Rad Man

Before bath time and during play time he's a pretty happy little fella. 

Bellagio this weekend

Thank you Bellagio for giving me colorful things to look at in the lobby at 6:30 am, and a delicious $9.00 latte to sip. The glass sculpture on the ceiling makes up for the security guard who kicked us out (for taking photos with out permission...and using their handy cap stall in the bathroom as our personal dressing room). Unfortunately, I still feel ripped off. $9 for a latte? Really? It just goes to show, I'll pay just about anything if I'm tired and desperate for my coffee! 

Life after Baby:

There have been some unbelievably amazing days, and some push-me-to-the-edge of a cliff kind of days, and if I (or any other mom) make it look easy, trust me, it's harder than it appears, (and it's much more amazing than it appears!) The joys of Motherhood are incredible beyond my comprehension. It blows my mind.

Being parents together has given us deeper intimacy:

I love my husband more, I respect him more, fatherhood has made him way sexier, I've fallen head over heels for the Daddy he's become, he's this incredible pillar of selflessness and patience that I never knew he could be and I want to have like a thousand more of his babies! Or maybe one more and a couple adopted....we'll see. Our marriage has grown so much. The number one thing about my husband that I love most since we had Conrad, is that he constantly anticipates our needs. He's always aware of what's going on around him and we are his main focus. When I think about what it means to be a good wife, he is my example. I want to be for him, what he is for me.

The Baby Blues:

It's no secret that I deal with depression. Post-baby depression, pre-baby depression, everything depression and all of it in between. I'm either all or nothing. All happy and beaming with joyous- joy beams shooting out of my head like Mother Mary, or all confused, sad, disappointed, bitter, and frustrated with the world around me. I have struggled to get my emotions under control as my body is trying to balance out from being bombarded by hormones during pregnancy. I'm still a basket case. Can't there just be a happy medium?

Strangers can be your best friends:

I know I may be a "bad" mother for it, but I usually don't care if my sons pacifier goes plummeting to it's demise at Old Navy dirty floor and gets germs on it "God made dirt!"....I don't care if he swaps spit with other babies, or gets hugs from a granny who saw me frazzled at the air port when the little dude wanted sleep, and I felt guilty for dragging him all over and making his life hard, and I was on the verge of tears myself because I couldn't satisfy him right then. So she stroked his little head and talked to him while he screamed on the changing table in the bathroom, and then offered to hold him so I could pee! (Yes, I let a stranger hold my baby while I peed, OK, I admit, it's not the smartest thing, but whatever. She didn't look like a baby snatcher! I would have held her baby too so she could pee if she needed....)

There are bigger fish to fry!

Last week when we were flying home from Texas, I had 30 minutes to pump before we boarded. So I jetted for the ladies room and was relieved to find an outlet. There must have been 15 or so ladies waiting in line. So I parked my bag, took out my janky breast pump, plugged that sucker in and did what I had to do. (I can't wait to throw that piece in the dumpster, I'm SO over it!) One older lady who was waiting in line said to me in her southern accent, "They really should have a little couch in here for you girls! That's just not right havin' you squat down there like that!" She was sweet. Then once she broke the ice, every mom in line one by one, proceeded to tell me all the crazy places they'd breast fed, or pumped. It was one of my more interesting moments of motherhood. (A side note, when I came out of the bathroom, my Dad was holding Conrad who was as red as a beet, screaming and flailing his little pissed self all over. That's when I went back to the bathroom and was greeted by the granny who held him while I peed.)

I'm a work in progress :

I write this because as of late, I have come to yet another epiphany of who I am and who God wants me to become. A light bulb went off in my pea sized brain this week when I realized that I have been trying to always have it all together. It's impossible. I HAVE ISSUES.

I want to share my life, and tell silly stories of motherhood's up's and downs, of strollers rolling into ditches, and having shitty days where I want to break away and sell my baby on the black market, or drop kick my husband, or buy a life time supply of dark chocolate to melt and bath in, but then there is reality. I may blow my situations out to proportion and poke fun at the struggles I am confronted with as a young, first time mama, but I write these things in an attempt to make other moms not feel so lonely in their struggles. AND, motherhood can be an extremely lonely place to be at times. It's ok to fail miserably at it, because we're all in the same boat. So laugh at me, and don't feel so bad! I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, I don't have it all together. I'm very impatient, I feel insecure about countless things and I have to rely on Christ to snap me out of my deep pits of depression and confusion when they decide to show up and throw a wrench in my day/month. Pride, envy, jealously, and fear have been spewing out of every orifice of my being as of late, and for that I need forgiveness. Being a Mom Stretches and Grows you beyond what you thought you were capable of.

There Is No Such Thing As a Perfect Mother:

It's easy to get discouraged when I see other moms who seem to have all of their ducks in a row, and ALL of my ducks are running as fast as their little webbed feet can take them away from me- and I can't catch up to grab them and put them back in line. Little bastards! But seriously. It's not as easy as us Moms make it look. We could read all of the books and do all of the research, but it will never fully prepare us. In my attempts to love on other Moms, It's been important to me to be as transplant as possible. Without Jesus we can never make life work. I don't claim to be a "perfect" mother, or have a "perfect" marriage. None of us do!

We all have things we could work on. Although we try to have it all together, we sometimes fake it well, no one is buying it. No money, or vacations, or success, or health, or possessions can give us fulfillment. It is only but for the grace of God that I can make it through a single day (without shaking my baby...kidding.) because lets just face it, MOTHERHOOD AIN'T NO JOKE! IT'S HARD! Period.

These are all things I'm learning.

Having a child is satisfying:

The feeling I get when I'm feeding my baby and he reaches up to touch my face, pull my eye lashes, squish my nose and grab my lip....that's what makes my heart melt.

Life is so purposeful and so much fun!

God is Good:

I'm glad that He has promised to not leave me as I am, but change me as I stay close to Him. I won't always be who I am today. God is humbling me, teaching me that I don't have to measure up to any one's standards but His standards, and If I do onto my baby and husband as I would do onto Him, and worship Him by laying my life down for these crazy dudes daily and never give up, I will be the wife and mom he's made me to be.

What does DAD have to say about his new life:

We talk a lot about postpartum depression for woman, we all have our horrible (or wonderful) labor stories, and we all are striving to be "good" parents, but seldom do we talk about what a DAD goes through after baby's home is no longer a warm cozy womb, but a cold, bright outside world with two young idiots who don't know their heads from their asses, (slipping on the hallway rug, running into the kitchen trying to satisfy a hungry baby with warm milk in the wee hours of the night....) and so is our life! We don't focus on the HUGE life change a Dad goes through. Most Dad's will acknowledge that the relationship with their offspring wasn't real until they could actually hold their baby, when Moms have a whole 9 months to get to know their baby, and get ready for it.

Later in the week you will hear from my better half on what "Life After Baby!" has meant for him. He doesn't ramble as much.

DIY Photo "clothes line"

I'm not ready to put all of his photos in an album yet, so this is a better alternative to be able to see them and change them out as he grows. 

A name with a meaning

In decorating our lil' dudes room we decided we wanted to have his name in his room, I know it's super trendy... So we decided we'd try to make it more meaningful by photographing letters from the billboards of important places that mean something to us.

The night Dustin proposed to me, we went to the our favorite Mexican food restaurant off of Charleston and Main called Casa Don Juan. (Go there! The margaritas are served in a whole pineapple. You'll die, they're amazing.) We used the "C" from Casa Don Juan.

When we found out we were pregnant, we were living in condos called Horizons At Seven Hills. Lots of memories in that condo. So we used the "O" 

Twice a year on our birthdays for the last few years, Dustin's Dad has given us comps to eat at our favorite steak house Hanks, so we used the "N"

For our first date we ever went on, Dustin took me to Blue Berry Hill and we went on a long drive and listened to music. I just thought it was a really unpredictable place to take me and I liked that about Dustin. I'll never forget that night. So I used the "R" from Blue Berry Hill.

The first apartment we lived in right after we got married was Arroyo Grande Apartments. It was fun living together for the first time. It was a sweet little one bedroom that we loved so much. So we used the "A" 

And It was only fitting that we use the "D" From the Howard Hugh's school of Engineers because that's what his Dad will soon become, and it has played a huge part in paving the way for our families future. 

This picture frame of photos will hang in our sons room, and hopefully when he's older he'll still think it's cool enough to stay in his room....It's a special reminder of the years spent together before our son came into this world. 

Retro Bakery here we come!

For our next date, honey, I would like to go here....

yum yum  yum!

This Weekend:

Conrad received a knitted hooded sweater from his adopted grandmother Marcelle

 who loves to bless us with knitted things! (It even has a kangaroo pouch in the front to hold his toy trucks!)

My little chubby angel sleeping soundly

Uncle Vinni & I cooked together. Something we used to do a lot when I was preggers and Dustin had classes late at night.  My brother would invite me over and cook for me and we'd watch the food network. He's an excellent cook. 

Bake the squash for 1 hour 45, puree it, put it in tortillas with cooked shrimp, cheese, with pureed tomitillos and have yourself some yummy enchilladas!

tōməˈtē(y)ō, I still can't pronounce it!

Dustin 

I sported a side bun.

I smothered 

Conrad got split in half

And made into a comic book character 

He was a defiant little sleeper!

Uncle Vinni loves Rad-nasty

Practiced his standing abilities for Vinni. 

What a show off!

He giggled as he was thrown in the air again and again! 

We enjoyed french toast

Rain drops dripped off of his tiny fingers for the first time. 

Maybe he likes rain just as much as we do?!

Daddy brushed what is left of Conrad's balding hair!

( It's freaking me out how much of a little boy he loooks like in the picture above! Please Conrad, don't grow up so fast! It's scaring Mommy!)

Go Girl

 I really wish this device  was handy a few days ago when I was out on a trail running, far far from a bathroom, or a kind neighbor who might let me in to relieve myself when my mornings coffee suddenly hit and I needed to think fast before an "accident" was going to happen. 

 So... 

I called my husband to ask his advice and he told me to find a bush....

"A bush??!!! There are NO bushes! What the heck am I going to do?!"

I tried to call a friend who lived close by, but she was at work- So I attempted to stall the accident, squeeze my cheeks together as hard as I could and sprint to the car....that seemed to make it worse....so I stopped sprinting. I tried to waddle to the car, looking even more ridiculously obvious....and then I was like "Oh crap!"  

The good thing about me is that I'm a fast thinker, I just did like my mama taught me and popped a squat behind the power box hoping the fine people of Seven Hills wouldn't happen to walk by and ask me what I was doing. I've peed on high ways, in lakes, and pools, but never have I done my business behind a power box! (The power box was tall and I used my stroller to shield me...plus, little kids have to learn how to just go anywhere right? It's better than going in your pants! I'm just starting him really young!)

Later Dustin asked me what I ended up doing, and I told him I "went camping" 

in Seven Hills, and his response was "That's my girl!"

It's funny the situations we find ourselves in.

But had I had this cool little contraption, It might not have been such an uncomfortable ordeal. If someone happened to stop to ask me what I was doing, I could have just shown them the box and said,"It's this cool thing called "Go Girl." I keep it with me so that if I'm ever out doors, like camping or in a residential neighborhood....I can just do my business! You should really keep one in your purse!" 

Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do right?? 

His first word will be camera...

You know how they say the first child always has like hundreds of baby pictures and the other children have little to none?? I hope I'm just as camera happy with the next bundle of love. 

When he woke up yesterday, his bib was flipped behind him and it reminded me of a cape.

 He's my little baby superhero!