The best kind of busy

This season of my life is so incredibly sweet that sometimes, in complete awe, I just have to stop and look around. I want to remember it all. 

The past few years have been a whole lot of busy, busy, busy, rush, rush, rush. Working 50+ hours a week, one or two grad classes a semester, summer sessions, and summer school mixed with Jeff's 60+ hour work week and both of his baseball teams, while still balancing family and home life. Sometimes it felt like we were just getting through the week then slogging through the weekend, and for what? In no way will I say that my life didn't have purpose, because it always has, in so many ways, but my purpose has completely changed. 

I have always given so much of myself to my students, throwing myself into my school work and taking too much of it home with me, physically and mentally. But now, as I find myself going into my third month away from the classroom, I have found a new purpose. If I'm being honest, as much as I've always wanted to be a stay at home mom, part of me wondered if I would feel lost without my students, my creativity, the energy of the classroom. I always knew that being a mother was the ultimate goal in my life but in a society that seems to glamorize a busy, overworked lifestyle, I wondered if staying home with my baby would set me apart, even if it is only for a season.

And yet, I am busy. My life is full. It is rewarding. But most days, I don't get dressed until after noon time and when I glance in the mirror, I see that my hair is ten kinds of crazy, my shirt is all sorts of stretched out and stained from being pulled and spit on, and good Lord, my pedicure, if you can call it that, is in dire need. I always felt so accomplished with a good pedicure but I guess my tune has changed. 

Some days, when Jeff gets home from work, I see him glance over at the sink, which is still full, or at the dozen dog toys strewn across the floor, and at my coffee cup still sitting next to me while Ellen is on at 4:00, and I know what he's thinking. Still, as I look down at my daughter, who is nuzzled up to me, filling her belly and looking into my eyes, I know that the day's greatest accomplishment is that 12 pound bundle of love sitting in my lap, smiling, happy, healthy. Even when it doesn't look like it from the outside, I am busy all day. Rocking, shushing, snuggling, singing, swaddling, kissing, changing, reading, walking, kissing, bouncing, tummy-timing, and more kissing. I am so busy. My life is so full. It is so rewarding. 

I don't ever want to lose the person I was before I was someone's Mommy; the person who was showered and out the door by 6:30am and could get 25 kids converting fractions and loving it by 8:00am, but in this short, sweet season, I want to enjoy my new busy. When I feel flustered trying to switch the laundry, take out the trash, wipe down the counters, sweep the floor, so that it looks like I "did something", I realize that I am "doing something" all day long. And on the best days, I am showered and dressed, using my teacher voices to read stories, with the hum of the dishwasher and washing machine in the background, a tired dog at my side and a happy baby in my lap. 

If I don't get to return a phone call, or update my blog, or check the mail, it will still be okay. If I don't get to the dishes or put away the laundry, it will be there tomorrow. At this point, I don't know how long I will get to be home all day with my sweet baby, being the only one who can meet her needs. She will only be this little once and I know that I will blink and be back in the classroom, up late preparing lessons, rushing to get dinner on the table so I can post online for a grad class. For now, I will enjoy being the best kind of busy I can be, because I know too well, that babies don't keep.

Mother, O' Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth.

Hang out the washing, make up the bed,

Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,

Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek - peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew,

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo.

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?

Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,

But children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

~ Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Noelle's First Halloween!

As soon as I knew I would be having a Fall baby, I immediately began thinking about Halloween costumes. Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays and it would be Noelle's first holiday. Jeff and I always have some sort of ridiculous couples costume so we knew we needed a family costume this year, especially since it was Noelle's first. Thankfully, Jeff doesn't think this is silly and we usually start plotting and making our costumes early in the season.

When I started looking for baby costumes, I ran into two issues. Halloween costumes for small babies tend to be sized 0-6 months and expensive. I think a six month size range is pretty ridiculous, especially considering our little peanut is still wearing some of her newborn clothes. I'm also not a fan of spending a lot of money on a costume that will be worn once and most likely be way too big. Of course, regardless of this, I still began to stress out that she needed the perfect costume. On Halloween, my niece comes up to trick or treat in our neighborhood and I knew that Noelle would be staying home to pass out candy with Daddy, since it was supposed to be rainy. The weekend after Halloween we had a costume party to go to, so I knew that she would eventually need a costume. It was the perfect recipe for stress for a type-A, first time mama.

It all worked out and our little pumpkin had a great first Halloween.

Our bigger pumpkin isn't the biggest fan of being dressed up. He has his 'Mom, you're embarrassing me' look totally down.

Daddy is the sweetest and carved a very special pumpkin for our girl.

And our first Halloween as a family of 3 was a success! Just a couple of farmers with our sweet chicken.

We have called Noelle, little chicken, since she was born so naturally it was the best costume choice.

Have you seen a cuter chicken?! Doubt it!

This was such an easy costume to make. I found some DIY chicken costume tutorials online, but again they all seem to be geared towards bigger kids and use feather boas. Let me just say that feather boas are the most annoying things ever. I bought one to try and there are feathers everywhere just from having it in the bag and I didn't even take the tag off of it. So I improvised a bit so that my chicken would be comfortable and I will be returning the boa. I used a hot glue gun to glue single feathers to the front of a long sleeve onesie. I originally used spray adhesive but it left a heavy chemical smell on the onesie and I couldn't have her hanging out in that all night. So now I have two feathered onesies, live and learn. I bought a pack of plain headbands and used the white one to glue red feathers to. I actually used a peacock feather that had a wire in it, removed the peacock feathers, keeping just the red ones, and used red felt to position it and hot glue it to the headband. My mom picked up orange pants and also gave her Halloween socks, which we reused for this costume. SO simple! The whole thing took less than 15 minutes to put together and cost under $10.

Noelle's first holiday was a success! Even though time needs to slow down, next year will be so much fun when she can walk around to collect candy that her mom & dad will eat. Hope your Halloween was just as fun and that you are getting to eat all your kid's candy!

A perfect Fall weekend!

Anyone who knows me knows that Fall is my absolute favorite. Like most people, Jeff and I go apple picking every year and we try to pick a different orchard each time. We are so lucky that in New England there are SO many choices and hope to keep trying new ones until we run out or find a favorite. This year, we were kind of up in the air about whether or not we would go because we weren't sure when we were going to have the baby and how I would be feeling afterwards. Even though I wasn't really sure about it, I was holding onto hope that we would make it because as much as I look forward to apple picking every year, I always looked forward to apple picking with my babies even more. 

This weekend, we made our annual trip to a new local orchard, as a family of four (no cats allowed). It was a small orchard that allowed dogs so we were excited to avoid the crowds to let our babies experience their first time apple picking. I was a little nervous when we first pulled in because there were only two or three cars there and I thought we made a mistake and that it was just a farm stand. Instead, we found the cheapest prices, nicest people, and an almost empty orchard with the BEST apples we have ever picked. Seriously. The last weekend of picking is usually a pretty lousy selection but almost every apple was practically the size of a small pumpkin and there were so many.

Of course, our little pumpkin slept the whole time. LOVE my Moby Wrap btw.

Our bigger pumpkin enjoyed sampling the local fare.

He was so excited just to be there.

Picking out pumpkins with my babies. Rocky had to be held this tight because he pounced on every pumpkin like it was a ball. He was in his glory.

Since we were practically the only ones there, I started thinking that we wouldn't get a family picture and really, isn't that half the point? Hah! No, but really. Thankfully, my sweet husband is well-trained at this point and he set up the camera on a timer and propped it up on a pumpkin to take my favorite picture, ever.

My sweet family.

This is my happy place. It was such a perfect day. I can't wait for so many more experiences with my little family.

The best three weeks

I am in complete awe that I've been a mama for three weeks. Time was absolutely standing still the last few days that I was pregnant and waiting for my baby to arrive and now it's moving so fast I'm afraid to blink. These past three weeks have truly been some of the best times of my life. Even through the exhaustion, endless stream of visitors, and roller coaster of emotions, I just can't stop staring at my sweet baby and feeling so lucky that she's mine. I love watching her make faces and watching her sleep. I love watching her Daddy interact with her. I love that Rocky takes his role as big brother very seriously and already loves her so much. I love snuggling up on the couch with my little family and knowing that all I ever need is right there.

At our last doctor's appointment, when Noelle was one week old, after losing a bit of weight she then surpassed her birth weight, going from her birth weight of 8 lbs 4 oz to 7 lbs 12.8 oz to 8 lbs, 7.4 oz. I still can't believe that I had an 8 lb baby! As chunky as she seems, she's also such a peanut, and getting good use out of her newborn clothes, that I wasn't sure she would fit into. She is such a good baby! She hardly cries and just makes little noises when she wakes up. She's so alert when she's awake and her awake time is getting longer and longer. Although, the past few nights she decided that her awake time should be from 9pm to midnight. As sweet as she is, this sleepy mama's not a fan of that time frame. She does sleep pretty well, going for 3-3.5 hours at night and she goes right back to sleep after eating. During the day she seems to sleep better when she's being held, so now I move the Rock & Play downstairs with me so I can get something done since she sleeps well in that and I just wake her every 2-3 hours to eat. The hardest part has been breast feeding. She nurses well and has right from birth but the first week and a half I was so sore and I feel like all I do is nurse her. Especially during the day when she goes every two-ish hours between feedings. Breast feeding deserves a whole post of its own but that's been the biggest challenge.

Jeff went back to work after about a week and a half and it definitely takes a lot longer to get anything done without him home. He has been such a huge help and has made it very easy for me to just focus on loving on and feeding Noelle. Now that he's not home in the morning, I've been trying to go back to sleep after Noelle's 7am-ish feeding so that I can catch up on sleep but it's hard starting the day at 10am. Especially trying to eat breakfast, feed and change her, and throw a shower in there. We're doing lots of laundry, too, since her newborn clothes are limited. It's amazing how short the day becomes when you're taking care of a newborn. I am on her schedule which doesn't leave time for much else, besides staring at her. I do a lot of that.

As for me, I'm feeling really good. After labor, I was pretty sore all over, like I just ran a marathon, but that went away pretty quickly. My belly went down much faster than I thought it would, it's just kinda mushy. I thought it would be weird to not have a big belly anymore but it is nice to be getting back to my old self, which actually only took less than a week. I can bend over again! My body definitely needs some work but seriously, the breast feeding diet is the way to go. I am down about 30-32lbs, which is 8-10 lbs less than my pre-pregnancy weight. I definitely had/have weight to lose but it was amazing how it just melted right off. This was the last thing I expected, especially after struggling with my weight for the past couple of years. I'm trying to get walks in but that's easier said than done, especially by myself. I do plan on doing a post completely dedicated to weight loss so that it will motivate me to keep going.

There are so many things I don't want to forget about this precious time.

• The way that Noelle scrunches up her face like a pirate right before she starts nursing.
• The way that the top of her head smells and even her little piggies.
• The way that she looks into my eyes like she knows exactly who I am.
• How sweet her Daddy is with her and how natural fatherhood came to him. There is nothing more precious than watching him interact with her.
• How she wraps her little fingers around mine when she's nursing.
• How she fits in the teeny space in my lap.
• Her sweet little smiles while she sleeps.
• How she crosses her little hands under her chin when she sleeps on my chest.
• The little humming noises she makes when she's nursing and wide awake.
• How sweet my Rocky is with her.
• The way Jeff suddenly has 10 sets of eyes when he's driving with with a baby on board.
• How my heart skips a beat when he says things like "my girls" when he asks about us.
• How many times a day we both look at her and say, "Can you believe she's ours?" or "Look at her now!" when she moves slightly, or "Isn't she the most precious thing in the whole world?"
• How complete I feel when I'm snuggled up with my little family.

Motherhood is everything I thought it would be and more.

As much as I want to document and share everything, I am trying to soak up every moment with my sweet girl and usually don't have both hands free at the same time. (I actually started this post a week ago!) I am taking a bajillion pictures but I'm suddenly having a hard time with the idea of putting my baby's pictures on the internet. I haven't decided what I'm going to do but in the meantime, I'm going to be limiting her pictures on the blog. I know I'm not a huge blogger but it's just weighing heavily on me. I do hope to get her birth story written and may post monthly updates with regular family stuff but for right now, it's really just hard to post anything with one hand :)

Thank you for your sweet comments, texts, and emails. We are so blessed to have so many people who are already so in love with our little girl. I also feel so lucky to have so many sweet friends that I've made through blogging who are genuinely excited for us and check in with us to see how we're doing. Thank you! Thank you! xoxox

Introducing...

Our sweet baby girl... Noelle Mary

Born on October 1st at 3:00pm.

8lbs, 4 oz, 21.5 inches of complete perfection.

We are doing well and trying to soak up every moment with our precious little girl.

Looking back... 41 weeks of bliss!

Being pregnant has definitely been the most amazing thing that I have ever done. Week after week, I am in awe over what my body can do and how it is capable of not only creating life but nourishing it, keeping it safe, and caring for it in a way that I could never understand. We were so blessed that we got to experience all of the joys of pregnancy. I know that not all women have this privilege and that makes it even more special to know that I was chosen to take on this responsibility and that my body was able to handle it. I have also loved documenting everything to always remember how special this time was.


Here's a look back at my pregnancy, over the past 41 weeks.

We found out we were expecting on January 14, 2013. 

Jeff insisted I take multiple tests to be sure.

The very first picture of our little bean.

Seeing the heartbeat flicker at only 7 weeks was absolutely phenomenal.

My first bump picture before there was ever a 'bump'

We entered the second trimester and announced our pregnancy to the world.

Soon enough the belly started growing.

During the second trimester, we found out that we were having a little girl!

We had a fabulous gender reveal party with our close family.

In the third trimester, we also had the most beautiful baby shower.

And the belly kept growing and growing.

I have had an amazing support system from the very first day 

and there are SO many people who are already so in love with our daughter.

The biggest support has been my amazing husband, who will be the best Daddy.

He even shared some of his experience here and here.

Here we are now, 41 weeks pregnant, about to meet our baby, and I am so, so lucky.

What an amazing journey this has been!

41 week Bumpdate! The LAST Bumpdate!

This week: I am one week overdue. Baby girl is starting to overstay her welcome and this mama isn't sure how to feel about it. I love feeling her wiggle around in my belly, knowing that my time with her there is limited, but I can't wait to have her in my arms. We have also been sent to Labor & Delivery twice now for non-stress testing and monitoring and we're ready to go back one more time and not be sent home.

How far along? 41 weeks!

Baby's size: Baby P is the size of a jack fruit! Still? I'd like to argue that Baby P is the size of a baby that was supposed to be born a week ago. 

Total weight gain: 22lbs. Down one pound from last week. I'm still blaming my fluid retention since it's serious, y'all. Still.. 22 lbs is way less than I ever thought I would gain and even less than what my doctor recommended but he was still very happy with my weight gain. I'm hoping to have a Biggest Loser style weight loss this week, too :)

Maternity clothes? Yup and I'm over them. I'm busting out of them and wearing the same outfits over and over and over.

Stretch marks: I'm officially marked up on my inner & front thighs, both hips, and lower belly. It is a sad, sad thing but I'm just hoping they will fade enough to make me feel okay about it.

Sleep: Mostly well, actually. Getting up to pee every couple of hours is annoying but I always fall right back to sleep.

Best moment this week: Planning our induction and this week our family will have a new little girl. We also had our last date night as a baby-free couple! 

What I miss: I am really trying to embrace the last of my pregnancy and what I miss most now is wearing my wedding rings. Oh, and wearing real shoes. If you even knew the trouble it took to get me in my Uggs, you wouldn't believe it. I'll be glad to never see a pair of flip flops again!

Movement: ALL over, ALL the time. Except when she's supposed to move for my biophysical profile and she doesn't, so they send us to labor & delivery where she moves like a maniac for two hours straight. Yeah, you can read about that here. 

Food cravings: We went to Bertucci's and Cheesecake Factory this weekend. Both were places I just NEEDED to eat from. Not even sure if it was a craving or just knowing that I won't be pregnant forever so I better enjoy it all while I can.

Food aversions: I didn't want Chipotle. Something might be wrong with me.

Gender: Girl! AND Jeff asked the ultrasound tech to confirm again! haha 

Belly button - in or out? Out

Wedding rings - on or off? Off :( 

Symptoms: Everything you expect when you're a week overdue, but overall, I really do feel great. Not working has made a HUGE difference in how my body is responding to everything.

Labor signs: Crampy but nothing else. My cervix was still 'unfavorable' at last check a couple of days ago but we are moving forward with induction because time's up! I am being induced Monday night, as in tonight!

Mood: Excited, nervous, anxious, ready, not ready. I'm all over the place. I can't believe that I am finally going to have this baby! I'm also worried about leaving Rocky for a few days :( I know he will be taken care of fabulously by a good friend but I'm still sad and worried that he won't know why we just sent him off somewhere for a few days.

Looking forward to: I cannot wait to meet my baby girl!! We are headed to the hospital tonight and it will be a long couple of days but we are ready. I cannot wait until she's in my arms!

Can I ask a favor? Please pray for us. Pray that my body, and baby, responds well to the induction and for a smooth delivery. Pray for a healthy baby girl. And pray for Jeff and me, as we adjust to our new normal. Thank you!!