This month has been full of ups and downs. This month he:

- Began day care 3 days a week. He still cries when Bryan drops him off, but once he gets past his first nap he seems to do okay.

- Got his first cold. He made it through two weeks before the day care cold began. A runny nose and fever turned into a runny nose and cough. I took him to the doctor and we were told to wait it out. He now just has a cough and is back in day care (he was too sick to go all last week) so I am hoping he doesn’t get a new illness right on the heels of this one.

- While sick he nursed a lot more and ate less of his purees so we didn’t make many advances in food this month. He still doesn’t like fruit purees, although we have found that he likes Watermelon and peaches if we put it in his mesh feeder. He has also gotten really good at eating his puffs and loves to jam the baby mum mums in his mouth!

- Transitioning to his crib wasn’t really working, and then with him getting sick we just kept him in the bed. We keep talking about getting him in his crib but are hesitant to go the Cry It Out route. He doesn’t really know how to self soothe (although he can do it as we have seen it) which is the main problem. We know that this is because of the choices we have made along the way (bringing him into our bed in the first place, letting him nap on us, etc.) so we are just trying to feel out the best way to make the transition. While we have enjoyed having him in our bed, we know that he needs to be able to self soothe and to sleep longer periods of time. We are ready to put him to bed at 7 or 8 and have a few hours of us time. Whether that is spent blogging, reading, watching TV or just catching up on laundry, that extra few hours would be wonderful!

- We booked our trip back east! I am excited to go back (it has been a few years) and to be in New York again. We will have him christened and then have Thanksgiving with my in-laws, it should be fun! We booked a non-stop flight through Jet Blue which I hope will go smoothly. My youngest sister is flying out with us (she is his God Mother) so it will help to have an extra person, not to mention a whole side row of seats, to keep him busy!

- Crawling has been mastered. He is now pulling up on everything and letting go with one hand. He can’t quite catch the cats yet but he is getting there!

I got out my camera, as opposed to my iPhone camera, this weekend and shot some close ups with my favorite lens.

One of Declan’s many plaid flannel shirts.

Went shopping for some new work clothes. It felt good (and even better because I found some nice pieces at Old Navy!)

These shoes are on their last leg. (No pun intended…) I eyed these for. ev. er. at Kate Spade and one day I went in and they were on sale. Like, 75% off sale. I had to have them and have been in love with them ever since. It’s been… a few years? I don’t own a lot of shoes so these are in the rotation and are worn to work once a week, sometimes more. They are always complimented, and offer the perfect pop of color when I don’t have time to pick a fun outfit and end up with the black pants, white top, grey sweater uniform. I felt they deserved to always live on in photographs. I don’t know if I will have it in me to ever throw them out.

Ombré paint chip dots, for a little gift wrap. Project to come!

Declan will be 7 months this week… The time has flown by, while at the same time has felt like forever. I have crossed a lot of things off the ‘you’re a mom when…’ list, and today I added labeling my kids clothes for daycare. I am not sure how I got to this point, but it feels right.

(iron on tags from this etsy seller)

I just finished up a huge project at work last week ( worked my first 12 hour day. Yuck) so things have been hectic. Here are some instagrams from the last week or so.

Perfectly ripe plums from TJ’s

Some sweet WPA posters

First day of daycare outfit (more on daycare later… long story short: its good but it kind of sucks but we know it will get better)

Growing tomatoes! Hopefully the grow nice and plump.

He loves sand!

Finally added a photo of the little dude to my cube.

Coral won out this time (thanks for your input!!) But at the first sign of Fall (which admittedly doesn’t really exist in southern California) the gray will come out!

Pedicure time. Grey or coral?

Note: This is not a sponsored post. I always appreciated baby product reviews when I was pregnant (heck, I still do!) so I wanted to review a few of my favorite products. More posts on products I love will come soon-ish.

When I was pregnant I saw a few fellow bloggers who used the Boon highchair. I quickly fell in love with the look of it. So sleek! So modern! The part about the pneumatic lift and the easy to clean? Sure, throw those in too. I registered for it at Target and some very generous friends gifted us with it. It stayed in it’s box and went into the garage until we needed it. A little before Declan started needing a highchair I started to second guess myself. Do I really need it? It would make so much more sense to take it back, get the $230 credit and just pick up a $20 highchair from IKEA. I don’t know if it was out of laziness or an actual decision that the Boon was really a good choice, but one day it was brought up and assembled and we haven’t looked back.

This thing is awesome. The wheels make it easy to wheel into the kitchen when we want to feed him while we cook. The pneumatic lift is actually very handy as we can keep him high up when in the kitchen, or lower at table height when feeding him at the dinner table. And since it is made out of one piece of material, with dishwasher safe tray covers, it is veeeery easy to clean. I can’t even imagine having a highchair with any sort of fabric on it because Declan likes to do this when he eats (shot courtesy of my husband’s iPhone):

All in all, I say that if you can swing it, get this highchair. You won’t regret it!

Love this article and slideshow of flight attendant fashions through the years. No yoga pants and ponytails in these passengers! And hot pants? Why not!