Quick update - finding balance and joy

So here's what happening in our life these days:

- Jared's birthday today (Happy Birthday Love, I am the luckiest ever)

- 36 weeks pregnant (and so ready to be done)

- Two campaign style dressers from Craigslist in the garage to be painted before Emerson arrives

- Brody spelling his name and counting to ten, melts my heart

- Discovering an extreme love for my new food processor

- Perpetually trying to be present and find balance

The last one is partially why I have been so absent on the blog as of late. I came to a point a couple of months ago where everything I felt obligated to do became a massive pile of dread, an endless checklist. I felt absolutely exhausted all the time. Cranky. Behind, behind, behind. It wasn't fun for anyone.

Lucky for me I'm married to the person who knows me best in this world, he knows how I think, how I stress, and how I can be my own worst enemy most of the time. He helped me to step back and take the pressure off of myself and for that I am so so grateful. There are so many things I love to do, that bring me joy by doing them. But trying to do ALL of those things ALL the time actually defeats the purpose. What I didn't realize is that even if I don't do something that I love as much as I want to (like blog) it doesn't go away, it will wait for me. So thanks for waiting.

I've learned to let go of the choke hold I thought I had to keep on finding joy, and let it come. And what's amazing is that it does. Not 100% of the time, or even 50% of the time (hello dishes, laundry, chasing a 2yr old tornado of stickiness). But it comes, and now that I'm not checklist-ing it to death I can actually recognize it and soak it up and save it.

Yesterday I laid Brody down in his big boy bed, he was already conked out for his nap. His room was clean (amazing and rare), the light was perfect coming through the drapes, and he was asleep and perfect with his little bo-bo bunny under his arm. My first thought - grab my camera, you'll forget this, he'll grow up so fast, his room will never be this clean again. I didn't get my camera. I laid down next to him and twirled his wispy blonde curls in my fingers. I kissed his forehead and smelled his hair. I breathed him in. I love you. I love you. I love you.

I woke up 2 hours later to him tapping my face "Mommy? Mommy! Hi mommy." So there aren't any pictures of his sweet curls or perfect light or clean room from yesterday but yesterday was just what I needed. Finding a balance between wanting document/create/learn/share and needing to feel/grow/give/love is tricky for me. And I know it's all about to change again when Emerson arrives. But I know that releasing yourself from the constant pressure is the first step. And that everything can, and will, wait. What shouldn't wait is your joy, your family's happiness, your memories. And searching for those moments in the chaos of normal life.

Phew, me and my hormones will shut up now. :)

Hello? Is this thing on?

Dear blog, sorry to leave you in the lurch the past two months. It wasn't you, it was me. Well, actually the two year old monster who lives in my house has been holding me hostage and has only released me on conditions of limitless Shrek watching and a finished big boy room.

I know we're all busy so I'll cut the "I've been so busy" crap, we all can relate right!? But we have experienced a few milestones the past few months that I am so excited (and/or relieved) about! Namely potty training, moving Brody to a big boy bed, saying goodbye to his "B" (pacifier), Jared's second office location opening, surviving swine flu and RSV, and counting down to little Emerson's arrival in March! Needless to say I am humongous, 7-1/2 months pregnant is not my favorite. And I'm afraid that it just gets worse from here. I've decided to parade my large-ness abroad and take a last minute trip to London with Jared in a couple of weeks. Yes, I'm crazy. But I wasn't going to let being 32 weeks pregnant keep Jared from seeing London for the first time! It's going to be so much fun, I can't wait!

I'll try to put up some pictures of Brody's new big boy room soon - lots of DIY projects, some unfinished, all in the pursuit of a not-so-kitchy but not too plain room for a little boy who eats, breaths, and lives everything sports. TRUST ME - I was dreading it like the plague. You'd have to hold me at knife point to get me to buy a matching sports themed bed set, which turns out was EXACTLY what Jared has envisioned/hoped for since we found out we were having a boy. Helllllooooo compromise! So details on that fun adventure coming soon...

I hate posts without a picture, so here is a picture of His Evilness. Not looking so evil in this one, actually pretty freaking cute if you ask me. He's got his act down, fooling us all. :)

Where did this big boy come from!?

These are from his first day of preschool. :) He goes two days a week, for two hours a day, and has a little backpack and everything! I can't stand the cuteness, it's just too much. He even says "pre-cool". I can't take it. It's like all of a sudden he's this little boy who's all grown up!

The month before preschool was a whirlwind of potty training (yes, it's early. yes, I'm an idiot), hand foot and mouth disease (hideous and awful), Brody's 2nd birthday, holiday and newborn sessions, and a trip to Utah to shoot a wedding and visit family. I feel like we got a jump start on the holiday mayhem!

But the great thing is that he's completely potty trained, loves preschool, and can't wait to see Grandma and Grandpa J in California over Thanksgiving. (Is it just me or did Thanksgiving totally sneak up on us this year?)

But preschool is really making me realize that time seems to be going by so much faster. Which I'm really banking on getting me through the sleepless nights this new baby is going to bring with her. Oh the joy. But it also motivates me to consciously slow down. Things aren't going to magically get less crazy or less busy, I'm pretty sure those things are just going to escalate at a faster rate. But if we can be happy crazy and happy busy I'm going to count that as a win. :)

So on days like today - with dishes piled in the sink, a to-do list a mile long, and a mangled peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting next to my keyboard (thank you Brody) - I have a preschooler. Who poops in the potty. Life is good.

Bumeee!!

That's how Brody says "jumping", but it's more like Bumeee, BUmeee, BUMMEEEEEEEEE MOMMY! I'm kind of glad the guest room is pretty much an unfinished box with a bed in it right now, it's the perfect place to bumeee.

I can't decide whether he looks more like Dennis the Menace or Draco Malfoy.


At least this keeps him busy for at least 5 minutes. At what age does "high energy" become "needs medication"?? Haha, just kidding. Sort of.

But really he's getting to that really fun age where he kind of listens to what I say or ask and answers back. He's my little buddy. He LOVES turning on music in the kitchen and having dance offs. His two favorite songs right now are Baby by Justin Bieber and Black Horse and a Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall. He sings along to both of them and it's to die for cute. We have a few of his funnier ones on You Tube, you can check them out --> here.

We find out what baby #2 is in two weeks, let's all hope for a calm, sweet little girl. Mmmmm K? Actually another little boy would be fun, Brody could have a partner in crime. So it will be good either way. My sister, Kellye, is due three weeks after me and they are having a girl!! (Their doctor does a Jack and Jill blood test and mine doesn't, boo) So either way we will have a little girl to play dress up with. :)

For now, I'll be running after this little maniac. Well, I guess he is kinda cute.

Vintage trunk love

I found this aviator trunk from World War II at a flea market a couple months ago (it had pieces of the original shipping label still on it, so cool!). FOR $40!!! Flea markets usually bring out a fierce bargaining gene in me (from my mother's side) but I practically threw two twenties at the guy and carried this thing on my back the rest of the day. Well, not all day. And not on my back (thanks to my sister Kellye), but if I had to I totally would have!

Now what to do with it? Polish it up and stare at it's beautifulness was first on the list. I stared for a long time. What do you want to be lovely trunk? Then it spoke to me - I want to be an awesome console table with storage underneath to hide your husband's ridiculous array of playstation materials. I knew I loved you, trunk.

The problem was the size - not tall enough to be a table on it's own, but too tall to sit on top of any normal table. So I decided to take matters into my own I've-never-built-anything-ever hands, smiled really nicely at the Home Depot lumber guys, and attempted to just make a table that wasn't hideous. Oh boy.



And you know, it worked! Although a tad hideous, for my first venture into building stuff I'm just glad it's sturdy and level. :)



It seemed a little plain so I slapped some corner braces on the outside of a few slats to make a little lip at the top for the trunk to sit inside.



Much betta!




And the final before and after:




I was so in love with this trunk and I'm so excited that it's now actually a functional piece of furniture. I think Jared was pleasantly surprised too, could I be winning him over!? Possibly so...

Moral of the story - if you can't find it, make it. Even if the end product is more on the slightly hideous side than you planned. If I can do it, I PROMISE, you can do it too. Home Depot is your friend. :)

When the house gets quiet...

things like this happen! By the time I found him he had scooped out almost all of the Vaseline and was rubbing it in his hair and all over his face. And thought is was HILARIOUS.




As soon as I saw him I knew I had a choice - go into immediate cleanup mode or grab my camera. Needless to say I chose to cleanup later, it was funny until he started chasing me around the room with his slimy self.




And then it started to coat his eyeballs...





So it was bath time. Have you ever tried to wash Vaseline clumps out of hair!? IMPOSSIBLE! Dish soap, peanut butter, and two beaten eggs later (the eggs worked the best) he was a little less slimy. I think it took a week before it was all out.





He keeps me on my toes, that's for sure. And it's really going to get busy this spring when he's not the only child anymore. Yep, Brody will be a big brother in late March/early April! We're super excited, and I'm sure Brody will be happy to recruit a partner in crime. I have a feeling the shenanigans have just begun. :)

Featured on Design Sponge

One of my favorite blogs, Design Sponge, featured my sideboard makeover on their site today. WHAT!!??!!
Click --> here <-- to check it out.

I'm not going to lie, I'm dancing pretty spastically around the house right now. :)

Oh the irony...

Even more ironic - he bit me while I was blogging this. Heeeeeee's a biter.

What is it with this kid and the fridge?

And the dishwasher, the trash can, the printer (he can just now reach). Basically anything that's not a toy he wants to play with. Toys do not interest him at the moment. But as soon as he hears the dishwasher door open he is hauling it from wherever he is in the house with his cute little janky leg crawl.

He started crawling between six and seven months with one leg up, foot flat on the floor, and the other leg bent like a normal crawl. He uses the leg that's up to launch himself forward and then the other leg scoots along like normal. He looks like a little pirate with a peg leg. Lately he's started putting both feet flat on the ground with his bum in the air like a little silver back. It is hilarious.

So usually I have about three seconds to throw something in the dishwasher before he's trying to pull the door down and grab the forks. And if the door is already down he's crawling on it trying to get inside. I think I didn't appreciate the sitting-up-but-not-yet-crawling-stage enough. And now that he's standing up and trying to take steps I'm realizing that life as I know it is over and the house has probably not seen the worst of the messes. I'm just glad he hasn't figured out how to take his diaper off yet, haha. Oh, I dread the day.





I have no idea where he learned how to do this. Okay, I do. Or I thought that I did. I thought "Okay, he's seen me have one every now and then. Or every day. So he's just copying what I do." But he seems a little too excited, no?

Sometime after that is when l I saw Jared GIVING HIM A SIP. Oh no, no, no, nu uh, no way did I just see that. Now I know who the culprit is here. He has his daddy wrapped around his little finger.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just the beginning.



PS - I am overwhelmed and humbled by all of your sweet comments and messages about the previous post. To be honest I was really hesitant about putting it up and worried that it wouldn't come across the way I had intended. So thank you, it's awesome to know that we're all in this together. Perfectly imperfect.

Fresh

Something about moving always makes me want to throw out everything and start all over. Ever get that urge? We're moving up to The Woodlands in a few weeks so I'm definitely getting to itch to rethink everything and start fresh. My goal: nothing brown allowed! I've always had an idea in my mind of what our dream house would look like, but for some reason everything I've accumulated in the mean time is brown! So moving forward it's new house, new rules.

These are some rooms/looks that I love.

I know for sure we will have these chairs. They're kind of an obsession, okay they're a full blown obsession.

Nap Time

Nap Time. This has been the trickiest thing for me to figure out how to do consistently so I've just determined that I like a fluid method - one that changes depending on Brody's needs, my needs, vacations/visiting family, sick vs. healthy, etc. In other words I am not going to wreak havoc on everyone involved for the sake of keeping to a strict nap schedule or routine, but when I can without any havoc wreaking I will. :)

So when all is normal (ie: Brody and I at home during the day) I keep to the strict eating schedule (previous post) and watch for signs that he is tired in between. He will usually scratch his eyes, get fussy, and turn red like Jack-Jack from The Incredibles. Since he is generally happy all other times of the day I know this means he is ready for a nap.

After keeping track of how often this happened over a few days I noticed that he is normally awake for two hours at a time, give or take a half hour or so. The only exception being first thing in the morning - exactly an hour after he wakes up he is ready to go back to sleep, like clock work. I'm sure this varies baby to baby, but usually they all have a max time of being awake before a level 5 meltdown ensues.

He sleeps for 45 min - 1 hour at each nap with one big 1-1/2 to 2 hour nap mid day. So this equals up to 3-4 naps a day, which makes us both happy.

In my experience the hard part isn't trying to figure out when they're tired, it's trying to put them down for a nap without losing your mind. One babywise method that really has helped me is putting them in their crib when they're AWAKE. This way they learn to fall asleep on their own and don't require endless rocking, singing, bouncing, etc. to drift off. This is really hard at first so I eased myself into it by putting him in his crib and holding his hands while I shushed him until he was calm. He gets a binky only for naps so that usually helps too. Nowadays I put him in his crib, give him his binky and bo-bo (a little Rabbit that he loves) and turn around and walk out.

There are times when he will cry or fuss when I walk out (maybe once or twice a day) and those times I give him 10 minutes and then go back in to check on him, put his binky in, and walk back out. He has cried for longer than 10 minutes only a handful of times.

Things get tricky when we visit family or when he's sick and wants to be held (which is my life right now since he has hives, poor little guy). Asking grandparents to put a sleepy baby in bed and walk away is like asking me to grow three inches - it would be nice, but it's not going to happen. So sometimes we go off the plan and it takes a day or two to get readjusted but that's fine with me. So here's an example of his normal schedule.

• 6:30              Wakes up in his crib. Put him in bed with us.
• 7:30              Wakes up and has a bottle.
• 8:30 - 9:30    Nap
• 9:30 - 10:30  Play time
• 10:30            Bottle
• 11:30 - 1:00  Nap (usually his long mid-day nap)
• 1:30              Bottle
• 2:00 - 3:00    Play time
• 3:00 - 4:00    Nap
• 4:30              Bottle
• 5:00 - 6:00    Play time
• 6:00 - 7:00    Optional nap or Play time
• 7:30              Bottle
• 8:00              Bath
• 8:30              Bedtime

Let's get down to the nitty gritty....

Did someone say SCHEDULE!!??

First off let me say that I am completely about doing what works for you. I am not someone that pretends to have this all figured out by any means, so any and everything I talk about when it comes to what works for us is simply that - what works for us. If it doesn't work for you that is totally fine with me, and don't feel bad if it doesn't. When it comes to babies everyone, I repeat EVERYONE, has a different schedule/opinion/routine/trick/belief system that works for them and they want you to know how amazing their schedule/opinion/etc is. It can get overwhelming to say the least. But the best advice I have ever heard is "Your way is the right way." (I'm trying to get Jared to repeat this as well, haha)

So, what works for us - I heard a lot about the Babywise method before Brody was born and it seemed like everyone who used it was a huge fan. When he was about six weeks old all I heard was "sleep through the night" and I was sold. Buy me the books, teach me your ways - I am all yours Babywise.

I honestly had no clue what it was or how to implement it and trying to figure it out from the book was no help. My baby wants to eat all the time, I am getting zero sleep and will never sleep again the rest of my life, I am sick of pajamas, I want my makeup, will someone who knows how to do this please just TELL ME  because this book wants to explain the philosophy behind the method for forty chapters! So I  facebooked a couple of friends that I knew would explain it to me in short sentences with no big words. They were a lifesaver!

Part One: Sleeping through the night

There are a few basic principles of Babywise that work together towards the goal of getting on a schedule, sleeping through the night, and having a happy baby in general. In the beginning I was most interested in the sleeping through the night part. The two most helpful things I learned about this were:

1) most babies can sleep through the night after they have doubled their body weight and
2) if you work on getting the schedule down during the day they will work out the nights themselves.

The second piece was my key since I was unsure about the whole "crying it out" situation. Considering his health issues I didn't think letting him cry and wail until he figured it out was the best thing. More on this later.

So what schedule exactly? The basic schedule for us is EAT - PLAY - SLEEP and repeat every three hours. The length of each stage changes depending on the time of day, but this pattern really has helped us know when he's tired or hungry since the two can get easily confused. The thing that we remained pretty firm with is feeding him every three hours starting at about 7-8 weeks. Before then he needed to eat on demand to gain weight as a lot of babies do.

So we started with feeding him every three hours (sometimes I would cave and feed him 20 minutes early if I couldn't hold him off any longer) and trying to keep him awake for "play time" afterwards. Sometimes awake time only lasted for 15 minutes but the goal was to not let him fall asleep while eating. If he was asleep and it had been three hours since he ate last I would (gasp) wake him up to eat, but only during the day. This accomplished three things - reinforced the schedule/pattern, gave him the opportunity to eat enough during the day, and helped him sort his days and nights out by not sleeping all day.  For the first two weeks he still woke up every three hours at night and I would feed him. I tried to remember not to stress and concentrate on the daytime schedule. Then at nine weeks he slept through the night for the first time - HALLELUJAH! I was beyond ecstatic, SLEEP! I've missed you! This is when I learned the second important piece:

You will have good days/nights and bad days/nights, just plan on it and keep your eye on the goal. After that one night of sweet sleep he changed his mind and wanted to wake up every three hours again. But now I knew he wouldn't die or starve to death without eating all night so instead of feeding him I put the binky in, put my hand on his belly and shooshed him, and went back to sleep - repeated as necessary. Probably after two weeks of this it was back to whole nights of solid sleep. The heavens opened, angels sang, it was a miracle. Sleep - I'm sorry I ever took you for granted. You are wonderful and I love you.

In a nutshell these were the things that helped me in the early days:

• If someones advice doesn't work for you that's just fine. Check it off the list and try something else.
• Work hard on getting your day time schedule down and the nights will work themselves out.
• EAT - PLAY - SLEEP 
• Be consistent with the length of time between bottles/nursing.
• Don't be discouraged by bad days/nights, it takes practice for everyone involved.

Next time - Part Two: The Anatomy of a Nap

Like I said in the beginning, this is just what works for us. I am fully aware that Brody's sleeping and happy temperament probably have more to do with luck of the draw than my efforts or his schedule, but for now everything's working out great and I get to sleep at night. So either way I'm happy (and grateful).  :)

Is my hair on fire?

I feel like the past two weeks have been a complete blur! A crazy, happy, busy, tired, wonderful blur. Welcome to parenthood I guess.

Latest happenings:

Brody insisting on sitting up before rolling over
Rice cereal and applesauce
Back on schedule
Sessions, sessions, and more sessions (now booking for July/August)
Sleeping 11 hours a night (Brody, not me)
Getting excited for vacation
Brody's first swim suit
Baby season (my sister and friends are all expecting!)
Laundry
Laundry
LAUNDRY

We call Brody the ninja barfer. No burps, no fuss, no warning. You'll be holding him and he's smiling and laughing then BAM. Hits you like a ninja. Hence the laundry.

I've been getting a lot of questions about what has been working for us as far as Brody's schedule so a post on that is coming soon.

I also need to put up more pictures! He is getting so big. For now, here's one from a recent engagement session with the most gorgeous couple. Seriously. How is this fair.