

To the man who is completely and utterly adored by his daughter

Kate loves to help her Daddy

And Jason always lets her help

Time to move on and a little Summer

Thank you Jason for making such a strong crib so I could occasionally crawl in and cuddle with Katherine when I woke her from a nap. I appreciated this since she rarely ever slept in our arms. However, Kate is now at the adorable age where she copies everything we do. She puts the drill on the screws in the TV stand, she tries to plug the vacuum in and push it around like Mommy does, she fake coughs after we real cough, she waters the plants and sweeps the floor and hammers wood... It's really too cute but this means her next step will surely be trying to climb out of the crib like Mommy does and I'm not quite ready for that stage.

How fantastic is this rug? Kate's nursery colors are green and purple with a touch of pink. After I had painted her room and set everything up I found this rug when I was about 8-9 months pregnant. Really, could it have been more perfect! (I was just reminded of buying this rug while talking to Dana about painting her nursery).

And finally, the real reason we installed a sprinkler system!

Abused Child or Result of Extreme Allergy to Mosquito Bites?

2 out of 3 visits to Kate's doctor have been due to a mosquito bite. I have learned my lesson and will become extremely diligent in keeping her away from horrible blood sucking mosquitoes. She can blame me for being so allergic since I'm pretty sure I passed my allergy gene down to her :(