A hodge-podge post.

 

So I haven't really updated my blog this week.  I'm not sure why... perhaps I'm lazy, perhaps I've been a bit occupied, just not sure.  I'll give you a little run down and include random pictures through the post for you to enjoy!

On Monday it was my mom's birthday!  Tuesday I made her a cake and we went and had dinner with her.  It was really yummy.  It would have been nice if my brother was here to help us celebrate, but he made the extra effort to make my mom feel special.  Plus I set up Skype for her {Kris and I got her a netbook since Brock took the computer to college} so that she could see Brock.  Their first "skype" talk was on her birthday!

On Wednesday I went to my 2nd Therapy appointment.  I really like my therapist.  She has been reading a book called "Parenting From The Inside Out" and it's been very interesting.  At times boring, but it has also opened my eyes a bit.  It talks about how the way you were raised and the experiences you had will mold you into the parent that you are.  That seems pretty obvious, I mean how often do you do things that your parents did with you?  A lot.  Or I guess we also try NOT to be our parents...

Anyway, this week I realized that maybe my real dad {a situation which one day I may blog about} is really more good than harm to me.  I mean I am thankful that I met him, it really clarified who he was and why I didn't want that in my life.  It also is helping me to grow as a parent.  My therapist was saying that I am learning to be more flexible and change as Aiden grows up and working on our relationship which is something my real dad doesn't know how to do.  He didn't care about anyone else's feelings or the wake he left us in, and I care.  I am different.  Stronger.  Better.   I care about how what I do will make Aiden feel.  I also make my family and my husband my priority and making seeking help for myself I am strengthening my family. 

When I leave therapy I feel clear headed.  Exhausted.  Relief.  I feel like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.  I get this "aha" moment that gets me a little further each week.  I am glad I decided to talk to someone.  I am learning that I am not as much "depressed" as I am anxious.  I need to work on that and she is helping me.  I've even been sleeping better {sometimes...}. 

Lastly, this week I got more cloth diapers!  Yay!  My dad gave me some money to buy more for Aiden and I got a great deal and got 8 new diapers!  6 more BumGenius One Size pockets {3.0's} and 2 FizziBuns to try out.  Also I have hinted that I will be doing a giveaway soon, and that is thanks to GreenerBaby who sent me a few diapers too!  Look for that the week of Aiden's birthday {Oct. 2-9th}. 

Oh and today my hubby went to Target to get more formula and he came home with the new Maroon 5 cd just for me!  Oh I love that man, I love the cd too!

8 Questions x2

Ashley from Kiwi's & Cocktails tagged me for these questions....

1. If you won a free, expenses paid trip to any ONE country, which one would it be?
Hmm this is tough - Ireland

2. If you could redo college (undergrad) for free, would you choose the same degree?
Yep.  I loved my school {Go UW!} I loved my classes and degree.  Perhaps I would have ACTUALLY used my degree...

3. Would you rather live in the City or the Country?
Hmm, I like both for different reasons.  I do think there is something special about the country.  Endless fields and trees and mountains.  The sounds of crickets and seeing the stars clearly every night, catching firefly's... But maybe just a country area 20 minutes from the city so I could still go get sushi??

4. Would you rather run 5 miles or bike 10?
Neither?  I only do physical activity that is behind closed doors... like the neighbors can't see me wii boxing through the windows and no one can see behind the bedroom door!

5. Do you already have your future children’s names picked out?
Yes.  Well, sorta.  We have a girls name picked out - Ellie Rose for those who are curious, but boys names are tough.  Aiden was easy we knew it before we got married, but thinking of a second one is a struggle.  We are toying with Owen lately. 

6. Are you team Bill Compton or Eric Northman (If you don’t watch True Blood, you can skip this question)
I don't watch this show.  However, I am TEAM JACOB!!

7. What is your favorite TV show? If you want you can say which is your favorite show whose season just ended and one that is about to start? Like for me, True Blood is ending, but House and Modern Family will be starting soon.
Well I love me some Big Brother and am very sad that I am watching the finale now - go Lane!  I am very excited though for Grey's and Criminal Minds and Parenthood to return.

8. What do you think is the most important detail of a wedding, that you attend? For example, The DJ/band/music, cake, ceremony vows, main meal, open bar, etc?
I guess I'd have to say the ceremony - that's what the wedding really is right?  I do think that good food and music is important though for friends and family to have a good time celebrating with you.  I know people still mention our wedding meal and we've been married 2 years now.  That clearly was a GOOD meal!  Open bar is the least important - I hate people who go to celebrations just to get drunk.  We don't need booze to enjoy ourselves.

Katie at Third Times A Charm wanted me to answer these questions:

1. What is the weirdest dream you have ever had?
I have this repeat dream about Killer Whales.  I've had several of them, but the idea is always the same - they are attacking me or waiting to. 

2. What is your favorite weeknight dinner recipe?
Oh my mom made this crockpot rosemary chicken and potatoes recently that was TO DIE FOR - can't wait to have it again!

3. If arranged marriages still happened, who would you choose for your child?
I would pick someone who made me laugh and who I would want my own daughter to be like.  If you can't get along with your MIL you are in trouble! 

4. Who is your favorite author?
Danielle Steel.  Sad truth, I've read more of her books than anything else.  I've read a lot of Mary Higgins Clark too.

5. What is a song that speaks to how you feel right now?
Every Day by Rascall Flatts.  Some of the lyrics that speak to me:  "I drive myself crazy tryin' to stay out of my own way.  The messes that I made, but my secrets are so safe.  The only one who gets me, yeah, you get me, It's amazin' to me... how every day, every day, every day, you save my life.

I come around all broken down and crowded out, and you're comfort.  Sometimes the place I go is so deep and dark and desperate, I don't know, I don't know how every day you save my life.

6. What is one of your favorite photos? (post it!)
This was the first picture that Kris and I ever took together and to me it's perfect.  We both look soo happy.  And sexy!  I want ot be that skinny again.  This was our first real date.

7. What is your favorite movie?
The Notebook

8. What is one of your favorite activities to do as a family?
Games or puzzles.  We used to do "family nights" and everyone would get together once a week, eat and play card games or board games.  Kris and like to do puzzles together too, although it always turns into a competition of who did more of the puzzle.  lol  I just like quality fun family time.  As far as my little family of 3 goes, the zoo was my favorite time yet.

Goodness those were some good questions!  Now I must think of my own 8 to pass along for answers!  Here we go...


1.  What is your go to snack food?
2.  What do you do to be creative?  Scrapbook, draw, write, make crafts... besides the bloggy thing please.
3.  Who is the one person no longer in your life that made the biggest impact on you {good or bad just say which} - they can be living or dead, just no longer someone you have contact with.
4.  What did you want to be when you grew up?
5.  What book are you currently reading?
6.  What is you favorite part of the Christmas holidays?
7.  How do you take your coffee?
8.  Do you fold and put up your laundry right away or let it pile up?

I pass this on to:
1.  http://readyonetwothree.blogspot.com/
2.  http://kiwisandcocktails.b/Ashley
3. http://anotherjoyousjourney.blogspot.com/
4.  http://circleofloveandthecrazinessaroundit.blogspot.com/
5.  http://lildavismichael.blogspot.com/

That's all I could think of, at least bloggers who might actually play along!  If you like my questions, join in and let me know you did!

Weight Watchers Update

I thought I would give you all a little update.  Dispite my mental health, my physical health is doing good!  As of this Monday I have officially lost 10.1lbs in 6 weeks. 

Doing WW is really easy for me.  I feel like I can still have some treats.  Like this week I had a nice warm and gooey Cinnabon!  Yum!  I also have a nice sushi lunch with my dad where I consumed 20 pieces of sushi and still didn't go over my points for the day!  I can eat most the foods my family does, but I also feel more in control of my meals.

I thought I would give you all a little glimpse of some of the foods/meals that I enjoy!  The first is a sample of how I can enjoy the same food Kris eats, grilled steak in this case, and still keep on track.  I had my reduced portion of steak, my instant brown and wild rice cup for 4 points {instead of white rice}, and my 0 point green giant broccoli and cheese!  Plus a salad.  Yum.

I also enjoy a lot of Lean Cuisine meals.  They have the new steam fresh bags, they are A-Maz-Ing!  Seriously really good, my personal favorite is the Mushroom tortelloni.  I also really enjoy the Bagel thins with whipped WW cream cheese for only 2 points TOTAL for breakfast.  It's not hard to eat right if you actually put thought into it.  I haven't even worked out ONCE either and still I am losing weight. 

Wordless Wednesday - Warm Winter Slippers!

PLEASE IGNORE MY UGLY WHITE LEGS.

11 Months?

Whoops!  In my busy mind I missed the 11 month post.  Not much new to report.  He walks more than crawls.  He can get up from sitting on his butt without a second thought.  He throws, he stomps his feet and fake cries when you make him mad.  Here are some pictures of little man, who looks more like toddler every day, being a sickly kiddo this week.

Down In The Dumps and Digging My Way Out. {PPD related}

It's been a bad week. 

It started with the dreaded P.M.S.  Yep it's already here again.  I felt cranky all day - every day, wasn't sleeping well, and it all started to pile up on me.  I was not a happy camper.  When you feel like that, you can't help but start to take it out on others.  Which is exactly what I started to do!

Aiden is also a bit under the weather, a little cold we believe, which means he is extra needy and a bit of a grump himself.  We don't make a good pair when we are both cranky.  At least that's what I blamed my frustrations and crankiness on.

Too bad you can only blame P.M.S moodiness for a few days.  After a few bad days in a row I started to realize that I might be mistaken.  Maybe it's not just my period, maybe it's not just "changing hormones" {an excuse I think I have overused} - I think it's my PPD.  I thought I had a good handle on my depression.  I thought I was doing much better.  I thought wrong. 

I know that getting better is a process of 1 step forward and 2 steps back.  That's just soo hard for me to comprehend though.  I want the medicine to work, I just want to be normal NOW.  This morning I wanted to give Kris a break.  He works soo much more than I do lately taking care of Aiden, and taking care of ME!  So I took care of Aiden during the night, which was easy.  Then I got up with him at 645 and we played, watched Playhouse Disney, had a bottle, share a yogurt, and then it was naptime.  That is where the trouble began.  He fought me rocking him, he cried in the crib, finally he took the rest of his bottle, but then fought me rocking him AGAIN.  Then he cried in the crib again.  Finally after 30 minutes he let me rock him.  He fell asleep after I cleaned the snot {sick remember} and tears off his face.  I laid him down and started to tip-toe out...he cried.

I tried to rock him again but I just kept thinking about how I should be enjoying this moment and instead I just wanted him to sleep already so I could have my coffee.  It really upset me that that is how I was feeling, and that this is not the first time I've felt this way.  I was being slefish.  I decided that it can't just be my hormones causing these feelings.  It's something more.  So I took the next step this morning, and after 6 months of medication alone, I called a therapist.

It's not easy to admit that something is still wrong.  I feel like it's been a long enough time on meds that I should be better or "fixed", but the truth is I am not.  I still need help.  I need someone to talk to who can give me the tools I need to deal with my frustrations and my emotions.  I don't know if my meds are the right one for me, maybe I can try something new.  All I know is I am still truggling and I am going to do what is best for Aiden and me {and Kris} and see a therapist about it.  *sigh*

I am scared to go to my first appointment on Wednesday, I'm scared to talk about my feelings with a stranger, I'm scared about everything.  It does feel good to admit that I need additional help though.  Both to admit it to those around me, including you lovely bloggers, and to admit it to myself.  So wish me luck and I will report back at some point about how I am doing.

My Love Affair with TITANIC

3.) What was it about that movie? Describe A movie you once had memorized.

The answer to this week's writing prompt came easily to me.  It was a no-brainer.  Titanic.  I was a teen aged girl, in love with Leo, and I saw this movie in the theater more times than I am willing to admit! 

I remember that my mom would go to bed and I would stay up until the middle of the night just watching this movie in the living room.  Sometimes I would just start with VHS tape #2 so I could get to all the dramatic sinking scenes. 

Even my mom started to memorize some of the lines, her favorite was "oh stop it mother, you'll give yourself a nose-bleed!" because she too had to watch it constantly.  My best friend Tori and I were obsessed.  They did a remake song on the radio with the popular quotes from the movie, we taped that and listened to it all the time.  We watched the movie together every weekend when we spent the night with each other - didn't matter whose house we were at.

I cried almost every time I watched it, mostly because I knew what was going to happen before it did.  I would cry when she let him go and would say "I'll never let go Jack, I'll never let go" and then I would cry again at the end of the movie when Rose dies an old lady warm in her bed {just like Jack said she would} and he is waiting for her along with the rest of the sunk passengers in her "heaven".  Oh it makes me smile just picturing it.

I loved Mr. Andrews, he was soo sweet and just felt awful they didn't have enough life boats.  I loved that it was based on facts.  I learned tidbits of info like that during filming the actors would just pee in the big "ocean" water tank because it was too hard to remove the wet clothes between takes.  I can seriously quote the entire movie {truth be told I'm sitting here running quotes through my head now as I talk about it}, it's almost a sickness.

I think i loved this movie so much because I was at the age of romance.  The time when you dream of dating someone perfect and having them sweep you off your feet.  I wanted to be Rose.  I was in love with Jack Dawson.  To this day I still enjoy when the movie comes on TBS.  I can't help but stop and watch part of it and quote right along with it.

Oh and just a side note - I was soo obsessed with this movie that I wrote a school paper on John Jacob Astor, one of the rich men who sank in the Titanic.  Yep - I did.



Join in at Mama Kat's....

Wordless Wednesday: Thermal pjs

New bedding...

I love decorating and shopping with my mom.  Once Brock went off to school and mom moved into our apartment we decided to take what would be Brock's old room and turn it into a room for "guests" or us of course. 

We got my grandpa's old bed frame, night stand and a big mirrored dresser {which you can't really see in these pics} and used the colors on it to decorate.

Here are some pictures I just took on my phone to show the bedding we got.  We also got a second set of sheets in the bright green.  We still need to hang pictures up, so when the room is actually finished I will take better pictures. 

As an added bonus, there are two handsome sleeping boys on the bed...

Aiden & The Puppy

Kris and I have gone back in forth about getting a dog for Aiden and our future kids.  It won't be a long while, until we have a house with a yard of our own, but still it's something to think about.

The thinking is over, Aiden made the choice for us.  He loves dogs.  He pets them and plays with them and just squeals with delight when they lick him.  I have posted videos of him and my mom's puppy "kissing" before to show you.  Today I will share with you a few pictures that further prove his love for Gema.

He has now mastered the latches on the kennel at my mom's house, so keeping puppy locked up while we are there is tough!  She sometimes gets too excited and knocks Aiden over, so we limit her time playing with him until they learn to play together better.  This week he unlatched her cage and just got right in to play with her.


Too funny.  Sorry for the bad pictures too, I only had my cell phone.  Gema is looking at Aiden like, umm, what are you doing in my cage? 

He also happened to take some of his plastic cookie cutters in there to play with too.  He was trying to share and would shove them through the slots.

I've gone green....

So Aiden had a bad rash a couple weeks ago.  It was awful and we had to use a fungal cream to clear it up along with warm wash cloths instead of wipes.  Now we had switched to sensitive wipes and that has kept it away.  We accidentally grabbed an older pack from the floor of regular wipes and guess who got a rash immediately?  Yep!

So I happened to have a few Bum Genius diapers sitting around.  Let me explain my AWESOME deal first... someone had ordered a 2 pack on Target.com and then returned them unopened to the store.  They were priced 35.99 originally.  Marked down on clearance, since it wasn't a store sold item, to 9.06.  I had a gift card for 5 bucks, so I got 2 brand new bumgenius all in one 3.0 {twilight and grasshopper} diapers, for 4.06!!  I WAS STOKED!  Even though we've never used cloth diapers I snatched them up just because of the deal, and I have considered using some before.

Fast forward to now.  We have been using the 2 diapers religiously ever night for a week now.  I LOVE them!  Even Kris loves them.  Not only are they adorable, but his bum cleared up overnight and he is staying  much drier at nighttime.  I am hooked.

For his birthday my mother in love bought me 3 more because I am washing one everyday to keep using them.  Now I am waiting on a Clementine one, Moonbeam and a Ribbit green one.  I think I will continue with the cloth diapers at night only with Aiden, and put them up for our next baby.  I told Kris I am already seriously considering going 100% cloth for our future kids.  That's how sold I am on them. 

Too funny, it's the one thing I NEVER expected myself to love this much even though I was always willing to try it out.

Cry-on?

So here is my latest idea for a baby product.  A mobile {or in our case it's the mobile with a projector on it} that turns itself on when it hears crying!

I mean, they have "clap on" plug in hook up, why not invent something that turns on to the sound of crying.  I think it would a wonderful idea. 

Aiden lately has gotten much better about going back to sleep during the night without being rocked.  It's taking time, but it's working out.  The one thing that seems to help is turning on his projector mobile.  He will lay down, not cry, and watch it until he falls asleep again.  The only problem is, even with remote control we have to either be in the room or open the door to use the remote. 

If anyone is an inventor, can you get on this?  Kris just said "watch, someone is going to do that and you will get nothing out of it now!".  :) 

{if you couldn't tell this is not my son, just a visual of the mobile we have} image via

Aiden being silly