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Sight-seeing around the Bay Area

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B’ys. Whoever said “the days are long, but the years are short” gotter all mixed up.

The days and nights are completely blended into one big ol’ day for me. My entire 24 hours are broken up into 2 (mainly 1.5) hour intervals with feedings. I often forget what day it is, except I don’t because I have to track Alfie’s medicine intake and have the days written out. So that helps lol. Honestly the days are literally flyin’ by and not creeping by at all like I thought.

I’m itching to grab onto every last moment where my baby was a newborn, now and infant. It’s insane how excited we get when he does the simplest new thing.

I love it. We love it. This little kid of ours is teaching us way more than we thought possible. He brings me so much joy. I catch myself smiling at him and now this (well last week) week he’s been grinning quite huge back at us. Makes all those inconsolable moments of his worthwhile haha.

So it’s been about a month since I was loaned the Lexus. That’s when we had two sets of visitors at once. Had a fine ol’ round of visitors there in March. My Mom, and also my husband’s awesome aunt from Germany (!!), and also my husbands relatives from British Columbia. I requested a larger vehicle for review to comfortably fit four adults and the car seat for baby. Cause man those car seats take up way more room that I would’ve thought.

Baby had his first ever car-diaper-changing experience in that Lexus. Kiddo knows style.

We did a slew of sight-seeing around the Bay Area with checking out Google for the first time, going to the Pulgas Water Temple (gorgeous) to me having a solo hour along cruisin’ in the car. Windows down, music up… it was glorious. We took full advantage of the Lexus and took it to SO many places. Capitola Beach for one of the first warm and sunny days of the season, up along highway 9 to see some redwood trees. 

Alfie OWNED the show. Per usual.

The 2017 Lexus RX 350 AWD F SPORT was the perfect size for all the adults, Alfie, and baby too. Thanks for the loan! (Pretty sure Alfie always enjoys it the most ;))

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Mom’s visit + out-of-commission car!

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The weeks are simply flying by. Not only is the baby almost 7 weeks old, my Mom has been here for a good few weeks too. It’s been pretty great having someone in the house with me all day long, helping out with the baby while my husband is at work. Meaning, I can shower, get dressed and dry my hair all in one go, without taking a break haha! It’s fantastic, and definitely makes me feel like a million bucks when I can take a half hour or so to myself each day. I know I won’t get that luxury all that often, once she’s gone back.

Sooo, my car was actually out of commission the first few weeks that my mom’s been here. It was an easy DMV fix that I forgot about (plate stickers) that got pushed to the way-side since baby arrived (I completely forgot about it, honestly) and I gotta say the dude I was dealing with (all thanks to reaching out to them on Twitter because they didn’t return my phone calls and I wasn’t about to wait 5+ hours with a newborn at the DMV office) was excellent. I feel like he should’ve got a praise and a raise with all the help he did for me.

While my car was out of commission I ended up getting a 2017 Toyota Highlander Hybrid XLE for review. Perfect timing since we wanted to ride in style, and room (since the car seat is so huge it basically leaves the front passenger seat of my car almost unusable) to head to San Francisco one weekend. After all, it was my mom’s first trip to California so ya gotta take her to go see the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s my Mom in the above pic, taking some snapshots of Ocean Beach, in San Francisco!

Those SF hills are no joke.

And just because we have a new baby in the family doesn’t mean Alfie was neglected being the first passenger in the car. He most certainly was…and he loved it. He’s always close to baby’s side.

A roomy vehicle since we didn’t have to budge the front passenger seat with the car seat in the back. And the hands free button to open the trunk came in handy with the groceries and stroller…my goodness. We definitely need to upgrade our decade plus old vehicles. All these one week loaners are spoiling me and letting me know what I’m missing out on. Modern technology haha.

After that trip, we ended up taking the only sunny day in the last few weeks, and drove to Gilroy Outlets where she got a few goodie for herself (and I got some McDonald’s for myself heh heh) for all those grandsons (she has six grandsons by the way lol!!!). It’s finally supposed to stop raining. I do love the rain but I also want to show my mom around my favourite trails and sight seeing. I mean I want to show her around all the big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Apple HQs. That will happen soon!

And now this week coming we’re getting ready for more visitors. Over the weekend I met some of my husband’s relatives that I’ve never met before, so that was pretty cool…and now tomorrow his aunt who lives in Germany is coming to town!!! I’m so exited. I’ve actually only met her I think just the once, but I think she’s pretty great – so having her here will be fun. 

Just a little update. Follow me on Instagram stories to see daily updates. :)

Thanks to Toyota for loaning the gorgeous (+ spacious!) Highlander Hybrid XLE for the week.

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One month post-partum favourites

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Well it’s here and was definitely the fastest month of my entire life. Our little boy is a month old today, and I thought I’d pop in here while he’s napping and while I have a few extra minutes to myself, to talk about a few of my post-partum favourites that I think may be useful/helpful to other’s.

Lou Lou Co swaddle – I received a few swaddles from different brands as PR samples, and this one from Lou Lou & Co. is a PR sample too, but I’m telling ya right now I should buy one or two more of these. The material is super stretchy (think jersey material) so save this particular swaddle on him during the night times since he tends to kick his way out of the other one’s during the day (and doesn’t with this one, so I feel safe leaving him while I’m sleeping, in it). Honestly not sure i’ll be buying more (since we do laundry daily and have that swaddle clean for every night) because they’re kind of expensive, and the site doesn’t have free shipping – penny pincher over here ;)

Burp cloth oh the burp cloths we go through! My friend bought these for baby, and they’re a fantastic size, and one part (the middle) of the burp cloth is reinforced with extra fabric to catch all those vom-spills lol. It’s great! Plus, they’re SUPER inexpensive and good ‘n soft since they’re made of flannel.

UPPAbaby VISTA stroller – I love this stroller because it’s easy to plunk in the bucko, and go’wan. It’ll grow with him too, since he’s in the bassinet part of the stroller in the above photos. He gets wrapped up in a swaddle for our walks, and the VISTA has a perfect sized bassinet attachment for him, so no buckling him and fussing with him while he’s napping. My Mom is visiting from Canada and she bought our baby a warm swaddle that velcros, so putting him in that for our chillier walks, is the perfect combo with the UPPAbaby bassinet, and off we go!

California Baby Diaper Rash Cream – baby had a small diaper rash for a few days and this cleared it up so quickly! I’ve been using a lot of the California Baby products….on our California baby ;). Their super sensitive cream is great for his dry skin, too.

Zippered sleepers – Zippered sleepers in my opinion are the way to go (for us). The buttoned up one’s, especially during a dirty diaper change at 3am take too long for me to button up, especially when I’m tired and have him all changed and ready to settle down again for another nap/nightly feed and then boom – another loud toot and a dirty diaper, and I have to start the process over again (this happens way more often than I thought it would… lol).

Breastfeeding pillow – my neighbour (who isn’t my neighbour anymore lol) Nicole, told me about My Breast Friend breastfeeding pillow; it’s a big ol’ pillow that you can buckle onto your waist. I feel like I’m a jello-shot seller at a local bar when I’m wearing one, because it’s flat on the top (and has two “boobs” on either side for the baby’s head to rest/raise). K, I’m describing it horribly, but it’s amazing for semi-hands-free feeding, while sitting.

Bassinet – this is the bassinet we had on our baby registry and my sweet friend purchased it for us! It has wheels so I’m carting baby around in it everywhere around the house. It’s the most-used item thus far. It even has a nightlight on it, so when baby is making really weird noises in the night time I check on him easily.

Bird Rock Baby – these booties have been on baby probably 75% of the entire month. They’re easy to put on, super soft (fleece), easy to wash and don’t get kicked off by him flailing about. He’s already starting to outgrow the size 1’s (we have a grey pair shown above, and a gorgeous bright yellow pair). I’m definitely going to have to buy some (these were sent to me) – I LOVE them and have already been recommending them to friends.

Nursing bras – I received two LaMaze nursing bras before I had baby, and they were pretty comfy. Mind you, I don’t have anything else to compare them to. But I loved them so much I bought two more (from Amazon) for like $16 for the pair. They’re cotton, easy to wash and chuck in the dryer.

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