my baby's six months. let's talk about me.

oh boy, i really need to do an elliot update.  and i SWORE i wouldn't be one of those people who let their second kid get the shaft in the pictures/blog updates/baby book department.  and here we are... update-less since four months.  trust me, the kid is doing some cute stuff & showing us his personality more & more every single day.  i really need to write this stuff down.  and the same goes for parker.  he's wicked smart!  letters, numbers, jokes... he amazes me with his wit & knowledge.

but right now?  i'm gonna give you a little six month post-baby update about myself.  

when i was near the end of my pregnancy with elliot i often got the "are you ready?" question.  of course i wasn't ready!  you never know what you're in for with this kind of thing until you're in it... just like how it was with your first.  you just don't know until it happens.  so when people asked me if i was ready, i told them i was at least ready for the chaos that was inevitably coming & to be in a fog for six months.  and that's how i've felt... foggy.  tired & making it through the weeks one day at a time, making it through the days, one hour at a time, just trying to survive til bedtime.  

in the last six months, i managed to get in some scattered work outs, i've added a couple of pieces to my wardrobe, i've lost some of the baby weight & i've booked & shot quite a few sessions with my biz.  but through it all?  foggy.  tired, worn out, stretched thin & still just not myself.  but that's ok!  it's exactly what i told myself to expect for the first six months.  whenever i got frustrated or like i should be doing more i would say, "amy, you have a four month old... give yourself a break."  and then promise myself at six months i'd start to piece myself back together.  

so here we are... six months.  i am SO ready to be myself again.  to get my body back, to have energy again, to wear cute clothes on occasion, to curl my hair every now & then, to plan & cook healthy meals, to be creative... to come out of the newborn-mom fog.  can it be done?  call me selfish but for my own sanity, i need it to happen.  and trust me, if i'm happy?  my boys will be much, much happier.  all three of them.

so how do i plan on making this happen?  i need tangible goals to keep me going & help me measure my progress.  here are some of those goals:

--> register for the Capitol City Marathon & run 2-3x a week.  i'm not crazy though, i'm not doing the marathon.  there is a 5 mile run & a half marathon... i haven't decided which one i'm doing yet.

--> STOP EATING SO MUCH CRAP.  seriously, my sweet tooth is out of control.  and with nursing it's been so easy to just say to heck with it & eat whatever i want.  well, i gave myself a six month pass & it ends now.  so.  no more.  i'll eat a little something sweet after lunch & dinner (think reese's miniature or hunk of cookie dough) and that's it.  plus one full-on dessert, once a week.  period!

--> go to bed!  this is probably one of the biggest sources of all my problems.  i'm so freaking tired!  but for so much of it, i only have myself to blame for staying up so late... especially now that elliot only wakes up once or twice a night.  so i am going to be in bed every night this week no later than midnight.  bonus points for bed at 11:30... which means i need to wrap this post up in like, two minutes.

--> get dressed in a real outfit at least one day a week other than sunday.  i always get dressed up on sundays for church but all the other days pretty much consist of work out clothes, pj's or just jeans & a hoodie (my errands go-to outfit).  i'd like to put a little thought into an outfit at least one extra time... and that will remind me that my clothes don't really fit me the way i like them to right now, which is probably why i wear all that other comfy stuff.  but i guess that's the point of all of this now, isn't it?

ok, that seems like enough to start.  i'm excited!  getting to the six months mark is a big deal.  my baby is half way to his first birthday & we've survived the newborn stuff.  i'm so excited to be at this point!  and i'm so excited to finally be doing something to feel like my old self again.

let's do this.

the last week in iPhotos!

another week down!  what've we been up to?  here are some randoms:

--> we cancelled cable & have been catching our shows by hulu or online streaming.  i've become completely addicted to Lost.  just in case i wasn't sure before if i'd like being stranded on a deserted island, i am pretty freaking FOR SURE against it now.  creepy!

--> elliot turned six months.  gahhhhh.  half a year.  now we're staring down the other side of the journey to a year old.  love that squishy kiddo.

--> it was valentine's day!  we did our traditional pizza dinner celebration & i worked all day shooting a photo booth of cute little kiddos at a local indoor playground.  good times.  soooo not romantic.  nothing tires you out like trying to make 40 little kids smile for a picture all. day. long.  by the end of the day it was all i could do to stuff my face with some pizza & chocolate & pass out on the couch.

--> my cleaning/decluttering/organizing phase continues.  out with the old!  put things away!  sweep & mop!  i know, we're getting crazy around here.

--> so i will be taking the stroller strides instructor training in just over two weeks.  i guess that means i should get in shape?  so i've been trying to take the work outs up a notch & am gonna be running a race in may!  went out for my first run in months today & kinda had my butt kicked.  gotta start somewhere, right?

here's what that & some other stuff looked like in iphotos!

we got rid of cable - week one.

i never thought getting rid of cable would work for us because sam is a bit of a (read: HUGE) sports fanatic.  sportscenter is always on & if it's not sportcenter, then it's some random game even if it's two teams i could care less about.  i mean, i love me some local college & seattle sports but i couldn't care less about st. mary's college vs. who the heck knows.  sam?  don't matter... if it's sports he's into it.  in fact, his mom told me about when he was like nine years old she caught him glued to the tv watching golf.  she was like, "sam, surely there's something more interesting on." and he said "this is the only sports i could find!"  so there's that.

anywho, we'd thrown the idea out to get rid of cable before but left it undecided.  then one day sam came home from work & started setting up hulu plus.  ten minutes later he was on the phone with comcast changing our service from cable, internet & phone to just internet.  goodbye landline, goodbye cable.  goodbye $170/mo, hello $65/mo.  sweet, right?

so here's where i'm at with it.

i've never not had tv.  i love watching the news in the evening & sometimes have the today show on while i am getting ready in the mornings.  i like hearing random stories that come on & being caught up in my current events & pop culture.  but there are just so many other sources to get these things that paying $100+ a month for it just seems silly, right?  i mean, surely they're not that important.  i also kinda miss channel surfing... or do i?  did i actually like watching the random episode of super nanny or  was tuning in to that kind of stuff just old habits?  pretty sure my life can go on without another episode of hoarders.

so we'll see.  i'm finding that whatever we watch is much more intentional & through the magic of hulu & internet streaming we haven't missed any episodes of our favorite shows.  we can airplay news broadcasts from our computer to our tv through the magic of apple tv & i'm not crying any tears over missing the "cat & the hat" on the pbs morning line up but rather am loving hulu's on demand episodes of "super why" & "dinosaur train," parker's favorites.

if we decide we're missing too much stuff we'll just sign back up, no big deal.  but i kinda don't see that happening.  i like the savings too much.  and there are so many other ways to get our shows that i think we'll be just fine.

actually, maybe we'll take that $100/mo of savings & put it into our vacation fund for a trip somewhere awesome a year from now.  we can laugh our tv-free selves all the way to some hawaiian beaches next february & bask in the treat that is tv from our hotel room.  seems like a good idea.

(via)

what we've been up to... in iPhotos!

it's been a busy last couple of weeks.  but i guess that's nothing new?  

i've been up to my armpits in photography biz stuff & now my newest obsession is some early spring cleaning.  i've been going through crap around the house like a mad women & taking loads of donations to goodwill like nobody's business.  a trip to IKEA last week ignited this fire to get rid of anything in my house taking up space that i don't absolutely love & to decorate/create a space here that i can be happy & inspired in.  ya know?  anywho, that's what i've been up to.

in other haps, elliot's almost six months {maybe i should post his five month update soon?}, i quit my part-time job with the state {no going back to the office for me!}, i finally finished parker's alphabet book i had posted about way back when {remember this?} and we've spent all kinds of time hanging out with friends, superbowl celebrating, mall shopping & toddler dance class taking.  

this is what it looks like in iPhotos!

scenes from bath time.

it's been about 3.5 months since i've posted my boys in the bath.  too long, right?

a couple-a notes:
--> when did parker get so big?
--> should i have stopped parker from dumping water over elliot's head?  maybe.
--> did elliot find it hilarious when parker dumped said water over his head?  yes.
--> there were about 75 more pictures of elliot wrapped up in that towel because clean-post-bath-baby < nothing.