Bulldog Beauties

Today Brady, Frank, Mickey, and I went to the Bulldog Beauty Contest in Long Beach. Frank and Mickey were very excited to go down there and see all the bullies.



We didn't enter Frank and Mickey. We really just went to walk around and see all the bullies. It ended up being a gorgeous day and there were bullies everywhere! There was definitely a whole lotta butt sniffing happening.



What a sleepy bullie. That's the problem with bullies, when they get sleepy, they get sleepy and you end up having to lug them around. Which is no easy feat.



A lot of the girl bullies had tutus. Mickey is definitely getting one for next year.



Princess Bullie! Ok, maybe Mickey will be a princess next year.

Or a daisy, so cute! I'm loving the Coach leash.

Frank can be an old school football player. Bullies are such good sports.

There were also lots of pugs and French bullies. It was a festival of smushy faces and slightly labored breathing.

After the contest, we went to Bono's on Second Street for lunch. It's an awesome Italian restaurant. The burger and tuna melt were amazing. Frank thought he was going to get a little bite. He was wrong.

Two begging bullies. Actually they were very good while we ate. They were asleep underneath the table for most of the time. I love Long Beach, particularly the Second Street area. It's so dog friendly and cute. I was so happy our dogs were well behaved too. I, on the other hand, tried to make a break for it and run into a shoe store. Brady definitely stopped me before I could go anywhere!

It was a super fun day but not without its mishaps. Poor little Mickey hurt her paw. She is not happy about her bandage. My poor little baby!

Lessons in Registering

And I have officially started my baby registry.  Man, this is fun.  I loved registering for my wedding, gun in one hand, husband in the other, I conquered Macy's and Crate and Barrel.  Of course, I had to go online to manage my wedding registry and delete all the stupid stuff my husband registered for that I knew we were never going to use (like a juicer and a gigantic roasting pan that I would never be able to fit anywhere).  I haven't gone in store to register for baby stuff, so far I've just been on Target's website.  Most of the baby stuff isn't available in store, so it looks like my gun totin' days are over. 

Registering for the wedding was such a different mind set.  It was all "will we be eating off this china pattern when we our in our 60s?" and "I finally am going to have matching silverware and a toaster!"  Now, as I look at all the baby stuff, all I can think is "is this the safest product available for my baby?"  "Is there something better?"  So far, I have only picked up the easy stuff, the bedding.  I started looking at bottles, um yea, target.com has like 12 pages of just bottles.  There is glass, plastic, BPA free, colic bottles, breast feeding, formula feeding.  To say that I am overwelmed would be a serious understatement.  When I registered for the wedding, it was all about me, what I wanted, what I liked.  Now that I'm registering for the baby, it is all about what is best for him, what he will like, what is the safest and most nurturing.  It is such a good example of how the focus of my life is going to drastically change in June.

The Quest to Find the One

When Brady and I got engaged I attacked wedding planning with a vengence. Within two months of getting that ring on my finger I had my venue, photographer, and d.j. booked with depsoits paid. And then I did nothing, for months. The last two months of our engagement were spent scrambling. I had my dress hemmed without the shoes I was going to wear because I bought my wedding shoes days before the wedding (and my dress ended up being way too long). I didn't have a florist until almost six weeks before the wedding. I spent many nights getting only a few hours of sleep because I was stuffing favors, printing invitations, figuring out my seating chart. And I was horrifically busy with work for those last couple of months. It was a stressful, stressful time. A lot of wine was consumed.

I am trying to not procrastinate as much with my pregnancy. So at 23 weeks pregnant, I have officially begun my daycare search. I have been thinking about daycare for a while. I considered a nanny, in home daycare and a daycare center. I've ruled out the nanny. First of all, I need full time coverage, and a full time nanny costs a ridiculous amount of money. Second of all, you have to worry about the taxes, the liability of having someone work in your home, and if your nanny calls in sick you have to have a back up plan. The nanny thing just wasn't going to work out for me.

That leaves in home daycares and daycare centers. I have a bunch of tours scheduled over the next couple of weeks and more that I want to contact. I'll be asking lots of questions about ratios, licensing, nap schedules, feeding schedules, cleanliness, and curriculum. Yes, even infants have curriculum. One place teaches baby sign language. Hopefully they teach the parents too, I don't want my baby signing a bunch of stuff to me while I'm standing there just looking confused.

A lot of these daycares look very promising and I'm very much relieved that there are so many options. I'm excited to start touring them and find a great place for my little one.

Motherly Advice

I have always thought that a sitcom could be based around my mother. She comes up with some great one-liners. She is the one that taught me to "never cook on a Saturday night," hence the name of my blog.

While I was nesting/purging/getting rid of useless crap this weekend, I found the card my parents had given me for my law school graduation:



The front had a lovely quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, so perfect for the occasion.

Inside the card, my mother wrote:

"Balls said the queen, If I had them I'd be king. You're entering a male dominated profession so have some balls. Love, Mom."

So true, Mom, so true.

Progress

This weekend, Brady and I tackled the spare room/room where things go to die/future nursery. We had already done a little work but it was still pretty bad.

When we first started it looked like this:



And now it looks like this.



Much better! There are just a couple things that need to be moved out and it will be all clear! We got rid of the ugly wallpaper border and painted the walls a cheery yellow. Well Brady's dad painted. We don't do paint.

I'm very happy with the progress, but this chair has become the bane of my existence. It is an original Eames chair that has been in Brady's family for a while. While it is very cool looking and supposedly worth a lot of money, it is horribly impractical. It takes up a ton of room, the ottoman has metal corners of death, and it weighs a ton. I'm still not sure what we are doing with this thing, but we can't get rid of it because it is an original Eames chair. (The italics mean you are supposed to be impressed.)



I also need to find a place to donate my gigantic bag of old clothes. Kind of wish I had done that in 2009, might have made taxes a little less painful. But I'm not going to go into a tax rant, all I will say is that I'm bitter, very bitter, and I want to be able to write off my student loan interest damnmit! Ok, mini-rant over.

Brady refuses to remove his cases of golf balls from the wall because he claims it took him forever to hang them. I hope Baby Brady likes golf!



So we are making progress getting rid of the junk. Now I am focusing on the theme. When we painted the room, we were not pregnant. We just knew it would be a nursery someday. So we painted it a gender neutral yellow. But now I have to plan my theme around this color because Brady refuses to re-paint the room. My original and continuing thought was a jungle theme, like lions and zebras. Ok, I just had a total pregnancy brain moment. I feel like I've already blogged about this before, but I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look through my blog. Maybe I just thought about it and meant to blog it...or maybe I did blog it. Well if you are reading this for the second time, a thousand apologies. Back to the theme, I'm thinking a jungle theme but I am stumped for ways to incorporate the theme into the room other than just the bedding. So my next project is to figure out the theme, and donate all those clothes, and figure out what to do with that stupid chair, and find a place to hang the gigantic poster of Michael Phelps in his speedo that we have, hmmm, maybe in my office, right above my desk.

Whatever Baby Wants, Baby Gets

Yesterday I wrote all about how I'm eating healthier and walking and such. I was all "look at me being pregnant and eating well."

That turned out to be a load of crap.

I had my monthly doctor's appointment this morning. My doctor looked at my weight and told me to start "watching my portions."

Look Doc, this baby is hungry and I'm not about to let my child starve. And this baby likes, I mean demands, Mexican food. The matter is out of my hands. If baby wants a two item combo with a shredded beef taco and cheese enchilada, baby's gonna get it. So don't tell me to "watch my portions," tell my baby to stop being so damn demanding and making me eat peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. It's not my fault, I swear!