S'mores Life

Since I wrote Clara Hope's birth story six months after her birth, it wasn't quite as fresh in my mind. I'm hoping starting this two weeks after Haddie's birth might help me include some more details since as we all know, pregnancy brain doesn't disappear once the baby is born. We have mom brains now and details literally just slip out of it. I'm not sure exactly how, but I know there must be a very scientific explanation for it. ;) Also, here are my thoughts after Clara's birth story was written on what I would like to do the same or differently with my second child's birth. Obviously, we decided on a natural birth center birth with midwives. This is a picture of me at 39 weeks, on Friday, December 6. We went to the Imaginarium with Clara that morning. I sat on a bench and watched Ian and her play half the time because I was just so.dang.tired. I'm wearing the same dress in my 9 months pregnant picture with Clara. I was much more swollen wit...

So I didn't hop on the daily thankfulness posts on facebook for a couple of reasons. Mostly, laziness and forgetfulness. Too much pressure for me to remember to most something specific every day. Also, because I post enough pictures of my daughter and crazy status updates to annoy my facebook friends as it is, I didn't want to make it onto more "hide users" lists. But this way I can still list 30 things I'm thankful for on my own time and people can choose whether or not to read them! :) 1. My family - just gotta get this one outta the way, right? My husband, my daughter, my parents and my siblings. They are all pretty much the best ever and exactly what I need in my life, whether I know it at the time or not. ;) The majority of the time I even want all of them in my life too! WIN WIN! 2. Tums. (I'm 38.5 weeks pregnant. Enough said.) 3. Facebook. Stupid, I know, and silly - but when you have friends and family spread out all over the country as muc...

Ok so I took a brief hiatus from blogging. Or a not so brief one. But do you know what happens with you start blogging when your baby is just learning to sit up? Nothing. That's right...you can type while your baby chews on your toes or plays with a teether or even type one handed while you feed your baby. Do you know what happens with you try to blog with a toddler? Lots of things. Most of them unsafe and involving calling poison control or unclogging whatever has made it's way down the toilet, that does not belong there. Yeah, we have a toddler now. She's two. TWO. She spelled it out for you in case I wasn't clear. (Laura Reeve Photography)  I cry a lot about this. Not because I'm so emotional that she's two (although yes, I have had those moments also) but mostly because she makes me cry - have you heard the phrase terrible twos? Yeah, we are in the throes of them. Last week I had a meltdown and she stopped what she was doing (beating me) and ran into...

Since Clara changes so much so quickly, I have decided to continue to do "A Day in the Life Of..." posts every few months. It's interesting for me to look back and see how much life has changed from even three or four months ago. It's interesting for you to...well, I'm not so sure any of this is interesting to you. It's never stopped me before, though. A Thursday in February 2013 6:00 a.m.  Clara wakes up. Every time she wakes up before 7:30 (which is basically like 95% of our days), I get false hope that maybe she'll fall back asleep if I bring her into my bed. So I pick her up, and bring her in to my bed. She proceeds to semi-cuddle, do gymnastics, head butt me and laugh at her pacifiers for the next hour. But hey, at least I got to lay down that whole time. 7:00 a.m.  Breakfast. Clara eats half a banana, applesauce, some cheese (yes, for breakfast - trying to make sure she gets her dairy intake!), milk, and then proceeds to eat half of my breakfas...

I caved. You know those Gymboree/My Gym/Rollie Pollies type places? I was all, I'm a SAHM. We're on a limited income. I don't need that for my toddler - we're Alaskans, I take her to the park in 20 degree weather and get death stares from other moms in parkas. Oh wait, no other moms are there - it's too cold, and the parkas come out at 45 degrees. Or, I thought - I can come up with ideas to do at home from pinterest or facebook or something. I was lying to myself. Do you know what toddlers do? Toddlers RUN. A lot. Do I look like I run, a lot? Don't answer that. The point is, C NEEDS Gymboree like I need chocolate chip cookies, which is obviously a lot. My elastic waist pants agree. Because after five seconds of painting the sidewalk with water and tearing all the books off the bookshelf (not found on pinterest, that was a self-discovered activity = gold star) and forty-seven thousand hours of pinning toddler activities on pinterest that made me feel...