I belong to a mom group on facebook. It’s a bunch of girls that I’ve never met, and it’s completely random how I found them, but in the past two years, they’ve become my go to for mom advice, venting and random kid stuff. They’ve been talking a lot about pictures lately. About making our husband take pictures more often, because most of the time we’re the one’s taking the pictures and then we’re never in them. And then we talk about not deleting those pictures even though we don’t like how we look in them. Because our kids won’t care, and all they’ll want is pictures of their mom.
Treat Yo Self
Just Me
Sometimes I feel like this past year has turned me from Caitlin into a mom, and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, being a mom is awesome, but every once in a while something happens that leaves me feeling a little funny. Someone will ask me a question I normally would know the answer to, and I realize I have no clue.
For instance, I went to a Red Sox game recently! There was a time where I'd go to 10-15 games a season, and lately I'm lucky when I average one. This was actually a pretty easy game to go to, but it still required a bit of planning. I went with my co-workers, and it was a 1:05 game. Tom worked from home so he could do daycare pickup, but I still managed to get home for bedtime.
Week Nights
When I say you love sleep like your dad, I mean it. Someone could honk their horn 4 blocks away and it would wake me from a dead sleep. On the other hand, the alarm can go off, I can turn the lights on, and still sometimes I have to hit Tom to wake him up.
Usually I try to put you down for a nap when we get home from daycare. You don't sleep enough there during the day, and in my mind more sleep is always better. You usually go down when we get home at 4:30, and hopefully wake up an hour later. When you hadn't woken up by 5:45, I decided to help things along. You see, I needed you to wake up so you could eat dinner and then go back to bed. It seems stupid but if you don't wake up, you'll get angry around 10pm and demand food. If I didn't give you the nap, you'd melt down. It's a delicate balance.
Not Worse, Just Different
A Peek at Life Now
At some point you realize that life goes on. Even though you feel like yours has completely turned upside down, and nothing will ever be normal again... you adjust. You go from thinking about keeping this tiny human alive 100% of your day, to 98%, to 95%... And you find you have room to start to care about a few of the things you did before he made his arrival.
A Jumble of Thoughts
I've been meaning to write something like this for a while, but have been struggling to put my thoughts together. And struggling with if I even wanted to share. And then once I think about sharing, the sheer amount of stuff I want to talk about comes pouring out.
Being a parent is hard. And I struggle a lot with if I'm editing too much to make it look all sunshine and rainbows, and leaving out some of the harder parts. Because the last thing I want to do is make someone else feel bad because they think that I have it all together when in reality I don't.
Some Videos of E
I love my pictures, but every once in a while you need a video. And sometimes the videos are so cute I don't want to wait until the end of the month to share them. So here's a couple of videos from this past weekend that capture our "right now."
The Day I left the House
When my doula came for her postpartum visit, I talked to her about how I didn't think I'd ever do anything this summer but sit on the couch with the baby. She told me to take two weeks to do absolutely nothing, and not feel guilty about it, and then to get up and start doing things.
Ever the overachiever, I took four. To be fair, I did leave the house and go on adventures when Tom was home, I just didn't do it alone. I guess it's easier to justify doing nothing when the day before we'd gone on a hike, or to a farmer's market, or shopping.