a little something extra

I love to watch the red carpet coverage. I love to see what the stars are wearing. Who’s taking a risk? Who’s playing it safe? Who always looks stunning?

My picks for best dressed:

Rachel McAdams in Elie Saab

Love the silhouette and the print in muted colors. Her hair color is fantastic (though she can pull off every hair color) and it is the perfect cool blonde for the cool blues in the dress. Bravo!

Elizabeth Banks in Versace

I’m not a huge fan of hers, but I love this color, again, and think it looks amazing with her hair and eye colors. The fit is impeccable and so flattering on her.

Vera Farmiga in Marchesa

The color. The ruffles. The lines moving in all the right places.

Cameron Diaz in Oscar de la Renta

So I love this gown. As in I want to wear it now. I love her hair, makeup, and nails. But? I don’t think it looks very “Cameron Diaz.” But I love it.

I need to get to work on my Netflix queue and add some of these films. I’ve seen a handful of the nominees, but with a baby, it’s hard to just spend an entire Saturday at the movies.

The John Hughes tribute was wonderful. I grew up on these movies (as most kids did) and I’m so happy that he got a proper tribute from so many of the youngsters that he made famous. Those are the movies that you sit around and watch over and over again with your friends.

Who topped your best dressed list? What were the highlights of last night’s show for you?

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Well I wouldn’t go so far to say he’s a gymnast, but Hudson had his first Little Gym experience on Tuesday morning.

We made plans to go last Tuesday. We got up, drove across town to The Little Gym and when we were about a mile away, I heard Hudson throwing up. In his car seat. So I stopped the car, cleaned him up as best I could, and we drove home to finish cleaning up and rest off the bug. The bug lasted a couple of days and was pretty awful, but he’s all better now.

So this past Tuesday we were even more excited to finally get to the Bugs class at Little Gym!

Hudson was a little worried when we first walked in. He kept looking back at me to make sure I wasn’t leaving him, but after about 10 minutes, he realized that I was right next to him and we were just going to play! He had such a good time and ended up screaming (with excitement) the entire time. He has started bobbing and bouncing to music. The mats in the gym are a great way to just let the kids play and romp.

If there’s a class in your area, I highly recommend going. We had been working on patty cake and clapping hands. Hudson is fascinated when I do it, but always leaves his hands in tight fists when I try to help him do it. Now he’s clapping his hands! Not often, but he does it.

He has also officially mastered the act of grabbing his Gerber Yogurt Melts and putting them in his mouth. It’s so exciting! (Yes, I’m a mother and I find little things exciting.)

Not sure if I can owe the success of these recent milestones to Little Gym, but I definitely think it helped. In his class, we worked on flexibility and stretching, forward and backward rolls, playing with balls and bubbles, and just socializing with other children. We’re already excited for next week.

This is his instructor, Mrs. Emily. She was lots of fun and was obviously a cheerleader in a former life!

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I have been tossing around the idea of writing this post for a few days, but a few of my favorite blogs have gone on hiatus as a result of something like this, so I’ve decided to come out with it.

I don’t like to blog about blogging. I like to blog about my life. But a big part of my life has become blogging, the blog community, friends I’ve made in real life as a result of blogging, you get the point.

When I first started blogging, I was writing and never knew if anyone (other than me) would read it. I knew my parents would check it if I told them about it. But I was mostly writing about wedding plans and my life leading up to the wedding. The URL to my former blog was both of our last names at blogspot dot com. The name of the blog was “Erin and Todd.” If you Googled my name, the first thing to come up was that blog. So I’ve never been anonymous.

A few months after I started blogging, people I didn’t know started to read. This thought had never crossed my mind. I just thought we’d have a little couple blog and then a little family blog as our family grew. The readers that I had never met before started to become my friends and the blog grew and grew into something I never imagined. I’m not saying my blog is huge, but I’m saying I’ve come in contact with so many people across the country (and some on the other side of the world) from this and that just blows my mind.

But while there are many strangers that read, there are also a lot of people I know in real life that read. There are a lot of people I know in real life that read my blog. But I don’t know that they read my blog until some time later. I get a random email every so often from an old friend or acquaintance and I hear they’ve been reading my blog for months.

Times like this sometimes make me wish I’d thought about the future of blogging in the beginning and originally created an anonymous blog. I’ve never been able to vent about things that are very personal to me, or complain about a job. I’m not sure how much of that I would do if I wasn’t anonymous, but I am very careful about the things that I say.

I feel like I’ve been really candid about my life in the last year– I gave honest thoughts about pregnancy (and how I don’t love being pregnant) and about having lots of difficulty with labor and delivery and the aftermath. But other than the occasional, “Hudson is really fussy today” you will never hear me say a negative word about my child. I don’t think that makes me dishonest. And I don’t think that means that I look fake or that my life looks like a perfect cake walk. He’s my son and someday he’ll be able to read. I don’t need to vent about my family to the world. I don’t care if other bloggers do it, but these are decisions I’ve made.

I have mentioned that I had difficulty healing after Hudson was born. But just because I’m a blogger, I don’t think I’m required to disclose the full details of those events. I’ve said that if you email me and want to know, I will tell you what happened. But I don’t need my whole town knowing my business– much less all of the interwebs.

As bloggers, and blog readers, we all have a right to decide what we’ll share and what we won’t share. Some blogs are centered around a specific topic. Mine happens to be a hodge podge of my life and things that I’m thinking and things that I’m liking. I choose to keep some parts of our life private. There need to be some things that are sacred only to my family.

cartoon via here

It’s also important to know that many of my “real life friends” don’t know everything there is to know either. Even though I’m a blogger and put my life out there, I am still a private person. Believe it or not.

I feel like there is a standard that has been set for bloggers (by other bloggers, maybe) to provide full disclosure. Where someone vacations, what someone purchases, where someone lives, what their kids wear, what they eat, their political views, the size of their diamond, how they choose to give birth, what they name their child… none of these things are a reason to hound on someone. At the risk of sounding extremely cheesy, I want to point out that bloggers are people, too, and there is a person behind your computer screen that wrote the words that you read. And it is that person’s right to decide what they want to share and what they don’t want to share.

Our blogs are our personal scrapbooks in this age of technology and maybe we just want to point out the highlights so we remember them someday when we’re looking back. Maybe the really bad stuff will never leave our minds so it’s just not great to put it in writing.

Most bloggers, though, blog for themselves. Not for the readers. And sometimes bloggers answer questions from readers and address comments from readers. But for the most part, it’s about whatever they want to talk about.

Here’s my point… we all need to take it easy on people that blog. It’s much easier to blog when no one is reading. It’s hard to put it all out there, so it’s nice to know that you can keep some part of your life to yourself and deal with things in your own way. It’s not secretive, but it’s sacred. There are families and loved ones to protect. Private conversations to have and keep private. Keeping parts of your life private doesn’t make you phony or pretentious. It’s just a choice. And it usually is a choice based on the people we love in our daily lives.

I love sharing my life on this blog. The community has been so wonderful and supportive. I just hate seeing people torn down and lose the joy in blogging.

Here’s to everyone finding the joy in blogging!

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Ashley Brooke Designs Easter Cards

My dear friend, and sponsor of Blue-Eyed Bride, Ashley Brooke has created some adorable Easter cards to send out to your loved ones. You can choose from the cross or the two more personalized designs. I’ll be sending out the design with the cross on them. So cute!

SHOP HERE for the cards.

Cross in Bloom

Hello Spring

Pastel Heaven (can be personalized with your hair color, hair length, and skin color)

Hair and skin color options

Pray for Cohen

My dear friend Megan of In This Wonderful Life is expecting a precious baby boy.

(Megan in the grey sweater, me next to her, Mrs. Preppy- holding Baby M, and Megan from Tales of the Trees)

But so far, things with Cohen haven’t been going as they’ve dreamed they would. Please go here and read Cohen’s story and add them all to your prayer list. Amazing things happen when God’s people come together to pray. You can also grab the “praying for Cohen” button from the sidebar of her blog.

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Today is Todd’s 30th birthday. To him, it doesn’t feel any different to be turning 30 and to no longer be 29, but it is a remarkable day for him.

Because 30 years ago today, the most important person in my life was born. And two years later, I was born and our lives moved forward to bring us to the point where we would meet.

Most of you don’t know Todd, but I want everyone to know that he truly is the kindest, smartest, wittiest, and most patient man I know. He has always been able to make me laugh and his quick wit never ceases to leave me amazed and saying, “how did he come up with that so quickly?”

His love for his family is the kind that you’d want any guy to use a model and his work ethic is admirable. Now, for the past 8 months, Todd has been an incredible father to our precious son.

Todd is a great example of what a loving husband and father should be. He is respectful to everyone he comes in contact with and loves his son unconditionally.

In fact, two nights ago, he got to show how unconditionally he loves his son when Hudson got sick when I was at choir practice and Todd had to clean it up all by himself. That’s a job for a mommy, but I was so proud of him for handling it.

But look at these two. Are they not the spitting image of each other? (It’s okay for some of you to say he looks just like me! Even though we know that’s not true.)

I’m so thankful to have such a great partner and best friend to walk with through life.

We celebrated on Tuesday night by going to the Jimmy Buffett concert and we’ll be celebrating tonight with dinner at Mr. Friendly’s and dessert at Garibaldi Cafe (almond basket- yes!).

We’re meeting Todd’s parents and grandmother for lunch today, so he’ll be surrounded by love all day long. Happy 30th, TC!

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Note: I’ve joined Formspring.me, so CLICK HERE to ask me anything and click back to view all of my answers. If you follow me on Twitter, some of the answers are there, too!

Thank you all so much for the amazing comments on yesterday’s post. I realize that I’m not alone, and no matter what big life events we’re looking forward to, we’ve all struggled with contentment issues.

Today’s post is a little lighter.

For years, I had a huge 5 inch binder that we filled with wedding inspiration. Things that I liked from Martha Stewart Weddings and InStyle Weddings starting in 1999 and going until 2008. I tore out my favorite ideas, gowns, shoes, flowers, cakes, stationery, put each page in a page protector and filed it in my binder. I still have the binder, but I don’t take it out and look at it nearly as often.

These days, I keep a home inspiration binder. I print off and tear things out of Elle Decor, Domino (still missing Domino), and Southern Living and file it away by room categories in a 5 inch notebook. I’ve posted some of my favorite dream rooms and ideas before, here’s the house I’m currently coveting.

It is the Southern Living 2009 Idea House in Hemlock Springs, Georgia. To me, it is just the right mix of bold and understated. Formal and livable. Beautiful and comfortable. Relaxing and show-stopping.

Hopefully, our next house will have a formal living room where I will not have a television, but I will have my mother’s baby grand piano. (Thanks, mom!) I’ve always shied away from bold prints, but this room gives me courage. Love it and it’s at the top of the list of room inspiration. I have furniture that I would just recover to achieve this look.

This next room was actually used as the master bedroom in Hemlock Springs, but I would take one of my guest beds and recover the headboard and go for this look. I love having a white, calming, hotel-like guest bedroom, but with two guest bedrooms (until another wee one comes along) we can do this. It’s so beautiful, happy, and serene.

And last, but not least, I want our master bathroom and our dining room to be done in a big, bold, graphic wallpaper. I’ve never been a huge wallpaper fan, but this changes my mind.

There are my current beautiful home obsessions. Any tips on other sources of beautiful homes?

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I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and hopefully I’m not the only one. For a few years, probably since I finished grad school, I’ve felt like I’ve been measuring and marking my life by certain events. As if every life needs to follow a scripted, mapped out plan. Writing this post doesn’t mean I want to change “the plan,” but more how I view the plan and how I let it dictate my thoughts and actions.

I kind of look at my life like a scrapbook and it needs to have certain pictures in it. Not for anyone else, but for me to feel like I “checked that box.” The scrapbook, in my mind, looks something like this: get a driver’s license, get a car (used, new doesn’t matter), graduate high school, go to college, turn 21, graduate college, go to grad school, finish grad school, start a job, meet “the one”, get engaged, get married, buy a house, have a baby, have another baby, have another baby…. Then what? What do you wait for and wish for next?

When Todd and I were serious and knew that we’d get married someday, I spent so many months waiting and wishing that we’d get engaged. I knew that we would someday and that he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. But I became obsessed with getting engaged and having the label to go with it. I think mostly so I could move onto the next exciting thing in my life with him.

Why do I put my life into such big milestones? Why can’t I live each day just for what it is and be happy with where I am right now? This was a recent Bible study topic in our girls study of Priscilla Shirer’s “Can We Talk?”

My current contentment issue is with our house situation. I just kind of feel like we’re waiting and praying and I’m becoming impatient. I don’t know why I want the change so badly. I mean, I know why I want to move, but I need to just wait and see what the Lord wants us to do while I sit back, pray, and enjoy my life.

My other thought that has recently begun creeping into my mind is the thought of having another baby. I’m definitely not ready for another baby, but I’ve always thought that I wanted my kids to be two years apart in age. Hudson will be a year old in June. I’d have to start thinking about getting pregnant soon after that in order to have a second baby by Hudson’s second birthday. It’s not something I really like to think about, so I don’t. But I do feel a little bit of pressure to think about the long run and what the best time frame to have a second child would be. And I have no idea if getting pregnant the second time around would be as easy as it was the first time. I don’t know what’s going to happen to my body after I have surgery in May. The thought of actually being pregnant just makes me tired, but I know that I want the precious reward at the end.

So why am I doing this? Why am I thinking and planning so much rather than just being still and content in my wonderful little life as it is?

After Hudson was born, my mom joked that I needed to take a break from big life events for a while. Actually, she wasn’t joking. Between ages 24 and 27, I got engaged, got married, and had a baby. That’s a lot to handle– and not just for me. It was a lot on the people that love me and helped take care of me, too.

People find their fulfillment through different things. I am a Christian and a child of God and find so much fulfillment from my relationship with Him. And I am very happy with my life. I can’t stress that enough. But I do feel like I’m always waiting for the next thing– and there may not be another “next big thing” for my life. There will be for my son’s life, but I’m hoping to not be one of those moms that lives her child’s life to find her happiness. I will be happy for him, but I don’t want his life events to become my identity.

And there are obviously the people, couples, and families that don’t want some of those milestones to happen in their lives. Not everyone wants kids or wants to get married. But maybe there’s something work-related that you’re waiting for.

Does anyone else do this? Do you feel like you’re constantly waiting for the next big thing to happen? What if there isn’t anything big that happens? Why isn’t the idea of waking up, living your daily life, and going to bed good enough?

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Oh my!

The weather in Columbia was pretty darn close to perfect this weekend. My dear husband despises the colder temperatures and as soon as there’s even a hint of Spring he gets so excited. He wants to come home early from work so we can take the baby and Boudreaux on a walk (no, Fiona still doesn’t come with us). Todd hates the rain and the cold, so a perfect day brings out the kid in him and he wants to do everything outside. Our little family had been apart for two weekends in a row, so we wanted to make the most of this weekend.

Columbia has a pretty great zoo. Todd and I had one of our very first dates there, and we return back to the zoo at Christmastime every year to commemorate the first zoo visiting occasion.

December 2006

On Saturday, we were so excited to take Hudson on his first Riverbanks Zoo experience. He loves being in the stroller and seeing new things. He loved being out of the stroller even more so he could really see the animals. His favorite part was the aquarium. The fish are so bright and easy for him to see. We all had a great time. We didn’t stay long because an 8 month old doesn’t have the longest attention span, but it was nice being outside and seeing the animals. It was even more fun watching Hudson see everything for the first time.

On an unrelated note, I had a great weekend, but ate my weight in ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, and anything else I could get my hands on. No weight gained– yet– but I definitely would like to keep losing it, so I need to get it together.

I hope you’re all having a great Monday!

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I’ve got a few pictures on my camera from our time in Dallas and some from this week that I wanted to share with you. And it’s Friday, so I can do what I want today, right?

Super Bowl Awesomeness

The Saints won the Super Bowl! And my parents, their friends, Hudson, and I got together to celebrate. And eat. Because that’s what people from Louisiana do. We had a boat load of king cakes, a huge pot of red beans and rice, and a huge pot of gumbo, and yummy bread pudding. I would have been fine not to ever eat again. But I did, of course!

Please look at the vast amounts of food here.

Seeing my besties on a Dallas snow day

My best friends from college live in Ft. Worth, so visiting Dallas is extra fun because I get to see them and they get to play with Hudson when we visit my parents. They came over the day that Dallas got slammed with 12 inches of snow and we had a blast just hanging out inside.

Valentine’s Day

Todd was out of town the week that Hudson and I went to Dallas (which was the whole purpose of us going to Dallas in the first place). We all returned to Columbia from our respective locations on Valentine’s Day. Todd’s parents were very generous and kept Hudson overnight so Todd and I could go on a fun Valentine’s Day date in Greenville, SC. But we exchanged Valentine’s Day presents before we left. Hudson got a lot of cards and some Karen Katz books. He also got an “I Love You Elmo” and a big red fluffy dog.

Todd and I made the drive to Greenville and checked into the Westin Poinsett Hotel (where we got married and stayed during our wedding) and then went to Soby’s for dinner. We love Soby’s! We didn’t have enough time to stay for dessert because we had to make a 7:30 show of Wicked! I had seen it once before, but Todd had never seen it. It’s definitely in my top 3 best musicals of all time. We’ve been singing the songs constantly ever since.

After the show, we went back to Soby’s to have white chocolate banana cream pie, which was used instead of groom’s cake at our wedding.

photo by Kelly Moore Photography

The next day we had lunch on Main Street and then drove home to get our precious boy. It was so nice to have a night away- just the two of us. We were able to rest and talk and enjoy each other’s company. We’re able to do all of those things with Hudson around, but it’s just nice to have an evening where you get to just be together.

Hudson on the go

Hudson got a new ride yesterday. We upgraded his car seat from the Graco SnugRide to the Britax Boulevard. He was actually 2 pounds heavier than the limit for the SnugRide, so it was time– way past time! The Britax is great and he loves it already! Pictures coming soon of Hudson in his new seat. But here are a couple that I took of him yesterday just hanging out at home.

Doesn’t he look guilty?

And I hope you’re not bothered by baby drool!

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