this mini-me stuff!

one of the most fun things about having an almost 10-month-old [wait, what?! when did that happen!] is that all this mini-me stuff just gets better. and. better. i mean, i cannot get enough of maddalena's miniature-ness when she does her tiny version of normal size looking things. every bit of it just really gets me, right down to watching her stand upright on those precious baby legs of hers! and you know, i'm thinking by the time we have another baby, she will have this whole mommy's-little-helper thing down to a science, and iii will just milk that for all it's worth. well, maybe not so much with the laundry... although, sure, throwing all daddy's socks on the ground works for me, girlfriend!

and can we just talk about the really cute mini-mommy's-iphone i found at the dollar tree of all places?! akhpjawoalsd seriously. i can't even.

...oh, i might be having way too much fun with these kinds of things ;)

warm evenings, summer self, dinner time

there are about a million and five reasons why i am so very much a summer girl. oh, the warm evenings and late sunsets... the happy fluffies and blooming flowers... throwing food on the grill and eating dinner outside almost every single night! every year we get to this point, and i make little wishes all summer long that winter would just never ever return. so much of the magic in my life has happened on warm summer nights, and you know, i think this is the time of year when i feel most like myself. my real self who walks barefoot and smooches horse noses and loves to watch the sun go down. the self who has messy, wind-blown hair that goes pretty great with a crown of daisy chains. the self who spent summers smashing pennies on the train tracks and stargazing with her boyfriend. the self that would have you think that she couldn't possibly be the type to have bouts of anxiety and an obsessive nature! ha! oh, that self, she's my favorite self and she can't wait to catch some lightnin' bugs this year to show a certain little lady how their tushies turn all pretty-like. also, that self was present around dinner time saturday night, when we back porched it at home for some grilled pineapple chicken and pasta. carrots for that rosebud girl. happiness and michael bublé for everybody. and well, i liked it a lot. i love my precious people.

...something something something, happily ever after, the end!

a pretty major grilled cheese moment

maybe you didn't know this about me, but i am kiiind of a grilled cheese eater extraordinaire! i am. like, i can't get enough, because bread and cheese are basically my food besties. and for way, way too long now i have been stalking the grilled cheeserie food truck on twitter, fully intending to one day hit them up for one of their grilled cheese masterpieces... but it really hadn't happened yet. it just hadn't, and i was starting to get sad about it. until saturday! when i saw on the twits that the food truck of my dreams was going to be super near our neck of suburbia for a fair at one of the parks! so, as i mentioned this tidbit to steven, i begged him with my eyeballs, and then... off we went! to fulfill my grilled cheese dreams. and i have to say... my cheddar blend on sourdough did not disappoint! and by that i mean, it was de. LICIOUS. i want another one asap right now.

and for maddalena... there were poooniiiies! she held her own my little pony and looked on at big kids on the pony rides. she loves horses, yay! we also saw a couple of chickens. she wasn't quite as thrilled with those.

and for steven... for steven, i snagged a real fancy chip clip from the publix booth we passed. hey hey! everybody wins! haha. just kidding. because clearly my biggest grilled cheese fantasy coming true is at least a fafillion times better than a chip clip, but steven does eat a lot of chips, like veggie chips and corn chips. and well, he did mention later that it was a "nice chip clip."

but back to that grilled cheese...  well, that needs to happen again soon! thanks, grilled cheeserie! you are the food truck of my dreams. unless there's a cannoli food truck out there that i need to know about.

some favorites from the month of april!

"life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around 

every once and a while, you could miss it."

[a wise one, that ferris bueller!]

the puddle formerly known as my heart

a really wonderful thing happened last weekend! and that thing was that i got back on my horse and actually rode... boots, helmet, saddle and all... for the first time since before i was pregnant! and seriously? it felt amazing. suddenly, i flashed back to the 10 year old me that got on a horse and never ever wanted to get back off. and if you did manage to pry me off, well, getting me out of the barn was another thing!

i love my horse. i love him. he is up there in the top 5 very best things that have ever happened to me, and there just aren't enough words in the dictionary to describe the relationship between a girl and her horse, especially after 16 years. and the best is that no matter how much time goes by, i can hop on and not a thing has changed. nothing at all.

...and according to her little squeals, maddalena is a 9 month old horse fanatic... and apparently also a golf cart chauffeur! melt my heart. heart melted.

beachside dinner!

if i'm being perfectly honest, i woke up this morning com-pa-letely missing vero. there were no ocean waves with my coffee and the air in my house was just too cold for my liking! not only that, a few of my family members are headed down there for a little and i am jeal jeal jeal!

but aaanyway...

there's this little resort and restaurant that's down the beach from our place in vero that we like to hit up once while we're there... it's the kind of place where young kids and old kids can walk up in their swimsuits and drink a little too much and get a little rowdy if they want to, but it's all good, you know? well, we don't do it like that, but we do like to go down and have some beach food on the deck that sits on the ocean! and i had almost forgotten until we went this past trip that this was the very place where last year, at around 17, almost 18, weeks pregnant, i felt maddalena's tiniest kicks for the first time!! i remember sitting there and being hesitant to say for sure that i was feeling kicks, but i knew. and i was right. so as we sat there this time around, i just looked down at her little footsies and thought about how crazy life is.

[a little disclaimer on our tanness levels: my cute parents had been there a week already, and
we'd only been there two days. obviously, i broke my "no photos til the end of the week" rule!]

mother's day up in here!

i hope all you mamas out there felt super special and loved yesterday! it was my first mother's day, yay! being a mom every day and night to the most amazing little lady has truly been the most wonderful, most challenging, most rewarding, and most natural thing all wrapped into one big ball of the best thing ever. the mom club is totally one that i am honored to be a part of now, and i am so fortunate to have learned all my best skills from my own incredible mother who i am beyond thankful for!

so yesterday! it was a great day. it was my kinda day... which, for one, definitely does not involve being dressed and out anywhere early for breakfast, or anything like that. no, when i wake up, the only thing i want to do is snuggle in my robe and slooowly sip my coffee. so, before maddalena and i were even up and out of bed, steven ran out to surprise me and bring home some of my favorite goodies, which included my morning coffee! plus, the options of pumpkin or lemon bread. [oh, or both. yes, thanks, i'll have both.] so we nibbled and sipped and listened a bit to our church's live stream for the morning.

and! on behalf of himself and maddalena, of course, steven had also picked up one of those big ole half whiskey barrels for me to use in the yard to plant in! yay! oh, i have been dying for one of those suckers. he grabbed a few azaleas for us to plant in the yard as well, so, we spent part of the day in the sunshine working on the yard and playing in flowers. my pretty rose bushes even decided to pop out all sorts of gorgeous blossoms for me, so i made myself a fancy little bouquet!

we had a late lunch out, which naturally, included a giant chocolate chip cookie. i wore my pretty new porselli ballerinas, which i am just ever so slightly in love with. [i clearly have a ballet flat addiction, and it's only getting worse!] and later, maddalena practiced her baby skills of reorganizing drawers, speed crawling, and popping out teeth before she finally wore herself out enough to take a brief evening nap. i poured myself some wine and watched steven "explain" to the birds that have been living in our attic that they were evicted. ha! and those birdies, they did not take kindly to such news.

and then, we cheersed!! and it was a happy mother's day for me! life moves so quickly these days, so a full day of quality time together was just the perfect thing. thank you, steven and maddalena, for being the most wonderful little family a girl could ask for. i am really, really, reallyreally, really, super, majorly blessed!

ps. we had steak for dinner... and let's be honest, it was steven's mother's day gift to himself ;) but i approved it because that meant my only cooking obligation would be broccoli. i love broccoli. the end.