Can We Really "Do It All"?

Where did all those summer days go? In some ways each day was just like the one before and the one after, and yet but each one was so special. How can it be that my little girl has been moving around, exploring, and playing on her own for over four months now? How can it be that the whole summer went by, all those walks, the sunshine, the easy afternoons cuddling my daughter and nursing her to sleep, then after nap time waiting expectantly for "Daddy" to get home, then dinner together, then a quiet evening or perhaps another walk or outing... The whole summer went by like that, and now here we are - it is fall, and we are just a month away from a first birthday party.

What was I doing with all of those days?

I look at my beautiful daughter these days, and I am in awe of how smart she is, how well she understands me, how much she loves life. She is such a happy, energetic little girl, and I wish I could see the world through her eyes. I spend so much of my day with her, and yet looking back, I wonder how many of those summer days with her slipped by me while I worked on getting things done in spite of her.

When I'm Hard to Live With {Transparent Tuesday}

Today I'm joining Mel at Our Growing Roots for Transparent Tuesday, a link-up where we can take the opportunity to cast aside the filters we use to depict our lives as always being perfect. My family is in the midst of moving this week, and I think the chaos and stress that goes on during a move is a great example of life's imperfections. So here it is - a transparent, honest look at what moving week is like in our family.

I encourage you to follow this button back to Mel's blog and check out the other posts for the week!

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Just two days from now we will be on the road, moving from our seminary apartment back to Michigan, our home state. We are excited for the next year, thrilled to have the opportunity to live near family and friends, and we cannot wait to meet our new vicarage congregation. There is so much to look forward to, but at the same time, the weeks surrounding a big move can be very stressful and bring out the worst in us.

Shortly after we found out where we would be spending the next year I wrote a post about why I love moving. I do love moving... theoretically, and I don't take back what I wrote in that post, but practically, being in the midst of moving week is much messier than that. I love moving because it gives me the opportunity to simplify my life, to give in to my organized, labeling, obsessive self, and to get rid of things that I don't want or use. But sometimes it feels like moving just creates chaos, messes, stress, and tension in the home.

The "Easy Phase"... Parents of Newborns, It Does Exist

"It gets better."

I heard that so much those first few months of caring for a newborn. I hoped that it would be true. At one point I think my mother told me that January was the month when it would start to get better (Baby Girl turned 3 months old in January). Somewhere along the line I latched onto that promise. There were some nights when I felt like I hadn't slept at all where I would sit there holding my baby counting down the weeks until January. Those first few months are so overwhelming. You feel like you can't get anything done. You feel like your baby will never sleep on her own. You feel like every minute of your baby's life they need your attention.

Those first few months are also so incredibly special, even though they are hard. If you are lucky, you don't have to work for much of that time, and you do get to spend so much of your day holding your baby. Having a baby changes everything about your life, how you view your family, how you view the world. It is truly a blessing and an amazing experience. By no means would I give up those first few months, no matter how hard they were! But that doesn't mean they were any easier just because they were also wonderful.

The Reverse To-Do List

Time goes so fast! It feels like it was just the other day that my now almost 7-month-old was a tiny, squishy newborn!

November 2013

April 2014

What happened?

Oh, those first three months... wow, were they crazy. I remember everyone would try to tell me, "It will get better" and I would push for specifics. "How will it get better?" "When will she sleep for 3 hours straight? For 4 hours straight? Through the night?" "Will I ever get anything else besides feeding and changing a baby done again?" "When did you start cooking again?" Whew!

New Beginnings and Why I Love Moving

I must be one of the only people I know who actually kind of likes to move. We have moved twice so far in our married life, and we'll be moving about three times in the next two years. Sure, moving is a lot of work. I hate living out of boxes, and I have no idea how I will get all the packing and unpacking done with a baby around. But secretly, I look forward to moving. I daydream about packing boxes. Am I crazy? Yes, I admit that I probably am.

A Stay-At-Home Mom (With a Job)

I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I plan to be a stay-at-home mom. I think about myself as a stay-at-home mom. And I am one, most of the time. After our daughter was born, I took 11 weeks off work. I started doing some work from home after about 8 weeks - just a few hours here and there - and then returned to part-time work at the 11 week mark. Right now I work two afternoons per week in the office and an additional 5-8 hours from home as time allows and as my job dictates. I like to think of myself as a stay-at-home mom, even though technically I work between 13 and 17 hours each week.

Now, we have been very blessed in that we have not needed child care. Jonathan has been able to be home with our little girl on the afternoons when I am at work, which is great. They get quality time together, I don't have a single worry about her, and it is free. I am also blessed with a great job that is very flexible about my hours and supportive of me cutting back to care for my daughter. I realize that I have been very fortunate and that I could have had to make even tougher decisions about jobs and childcare.

To be honest, if I could afford to not work at all, I probably would choose that route.

"When I'm a Mom I'll Do Better..."

I think every mom (or parent for that matter) has a picture in their head of the ideal parent they want to be. For me, Ideal Christa gets up every morning at the same time each day, grabs a cup of coffee, reads her Bible and has some quiet prayer time, gets her daughter out of bed, feeds her, eats breakfast, and then starts the day. In the course of the day, Ideal Christa gets a healthy, delicious dinner prepared with at least two or three side-dishes, does a couple loads of laundry, maybe puts in a few hours of work from home, but still manages to read to her daughter, spend lots of time playing together, has time to snuggle on the couch, and takes a 45 minute walk with her little girl in the stroller.  Oh, and the house is always clean. I have discovered that sadly, Ideal Christa is as fictitious as Frodo Baggins, Obi-Wan Kenobi, or my favorite characters from Grey's Anatomy. She just doesn't exist. I keep trying to find her though. Sometimes I find pieces of her, but then other parts go.

Before I was pregnant or had a daughter I had a mental list of habits that I was going to quit before I had kids. Mostly these were habits I developed in college, things I knew I didn't want to have be central to my family, but things that were just too easy and natural to do at the time. I always consoled myself by thinking I would cut back on TV, stop watching so much Netflix, only listen to 100% wholesome music, cut certain words out of my vocabulary, start exercising regularly, and of course, never eat junk food again, when I was a mom. Wow, was I crazy!