Tuesday Tidings

It has been awhile since my last update, so here's the "Bo-lowdown," a.k.a. what's been going on around here lately...

Friday night Mr. Bo took me out on a much needed date. We don't have much money these days, and as much as I love sitting on the couch in front of the T.V. eating frozen pizza every night, sometimes it's nice to get out. We went to see the new movie "Celeste and Jesse Forever," starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg. I thought it was really cute, but I think it took a few too many "real" turns for Mr. Bo, as he was expecting a more lighthearted comedy. Regardless, it was an undeniably well written movie (Rashida Jones was actually one of the writers). Afterwards we decided to get a bite to eat, where our dinner conversation took a turn for the worse when we began discussing our current personal financial crisis. Ugh.

On a related note, I am still looking for a job. In case you are wondering why I am not yet working, it is not because I am completely unemployable, nor is it because I am being lazy and unmotivated. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. I really really want to work. More importantly though, I really really want to work at a job that I will enjoy. Therefore, I have been a bit picky and selective about the jobs that I apply for. I am also pretty cautious when discussing the jobs I am applying for and looking into because I do not want to get my hopes up, or anyone else's for that matter. That being said...SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME A JOB!

On yet another, somewhat related note, Mr, Bo and I spent a large chunk of our Labor Day weekend preparing our house for football season. Explanation?.... Mr. Bo and I live in a college town, and with that comes college sports and a large fan following. College football is HUGE in our town, and it is for this reason that this fall Mr. Bo and I will be renting our house to returning alumni for a few home game weekends for around $1,200 for Friday and Saturday night. This coming weekend we have our first renters, and along with a thorough cleaning, we have been busy jumping through all of the city and state ordinance hoops to get our house "renter ready" (like installing smoke alarms in every bedroom. Seriously?!). This afternoon BB and I took a trip to Target to pick out, among other things, sheets and towels for our guests.

Last week Mr. Bo and I acquired a large piece of furniture for our home. A family heirloom to be exact.

Antique hutch for our dining room

In it's place used to hang a decorative mirror. Since I relocated the mirror to the living room I decided to change the color of the frame.

I changed this...

To this...

By doing this...

Covered the mirror with a plastic bag and spray painted the frame

I love it.

BB has been a super picky eater lately. We don't even dare spoon feed him puree anymore. It's his way or the highway, i.e. he eats what he wants to eat or it ends up all over the wall. And what he wants to eat is fruit. While fruit is better than nothing at all, I sure do hate wasting our precious earnings buying the vegetables he used to love, only to have them end up on the floor, on the wall, or as "paint" for finger painting. This morning he did manage to scarf down a whole grain waffle with a peach puree smear; At least not all of my frozen puree cubes are going to waste. And even though it seems like he has been eating next to nothing, he still seems to be packing on the lbs...must take after his mom : \. 

On that note, I will leave you with this...

My friend posted this on her blog about a month back, and I have kept it in mind ever since. As much as I love being a mom, it's not always easy. Like on the days when all I want to do is lounge around the house in my jammies, and BB is fussing from boredom...Or when I really need a night out with friends after a long week spent with just me and BB by ourselves, and we can't get a sitter. On the other hand, there are times I feel the need to remind others of this thought, like when our friend's without kids (which to be honest, are pretty scarce these days) can't understand why we would actually choose to spend an evening at home with our little one instead of going out with them. While "mom" does not equal "martyr," being a parent does require sacrifices. Which is ok with me, especially when it means I get to hang out with this guy....

Happy Tuesday!

Sunday Fun-day

Ending the weekend on a high note...

with a few laughs!...

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The Adventures of Baby Bo: 9 Months

On Monday Baby Bo turned 9 months old. It's crazy to think he has already been around for almost as long as I was pregnant with him. At this time last year I was about 30 lbs heavier, about 10 degrees hotter, and constantly uncomfortable. I like the child rearing part of parenthood soooo much better than the pregnancy part. I hated being pregnant, but for the past 9 months I have loved being BB's mom.
Another month has gone by, and with it as usual, has come so many changes. BB has finally kicked his third nap of the day, and is now on a nice two-nap-a-day routine, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, both between 1 1/2 to 2 hours long. Lately he has been sleeping a solid 12 hours every single night, meaning that since we usually lay him down around 8 in the evening, he sleeps all the way until 8 the next morning (a welcome change to the 6 a.m wake up calls we were getting earlier in the summer).  Last night he stayed up later than usual because we had family in town, which meant I got to sleep in this morning until a glorious 8:45! He still loves his bed. So much so even, that I think sometimes he has so much fun playing in it when we lay him down that it makes it harder for him to fall asleep!
He is crawling with his belly off the floor now, as opposed to the army crawling he was doing last month. In addition to crawling he is able to pull himself up too, and he gets into EV-ER-Y-THING. I feel as though I spent a majority of my free time last week rearranging our home to make it more BB-friendly, and to save my few treasured/breakable items that I just can't bare to put away in a cabinet. He spends so much time exploring the house that he hardly touches his toys anymore. I spend most of my time while he is awake following him around the house watching him entertain himself, and trying to keep him out of trouble. It is getting a little more difficult to manage my time during the day, but he allows me to get just enough done that I don't feel overwhelmed, or like our house is completley falling apart...yet.
Last week BB was pretty fussy. Since he has a tendency to be a little fussy sometimes anyway, I wasn't sure if something was going on with him or if he was just being in a BB-bad-mood. Come to find out he was getting another tooth! His front left top tooth finally broke through, and he has been in a great mood ever since. This is a huge relief to me since Mr. Bo started back to work this week, and I was not looking forward to hanging out all day by myself with the BB we had last week!
We had a great summer hanging out as a family. I am so sad that it is over, and that Mr. Bo's school year has to start so early (this year he is teaching P.E.). I myself have begun filling out a few job applications around town, and am hoping to begin working soon...It was an expensive summer! The hardest thing about the job search is finding something that either pays enough for us to also pay for full time child care, or has hours that  will allow us to hopefully get enough help from Mr. Bo's mom that we won't have to pay for much child care at all. The past few weeks have been a little bit stressful, but I have faith that everything will work itself out. Until then, I will continue enjoying my time at home with BB, because I know I will be missing it all to soon.

Family picture time

He makes this face a lot

see...

He loves lemons

Nice and clean after a bath

picking out a bed time book

Watching Elmo

Hangin' with cousin Jake 

Our July in I Phone Pictures

Mr. Bo and I don't currently own a good camera for taking pictures, therefore most of our photos are taken using our phones. Thanks to a little thing called Photo Stream, I have easy access to these pictures, and can easily upload them to my blog or Facebook. We've done a lot this past month, but at no point have I really felt like sitting down and typing out individual posts for each event. Thanks to my good friend over at Our Fishy Family, I got the idea to use some of our random I Phones pics from throughout the month to give you a quick snap-shot list of our July. 

A few weeks ago Mr. Bo and I went with some friends to see The Dave Matthews Band for the fourth time in the six years we have been together. We definitely broke the bank paying for the tickets, but it was well worth it... 

He opened with "Don't Drink the Water"

The official set list

 This was the first time Mr. Bo and I had both been away over night, leaving BB at home. My mom stayed with him at our house, and I think they had a pretty good time...

He loves his CC

We missed him, so we sent my mom this picture to show BB at bed time

 Later that week I ran my first 5K..

Mr. Bo did not run, but he joined in on the festivites

There were DJ's and dancers along the way, and at the start/finish line

Starting line

The race was two hours away in the town where Mr.Bo's sister lives. Since it was at night, we left BB for the second time over night, this time with Mr. Bo's parents...

Playing with Grandpa

It has been so hot outside lately. There were a few days last week when the temperature dropped just enough that we were able to take advantage and enjoy the "cool" weather...

Can you sense the excitement?

Gettin' outdoors-y

Must be bed time!

This past weekend we took another two hour trip (this time with BB) to visit my aunt. We relaxed, ate yummy food, and played in the pool...

Lovin' on aunt Car-num

Playing by the pool

Me, catching up on an old hobby; doing nothing!

We also got to visit some friends who live not too far from my aunt, and who have a one-year-old...

New friends

On Sunday morning we hurried back home for a birthday lunch at my grandma's house for my dad. We got to spend time with family, including my sister.

Chillin' with Aunt K

July was a busy month, and August is gearing up to be the same way! Get excited folks!

A Little Bo History

You can admit, it's ok....It is a little bit annoying that I always use the name "Bo" when referring to my family members in each and every entry. Believe me, I am aware. There is however meaning behind it, so I have decided to give you all a quick history lesson in hopes that you can better understand the true significance of the name.
Mr. Bo has always had a somewhat difficult last name to pronounce. It was back when he was 12 and playing for a little league all-star team that a game announcer mispronounced the first syllable of his last name as "bo" instead of the correct pronunciation of "bow" (like a dog says "bow-wow!") While I am not going to tell you what our actual last name is, I will tell you that this mispronunciation for some reason stuck, and from that point on his friends began referring to him simply as "Bo." The name followed Mr. Bo the rest of the way through junior high, high school, into college, and then into his first job after graduation. It was at this point that I met him, and I, just like so many others to meet him post-HS, never knew that "Bo" wasn't his real name. Now as a 30 something adult he has two groups of friends...those who met him in his" HS through immediately after college" days and still call him "Bo", and those people who he has met in more recent years and who are probably completely unaware that he even has a nick-name. Well I get a kick out of the name, and since we now share the same last name, I feel that makes me an honorary Bo.
When trying to decide on a name for my blog, I happened to remember the old song "Mr. Bojangles" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and decided to run with it. Since this is a public blog (meaning anyone and everyone all over the world has access to read it), in order to "protect the innocent" I never use any of our real names (nor do I mention too many specific locations, towns, etc. when writing about our lives), and therefore refer to each member of the family as a respective "Bo." 


...Aaaaannd mystery solved. Any more question? :)

Volg Week: Day 5

My week of vlogs didn't quite work out the way I had planned. I wanted to post more videos than I actually had an opportunity to, and the ones I did have an opportunity to upload took a very long time to do so. I was also informed that Mac users were sometimes unable to view the videos. Then I began noticing that I was getting an unusually large amount of hits on my original vlog week post, and that I was not getting many on the subsequent entries. At first I thought maybe there really just weren't that many people interested in seeing my videos, but I still thought it was strange so many people kept linking to the original post (I am not able to see who specifically is reading my blog, but I am able to see how may hits each entry gets, and when). Then I thought of something: Maybe some of you are unsure how to read each new post without simply clicking the link on my Facebook page. If you are clicking the links I post on Facebook, you will only be directed to that specific post, and no other entry's will be visible on that page. However, I do have a blog archive located on the right side of my blog. The archive allows you to link to other posts throughout my blog, and dates all the way back to when I first started writing, over a year and a half ago! The easiest way to read my latest posts without having to link through Facebook is just to simply type the blog's web address, www.mallorybojangles.blogspot.com  into your address bar. This will give you a list view of each entry in the order they were written, and you will also still have access to the archive at the right of the screen.
All of that being said, this last video of my grandpa entertaining BB with a teddy bear will conclude my week of vlogs. I'm also going to tack on a few pictures just for fun. :)

With his friend Emily at the disc golf course

Happy!

Listening to music at the park

My two favorite people