oh, hey 2014

I am not much of a new years resolution type person. It is mostly because my melancholy personality is too busy mourning another year has passed. However, I wanted to take a minute to think about what it is I want out of this year. I do not think I can come up with a direct phrase or word to embody the whole year, but the closest thing I can think of, is rest. 

I want this year to be a year of resting in our family. Resting in our here and now. Resting in watching our two girls turn three and one. Resting in the adventures Colorado has to offer. Resting in not having a huge life change lurking in the future. 

In order to really emphasis what I mean by rest, I should do a rough recap of our life together. 

[2007]

We meet. We decide within a too short of a normal time period we want to get married. I make plans to figure out how to graduate from college early. 

[2008]

We spend the summer working in Estes Park. We get engaged. Will starts graduate school in Montana. I finish my last semester in college. I graduate from Texas A&M. 

[2009]

We get married. Move across the country. We move into student housing. We move again, this time in a 450 sq. ft apartment. We adopt Aspen. 

[2010]

Start the year of running by training for a half-marathon in May. Spend the rest of the year training for a marathon. Plan for Will's potential completeion of graduate school. Surprise, I am pregnant. 

[2011]

Will graduates. We move to Texas. Madison is born, woah! Move to Denver. 

[2012]

Start looking at houses. Buy a house. Go to Hawaii. Celebrate Madison's first year. I start graduate school. Surprise, (well, not really...) I am pregnant again. 

[2013] 

Spend the first half of the year anxiously anticipating little Eliza. Spend the rest of the year anxiously transitioning to having Eliza. 

[2014] 

The year of no impending life change. 

We have pretty much made a huge life decision every year of knowing each other. It is something I had not even realized until I sat down to reminiscence about our five years of marriage. I have been pregnant for a least a portion of the past three years. We have always had some sort of move looming in our future. Anyway, it is really nice to know that we do not have anything on the agenda this year. I am realizing and accepting that this is our home. We are finally digging in and making this place our own. 

We have several of our close friends and family whose turn it is to experience these life changes and we could not be more thrilled for them. It will be great to get to celebrate them fully and be the bystanders. 

I am excited that we can finally get the chance to just be, to rest (well. relatively). 

So here is to 2014! 

 

seven months

These updates are pretty close since I was so late for her six month one. I will try to think of what she has done different these past couple of weeks for memories' sake. 

At seven months: 

* She is still not a reliable sitter. I think this is because she would much rather be stretched out trying to move around. I guess we just make children who need to be on the move constantly. 

* I thought for sure she would be crawling by now. Still rocking on all fours. She can army crawl a bit forward, but mostly just scoots herself backwards. She can roll incredibly fast, like be across the room in a blink of an eye. 

* She has two teeth! I think she may be working on more. Getting these teeth took me by surprise because Madison did not teeth until several months later. 

* We have started solids. Mostly just bananas, an avocado, and apples. I have been giving her slices of apple and she can shred them with her two teeth. So she can manage to eat an entire slice of apple on her own. 

* I thought we were in the clear, but little girl is still having some tummy trouble. I even took her to a chiropractor this month, but it did not do much.  She is just waking up so frequently at night again and her discomfort is noticeable. We just feel at a loss, but oh well. 

* She is babbling a lot more. Her and Madison have been communicating a bit. They will mimic each others' noises back and forth. It is such a neat moment when we catch them getting lost in each other. They just laugh and laugh.

* She is transitioned out of nearly all her infant items. We no longer need the car seat adapter for the stroller. She can sit in a high chair all by herself. She squirms out of her rock and play. She even went on a stroller ride the other day where Madison pushed her the entire time. 

Here are some pictures from the past month:

And a certain sister took over our seven month photo shoot...

I feel I have all these blog posts swirling around in my head, there just is not enough time to sit down and get them out. My moments of uninterrupted time is still so scarce.

half-marathon

I am going to try my best to catch up on all the things we did the last of the year. One of those being the half-marathon I ran in December. I had not done a race since Madison was born, so I was pretty excited about doing the training and running this race. It was definitely a climb the first six weeks of training. Running four miles felt like I was pushing hard. Every week I kept thinking it should be getting easier, but it just kept being physically difficult. Then I hit the six mile mark and I think all of the previous weeks were finally paying off. I felt great the remaining long runs and found my love for running long distances again. 

I also knew that the training is the hardest part, so I had confidence the race would go well. We headed down to Galveston early in the morning, leaving the girls with the grandparents. We stopped at Starbucks and enjoyed a scream-free car ride. I began to get a little bit nervous when we met up with my dad and brother. We casually walked around and took in all the super intense, pre-race warm-ups of the other runners. 

Then the race started. I always hate the first three miles. I felt really awful, but did not want to say anything. Luckily, I found my groove at mile 4 and began to enjoy the run. We ran along the ocean in Galveston. The humidity felt great after training in such a dry climate. About half-way, Grant noticed that we were getting a little bit faster each mile, so he encouraged me to keep it up so we could finish under two hours. 

At mile 11, I just wanted to be done. So I picked up the pace and headed for the finish line and we crossed in under two hours.

 

It felt great to do this race. I am looking forward to doing more this year and using the running as a way to take back a little piece of me. There is something great that happens after running for an hour and I am so glad that I pushed my body to get back to that place.

five years

(Picture from a week before our wedding)

Today is our five year wedding anniversary. 

Five years seems like one of those big milestones in a marriage. It is a strange time frame that feels both long and short. We have packed a lot in since we married on that warm, Texas, winter day in January. People say they can barely remember their life before their spouse or children or whatever and I just did not see how that was possible. However, as time keeps ticking on, my life alongside William is becoming all I know. The part about marrying young and having children young that fascinates me is that the majority of my life will be spent with them. I like knowing that Will and I are doing all of our growing up together. This marriage has taught me more about myself than I would have ever learned on my own. Will has challenged me and encouraged me in the most effective way. On our wedding day, I could not have envisioned our life to be where it is today, but then again, all I could really focus on was just starting our life together. 

 (from our failed attempts of capturing us jumping off swings in Texas)

I love you Will! Happy five years of almost complete marital bliss!

six months

 

 Little Eliza Lynn is six months old. This is a bit late, but I am going to try and play catch up from the past month. We spent the majority of December in Texas and just got back yesterday. It was a blessed trip with some much needed family time. It is hard to remember what Eliza was up to in November because she did so much changing in December. However, for documentation sake, I will try to record what the peanut was up to at six months. 

Eliza at six months: 

-She weighs 14.6 pounds. She is still in the 20th percentile of weight, but gained a lot from her last visit. This is the first time since she was born we do not have a follow up appointment after her well-check up visit. So we go back again at nine months. 

-During Thanksgiving we sleep trained her again. It worked wonderfully for two nights, but has been rocky ever since. She has been roughly waking up once a night. Well, we try to just feed her once a night at least. In Texas, she pretty much stayed on this schedule as well. 

-She seems to be a little less sensitive tummy wise. After months and months of worrying about everything that I was eating, how much I was feeding her, questioning her health, I decided to just stop (for the most part). Once she started gaining weight again and realizing that her demeanor did not change all that much since I cut out wheat, I began to stop restricting my diet. It took me about two weeks to feel ok about letting myself eat wheat and dairy, but I think it really has not been bothering her. She does not have screaming fits like she used to and everyone just sees a baby with a smile constantly plastered on her face. I think she is probably just sensitive and will continue to get better with age.

-She can roll with a purpose. She is figuring out that she has control over her body and can command it to move (usually in the direction of Madison). She is still not sitting up on her own because I think she would rather be on her tummy figuring out how to get places. 

-She still enjoys cuddling. She still finds her way into our bed a lot of nights and sleeps snuggled in Will's arms. She is usually always content if we are holding her. I melt when she falls asleep on my chest when I rock her. 

-She has found her voice and can be quite loud. I just love this phase and all the noises that they make. 

I think I was right about it taking six months for us to find our rhythm. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophesy, but either way I think it is for real getting easier. Eliza will be crawling any day now. Madison is at an age where she is usually very compliant. Our days are a bit more predictable and so are our nights. I am worrying less about food restrictions and allergies. I am hopeful for what is to come. This Christmas season was a great time for us to reflect on our family and we feel extremely satsified with everything that we have in each other. 

I feel I am honestly excited about the coming months in Eliza's life. I do not feel like another obstacle is looming in the distance. The newborn days are tough on me and it is with mixed emotions I can say I am thankful they are getting farther away. 

We are so smitten with Eliza. She has captured our hearts. Her smile is so embedded in my mind that when I close my eyes its often the first thing I am visualizing. I love her so.