Chatting about Even More Excitement!

Hi everyone! So much has happened this past week and I have so much that I want to talk about, that I am not quite sure what or where to even start! I think I am just going to kind of free write and see what happens. These type of posts often become my favorites to write and read because I find that you get a true sense of a person when you just let them chat and chat with them.

So, let’s see…where to begin…

I started to get heavily into my spring/summer day cooking and baking. That meant that we had a full Potato Salad ready to go for the week for lunches and dinner sides, rolls, smoothies and all sorts of yummy treats in the house! That is all good and dandy, but I’ve also made this past week the start of my return to healthier options. I find that summer time can either be a healthy time of year with fruit salads and salads, or it can be the completely opposite with soda’s and chips to complete barbecues. I’ve already been making healthier meals for my family during the week, but I have a big problem with snacking. This past week I’ve been trying to make a conscious decision to pick up fruit or veggies over grabbing a handful of chips or the chocolate bar that I like in the afternoon. I indulge once a week and I am hoping to keep that up!

This past week also meant the return of my husband from the school that he was attending! He had been gone for around 3.5 weeks and while we have said “See you soon” and “Hello!” numerous times before, the sadness of see you later and the excitement of a hello never fades. It is even more special each time now that we have children. Not only do I have my excitement and happiness, but to watch our son’s face light up when Daddy comes home makes everything even more exciting. He ran over to greet daddy and gave him a huge hug! It’s been great to have him home and to feel “complete” in our family once again.

April is very rapidly coming to an end and it is going out with a lot of rain! I am hoping that I can really let you know if the phrase “April Showers bring May Flowers” really rings true. It has so far with a lot of the month having days of rain. I am loving it as I am a huge rain fan and it is really helping out all of our flowers! Everything is really starting to come into bloom and I am hoping for a sunny, floral, May!

With April coming to an end, I am starting to look at what posts I want to be doing in May and all of the brainstorming and ideas I’ve got for upcoming blog posts. I think I am going to be incorporating some more posts about how I stay organized, how I manage to handle everything I do, how I stay positive, some self help type stuff, and of course, the transition from one child to two and anything to do with our family!

How have you been? How has April shaped up for you?

MiaLeave a comment

Take A Moment…

Do you ever just sit in awe of the world around you? I am sitting out on our back porch and just watching and listening as the world turns around me. I’ve got a mommy bird in the hanging candle behind me laying on her eggs. I’ve got a woodpecker somewhere in the trees off our back deck, pecking away at a tree trunk. The fox just ran through our backyard (and no I am not making any of this up, this is what really happens in my backyard) heading to his home. Here I am, sitting and enjoying a hot cuppa whilst birds are singing, flowers are blooming and a perfectly blue sky is up above. It is such a magnificent sight to take in.

When the weather turns nicer, I love to sit out on our back deck whenever I can and take these moments and views in. It’s a little reminder to stop my busy life and just take a moment to really enjoy the world we live in. There is beauty everywhere you look- if only you take a moment to look.

I want to encourage you to do the same thing at some point every day or as often as you can. It really changes your whole outlook on not only your everyday, but your life. I know it may sound cheesy, but when you take a minute to come out of your own life and view something in nature it changes everything. If you can make it a part of your every day or weekly routine you will start to notice a change. A more positive outlook, a little more relaxation and on the whole just a happier approach to your days.

MiaLeave a comment

What a Week!

Gosh, it’s been a week! It started busy and ended with a little domesticity and a little relaxation.

The week started off with my Mother In Law leaving (after being in town for 2 weeks helping me out after a little fall) and a visit from my best friend, Aleta. We’ve been close friends for a couple of years now and she not only wanted to come and visit us, but also bring her daughter to the city (D.C.). It was such a lovely time! I can’t speak enough about how amazing she is and how much I truly cherish our friendship. We not only did some sight seeing, but we also did some tea drinking and A LOT of talking.

Her daughter also took some photo’s of us for The Cosy Book Shoppe (business), but also managed to capture some of me in all my pregnant with #2 glory. I wasn’t planning on doing any maternity photo’s this time around, just kind of capture some moments here and there, but nothing too formal. While we were taking the business photo’s she took a little time out to capture some of me that turned out really well (if I do say so myself).

With all of the excitement of having people in town for 2 1/2 weeks, I really needed some time to decompress and relax. I took a day to just take it easy and then took a little time towards the end of the week to do some cooking, baking, and reading! The weather has been warming up, which means I start making Potato Salad a lot- maybe a little too much sometimes LOL. The warmer weather also means a lot more time on our back deck and a lot of cold beverages and colder treats like smoothies, and cheesecakes/silk/satin pies.

I can’t believe that we only have a little less than 9 weeks to go before #2’s due date, although if he is anything like his brother it’ll be closer to 10-11 weeks! This pregnancy has really just flown by and as we are nearing the end, we are starting to get things for a new nursery. We don’t have to get too much, it’s more rearranging furniture and then a new theme/wall decor/bedding items. The biggest shift is moving our Little Fox (Little Man #1) to his new room. The room that he is moving into was our home library, so we had a lot of books to move! The books have all been moved, it is just the last bit of furniture that needs to be moved and then we can start figuring out what we want to do. I am trying to keep Little Fox in his crib for as long as possible (as close to two as we can possible get it to work) without having to buy another crib. Little Bear (Little Man #2) will not being going into a crib in his own room for a little while after birth, so we’ve got some wiggle room.

I’m starting to order some items and things are starting to once again, become real in the fact of us becoming a family of 4! It will be quite a change and I am trying to prepare us as best as I can for it. The biggest thing that I learned with Little Fox that I will be taking into this new chapter is to just “go with the flow”. We fell into a routine the first time around fairly quickly and while I know it will be different with two instead of one, I know that as soon as we get things established everything else will fall into place. The biggest thing is just going to be going with it until we get there.

That’s all I’ve got for today- it became a little more chatty than I intended, but sometimes that is just what happens.

MiaLeave a comment

Bad Habits as a “Stay at Home-r”

Good afternoon everyone and Happy Friday!! The week has come to an end and what a week it has been!! This weekend is also Easter, so a very exciting weekend! Today I am going to talk about something that I have noticed since becoming a person who is home more than not. I’ve always been a homebody, but it is different when you are truly a Stay at Home Mom/Employee/Wife/Whatever. It is very easy to fall into some bad habits when you stay at home most of the time and are busy-ing yourself with things around the house.

I work part time, own my own business and am a mom, wife, and homemaker. I blog as a hobby and enjoy it! With all of that, I found myself going down the rabbit hole with some of these habits. I’m hoping that I can help you identify these habits too.

1.) Staying in your pajamas all day. Get out of your pajamas! I don’t care if you just get out of your sleep clothes and put on sweatpants, just doing this one thing will change a lot in your mindset. It is so easy to fall down a rabbit hole when you stay in the same pajamas or clothes all day and all night long (even if you are changing your pajamas frequently it’s the mindset of being in clothes that you sleep in that makes a difference). For me, I actually put on a full outfit every morning that involves jeans, a skirt or a dress. You will automatically be more productive and feel better when you change your clothes after getting up in the morning.

2.) Eat and Drink Appropriately. Another one that I just can’t stress enough. A lot of times when we stay at home we fall into two different categories; eating everything or eating nothing. Neither one of these options is a good option. Try to space out your meals and/or snacking and make sure that if nothing else- you get a good breakfast to start your day off. I find that when I eat a good healthy breakfast in the morning, I snack less throughout the day. Another big thing to make sure you are doing is hydrating. Drinking plenty of water is a big thing and will also help motivate you to be healthier and make healthier choices throughout the day.

3.) Staying in the House Too Much. It is really easy to just stay in the house and stay where you are comfortable. It is even easy to say, I’ve got too much going on to fit in time to run out without it being errands or necessary. It is essential to leave the house a couple of times a week just to change your environment and scenery. I will be the first to admit that I don’t do this very well. I find that even taking a walk through the park and out in the neighborhood halfway through the week works wonders for our attitudes and our outlook. In our home we try to take a walk halfway through the week or run out to a store or do something and then our weekends tend to be filled with seeing new sights and running errands. It breaks up the monotony of the week and helps it you to not feel like you are stuck in Groundhog Day.

These are the three biggest things that I have discovered, although keep an eye out because I’ll be talking more and more about some other habits to get into and how to break some of the bad habits that we may have! What bad habits have you noticed if stay at home?

MiaLeave a comment

My Evening Routine

Good afternoon everyone and Happy Monday! I hope that this week is getting off to a great start for you! It’s been fantastic here in our home as my nearest and dearest friend is in town visiting for a couple of days. It’s already been a whirlwind of a couple days and I can’t wait to see how the next couple days go!

Today I’m excited to share a little glimpse into my evening routine. You can find my morning routine HERE and while I get a lot done in the mornings and have some “me” time, I feel like my evenings are where the real relaxation is. It’s a great time for us to spend together as a family and when we get to just enjoy the coziness that is our home.

I work from home and then once I’m done with work, I typically do my daily chores around the house. I consider my day “over” around 4:00-4:30pm. At this time our little man is typically waking up from his nap, so I’ll get him out of the crib and we will enjoy a little bit of time together in the living room. I’ll grab his leftover milk out of the fridge and we just relax for about 30-45 minutes with a little TV or playing on the floor.

Around 5:15-5:30pm I start on dinner. I make home made dinners every night, except for a Friday or Saturday night, when we either do something easy or order in for our date night. Because I am making dinner almost completely (and completely in some cases) from scratch it can take upwards of an hour to cook. I enjoy cooking and typically during this time, my husband will arrive home from work. I try to clean as I go, rinsing out dishes and doing what needs to be done.

Dinner time is typically around 6:30pm in our home and we like to sit around the table and just chat about our days. This is our time to catch up with each other and just chat. After dinner, I’ll get the kitchen and dining room cleaned up and my husband will either play with our little man in the living room or head down and do homework. One way or the other we will all end up on the floor in the living room playing until it is little man’s bed time.

We start getting little man ready for bed at around 8:30pm and my husband actually handles bed time for the most part. While he is getting little man ready for bed, I am taking my make up off and washing my face. I occasionally change into my pajamas at this time, but more than likely not. Once little man is in bed, we either catch up on some television or read in our living room until we are ready to go to bed. This is the time that we get to just relax and spend a little one on one time with each other, without little man.

So that is what our evening looks like! What is your evening routine like?

MiaLeave a comment

March Favorites!

A post on a Wednesday?! This was originally scheduled for Monday, but Monday just got away from me and I didn’t get the post finalized in time to get it posted. So, here we are.

It’s already April 5 (what?!) and while I can’t believe that it is already April, I am excited to share some of my favorites for the month of March. I am trying to do only products that I used the whole month, but there are a couple that slipped in that were only used for part of the month.

Ok, to start with, I’ve been really loving my new planning that I have started with in the month of March. I have been going round and round with planners as I am such a picky person and a huge paper planner. I had been using the Passion Planner, but it ended up becoming cramped and I wanted to have a little more space for notes and such on each date. I’ve been eyeing the Bullet Journal system for a long while now and decided to take the plunge for March. I’ve never been happier and more at peace in a planning system. I will be doing a separate post and series about this system, so stay tuned!

I finally bit the bullet y’all. I decided to go ahead and purchase the Ugg Slippers that I have been eyeing for years and years. I always went back and forth because, let’s be honest, they are expensive and I was always able to get a similar cheaper pair somewhere else. After throwing out my latest pair of slippers I decided to go ahead and purchase them as I know they are meant to last for a long time and I have heard only good things. I have not been dissapointed! I’ve only had these for about half the month, but holy cow they are fantastic! I’ve been wearing them everyday around the house and they have been so comfortable.

We are coming up on Passover and while I do not celebrate anymore, there are still a couple of food items that I love getting and eating. One of my all time favorites are the Manischewitz Chocolate Macaroons. This is the only way that I will eat Cocunut and I honestly gobble these down. I have been enjoying have a couple of these throughout the week (or maybe more than a couple) and they are just so delicious! I will be a little sad when they are retired for the year soon.

Lastly, this past month I have watched two movies that I love and am proud to call favorites in my collection. The first movie being, of course, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I could not ask for more in this movie and as an installment in the wizarding world! It is simply magical and just perfection! Newt Scamander is such a fantastic character and the niffler is by far one of my favorite animals/characters! The second movie is Trolls! I only just recently watched it when I bought it on DVD and it is the cutest movie! Our little man loved watching it as well with all bright colors and fun songs! Poppy and Branch are very dear to my heart as they are very much like myself and my husband in so many ways.

What are your favorites for the month of March?

MiaLeave a comment

Looking Back: 2nd Trimester!

Happy Happy Friday!! I thought I would do a short little update on how my second trimester went in this second pregnancy. I didn’t really do a first trimester post, but I did do a first pregnancy vs second pregnancy post that touched on some of what I went through. This isn’t going to be a very long post because for the most part, my pregnancy has been pretty standard, as it was with my first. Most things have just been fairly straight forward just pregnancy in general. There have been some good things and some not so good things, so we will start with the not so good and work our way through to the good!

The biggest thing that I noticed towards the end of this second trimester is just how sore my body would get faster. So, with sweet little man, my body didn’t really have that tiring feeling and the soreness until 32+ weeks. This time around my body definitely gets sore and just feels that baby a lot faster. I don’t think it helps that I am carting around my 14 month old either and going around keeping up with him.

I’ve also noticed that I have been getting heartburn more frequently. I actually don’t know if I should truly include this one as it isn’t bad and happens very rarely, but it has happened a few times now of recent. It’s not horrendous and is typically at bedtime. Even with getting the heartburn, I don’t limit certain foods and won’t unless it becomes a major problem.

Those are the two major negatives that I’ve really noticed change in my second trimester. As for the good things…

Hello, nesting!! I am super excited about this one, I’m not going to lie. We were moving while I was hitting the “nesting” point with little man, so I had a bunch of that pent up energy that I couldn’t expend doing that. By the time we got settled into our home, I was so beyond pregnant that I couldn’t give a crap less about nesting. This time I am in full mode! I’ve always been a neat and organized person, but I have gone beyond. I have pretty much taken over every household chore (maybe that could be leading to the tiredness lol) and I’ve been in full decoration mode. I have been loving it! I am also trying to get it into a routine so it sticks around even after baby!

Another thing has been cravings. I haven’t actually had too many cravings this pregnancy and when I thought I would really start to get them, they’ve been pretty kept at bay. My biggest thing has been fruit smoothies and those can be made in a way that is still healthy (although that may not be…is not happening).  Other than that, I’ve just been loving the carbs and occasionally sugar. I’ve been trying to stay away from soda’s and when I get the urge to have one, I try to pick up a fizzy water instead of a soda.

So that pretty much wraps up my second trimester! Here’s to hoping the third goes just as smoothly!

MiaLeave a comment

I Hit a Wall…

I feel like it is an age old situation: Dispense good advice, don’t take a word of it yourself. This past week has been so hectic and at times just felt discombobulated. Side note- I’m super proud of that word choice 🙂 I’m very much a organized and have become a routine based person and this past week has just been crazy where that is concerned.

I feel like I say a lot that I am a routine based person. I can do spontaneous and I can have my days/weeks where it is off, but on the whole I love the way that I have my days and weeks planned out and I have found that it works really well for our family. This past week has pushed the “spontaneous” side of me a little too far and by the end of the week, I had firmly hit that wall of DONE.

We had a couple of appointments this week, which normally wouldn’t be so bad, except this week I had anticipated one appointment that was 30 minutes away. I had planned for just that one appointment and had figured that I could get everything else done around that. Then, it turned into two appointments on two different days both 30 minutes away. I also had a couple other errands to get done while we were out that added to the time.

My part time job picked up quite a bit in terms of being busy and having A LOT to do, so that was a factor. It’s tough when you feel like you are accomplishing quite a bit while working, but when you look at the numbers, nothing has changed. You clear out x amount of tasks to have y amount just added back to the mix. So, I know that that played a lot into my feeling of busyness and discombobulation.

Our sweet little man has been teething this week as well. I’m not sure what teeth are coming in, but it’s been a rough one for him. Normally he has a very happy sweet temperament, but with teething he goes hot and cold between smiling and crying. He typically wants to sleep more and has no interest in eating/food. He also becomes very clingy when he is teething due to the pain. He only wants to either be held or be in my lap. This is not a bad thing until things are not getting done. I still soak up the time for the most part because these moments are starting to become few and far in between.

So add together: extra appointments, extra large work load, irritable, clingy toddler, and a snowstorm at the start of the week and you get a mom who feels like she isn’t getting anything done! Normally I have a good handle on things and can pretty much handle whatever is thrown at me, but this past week just felt like so much at once. I hit a wall and actually ended up doing as little as possible on Saturday. We did a simple breakfast, leftovers for lunch, and ordered in for dinner. I did a little work, but overall just tried to relax and enjoy my time with my toddler.

It was exactly what I needed after the week felt like it was falling apart!

MiaLeave a comment

Storytime: Mom Knows Best

I’ll be completely honest right now, I don’t really know even how to start this post off. I think I’ve thought about writing it for so long now and I’ve actually written and re written it several times. I’m still not sure how this is going to go, but I really want to share this. Being a mom can be scary at times and even the most confident, will stumble at a time or two.

I know that this can lead to a sensitive topic for some, so I want to quickly say that weight gain is a serious thing and I know that. It can be a sign of a lot of potential problems and I took every bit of what we were being told (as well as some of my own instincts and research) in. I am not a doctor andI do know that there are times that I will need to listen to Doctors (and do!) and understand that they know better than I do, but on the whole I have realized that sometimes it’s best to also take your own judgement into consideration. Our issue was not that he was not gaining weight, but that his picture of health as a whole was not taken into consideration from the beginning. What I was seeing and how little man was acting as a whole did not match what we were being told.

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Sweet Little Man (around 12-13 months)

Our first son is 14 months old now and I can definitely say that I’ve learned a thing or two about being a mom and being more confident in myself and my decisions as a mom. Things that I will be keeping in mind as we welcome our second son this summer. One of the most important things that I have learned is there is nothing like Mom’s Knowledge/Intuition.

We struggled with Doctors and Colton. I should preface this with the fact that both myself and my husband are above average height with small to average frames. My husband is 6 ft tall and thin and I’m around average (ish) height and thin as well. Colton follows along the same line, which we realized very quickly. When he was born he was long enough to fit into 3 month clothing, but definitely not anywhere near in the weight department.

At Colton’s two month appointment, I had a Nurse Practitioner sit and insinuate that I was starving my child. That I was not providing enough for him. Now before you say, well what did she say, maybe your hormones blew what she was saying out of proportion. No. She said that I was not providing enough and he was starving. He had gained weight and grew quite a bit longer and I was struggling to reconcile what she was saying with what I was seeing. I could see the growth in my child. He was happy, eating healthily, meeting the milestones that he needed to be (although not many at that time) and I was in shock at what she was telling me.

*It was about a month after this appointment that we realized that my milk, while it had come in, my supply had not been able to keep up with the demand. So while he was getting enough from me up until this time, it wasn’t enough for a long term nursing situation.

If that wasn’t bad enough to be told as a first time mom, when your son is 2 months old, it got worse. The first time she said it, I was in a little bit of shock. The second time, my mommy instincts kicked in and I said “Ok. What do we do”. Instead of working with me and coming up with a plan, she just continued on with her statements. We went back and forth, with me trying to come up with a plan. If my child truly needed more, I was willing to do whatever it took to get that for him. In the end, after several times of asking, I decided that we would supplement with formula. Eventually we ended up switching entirely over to formula.

*Honestly, I could (and maybe I will at some point) write a whole separate post about this experience, but for now this little summary will do.

Colton continued to grow longer and started filling out a little bit. He started to surpass the developmental milestones that they are supposed to meet and again, I was looking at a happy and seemingly healthy baby. I had recovered from my complete breakdown after Colton’s two month appointment and everything was back on track. Then, we headed to his 4 month Well Baby appointment.

Again I was told that he wasn’t gaining enough weight, although he had put on a lot for him and grown much longer, and that I was not doing what I should be. Let me just say, I was letting Colton decide how much he wanted to eat at every bottle. I couldn’t force feed him more than he wants and he was eating close to 6 ounces every single bottle, if not more. He had surpassed most of his developmental milestones and was working on 6 month milestones. I could see with my own eyes that he was doing wonderfully, but I had a Nurse Practitioner (and then a doctor) telling me that I was failing. It was at that point that I said to hell with it, switched doctors, and started tracking things on my own.

It was clear to me that my son did not follow along the growth curves like other children did when it came to weight. He puts on weight, but he is more likely to grow longer than wider. His first doctor did not even bother to review not only his growth as a whole to include his length, but to look at how we, as his parents, were built. I was mad leaving his 4 month doctors appointment. My gut as his mother was continually telling me that he was just fine, healthy and that we were doing everything we were supposed to.

Things got better once we switched his doctor. We still have issues from time to time with the concern over his weight, but it’s not in a way of his doctor saying we are starving him. I take most of his weight gain concerns in, keep a watchful eye on how his eating is going, and overall watch how his behavior is. I am with him all day long and I am the first to realize when something is wrong. Realizing that I am his number 1 and best advocate and that at times, I will know best and will know better than the doctors has been the best thing both for him and for us as a family. By having this attitude, my son is not only happy, healthy, meeting milestones way above his age, and growing appropriately, but our family is also happier and healthier. I am happier and healthier.

MiaLeave a comment

Week In Pictures – A Family Visit and Shopping!

Hello everyone! Gosh, it is already 5-6 days into March! This past week has been a whirlwind as my husband went out of town for most of it for work and my mother came into town for a visit. We did quite a bit of shopping and just got to spend some time together. This was also my first full week in a new planner set up as well as adding some more to my journal. The week ended with some more shopping for the new baby as well as our little man.

I had a few things that I needed to pick up, some more spring/summer maternity clothes, some books and I had a few appointments throughout the week as well. This kept us plenty busy for the week and it seemed every day we had to do something!

I was able to get quite a bit of some new tops to gear up for the warmer weather (of course now that I have, it’s getting cold again) and I’m very much looking forward to spring and summer outfits that I can put together! Sweet Little Man and #2 also got some new clothes for summer as well. We’ve got everything saved from when Little Man was a baby, but with them being born at opposite ends of the year, there are some clothing items that we need to have. I also want to do a different theme for his nursery than we did for Little Man as they are different.

Little Man had a “woodland” animal/fox theme with Oranges and Browns in his nursery and I think #2 is going to have a mountain animal/bear theme with Blues for his nursery. I love what we have picked out so far and I think it is going to come together really well! We’ve still got to move quite a bit of furniture around and switch rooms around before I can decorate the new room, but I’m definitely in a nesting mode and think I will be for a long time still.

One other big thing that I did this week was to get my eyes re checked out. I’ve had glasses for a long time for when I’m reading/working at the computer/watching TV and when I was in school, but I’m one of those people that doesn’t typically wear them. I just strain through the situations and work through it. It has been steadily getting worse and I think it has some to do with the amount of migraines I deal with. I got a new prescription and some new glasses to go along with it. So far, it’s been such a difference! To be able to clearly see things has been so nice! No more straining to see for me.

How was your week?

MiaLeave a comment