Seriously, where does the time go? I’ve been thinking these past several weeks how time is just passing way too fast. How can Finn almost be 1 year old?? He is turning in to this little man and it is so fun to watch him every day, yet I frequently ask myself how can our baby be growing so fast?
He loves to be a bit mischievous and test the boundaries at times. Sometimes when we tell him no, he will look right at us and cautiously do it again – whatever it was. Trying to see how far he can go, that little stinker! He’s loving climbing on things, including climbing into buckets or boxes, climbing on to his rocker, or at times, climbing on Lily! She just lays there and puts up with it, usually chewing her nylabone. 
This week Kevin finished installing a new chalk board we purchased for the basement. Despite having a finished lower level, we didn’t spent much time down there ourselves or with Finn. However, after our trip to IKEA awhile back it is a much more kid-friendly space to play! Debbie plans fun activities with Finn and Sam each week. They’ve been coloring, painting, playing with bubbles, and playing with all of the toys down there. She took a few cute photos of them together this week too. Finn continues to cruise all along the furniture and he also pushes things across the floors (including his music table across the carpet). He’s wanted to take a few steps on his own but so far he only goes about one step before he falls to his bum. He is also quite good at lowering himself to the floor very gently!
We are in party planning mode and look forward to celebrating Finn’s birthday in a couple weeks with our family and friends. My office hours officially switch to 5 pm on Monday, March 3rd, and that is just the beginning of the longer days for me. I’m not really looking forward to the late nights, but will appreciate having such a flexible schedule after the spring craze is over. Renovations have begun at my office as well and as a part of this phase I will have an office of my own! I never really thought I needed an office to myself, but I am actually looking forward to having a space that I can work uninterrupted! It’s exciting and hopefully will be complete by April 1st! Yay! Other than the hours of sunlight getting longer each day, I’m most excited that Kevin and Finn will be able to come visit me in the Spring!
Kevin and I began a meal replacement plan this week. I have two shakes a day, breakfast and lunch, and Kevin has one for breakfast. Then we eat healthy snacks, like cottage cheese, yogurt, hummus, tuna, fruits, veggies, nuts, throughout the day. Can you guess which one of us eats which of those foods? :). Then we make a nice dinner of salad and a protein like steak or pork. I’m really enjoying it as I don’t really eat breakfast or lunch and I snack throughout the day. So this provides some consistency and I love that the shakes can be any flavor we want. So far we’ve stuck to mixed fruit and mixed berry, but this week I’m excited to try peanut butter banana and chocolate cherry! We use any kind of frozen fruits (or fresh), almond milk or oj, so the possibilities are endless. We splurged on Saturday night as we met up with the Ackerman’s on this side of the river for dinner at Easy Street, followed by a shared bowl of ice cream at Jeni’s! And correction from last week on mentioning Finn doesn’t care for raspberries! He actually is loving them, and had more than 10 tonight at dinner. This little man has a big tummy, we haven’t figured out where it goes, but he enjoys having a good meal with mamma and daddy. This week some of his newer foods include steak, burger, cottage cheese, melon, avacado, curried brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and Jeni’s Salted Caramel and Milkiest Chocolate ice creams! 
