The whispers of my heart

Dearest J

I love you more than I ever knew was possible. Every time I look at you my heart swells. It swells with love for every exaggerated face you make, for how easily you put a smile on every face, for your excited flapping arms and your anxiety to move. You fell asleep in my arms tonight and I realized it had been months since this has happened. Oh how you have grown!! You are such a little man now. I love these precious moments with you as you are now. Your joy and excitement about everything in life reminds me of how life is meant to be lived. I try to soak up all our moments together and lock them into my memory as best I can. But at the same time as I look at your little boy face, and I am excited for you to grow. I am excited for all of the milestones we have ahead of us and am excited to be by your side as you go through all of them. No matter how big you get you will always be my little boy. 

I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living my baby you'll be.

 

To be a mother

I love my little baby. And I find joy in being his mother everyday. 

But every now and then I have a moment where I truly feel like I'm a mother. 

My poor little baby had a rough night. He just could not sleep and he was a little bit on the moody side. 

After trying and failing to get him to go back to sleep I decided to take him out into the family room. 

I laid on the floor and watched as J had the time of his life with a box full of goodies he found. He'd play and then lay his head on me, sometimes he'd lay on me and just chat and every now and then he'd give me some kisses. 

And even though I was exhausted and was more asleep  than awake for the first hour I found that I really enjoyed my early morning play date. As I watched my little man, who got no sleep, enjoying life I felt such a surge of love for him and the gift of being his mom. 

I'm so grateful for him, for his contagious smile, and his easy demeanor. 

Being a mom means you take the good and the rough (I'm hesitant to say bad). It means you get to be the one to comfort the baby in the middle of the night, because you're the one he cries for. You're the one he reaches for. It means that even when you're sick or tired your baby still needs you and you still need them. It means being exhausted but loving the extra snuggles you get in the middle of the night when you feed him, because he no longer sleeps on you in the day. It means giving all you got and receiving so much more. 

I'm so grateful to be a mom. And I love all of my rough times as well as my good times. 

Now don't go thinking I'm totally crazy, as soon as 8 rolled this morning around I had Woody take a turn while I went back to sleep. ;)

How does she do it?

I miss my summer life. Like really. I. Miss. It. 

I was seriously struggling. I was stressed all the time. I felt like I was not being a good teacher, not a good wife, not a good mom. You know how it goes. 

Basically I needed to put more time into EVERYTHING. And I had no time for anything. 

Cooking dinner? Sure I planned dinners and then..... Got take out

Work out? Hm... How about Saturdays ok every other Saturday. Wait what's Saturday?

See my baby? Definitely. I played with J every second he was awake and at home. But that was like 3 hours maybe 4. And I just felt a serious ache for all the time that I was missing. 

Plus playing with my baby meant no chores, no working out, no dinner, no school work. Maybe a shower, MAYBE.... SOMETIMES

AND it is my first time with a serious church calling. And by serious I mean time consuming. All callings are of course serious

I was frustrated. A lot. And I complained and whined a little. Ok ok a lot. 

Something needed to change because I had to work. No way around it. 

I know some people can do it all. Have multiple kids, work full time, work out, have a clean house, make dinner.... But I was finding out that this was not my talent. 

I tried some things. Like asking woody to help, not making dinner (obviously) and just trying to cut back. But I still was struggling. 

Finally I realized the one thing that I had taken out and that I should not have. My scripture study. 

I started listening to conference talks on the way to work. It was a perfect solution for me. 

I have felt such a change in my life since I invited The Lord back into it. I am still stressed and I still don't have enough time but I'm happy. I'm able to enjoy my life way more. And to be PERFECTLY HONEST because I am less stressed, I feel that I a more efficient with my time and am able to get more done. 

When life gets busy it's so easy to cut out your personal scripture time -  it seems to be the first thing that goes. But it's the thing that we need the most. 

So spend some time with The Lord and He will help you accomplish all. 

Don't forget to smile :)

6 Months Old AKA 0 years

My baby turned 6 months old last week!!

WHHHAAATT????!!!

I could hardly believe it.. so I checked, I counted the months on a calendar, on my fingers, called and asked the doctor, and sadly it is true! He really is 6 MONTHS OLD

He is such a great baby. He smiles lots, babbles lots, and eats his toes lots.

Brighton tried to get J to smile.  J really loves Brighton and usually smiles for him, but he always knows when a camera is on, and he always makes me work for his smiles. 

After 6 months of life J is turning into a little man.  He is very interested in everything.  He is constantly looking around and easily distracted, especially while nursing

J is very interested in eating. He opens his mouth whenever I am eating and wants to take a bite! He really enjoys his rice cereal and baby food for like 10 bites.  Then he is bored and is ready to do something else... 

He has recently decided that blowing raspberries while eating is the best idea ever! This makes for some colorful raspberries!

He is an outside baby and loves sitting outside, walking, swimming, anything!

He has a new habit of smiling with his tongue out, he loves it.

I've recently decided that J has the perfect hat head, plus he doesn't have any hair so that's 

the only reason we will welcome the cold weather, beanies.

Even though it has been such a short amount of time, my little J baby has changed so much.  I have loved every stage so far and am loving that he now interacts more with me and his surroundings. 

Basically he's best the baby ever. 

And I feel bad for everyone else because he's not theirs.

Sleep training take 2

So I went on a vaca with my family. We went to Newport and it was tons of fun!! 

Sadly woody couldn't come so I was a single parent for the week. (Kudos to single parents, phew) But I have an awesome family so I had lots of help during the day...... But I was flying solo at night. Which was always the hardest part of the day. 

Of course j was sick or just upset about not being home and could NOT SLEEP. At night... 

He slept during the day of course. 

I was up about every 2 hours trying to rock the little dude to sleep and he ended up in bed with me every single night. As bad of a habit as that is, we were pretty snuggley and comfy! 

BUT I knew that it was time.... Time to.... Sleep train... Take 2 (GASP) 

So when I came home, woody and I basically just let the poor kid cry. And cry. And cry. And CRY! We'd go in and give him a pat, a kiss and tell him how sorry we were. And then he'd cry and cry and cry. 

We were lucky and it only took a few days, but those were some ROUGH days, I mean nights, 

no I mean both.  

I couldn't handle it and would leave. I'd go work out or go to the grocery store because my poor little heart couldn't take it! 

We'd even turn the monitor down so we couldn't hear him out of it and would just watch the lights on the monitor and hear him in the background. 

One night we just stayed up all night long. I mean there wasn't much sleep going on... at night

But I'm glad I did it. You know the kind of glad that only comes after the fact.... Like  after you've studied for days without even sleeping and you get an "A", or after going on a juice diet to lose some weight you're "glad" you didn't eat those delicous treats at the party, but you never want to hear the words "juice fast" again..... That kind of glad.

But now USUALLY not always but usually I can set J in his bed, walk away, and he will fall asleep!! Of course not tonight, because I'm writing about my success in sleep training, J would not go to sleep by himself. Figures. He's the boss. 

Ps why do I have so many sleeping pictures??