Insta-Avery-Weekend-Gram

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Meghan

Have I mentioned how IN-LOVE I am with Instagram? I know I have, and if you follow me, you’ll see my posts blow up on the weekends. This past weekend was no exception.

Our weekend started a bit early, as Mr. Avery had to stay home sick Friday. So we had some nice morning snuggles…

And although he didn’t get any schooling for the day, we had some fun activities at his table set he got for Christmas.

He’s such a good stacker! And I love these little plastic things, they don’t hurt like the wooden blocks do when he starts throwing them!

Saturday morning started bright and early with some much needed Fixin’

We have safety locks on the cabinets under the kitchen sink, and these things were not cheap. You screw them into the cabinet door and base of the cabinet, so they lock when closed, preventing curious little toddler hands from grabbing the trash or cleaning products. However, our little toddler thinks he’s the Hulk and pulls and bangs these doors over and over and over, until the latches break! This musta been the upteenth time we’ve replaced them. Now I know why they come in packs of 20+.

Then we were off to Costco! Our sick little guy fell asleep on the way there and snoozed the whole trip, only to wake up just in time to eat a hot dog on the way out… oh and he had to inspect the goodies we bought…

At snack time, Avery ate a treat from his pen pal, Annabel, in Texas. There was a card, some beautiful artwork, stickers, and a fruit strip!

So, on Sunday it was only fitting that we went shopping for a card and stickers to send back to her. Avery made some artwork of his own…

More on that later…. I don’t want to share pictures of their cards to each other until ours reaches Texas this week!

And we ended the weekend with a new money-bank for Avery. He had a ceramic penguin, but they tend to smash into a thousand pieces when toddlers drop them (yep, totally happened-and i should mention that it was my bank from when i was a teen). So when I was out shopping with Erin on Saturday and found this bank for $2.99, I couldn’t resist.

Avery was quite happy to transfer his money from the temp yogurt container that’s been housing his cash the past few months.

Do your kids have money-banks? What do you do when it gets full – cash it in to buy a toy, or put it in savings? Avery’s is getting very full!

Picture-esque Weekend

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Meghan

I finally broke down and signed up for Instagram. I have a hard enough time keeping up with Facebook, Linked-in, the blog, etc. I don’t even have a Twitter account (yet)… but since I love taking pictures of Avery, so I used the cool instagram thingy this weekend.. mixed with some ‘normal’ pictures… our weekend went a little like this…

December first…and our first snow!

Avery loved touching it and eventually grabbed a handful of it on the ground… I didn’t get a shot of that because since there was only a little snow on the ground he picked up a mound of dirt with it – had to grab his hand before it got all over him because we were headed to the mall…

Before getting our Christmas shopping on, I wore Avery out. I took him to the play area in the mall for an hour. I love taking him early in the morning… only a couple other kids (including 3 girls that kept following him around trying to hold his hand… oh man it’s already starting!)

Then we hit up the smoothie shop for a kids sized Strawberry shortcake (strawberries & yogurt) smoothie to share…

Avery got a kick outta sipping on the smoothie and watching the snow fall outside. Then we were off shopping! No pictures of that… Avery quickly passed out and I was able to score goodies for him and stockings AND got a spanking new bra (I know, you totally wanted to know this) from Victoria’s Secret, thanks to my Aunt Candy’s birthday gift card. After having a baby and an every changing body, a good fitting bra is like heaven!

Then it was home to make rice crispy treats! I was trying to think of a quick and inexpensive, but thoughtful, gift for Avery’s daycare girls. I would like to say Avery helped me, but I was able to make them while he played in his cupboard and experienced his first marshmallow…

He tasted it and started smiling and squealing and then figured out he could poke it with his finger…

He was too funny. Within 20 minutes the treats were done and I shared one with Avery. He LOVED the green and red m and m’s in them… he kept pointing at them and I let him have a litter (hoping he would still sleep that night) and he would stomp the ground with his feet in excitement!. Last night I decorated some bags with the treats in them and handed them out this morning at daycare, and one to a friend at work.

Sunday the snow was gone and Avery got his ride on…

Oh and can you believe these pumpkins are still intact… we’ve had them since before Halloween!

The rest of Sunday was much needed cleaning… the bathroom, Avery’s room, the living and dining rooms… and three loads of laundry. It was quite a task, but it was sooo needed and now everything smells so fresh and clean! In the midst of chasing Avery with the vacuum (he loves it..and yells at it as if he’s talking back to the humming sound), I rearranged his room to make a little reading nook – since we read on the floor before bedtime.

Then I took a few more shots while I was in there…

It’s changed so much since he was a baby…

Now there are toys EVERYWHERE and forget cleaning them up for a ‘staged’ picture.. because they’ll just be on the floor again 20 seconds later.

And see our changing table turned into a toy shelf with bins…. I decided to utilize it instead of put it away because Avery’s too big to be changed on it, but it’s great to store toys now!

And that was pretty much our weekend…(oh and I went to the gym…TWICE!)

What did you do over the weekend? Did you get snow!?

NUMB3ERS: August

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Meghan

August has come and gone. I can’t believe it’s already September. For most, that means back to school. For us, that means we’ve been blogging for ONE YEAR! Yep, it’s been a whole year since our first post, when we moved into our new house. We’ll ‘celebrate’ this next week with a fun post, but before we look back at the whole year, here’s a recap of August in the RatnamResidence…

The Blog

23,764 all-time visits. Whew, that’s a lot for our first year!

2,286 visitors checked us out this month. Where do they come from? The top FOUR countries are:

1 US 2 Canada 3 UK 4 India

It’s pretty cool that people across the world are checking us out from countries like Australia and the Philipines. What I wonder is, where our readers come from within the US. Hey WordPress, can you give us a map showing that too? Any other bloggers wish they could see that too?

125 Followers. 11 people have joined us in the past month! Who are they? Victoria Elizabeth Barnes (She’s blogging about renovating her 1890 Victorian Home), Kate (She and her husband take adventures with their little one in tow), Natalie and Maya (They have a design studio and blog about design, fashion, and food. I heart their website design)…

28 people searched the net for ‘bumbo seat’ and stumbled upon us. Maybe this is because of the recent recall for bumbo seats? Do you have a bumbo seat? What are you doing with it now that it’s recalled? Other popular search terms to find us were:

19 Posts. Bleh, not ideal as I hope to post daily M-F, but typically one day a week I skip because I’m swamped at work or have to run out for errands at lunch (when I typically write). How often do you post to your blog, and how do you find time to!?

The Residents

1 Duck trophy. I won the annual duck race at our Chinese New Year themed family reunion. And Vinay ‘volenteered’ to be on the committe to plan next year’s reunion!

2 Avery took his first two steps while we were in California. Didn’t surprise us, as Avery started crawling our last trip out there! He is now on the move, walking everywhere! I can’t believe he’s almost a toddler! He even said his first words this month!

3 I am knee deep into the three books of the ‘Fifty Shades series‘… Loving them! Reading is a nice escape and great for relaxing right before bed – I even escaped one day during lunch to read because I couldn’t put the book down!

11 items on my ‘to do’ list on our rainy weekend. We got lots done and Avery loved ‘helping’.

16 Avery had his sixteenth doctor’s appointment this year – they found another ear infection. Avery stayed home with Daddy for a day on antibiotics before returning to daycare. He’s all better and no penguins were hurt in the process…

50 I must have sent out over 50 invitations to Avery’s First Birthday Party. And come to think of it, I only have 12 RSVPs so far… come on people… has the RSVP died? I bet the week of the party I’ll hear from the remaining 30 something invitees.

9 I waited nine long months since Vinay gave me tickets at Christmas – to Country Fest. We enjoyed a fun date night together listening to Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney.

430 Is the new time Avery and I get home every day. Our new ‘schedule‘ with Avery’s new daycare means less commuting and we’re home earlier!

The Residence

0 After our unexpected trip to California, we stayed home the month of August – sticking with our plan to travel less and spend more time at home as a family relaxing and resting from our busy week.

2 We had zero pieces of furniture for a week while we swapped out our ‘old’ sofa bed and got a TWO new pieces that are family friendly with an ottoman!

11 looming student loans left to pay off. Yay! I paid off one this past month and I’m chipping away at them with the goal of having them all paid off by my 30th birthday (3 years away), and then we can have little Ratnam #2!

Check out recaps from earlier in the year - January, February, March, April, May, June, July

RatnamResidence

Documenting life in our home…

Category Archives: A Day in the Life

Insta-Avery-Weekend-Gram

Picture-esque Weekend

NUMB3ERS: August

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