new year's resolution 2012

i'm not a big fan of new years resolutions because, most of the time, i think i'm setting myself up for failure. however, i feel like 'start blogging again' is fairly attainable and thus, i'm blogging again. 

for those who don't know why i stopped blogging, it was essentially that my husband adam and i decided to start trying to have another baby. which, while certainly a big deal, doesn't seem to impair blogging abilities but for me, it started to consume every unpublished post and i didn't want to write about it or really make it public. so writer's block ensued and never really left. 

and fertile as we have proven to be, we were successful!

23 weeks and 2 days with Baby Girl Hinson!

i'm actually over 24 weeks now, due April 19th.

in the spirit of updating on current events, a few other things have happened in the past few months:

we bought our first home
adam & i became homeowners back in October and after a few months of painting and fixing up, we are now residing in said house. i'll be holding off on pictures since as we moved from an apartment to a house, we have a few rooms with zero furniture.

adam is moving...to a new Starbucks
after over 5 years at our poplar highland location where we first met, adam is being transferred to the Saddle Creek location later this month. so Starbucks patrons of Germantown, go see my silly husband.

and other things have stayed the same. i'm still on-air at the radio station, reed is still awesome and my favorite little boy:

September 2011 on Thomas the Train in Nashville. It's his heart breaker picture.

i'm going to keep up the blog this year, albeit i think i'm going to be focusing more on pregnancy, babies, kids and mama stuff....maybe.

happy 2012 everyone!

 

growing pains

last friday, i was reminded via text from my friend molly that my sweet little reed would be turning three years old in a month.
i'm not sure if there will ever be a birthday of reed's where i say "yes, i can believe that he is  (insert age here) and emotionally, i'm quite okay about it"
i'm fairly certain that never happens to mothers.

reed bryant hinson can speak in full sentences, eat real food (though he often tries to convince me that popcorn & cupcakes are a real dinner), put his own shoes on, convey emotion (something that will likely go away after puberty) and almost pour himself a cup of milk. 

my little guy is growing up.

the heartbreaking part of all this is that while i've taught him to do nearly all of these things, the phrase "no mommy, i don't need your help" can devastate me faster than i ever expected.

while i miss the total dependence on me, this next phase has been really amazing.
por ejemplo:
we were driving down poplar the other day and reed started saying ouch ouch. so of course i said, whats wrong reed? and very seriously, reed said mommy the sun hurts me! it hurts my eyes!

what a sweet little guy.

happy fourth of july, everyone :)

when this is all over, i'm going to need a nap

i'm going to have to try really hard while writing this to not sound like i'm bragging (or humblebragging, which is slightly different and much funnier) so bear with me.

i've had a pretty amazing week this week, professionally speaking. 

after about seven months at the radio station going from intern to producer and learning all kinds of things i never thought i'd know, i'm having my first all by myself on-air shift this saturday morning from 8am-10am.to say this came out of nowhere wouldn't be entirely accurate but it was very much a zero t0 60 thing over the course of this week.

sure, i talk during the morning show but morning radio and being a disc jockey are totally different animals. i'm nervous and excited but mostly, i'm just surprised. 
when i got into journalism in college, i really fell in love with public relations especially since it meant i could still write. i never thought radio would be a career path, even after i first took the internship, and while most people wouldn't disagree that i could make a career out of talking, it's still scary to think about changing paths, even so slightly. 
at the same time, i'm very excited and so thankful to everyone who has helped teach me and so lucky for this opportunity. so please listen (in tennessee on 107.5, in mississippi on 96.1 and elsewhere on the website link above)!

moving on.

i drink tons of coffee every week to the point where i think i might be comprised of at least 20% pure caffeine. hey, we all have flaws. but this week i had an exceptionally great cup of coffee because it was with Suzanne from the East Memphis Moms blog. I saw on twitter (follow me @raquelhinson) that she was looking for guest bloggers and after a few emails, we met to talk and she was awesome! Her youngest and reed are the same age so there's also a possible play date in reed's future. it was really nice, she was beyond encouraging and seemed really excited to have me write for her blog. she also did a mom spotlight on me which was very flattering, so thanks Suzanne. 

all moms in the Memphis area: follow this blog, like it on facebook and then take advantage of all the cool stuff around town she finds for us to do with our kiddos!

and my last bit of cool news is that i'll be hosting this little party at Gould's in Collierville:

alright, i'm done. i promise. happy thursday all. 

is your glass half-full?

"Retreat? Like hell! We're just advancing in another direction"- Oliver Prince Smith

i'm a firm believer that no matter what life throws at you, the way you handle it is simply a matter of having the right perspective. 

recently, adam and i have had to make quite a few decisions about our family, our lives & our future. when this stuff comes up, we try and help each other keep a decent outlook on the situation and we have a little story that helps us do that.
(this may not be the word for word story so please, a little latitude)
back when the chappelle show was in its prime, the star comedian dave chappelle went awol. everyone remember?
he went on a retreat to africa and at one point, he spoke to a local man about his lack of creative control on his show, the sudden influx of fame & money and all of the issues in his life that caused him to pack up and head across the atlantic ocean. the man listened and after he was finished, the man said "dave, i just want you to know something. I ate a dog for breakfast"

so while making enormous decisions that impact our family and the rest of our lives are hardly a barrel of laughs, at least i have adam to look at me and say "honey, at least you didn't eat a dog for breakfast"

like i said, it's all a matter of perspective. 

winner winner chicken dinner

i am a money making machine. 

no, i'm not talking about working two jobs (humblebrag), i'm talking about a little place i'd like to call Tunica, Mississippi and how i owned it on Friday night. 

adam's 28th birthday (yes, he's very old) is coming up this monday so had a momma and daddy date night in Tunica at Harrah's to celebrate.
i've only been to Tunica to gamble once before and I absolutely hated it. the frugal saver within me counted each dollar in terms of gallons of milk and toothpaste to the point of ridiculousness.

 however, in the spirit of adam's birthday and the fact that i was only gambling on the penny slots, i committed to having fun with it. 

And boy, did I. Not only did i dominate the Paula Deen Buffet, thereby assuring that I wouldn't be getting into my bathing suit this weekend, I owned my little penny slots all the way to turning $35 into $275. 

yeah, I did.
and as a non-gambling type, I also had the good sense to put it in my pocket and sip a free pina colada while adam played poker.

all in all, it was a good little mini-vacation. 

and if you're in memphis and you stop by adam's starbucks tomorrow before 1pm, make sure to say hi to the birthday boy. 

look at how cute he is :)
Happy Sunday Funday, all. 

Summer TV Time

every season i update the blogosphere about what is currently irritating adam on my dvr and it's time for the summer series. 

unfortunately, summer tends to be terrible for television. it's not always true but generally, reality tv and cable network shows are all that is out there. however sometimes that's wonderful- just look at Mad Men. However, there are no Mad Men's on this list so please, don't expect anything on this list to end up on the Emmy nominee list because sometimes terrible television is wonderful.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

Yes, I know. It's alright, you can judge me for this one. I'm an adult and this show is clearly week one of an acting/writing workshop in Ohio or something. This show is the brainchild of Brenda Hampton, the woman behind 7th Heaven about teenagers who say the word sex and have it entirely too much. The parents are terrible (one of whom is Molly Ringwald), with each of them pretty much having a "kids will be kids" approach to the bed hopping of this group and then getting surprised when 2 of the 4 main girls on the cast have gotten pregnant. It's trash. And I love it. I will admit, I fast forward through about a third of it because some of the characters grate my nerves.
Just do it, my girl Katie also indulges and she's brilliant.
Secret Life airs on ABC Family on Mondays at 7pm. 

The Real Housewives of New York City

alright this one I'm blaming on my dear friend Heather who through feeding me lunch on breaks from school got me hooked on this and it's counterpart over in Beverly Hills. I refuse to get into the New Jersey, Miami or Orange County versions though. I do have standards, okay? This mess of a program is how my girl Bethenny Frankel got the bulk of her fame before leaving for her own show, featured in the spring tv blog by yours truly. It's basically the cattiest high school group of girls gone bad, in their forties and fifties, running around New York City with millions of dollars. It's a trainwreck, I've never seen women behave so badly and I went to an all-girls high school. However, if like me, you're amused by other peoples bad behavior then tune in. Just try not to think about how much money they have without actually working or you'll get upset.
It airs on Bravo Thursdays at 9pm.

Teen Mom

So technically the season hasn't started yet but I think everyone knows I'll be watching as the orignal four moms from the first season of 16 & Pregnant finally come back for the third season of the first spin-off. A lot has happened to these girls since we last saw them and most of them aren't even teenagers anymore.
Maci, the sweet redheaded girl from Chattanooga, went blond, got extensions and some pretty sizable fake boobs. Personally, as a mother, I don't think I'd risk plastic surgery when I had a young child at home and an unstable relationship with his father but hey, do what ya can.
Farrah...ehh i just can't with this one. I usually fast forward through her segments unless it looks like her mom is going to go apeshit.
Catelynn, through twitter (follow me @raquelhinson :) and the like, it appears that she's seen her daughter, whom she gave up for adoption, a few more times and has graduated high school after her pregnancy and maternity leave set her back a full year.
Amber. this girl is a hot mess. She lost (or gave up, depending on the source) custody of her daugher, currently has a restraining order preventing her from seeing her baby daddy, Gary, in the presence of their daughter and has felony assault charges pending. Clearly, she's MTV's bread and butter on this show.
Season 3 of Teen Mom begins July 5th on MTV.
 
and again, if anyone is interested Adam is currently getting into a new summer show:

Franklin & Bash

Travis Birkenstock and Zach Morris have grown up into wise cracking lawyers who handle their cases in atypical fashion. It looks pretty funny and I'll likely check it out when I stop watching trash television during reed's naps. 

adventures of raquel & reed: part 4

I haven't posted in over two weeks and I'm literally forcing myself to do it now. it seems like all I've done lately is work (my job at the radio station and then my new marketing internship) and I'm not sure that anyone wants to read about that right now.
I have had a few times in the last few weeks where reed and I have had some time to do fun things together and I thought I'd focus on those. 

reed and I caught up with robyn and ellie a few weeks ago for some yolo midtown and reed opted for something from the bakery rather than the self-serve frozen yogurt.

clearly, he thought it best to just dive right in. 

that's pretty much the best face ever. 

we've frequented a few memphis redbirds games so far this season, a summer favorite of reed's. he doesn't so much care that baseball is happening as much as he likes rockey redbird, the playground and the food.

and here's a throwback picture of one of his first meetings with rockey. note the crazy faced woman in the crowd.

back in the day, adam and his older brother andrew had a fort in their parents back yard.

reed has since claimed it in the name of thomas the tank engine.

during yesterdays trip out to Collierville to register for this years St. Jude Dream House, reed fell in love with the boys room set up in the house.

just in case anyone thinks i have adam locked in a basement, we did manage to sneak away a few weekends ago for a movie and lunch, our first date in a few weeks (and come to think of it, we haven't had one since) and of course, we saw Thor.
(side note: 5 days until X-Men First Class,  19 days until The Green Lantern, 47 days until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II and  54 days until Captain America. it's going to be a summer of nerd movie heaven for me & adam).


adam with mjolnir (thor's hammer).

and lastly, and in related movie news, i saw Bridesmaids with robyn last week and it was pretty funny and definitely not a chick flick. 

happy memorial day weekend everyone :)