Portrait Project / January

This month I had a ton of pictures of Ryder (which is expected), quite a few of Claire and hardly any of Anaya. I'm going to have to make a special effort to actually get a good "portrait" of Anaya since she is here so little during the month.

My Babies

My wee little babies on the days they were born...


It's fun to look back at the pictures of Claire when she was a newborn. I have hardly any pictures from the hospital of her sleeping - she almost always had her eyes open. And I have hardly any pictures from the hospital of Ryder with his eyes open because he was almost always asleep - and he still sleeps A LOT.

Claire at 5

Claire is FIVE! It's hard to believe that it has really been five years.


I'm amazed at how much she has changed in just the past year. Her speech has improved so much and when she is playing with her toys, she is having them "talk" to each other. Since a lot of her toys are related to tv shows, she sometimes will have her toys act out an episode that she has seen recently. She is very independent and once she makes up her mind, there is no changing it. She can recognize lots of sight words already. She wants to tell us about life and tries so hard to express how she feels or what she wants to do. When she & I come home from somewhere and we walk into the house, so yells "Daddy, we're home!"

I asked Claire about some of her favorite things:

What is your favorite color? Pink
What is your favorite food? French Fries
What is your favorite treat? Ice Cream
What is your favorite movie? LaLaLoopsy Videos on YouTube
What is your favorite tv show? All of Them (Peppa Pig, LaLaLoopsy, Paw Patrol, Octonauts, Dora, etc)
What is your favorite book? Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
What is your favorite animal? Red Panda, Elephant and Zebra (or All Of Them!)
What is your favorite song? Built For War by Megadeth
What is your favorite place to visit? Playground
What is your favorite toy? LaLaLoopsy Dolls
What is your favorite stuffed animal? Bear-Bear & Red Panda
Who is your best friend? Ethan

Some of her favorite phrases right now are:
...a little bit... : in reference to her wanting to do something that we have said no to.
I'm MAD : usually accompanied by a foot stomp
go away...right now! : when she wants to do something by herself.

Hello Ryder

I've mentioned him in almost all the posts I've written recently. So let me introduce you to our newest family member.

This is Ryder:


I've learned some things this time around that I didn't learn with Claire. As far as a birth experience, Claire was induced, Ryder was not. Having your water break at home...is a huge mess. When you're 38.5 weeks pregnant and your water breaks as you lay down to go to bed, your will probably think something like, "How in the world do I get to the bathroom and then out of the house without making an even bigger mess?" Then you will have to call your husband on your cell phone (which is hopefully within reach of your bed), because leaving a trail of amniotic fluid everywhere would be gross. Towels, lots of towels, are the answer to most of your problems.

I couldn't actually remember my doctor's instructions about what to do if my water broke. To be honest, I thought I would go way over my due date and end up being induced again. So I called Justin (he was in the basement) and pretty much said, "I need you now, my water just broke". Then as he contemplated how to clean up the mess, I called my mom because she was the one taking me to the hospital. She'd been over earlier that evening, apparently she should've just stayed. Then I got a shower and my mom showed up and we went to the ER (because it was about 11:30pm at that point).

My water broke at 11:00pm...we got checked in around 11:45pm...Ryder was born at 1:53am. Let me tell you how glad I am that we didn't wait any longer to go in. I just barely got an epidural and by the time I did get an epidural, I could barely hold still for it since I was having so many contractions. Which was a bit surprising because I hadn't had a single contraction until at least 15 minutes after my water broke.

So, Ryder was born at 1:53am. He was 8lbs and almost 2 oz. I think he is the most adorable little baby boy in the whole world (but I could be a bit biased). He has reddish hair and dark blue/gray eyes (although they still could change to brown like Claire & Anaya's).

Expect to see lots of this little boy. Especially for the next 6 weeks (well, 4.5 weeks at this point) while I'm home on maternity leave.

Day in the Life - January 20th

Last year, Ali Edwards did a thing called Day In The Life, where on the last day of each month she took more pictures than normal to show what a normal day in their life was like. Since it was always on the last day of the month, sometimes it was a weekend, sometimes a weekday, sometimes a special event, sometimes just a normal day. I did not participate.

This year, I saw that Megan at the Nerd Nest was planning to do Day In The Life on the 15th. I had liked seeing how other people were doing and thought using the same day as a blog that I follow would help me remember to actually do it each month. But then I went into labor late on the 14th and Ryder was born on the 15th and I didn't really want to do Day In The Life while I was at the hospital. Instead, I did on Monday, January 20th.


We got up...made coffee...started getting ready for the day. It was Martin Luther King Jr Day so Claire didn't have school. And I'm on maternity leave, so there wasn't really much getting ready so much as just getting moving.


Claire played the iPad for a little while and I waited for Ryder to wake up. This baby LOVES being swaddled. My swaddling skills aren't all that great.


Claire wanted to play some "game" involving wrapping and unwrapping her lalaloopsy dolls and pretending they are birthday presents. We wrap them in some of her blankets. Ryder eventually woke up after peeing out his diaper. Then it was time for me to fed him - which I did not actually take a picture of because no one really needs to see that, yes it is a part of our life right now (a big part) but I don't really want to take a picture of the process.


Ryder went back to sleep and I did some laundry. The first three or four days he was home pretty much all he did was sleep. It was just a matter of where he would be sleeping since I tried to put him down for naps in a variety of places so he doesn't get picky about ONLY sleeping in his _______.


We went to Ryder's 1-week check up. He's doing good and is almost back up to his birth weight. He's actually only 5 days old. More napping in the newborn napper that came with our pack-in-play. I love that thing so much. Also, he can sleep through just about anything, including Claire stomping her feet and throwing a fit because she isn't allowed to do something.


Claire had gone to the zoo with my mom for most of the day and she brought her back around 3:45. Ryder was napping but I was holding him, so we played with her LaLaLoopsys in her room.


Claire played the iPad some more before bedtime - with Bear-Bear on her head for some reason. And I carried Ryder around because he is just so small and cute and sweet.

I will most likely continue to do my Day In The Life on the 20th of each month. I'm sure the months when the 20th is on a weekday my days will look different since I spend so much of the day at work, but hopefully this will still be an interesting look at our lives throughout the year. And who knows, maybe I can get Justin on board and having him at least take cell phone pictures of things going on around the house while I'm gone.

Also, Justin was around on January 20th...I'm not sure why I didn't take any pictures of him besides the pure and simple fact that he doesn't like it when I do. Maybe next month I'll try to make sure he is featured...even if he doesn't want to be.

Around Here...

Not Quite as Expected

I have a nice little post all written, just waiting for a picture, about Claire's birthday which was back on the 16th. But then life happened. And in this case, I mean I gave birth to the most precious and adorable baby boy EVER on January 15th. Which means the post about Claire's birthday...didn't happen. We were planning to celebrate her birthday, on her birthday. But instead, I spent her birthday in the hospital remembering how to take care of a newborn. And now I have two kiddos whose birthdays are right next to each other (the 15th & 16th)...during month after Christmas.

This baby, Ryder, is so much different than Claire was as a baby. He sleeps, a lot. I'm not complaining and I'm not bragging because I do not want to ruin it. It is a blessing. And he can sleep thru just about anything. We have yet to find anything that he can't sleep through. Vacuum cleaner - no problem. Claire stomping her feet and yelling - not an issue. Grinding coffee - that's okay too. Cell phones & doorbells ringing - doesn't faze him at all.

So, soon, I will post about Claire turning 5. And about Ryder being born. But right now, I'm just learning about my new little guy and figuring out our new normal. :)

Projects 2014

Hey look, it's already the 9th day of the New Year and yeah, life has already gotten away from me. Why? 1) I started watching a new TV show. Well, new to me. USA's Suits. It's on Amazon Instant and I just signed up for a Prime Trial right before Christmas so I have to watch it all now before my trial is over. 2) I'm so overwhelmed with everything that has to be done before the boy's arrival + normal life stuff that I just kind of shut down for a few days. Seriously, I got a Silhouette for Christmas and it is still in it's box from Amazon.

Portrait Project

I've seen this basic idea online for quite a while: take a weeky/monthly/whatever portrait of your child (or yourself/spouse/etc).

I'm not even attempting for weekly...that would just be setting myself up for failure. I would like to try for monthly. I'm planning that anyways for the new baby, the trick would just be getting one of Claire and one of Anaya. I would also like to get at least quarterly portraits of Justin & I. I'm also not sure how...professional-ish...I want the portraits to be. For example, I got some pretty good shots of Claire playing in the snow last week, those could count as her "portrait", but they weren't planned. This is definitely still an idea in progress.

Operation: Clean House

Our house needs some help. Mostly because Justin & I seemed to have missed the memo about how to take care of it and clean it. And we can't agree on who's responsibility anything is, so everything just piles up until it either annoys someone (usually me) or someone that cares is coming over (like my parents) and then we do a fast pick up and do whatever amount of cleaning can be accomplished before they arrive. (Yes, my mom reads this, and I'm pretty sure she already knows that about us). But there are some parts of our house, like the master bedroom & bath that no one but us EVER see and so with everything else going on they just get pushed farther and farther down the list of places to clean. We've lived here EIGHT years, you'd think we would've figured this out by now. But we haven't.

Project Life 2014

Another year, another project life album (or two). I've already bought one album, I went with a yellow stripe one. I probably should've bought two because they were 40% off, but I didn't and it will really annoy me if I end up with a different album for the second part of the year. I'm still working on making my title page, mostly my album is still empty except for a few blank page protectors.