Thursday, February 22, 2018

Georiga June - 1 year


I'm sitting here attempting to type this and still in complete shock that an entire year has passed.  I remember my labor and your birth so vividly, although once I was given the spinal for my C section things do get blurrier for a while, I would do anything to relive those first few hours & days with you again.  Unfortunately it's impossible, but I am thankful for every photo taken that day and every day since that capture our journey as first time parents to our daughter that we waited so long for.  Now we are here, on this day, celebrating your first birthday.  It falls on a Thursday.  You are at daycare with your friends and I am at work.  You won't remember it.  I am secretly kicking myself for not taking this day off to spend with you, but then I remind myself that your birthday party is this weekend and we cannot wait to celebrate you.

I've never had a year like this in my life.  For a long time, years felt like they were never ending as we tried with every bit of strength and determination we could muster to have a child.   A new year would come, yet we were still stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over again, there wasn't much change in our lives as we just rode that rollercoaster over and over again & it wasn't a big fun roller coaster like at 6-Flags, it was one of those tiny little rollercoasters that you see at your small-town carnivals.  Don't get me wrong, life was fun, we only had a dog and a cat to take care of, we could get on the bike and ride for miles whenever we wanted, we could impulsively hang at the bar on a Friday night last-minute, we didn't have a baby to consider and life was good, but there we were, still on that tiny rollercoaster when it came to building our family; something my heart desired more than ANYTHING.


Over this last year, every day is seriously like a brand new adventure as you grow and change right before our eyes.  It's amazing to watch as your little personality continues to blossom each day.  You love to babble, you're definitely a morning person, you love your bath, you hate diaper changes & getting dressed, you can move extremely quick & are so close to walking, your hair is growing like a weed (thank you Amy for giving my child that amazing quality!), your feet are so tiny still, you have zero teeth, you sleep in our bed every night and mama still rocks you to sleep in her arms every evening.  You can put a smile on the face of anyone and we make loads of friends literally everywhere we go, people cannot help but approach you as you're such an inviting little soul with beautifully blue eyes and a perfect little smile.  I like to call you ham & cheese because you have a little scrunchy face that you sometimes give to people you're really trying to charm.  You love to give kisses but only on your terms, not when we ask for one.  You love your puppy, kitty, and the vacuum (seriously this girl loves the vacuum and points to it every day & screams with laughter when we run it), and of course prefer to play with everything that is NOT a toy vs. the hundreds of toys that you do have. 


You are currently about 20 pounds, my little peanut, but your head circumference I'm guessing is still in the high 90th percentile.  For being on the smaller side (37% for weight) you have an appetite like no other baby I have ever seen.  You want to eat (and do eat) everything in sight.  I mean everything.  You are still nursing, but that journey is coming close to an end soon and although mama will miss it a lot, she's ready to be done with the pump. You have a special relationship with your daddy and although he always wanted a boy, he would not trade you for the world.  He gets you dressed every morning and although sometimes your shirt is on backwards or he gags while changing a poopy diaper, he always gets an A for his effort. 


Sometimes I still cannot believe this is real life.  It's easy to get caught up in the day to day stuff as a mom, but every once in a while when I take step back it still sometimes doesn’t even feel real.  Our struggle becomes a blur and there you are and I know that it all happened the way it did, in the time it took, because YOU were the child we were meant to have.  I know this birthday isn't one you'll ever remember, but for me it's just another symbol of what we overcame for you.  Happiest of first birthdays to the most wonderful little being I have ever known. 

Friday, February 16, 2018

2018 Goals



I know, we are already more than halfway through February and I'm just now writing down my goals for the year!  Maybe we should just call this post "goals" and not tie any length of time to them.  I don't really feel it's necessary to attach a deadline to certain things that we want to do for ourselves.  Maybe sometimes we need a deadline, ie. I want to have our loan for our DEIVF cycle paid off before we start our next cycle, however, I do feel like there are some goals we set for ourselves that don't need to have time constraints attached to them.  I'll be honest, some of these are kind of deep, they're not your typical, get to the gym, read 5 books, make more home cooked meals, some of them are, but these are really about just bettering myself and my life for me and my family.  There is always room for improvement.

Find Better Balance
I'm not sure if this is even humanly possible & something that I should probably consider as a long-term, ever-evolving goal as our lives change over the years, however I do want to try to find a better balance between working my full time job, being a mom, being a wife, being a friend, practicing self-care, taking care of my home, being a blogger, and selling shampoo on the side.   Sounds like a lot doesn’t it?  It is.  I find myself stuck sometimes in the monotony of the day to day, but we are creatures of habit and I am definitely someone who likes routine.  A lot of people have suggested hiring a cleaning lady for at least 2 times a month & I'm really really considering that something I might do this year.  Is it possible to just add another 5 hours to the day??

Continue to Pay off Debt
We don't have a ton of out of control debt by any means, but we do have a few things that we need to clean up.  A credit card and our loan for our DEIVF are the two that I'd like to see paid off this year.  I do have another year or two on my vehicle, and of course our house, but we just actually did make a huge improvement on our mortgage and ended up refinancing to a 20 year from a 30 year loan and knocked off 7 years and 1.4% on our rate!

Find Contentment in what I already have
I am bad with this.  I feel like we grew up in an era when we are always wanting the next best thing and we are never really happy with what we have.  I am totally guilty of this and I am trying to be better about reminding myself that what I already have is pretty damn amazing.  A big contributor to not being content with what I already have is being so involved with social media.  I follow some really amazing bloggers, but they live (or portray that they do) these fabulous lives constantly sharing links to their wardrobes, their home décor, & more, and it's extremely hard for someone who is impulsive like me not to "swipe up" on every Instagram story I see with a cute thermal from Nordstrom that is "under $70" – seriously WTF is that.  So working on my self-control & impulses and being happy with the things I already have is really important for me & also contributes pretty heavily to paying off our debt too. 

Decluttering & Purging
So over our 10 years together we have collected SO much stuff.  Joe likes "stuff", and he is an extremely nostalgic person so we have every remote control car, gaming system, and pretty much every other toy he's ever had in boxes downstairs.  On top of that we just have accumulated a lot of stuff over our years together.  This year I really want to focus on getting rid of as much as we can.  Simplifying & organizing everything that we can.  I am totally not a saver of stuff and Joe is so we need to find a happy medium which will probably be our biggest challenge.

Cultivate Positivity and Happiness
I feel like I am in a good spot with this already, but like I said, there is always room for improvement.  I want to make sure that for myself and my family that we are living the best life that we can be.  I want to make sure we are having some awesome experiences together, but also be able to be satisfied when we are doing nothing or are by ourselves.  There is no room in our life for negative or toxic relationships, life is just too short for that.  I want more date nights with just Joe and I, and I want us to also do more as a family too.  Cleaning up my social media is also a big part of this—who I am following on social media as well & trying to only follow accounts that I feel are really inspiring and positive.  I've been trying to spread more of that myself lately, you might see more quotes shared on my pages that are uplifting.  I think that's a really easy way to cultivate happiness is by sharing your own joys with others.

Better Self-Care
I think I do a pretty good job of this too.  I take the time to get my hair done, I try not to spread myself too thin if I can, but I really need to be better about my diet, especially once I am done breastfeeding because I won't be able to eat the way I have been for the last year without gaining weight now that I don't have a tiny human literally sucking the calories right off of me.  I want to be better about incorporating oils and cleaner products into our lives, and I'm hoping to start doing some form of exercise or something for myself, even if it's just getting outside and taking Georgia for a walk each day.  It's so hard in the winter to be motivated and I cannot even fathom where I would find the time to go to the gym, but taking small steps like a quick walk each afternoon is all I think I really need. 

Rebranding my Blog
I've had an itch lately for a change with my blog and I am slowly starting the process.  I feel like Baby Ridley Bump is finally a big book that can be closed.  It will always be where I started my life as a blogger.  It will always be what started as a pregnancy blog that evolved into an infertility blog, and documents every step of the way over the last 6 years.  All of Baby Ridley Bump will be moved over to the new space so that my journey can still be accessed from the beginning, however, I plan on a name change, a design change, and a host change.  We'll see how far I get with this!  It seems like it will be a lot of work.

It's a lot now that I read back, but it all seems like things I can make happen and it will all only be to make an already amazing life even more incredible.  What are your goals?
 
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