Northern Southern Mommy

I love that my little boy loves to go outside and play! It's probably my favorite characteristic development he's had, other than feeding himself, walking, talking.... Yeah, I have a lot of favorites. My favorite memories growing up are from being outside exploring or just being in nature. And being able to share that with my son is amazing, I don't have to really take him anywhere unless I really want to. We have a great backyard that we are slowly, but surely making into our own oasis. So far we have put in a sandbox (which the little monkey adores)  and a small pallet garden bed. We've got strawberry plants, a couple of tomatoes, a jalapeno plant, rosemary, two different lettuce plants, and my chives just started sprouting!! If anyone knows the book "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie", you will have a thorough understanding of my daily struggle to keep my garden from being pick and eaten bit by bit. If you give a toddler access to your garden,...

So yesterday some of my mommy friends and I took all the little kiddos we are associated with to the splash pad. No, it wasn't some weird punishment for the kids. Yes, the splash pad had actual water being sprayed EVERYWHERE. No, we weren't forced into doing this activity. Yes, it was actually MY IDEA! So I had heard a rumor from another mommy friend that the local parks were turning the water back on for the pools and the splash pads, since you know....Global Warming (If that is still a thing) aka living in the Deep South. It's March, which for me growing up meant temps were still at the most 50 or maybe 60 degrees during the day. Here it's already blasting out above 80 degrees! WHAT?!?! Yep, we got a good two or three months of a break from the AC. I think I maybe turned on my heater like a total of 4 times..... So because of that we decided to let these little humans that we live with go off and play in the water. And some did.... And some weren...

My son's favorite animals, currently, are the tigers at the zoo. We literally have to pick him up, tears and all, to go look at the other animals. Because if we just sat there and watched these beautiful big cats, my husband and I wouldn't feel like it was money well spent. Plus once we leave them behind and go look at more of God's creations, Mr. A forgets all about those amazing beasts. Until we go to leave, because whoever designed our local zoo had the brilliant idea of putting the tiger exhibit as the first and technically last one that you will go by. And so we start out pulling our toddler away kicking and screaming... and we leave with him kicking and screaming.... Thank you, you brilliantly sadistic zoo designer. Other than that one "flaw", I really love our local zoo! It has a great big, multi age playground, loads of animals, a petting zoo, and plenty of trees to shade us poor parents running behind our children trying to keep them out of th...

For those of you who don't know what's the recent hot new app for your phone, it's Pokemon Go! It's a app created for the millennial generation to help us get off our butts and out into the world and socialize. Sad isn't it? That we now rely on an app to help us get out of our homes and out into this beautiful world? But there's no use crying about it and the state we are in that caused this app to be such a HUGE success, rather I would like to praise the idea behind it and share the Monkey's and my experience thus far. Now to be clear, the Monkey doesn't play on my phone when we are using the Pokemon Go app, he enjoys the fact that we are going out to more parks more often and getting to explore our new area. Since we moved about 4ish months ago, I haven't really taken the time to get out and about to explore my new local. I've let myself get swamped with unpacking, organizing, and cleaning. So any time we do venture out is usually to go visit...

So a month ago our little Monkey turned one, and we held a party for him. Because it's cute and probably one of maybe three birthday parties where I can choose more or less the theme and decorate how I want. As a mom I've found that I really love planning these little events and decorating for them. Not that I'm very good, but practice makes perfect! And on that note, better late than never in putting up the pictures of our little family party and his smash cake. I LOVED making his smash cake and his reaction to it was totally worth all the late nights, dirty diapers, and fits we've had this last year. So without further ado, here is my Monkey's first birthday pictures! Nothing better than sharing cake with your daddy!