Disney Pregnancy Announcement

After living in Southern California for nearly two years we found out we would be expecting our third child.In those two years, we’d spent a lot of time visiting Disneyland and knew we HAD to incorporate it into our pregnancy announcement.

I did some searching and combining of a couple ideas before this popped into my head. We used our Annual Passes and had one of the park photographers grab some great pictures of our boys.

I did the editing on an app called Color Pop to make it black and white and make the balloons POP. (See what I did there?) then added the text from my computer!

We had so much fun with this one! We welcomed our third boy to our family in October. Can’t wait to do some sort of spin on this picture with him once he can sit up!

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They don’t say how hard it will be.

The days are long, but the years are short.

How often do new moms, or mom of young kids hear that?

What you don’t hear is sometimes just how hard it is.

Today was a hard day. And the mom guilt is real. Today is a day I wished away. I counted down the minutes until bedtime because today was just too much. Too hard.

My oldest, just over 3.5 is in that questions about everything phase. The why phase. And each question is asked about 10 times. I love that he learns through repetition and examples but I can only answer the same thing so many times.

My 2 year old is sweet, and into everything. Mischievous. And in that stage where a simple no, you may not have 17 snacks you need to eat dinner, equals a meltdown.

Then my sweet little newborn. He needs me for everything. And he has two older brothers who need me too. I can’t spend an hour to get him settled down for each nap, or let him nap in my arms all day everyday. They need me too. He’s constantly needing something. He needs to eat. He needs to sleep. He didn’t get enough sleep so he’s overtired and screaming. He seems to have a dairy intolerance. He is just hard right now. This stage is hard.

It seems like each one, in their own way, needs me, and all of me. And yet I’m only to give just under 1/3 of myself to them.

I spend most of my day saying, wait, I can’t hold you now, I’m holding your brother.

Your brother is crying now, you’ll have to wait.

I’m sorry, I can’t do that while I do this.

All day. Everyday.

I know today was just one day and tomorrow is a new day. A new chance for me to be more for them. The confusion and guilt between wishing time would freeze, and fast-forward a few years is immense.

My favorite moment from 2016

I had a lot of them.

All with L and W.

But my favorite moment by far was the moment I got to tell my husband I was pregnant.

We tried for years to have L and were under the impression we would never have children without medical intervention.

So after a couple weeks of feeling really crummy, days before my first half marathon (and Mother’s Day) I was prepared to give my doc a call to see what was up. I knew they’d ask about dates of things so I took a pregnancy test anyways – just because things were getting back on track from breastfeeding.

The shock of all shocks was that it was positive!

Never in my life did I think that would happen. I literally fell to the ground crying and my sweet little 11 month old at the time came waddling up to me for the best hug of my life.

Until my husband came home – and we got to tell him the news.​ So here is the video of my favorite moment of 2016. 

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Happy New Year everyone and may 2017 bring you much joy and happiness! 

Just another manic Monday…

I know it’s not Monday, but this is how my Monday went this week.

Ever have just one of those days?

We started off great. Breakfast happened with minimal whining. Awesome. We cleaned. He didn’t break anything. Went down for a nap easily. We ran some errands.

All was well in Whoville.

And then the afternoon hit.

First I changed a diaper, didn’t wrap it up properly and dropped poop on my floor. Great. Just what I wanted to clean up.

Then the little terror destroyed everything we had cleaned up in the morning.

Next he found my wallet and hid some very important cards from me for a few hours.

And he tried to jump off the couch, causing me to dive to save him, laying on the bump – not very comfortable.

Oh, and he wanted dinner an hour earlier than I anticipated, so hot dogs for everyone instead!

Finally it was bath time which meant bedtime would be soon, because I was one tired mama.

Bath time went semi-smoothly. Mostly he threw toys out of the tub and hit me with them (while they were full of water). He squatted to grab another toy, chucked it at me. And it was a funny toy. One I hadn’t seen before. In the half second it took me to process that, wonder where the toy came from, I realized it wasn’t a toy. It was poop.

Yep I had a feces throwing monkey in the bath tub, not my sweet adorable son.

Stupid me was suddenly surprised, yelled OH SHIT (no pun intended at the moment) and scooped said monkey out of the tub to prevent any more throwing of the feces, or further contamination of this now clean little person.

Of course my yelling and scooping scared him so he sat in the corner crying while I scooped poop out of the tub.

Finally I get the poop out, take him to put on jammies and find out…he wasn’t done. Now there’s poop all over his lower half and the towel I had wrapped him in.

At this point I’d prefer to give up…but eventually get him cleaned up, dry and calm.

All without any wine to assist me, might I add.

So if you think you had a shitty day….remember this story. (yes yes I went for the cheese factor there).

Last Night Was a Good Night

There are some things that seem so distant, so unreachable, that you can never fully picture them.

You can’t visualize what something will be like because it seems so impossible.

But luckily for me, I had one of those magical, unreachable moments happen last night.

Every night when my husband is home, we put our sweet little guy to bed together.

Tonight I put him in jammies, we brushed his teeth and took him into his room. W read to him while I tried to snuggle him in his bed. Just like we do each night, but we swap, one reads while one stays.

But tonight L seemed like he wanted us both, so W laid down next to the bed so neither one of us had to leave him.

L wiggled and scooted around like he always does. But then…our Itty-Bitty started kicking. The strongest kicks I’ve felt with this pregnancy, high by my rib cage. I didn’t move for a moment, enjoying the happy baby.

I finally thought to get my husband’s attention, and he rested his hand there, and behold! A kick!  W hadn’t felt kicks like this yet. He’d been deployed almost my entire first pregnancy, coming home just days before the c-section. He’d felt movement then but not kicks like this.

This is never a position I thought I’d be in. Having my husband home is a novelty in itself it seems like. But cuddling with our sweet angel of a boy while he drifts off to sleep, while our second little miracle bounces around happily.

Thank goodness for these two little miracles we never thought we’d have.