our morning

 

any guesses as to what we did this morning???

 

our schedule at 13 months

I think the last time I did a schedule type post she was three months old and not sleeping. I think my outlook on our days have improved a bit, lets hope its reflected here.

7:00 am: Little miss is our alarm clock and we wake up. She is still nursing in the mornings so we have family snuggle time in bed and then Will usually takes her and I keep sleeping until 8. But today I got up with him. 

 7:30 - 8:20 am: Will feeds Madison her banana and waffle and start on my Insanity work out. Will took a picture of me once I finished.

8:30 am: Will leaves for work. Madison has been pretty sad about this lately. Will rides his bike to work and usually gets there about 9 am.

 8:40 am: I shower and get dressed for the day. The hair is in a bun because I washed it the day before and I don't like washing it two days in a row. Will thinks I am gross for doing this, but I think it helps my oil naturally condition my hair, and I hate brushing it. Someone is almost ready for a nap.

 9:00 am: I do a few extra chores before she takes a nap. She is a very light sleeper and I must remain in one spot during her nap or she wakes up. Its a good excuse to just take it easy during her nap time. So we start a load of laundry before hand. She has turned into an excellent helper.

 9:15 - 11:30 am: She naps for a really long time today. She was sick all weekend and the beginning of this week, so maybe she is catching up on her rest, either way I love it. During her nap, I finally eat breakfast, drink my ice coffee, and relax. Today, I watched Pretty Little Liars, read the bible, read some of my text book for class, and browsed the internets for outfit ideas for a wedding we are attending this weekend.

 11:15 am: Madison is crying in her room signaling her nap is over. Sometimes she wakes up happy, lately she has been waking up fussy. So I try to figure out what she wants. Does she want to snuggle? Sit quietly and look at a book? Its a fragile time, ha. So this is why she is throwing herself backwards because I was not doing what she wanted, but I have no idea what she wants.

 12:00 - 1 pm: We eat some lunch. I did not take any pictures. It was left over turkey sandwiches and an assortment of fruit. Yummy. It takes her a while to eat and then I have to clean it all up, so it takes a while. I also vacuumed and mopped while she ate.

1:00 - 2:00 pm: In an effort to actually leave the house, I decided to go to Buffalo Exchange. I worked at a friend's food truck this weekend and earned some money for a couple of new clothes items. This turned out to be an epic fail because I could not find the store. So we drove for 45 minutes in a big loop and made our way back home. No shopping trip for us.

2:15 - 4:30 pm: Time for another nap. She sleeps for another awesome nap. This is really rare. I even lay down and take a nap also.

4;30- 5:30 pm: Finish cleaning up the house because a good housewife always has the home in tip top shape for her hard working husband. Not really, I just struggle with OCD tendencies. We also wait outside for DADA to get home.

5:45 pm: Eat dinner a bit early because the hard working husband is starving. We had salads and cheese quesadillas. Madison had a smoothie and bits and pieces of our meal. We hardly ever eat out during the week so I cook almost every meal. I usually get burnt out meal planning and fall back on easy things like this meal.

 6:30pm: We went on a walk around the neighborhood. Our other baby is dying at this point and is demanding attention.

 7:00 pm: Baby goes to bed. yay! Mommy and daddy play time. We have formed a habit of sitting in front of the TV once she goes to bed. Sometimes I feel guilty about this other times I really love it.

7:30- 9:30ish pm: I get my nightly foot rub, for all my hard work, ha. We drink some wine (a couple of times a week). Tonight it was Sangria that probably had like no alcohol in it, tasted just like juice. And then Will gets his turn with the iPod and plays with the camera settings.  We try to be in bed by 10 most nights or else we are much too tired in the mornings.

There ya have it. Our lives. I would say being a stay at home mom has gotten much more enjoyable for me. I still struggle with feeling like I never leave the house and all I do is clean up after my child, but overall I feel a lot more freedom than I did at first.  

Now, I am off to make the most of her nap time. We have a play date today and I have to make lunches for us both. Oh, and get that chocolate chip zucchini bread out of the oven, oops.

Updated Home Tour

So I sort of joined the Mac world. I purchased an ipod this weekend. Will and I both wanted something that could capture all our memories (aka pictures of madison) with ease. We have not taken much video of her and the pictures have been lacking lately. With the ipod we can do both and share them with ease. The only real down size is the camera does not take stellar pictures, but I think overall it will serve its purpose. So my first use of the camera was to take pictures of our home. I have not shared many recently, so here it goes. 

 Our front door. It took two months to finally figure out a way to hold that wreath up. I am not super wild about the windows on the door either because anyone who comes to the door can see right in. This is not ideal when I am jumping around to my insanity videos in my pajama shorts and sports bra. 

That pretty much sums up our house. There is another bathroom and mudroom to the left of the washing machine, but those are a bit tricky to take pictures of. And, yes, those are all our clothes hanging. Our dryer was one of the twenty appliances that broke when we moved in and we have not found the need to get a new one.

Next up, a post about what our day to day looks like. I have to try and plan it out on a day where we don't stay in our pajamas until noon.

ramblings

1. I have really been missing having things to blog about. The thing is, I probably do have things to blog about, but then I just forget. I also think that not having a reliable camera is really effecting my blogging mojo. It takes twenty minutes to upload photos from Will's camera and mine was overtaken by sand in Hawaii.

2. I have started doing the Insanity work out program. It is a 60 day thing and you switch between several different DVDs. It is pretty insane, ha, but I am getting addicted to it. I am only on week 2, so I might have a change of heart, but I already feel like my body is changing. I thought I would take before and after pictures, but once again, the camera issue comes back to bite me. The DVDs also remind me of off season during my prime volleyball playing days. So Claire and Concetta, you should totally look into doing Insanity with me!

3. I start classes on Monday. And by classes, I mean one class. It is an substance abuse counseling class and will meet once a week for eight weeks. I am excited to finally start classes towards the counseling degree, but also slightly nervous I will dread having some place to be. The nice thing about being a stay at home mom is I never have to report to anyone.

4. Madison does not crawl anymore. She is a full blown walker. It is such a strange thing to realize she will probably never crawl again. Something she did for almost half her life up to this point, will just be a little dot in her life as a whole. I never realized how fast the baby stage actually is, they turn into full fledged kids in a blink of an eye.

5. Fall was in the air the past couple of mornings. It seems to have just been a tease because 90 degree days are upon us again. But it left me really excited for Fall, it is probably my favorite season. I do not want to wish away these last warm days, but it feels it has been hot for so long. I guess I have grown to appreciate the change of seasons since moving away from Texas.

I think thats about it. We do not have anything planned until September, which is in like a week, crazy?? So we have just been relaxing on the weekends, trying to enjoy all these little moments together as a family.

vacation after a vacation?

We have been back from Bozeman since last Wednesday. Luckily, we decided at the last minute to fly. I am so thankful for this because we actually were able to enjoy the trip without having to recover from driving and then dread the drive back. I think at some point (like when little miss turns 2), we will have to start driving more places, but until then we will put all our savings into plane tickets.

Bozeman was wonderful. Everything seemed almost the same as when we left. We pretty much crammed in everything we enjoyed doing there in a week. We even got to catch up with some of the only friends we had while living there. I think we even convinced our friends Sabrina and Scott to jump on the parenthood bandwagon, ha. We didn't make it look so bad, right Sabrina?? It was a great mix of relaxing and adventuring (as much adventuring that's really possible with a baby.)

Probably one of the most exciting things that happened was Madison learning to walk the second day we were there. Oh, it was just the most wonderful thing to watch her finally grasp that skill. She pretty much walks everywhere now and totally wants to run. She also loves being able to drag items around the house while walking because it was fairly difficult to do that when she crawled. I guess she is a toddler now, since she can toddle?

In other news, I start graduate school classes this fall. I had an interview the day I got back from Bozeman, and I guess they liked me enough to admit me. I am going to try and take two classes a semester and see how I handle that. The degree will be in Counseling and I will hopefully have my LPC in like twenty years. The degree takes a while to complete and all the hours required to receive the license take another couple of years, but it will all be worth it. The plan is to work on the degree gradually while Madison is not in school and then when she goes to kindergarten (yikes!) I will be able to counsel. 

 We have had an eventful few weeks and now we are slowly recovering. Its always a bummer to come back from vacation and realize there was no magic cleaning fairy. All those chores are still waiting for you when you return from vacation, so I will be catching up on all my cleaning today. 

Here are some of the pictures we took while in Bozeman:

1. Walking! So thankful for this picture that Will captured. The look on her face is of pure delight. 

2. This is what missing a morning nap makes my baby look like. There were a couple days we were out and about during her nap times, but she hung on like a champ. 

3. Playing in a toy shop in downtown Bozeman. 

4. Forcing my baby to take a picture with me. 

5. Family picture on a hike. I have a picture of just me and Will on this mountain the first winter we were married, life changes quick. 

6. I guess Madison is officially allowed to stay in our family since she discovered her love for guacamole.