I cannot believe it has been 1 month since my last update. I am really slacking here. One month later, we now have a 6 month old, and we are settled into our house! How things can change in 1 months time. First things first, our little 6 month old…
I cannot believe how fast the last half a year has gone. It has been one of the most difficult and joyful 6 months of my life. Everyone talks about the happy part of their child life. Not everyone talks about the difficulties. We live in a society that always shares all the positives on social media. It makes it look like we all live perfect lives, then, when our lives aren’t perfect, we compare ourselves to everyone else and become discouraged. I am just as guilty of this as anyone else. I only post the happy, good things. Why would I want to admit to failures and struggles? I think if we did, we would all be better people though. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others, we need to admit our struggles, embrace our struggles. Because it is in our struggles that we grow and learn more about ourselves. We find we are resilient people. As a new mom, I have struggled with being good enough. I am always afraid of not doing the right thing. There are times when I know I should be happy, but I am not. And it is not that my life isn’t wonderful, it is, I have a husband who I love and adore, and who loves and adores me, I have a daughter who is so happy and joyful. It is just hard sometimes. I was never diagnosed with Post Partum Depression, but I feel that maybe I had a little bit of. The weeks and months get better and better as they go by. I feel like I am my more happy self again. I have always struggled with some down moments and anxiety even before having a baby, so I know I will always have difficult days, but not everyday feels like a struggle anymore. Ok, so I digressed big time. Back to my adorable, lovable baby girl 🙂
Alaina has grown so much this past month. She has learned so much. She is sitting up now without anything behind her in case she would fall. She still will topple over at times, but she is able to soften her fall. She is in love with her Noah’s Ark Little People toy. She loves the animals, she loves it the most when mom and dad make the animals noises. She laughs so hard. She loves tossing all the animals overboard. She also loves her xylephone. Her favorite part? Eating the stick you use to hit the keys. She has no interest in using the stick for what it is intended for. Someone is teething…everything goes in her mouth. One of these days she is going to chop on my finger and there is going to be a tooth there. Not lying, I am not really looking forward to that moment in time. She loves her stuffed animals as well. She will snuggle them…and try to eat them. And the bigger the better. She loves the stuffed animals that are just as big as her. She is also getting so tall, she can barely sit under her play gym any more. Her head almost hits the top. It was really funny, the other day, she was sitting under the play gym, she looked up and realized the mirror was right by her face. She kept looking at it and making faces and laughing. This went on for a good 10 minutes. Seeing her personality bloom is one of the best things about being a mom. I get to see my little girl turn into herself.
She is still a champ when it comes to sleeping. She continues to sleep though the night. There is one new thing that she has started the kinda drives this light sleeping mama crazy…I swear she sleep talks. The other night she was talking in her crib on and off for about 2 hours straight. Just when I thought she was finished, she would start again. It is adorable for the first little while, but when it goes on for hours…it gets old fast. When I finally fell asleep and she woke up for good the next morning, one of the first things I said to Jason was, “she is lucky she is cute.” She is worth the sleepless nights. And she spoils us with how well she sleeps.
She is also so close to crawling…like sooooooo close. She is able to get on all fours, she can get her legs to move, but hasn’t quite figured out her arms have to move too. She will rock back and forth and then faceplant. It is kinda funny. She gets so mad that she can’t get to where she wants to go though. She keeps trying to go forward but can’t, then she has her little meltdown, face buried into the carpet arms and legs flailing meltdown. I can’t help but laugh. It is the cutest little tantrum. She has got moving backwards and sideways mastered. When you lay her down or sit her on the floor, 5 minutes later she will most likely not be in the same place she started. Hence the buying a baby gate this past week. It is fun to watch those wheels in her head turn though. You can tell she is thinking so hard trying to get it all figured out.
Now to our house (goodness that sounds so good)! We originally went through the house on Sept 7, our offer was in on Sept 10, offer accepted Sept 11, closed Sept 28, moved Sept 29 and 30. It was such a whirlwind, but such an amazing experience. We could not be happier. Alaina can squeal, cry, laugh and we don’t have to worry that we are bothering our neighbors (even though they were amazing and could care less if they heard her). Our backyard is to die for. We got the roof re-done, the trim around our outside windows painted, and our front door and side door into the garage painted AQUA!!! The house is officially feels like it is our home now. We made it our own. We have a few more things that need to be done on the outside to make is look perfect, but it is so close to being done. Some of you might be wondering how I convinced my husband to paint our doors aqua. Well, it involves letting him buy a U of M flag to put on our porch. Sometimes things are all about compromise 🙂 Now our life is waiting for all the leaves to fall in our backyard. Almost all the leaves have dropped in the front yard, it hasn’t even started yet in the backyard. I think this cool week ahead will cause them all to drop quick. It is amazing how doing yard work is much more enjoyable when you actually own your own house. It makes you feel like you are accomplishing something. The one thing I am looking forward to the most is decorating for Christmas. I keep coming up with so many ideas of how to decorate both the inside and the outside of our house. We will see if I can make my ideas come to fruition.
I also have an update on craft night. Our craft night was filled up almost after the first church service, it was completely filled up shortly after the second service got out. And people are on a waiting list! Nobody at our church signs up on time. They usually wait until the last minute. I even had someone from another church contact me to see if they could get a supply list so they can do a craft night at there church as well. I can’t wait until the craft night is here. I have decided too that I am going to make the “joy” signs (and some other things as well) for a craft fair next year! This is something on my 30 before 30 list….be in a craft fair. I am so excited, yet so nervous because I am afraid of it being a failure. We will see how it all goes. My goal is to do it next fall, it might be 2 falls away though, depending on how quickly I can get them made. They will come in all different colors. I will keep you all updated!
living gracefully 