Friday Favorites, 12/30

1. First, let's say good-bye to 2022. I know we got another day and all, but I am not sorry to see this year go. Part of me feels like I can't throw my old planner away fast enough. Though, I don't know if I should because it's the year Sutton was born. I started out 8 months pregnant and was continuously sick with colds and coughs for January, February, and March. We had our delightful baby Sutton in March but not without a whole lot of things I'd rather forget to go along with it. Scott was away for weeks upon weeks at a time this last year. Spring was incredibly rainy and not great. Summer was hot and kind of hard to get out in with a small baby. Fall brought all the feelings and complications of not going back to work and getting Wells onto a preschool routine. Also, sickness. All the colds and coughs, all the time. In reality, aside from Sutton herself, this year was just really tiring. I mentioned to a friend that I used the excuse of "I'm having/had/have a baby" to get out of a lot of personal accountability in 2022. 

2. Speaking of babies: this is the #1 gift you need to get for any baby in your life. 

When Wells used to go to a playgroup, someone would bring a set of these stacking cups and they were the most popular toy among the under-1 crowd. I could never understand it. We didn't have a set, but I got them for Sutton for Christmas and they are, shockingly, the most popular toy in our house right now. 

*They are sold out on Amazon, which is where I got them. Amazon gives a lot of alternatives but you don't need anything fancy. You need the $5 ones. 

3. Wells' favorite gift is probably this scooter. It's so nice to see him flying all over the house on it because he is kind of a fearful kid. He has an outdoor scooter that he is a bit scared of and he isn't comfortable on his bike. This is the perfect gift for a preschooler if you've got the floor space in your house. 

4. Got a new phone yesterday. I'd had my old one for 2.5 years and I usually wrangle myself into a new one every 2 or so years. I'm a millenial and that's my curse, I guess. I like shiny new cell phones.

Unfortunately I didn't have a solid back-up on my iPhone 11 so...I'll be spending my weekend adding in contacts. (back up your phones)

See the baby stacking cups on the floor?

5. The Core Corrective program I mentioned the other day is on sale until January 1st. Again, I'm loving the results (I'm in week 3) and can see myself doing these quick core/glute workouts multiple times a week, even after I finish it. I plan to, honestly, go through the program a second time once I finish this first 4 week round. 

In case you missed it this week: 

Christmas Weekend Recap 

9 Months of Sutton

OH! In case you missed my Airing of Grievances, I put it on Instagram last week:

9 Months of Sutton.

NINE WHOLE MONTHS.

Sutton has a lot of teeth. Like 9 or 10. She won't let me get a good look. I scrub some toothpaste on them after her last bottle at night.

At her 9 month appointment last week, she weighed 17 pounds, 15 oz and was 27.5 inches long. That's right around the 50% for both. Head is at 95%. 

I have her in size 4 diapers and she wears 9-18 month clothing, depending on the brand. Speaking of diapers, Wells could wear just about any brand so I usually stuck to Target. She does best with Pampers ($$$).

She loves to eat now and I give her whatever we're eating: eggs when Scott cooks breakfast, the meat and veggies from soups, bananas, strawberries, rice, tortillas, toast, pizza crust, whatever. She's learning to use a straw now too. 

She is "dragger", not a crawler. She's getting better, but she's generally a pretty careful baby. She's face-planted a few times and it's definitely scared her a bit. If she sees me at all, she starts wailing so I will pick her up. She's lazy, for sure. I am pretty sure I made her that way. She does love to sit on a little chair, fall forward, and have me catch her. 

Sutton LOVES her baths. It is absolutely her favorite thing ever. She cannot get enough of the water. She is more adventurous in the tub than she is sitting on the living room floor. Wells pours water over her head and she just laughs. I really wish there was a place for swimming lessons around here. 

Onto this month's commentary...

I was reading a comment thread in a local Facebook group the other day (isn't this how all good stories start?) and it was a question about the best place to deliver a baby around here. The question was: Do they give you a celebration meal?

This shows where priorities lie, am I right? I kid you not, post-traumatic delivery/c-section, I was asked no less than 5 times if I wanted to order my celebration meal and they kept shoving a menu at me. I couldn't even sit up without throwing up and wasn't even able to hold my baby yet. 

I told Scott about this comment thread and he just laughed. People are freaking ridiculous. 

In case you're wondering a local hospital does do a celebration meal that includes tomato vinaigrette salmon. 

Meanwhile, I still can't eat pancakes or toast or eggs or breakfast food in general after they forced it on me 36 hours after Sutton was born. Like, wouldn't let me leave until I took a few bites of something.  Talk about trauma. I used to love breakfast.

I know I really (really) need to put this all behind me and I can't believe it's been 9 whole months but I also feel like my feelings about our experience will intensify as we move closer to her first birthday. 

Also: Had an uh-oh moment when I realized she was now 9 months old and my consolation to baby weight and whatever is "well, it took nine months to grow the baby, so I get nine months to go back to normal". And now it's been (over) nine months. Whoops.

I'm not unhappy with how it's going but also I could definitely up my strength training and add in some cardio now that winter is really here. I did actually start a Core Corrective program because all the strength training and Pilates in the world isn't designed to fix "c-section". I thought maybe trying to work from the inside out in December and then dive back into strength and cardio in January (with the rest of the world lol) would be a good compromise. It has to be impossible for abs to just plain old heal post-caesarean, right? Muscles just don't go back together like they were never sliced in half, you know? It's just different from the first time around. 

Anyway, I think it's really working. I'm three weeks in so I'll link it and review it when I'm done. It's originally a $70 program but I got it in a Black Friday deal. 

The big stuffed elephant is covering up the fact that I sent Wells into his room to dress himself and he put on a 4th of July tank top. It was about 15 degrees outside on this day. 

Christmas Weekend 2022

Scott got stuck on the east coast on Friday. He had originally flown from St. Louis to the east coast a week before and then couldn't get back due to the weather delays and cancellations. He'd left his car at the airport too. The only way he could get back for Christmas was to fly into Springfield, where I would go to pick him up on Christmas Eve. Then that meant we had to go back to St. Louis to get the car this week. 

This did, however, give us the chance to go to The City Museum. We went there back in 2009 when we first came to Missouri for a summer. In addition to the tripling in admission fee, I don't remember it being quite as amazing this time. Maybe because I'm old. Maybe because we were wrangling a non-adventurous 4 year old. Maybe because it was 24 degrees outside and they don't heat the building. Maybe because it was super crowded and we had a stroller. Who knows. I'm glad we went though. Day trips to St. Louis aren't usually in the cards for us (me, I'm referring to me) because it's a 2 hour one-way trip. 

Backtracking a few days... since we had to be in Springfield for an airport run on Christmas Eve, we tried to go for pho. They were closed. Tried to get Thai food. They were closed. Ended up at an Indian restaurant. I don't know: I think dinner out on Christmas Eve might be a nice tradition to start.

 

And Christmas...

She has worn all of Wells' old Christmas outfits from his first AND his second Christmas this year, since she's between the two sizes.

Hanna Andersson pjs I love.

Tracking Santa

Family presents

Santa presents

We were given this bottle when Sutton was born. Now's as good a time as any because we certainly didn't drink it back then.

I totally took a week off from this without even planning to, mostly because the weather was so atrocious last week that I couldn't focus and had to go out and buy space heaters. Then the whole airport kerfluffle. Look for Sutton's 9 month update tomorrow.

I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend and a Merry Christmas :)

Wednesday links. 12/21

First, I posted my 2022 book recap yesterday and, on Monday I shared some last-minute gift ideas. 

Today was supposed to be a 9 month update on baby Sutton but well...I haven't even taken her official pictures yet. 

So here's some links worth sharing.

So I ordered two pairs of jeans from Target at like 11pm one night last week. Barely remembered doing it in the morning. This is why babies who wake up a lot + phone next to my bed is dangerous. But I got these mid-rise skinny jeans and these high-rise ones, assuming one might be okay. I ordered the same size in both. The mid-rise felt better but the high-rise ones didn't *not* fit. But I returned the high-rise because I didn't really need a pair that didn't fit perfectly. The mid-rise are pretty much close to perfect and I can't believe they were only $24. Anyway, I "returned" the high-rise but they must be so dispensable to Tar-jay that they gave me my money back and told me to keep the jeans anyway. 

This fruit salad was so good last winter that I'm going to make it this weekend. 

My parents got me this shirt for Christmas. Apparently it runs very big but it's wrapped up and I haven't tried it yet. I'm just excited for a shirt that's not cropped. I'm so tired of everything being cropped. It's not a good look for 99.9% of the population.

I'm going to make these peppermint brownies maybe tomorrow. 

This is the most forgiving sugar cookie recipe you can find. It's EASY and simple and they really do taste good and hold up to a lot of frosting. I baked them yesterday and I'm decorating today. 

If I can find a very small bottle of vodka and a very small bottle of schnapps, I'm going to try these peppermint mules. I hate vodka after the Cranberry and Vodka Incident of 2008, so I don't want it around the house.

I made this pizza on October 28th, which was the day we pretended was Halloween because that was trunk-or-treat for us and we didn't do anything on actual Halloween. So Wells calls it "that pizza you made on Halloween". It's on the menu again this week. 

Best Books of 2022

What a year. 

I started out with a very modest goal of 20 books. I had no expectations other than "keep reading, don't stop reading". 

While I read a few great books in January and February, it wasn't until I had a newborn in March and I was feeding her 8-10 times a day that I really started reading again. I am one million percent a Kindle reader. In the last few months, I've become a Kindle-app-on-my-phone reader because then I don't need to keep track of a separate device that way. I prefer to do any non-fiction through audio so, as Sutton has gotten older (and distracted by the screen of a phone or Kindle), I tend just listen to a book or podcast while I feed her. 

Goodreads has all stats available if you've hit your goal for the year, so here is that, and then I'll show you the books and my most-recommended if you're working on those TBRs for 2023.

*I am entirely aware that I dropped the ball and stopped posting books on Instagram. I should do a catch-up there before the end of the year.*

Starting at the beginning of 2022...

The Paper Palace was fantastic.

So was The Lies I Tell.

Stay Awake was good.

The One was terrific.

His & Hers was a favorite of the year. 

The First Shot was an excellent prequel.

When You Disappeared was amazing.

Apparently I gave The Other Wife 5 stars but I couldn't even remember what it was about. I had to look it up. 

The Housemaid was SO good.

The Good Samaritan was mind-blowing.

Live Your Truth and More Than a Healer are Christian must-reads. 

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Favorite authors this year were Freida McFadden and John Marrs 

Favorite books were probably The Paper Palace, The Housemaid, His & Hers, The One, and The Good Samaritan.

Least favorite books: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Darling Girl, and All Good People Here.

I had multiple DNFs that I won't go into and didn't bother explaining why I didn't finish. But those three ^ are ones I could articulate an opinion on why I didn't like them and we could happily discuss and go back and forth. 

Looking ahead, I'm not sure what my reading goal for 2023 will be. I have majorly slowed down my reading in the last few months, so maybe I'll start with 40 and see where it takes me? 

What was your best book of 2022? 

What are your reading goals for 2023?