Finding Balance: Wellness for the Everyday Struggle: 2017

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

The Ever Evolving Life....and Toddler

Modeling his new yard and climbing table - yes,

that's corn behind out house

Well, quick update:

Little man is walking full time, we bought a house, painted it, got HFM (Hand Foot Mouth), moved in, unpacked and had our first party.

AND...Legan moved to sleeping in his crib full time instead of half time. Granted, he's still getting up 1-3 times per night, so I'm not actually saving myself any sleep with this. Good move? Hm, debateable. There was something totally lovely about only having to roll over and put a boob in his mouth and then pass back out. Oh well! Now that he's got this crib thing down he's totally not interested in sleeping while touching mommy. The plus side: pretty much anyone can put him down for a nap or bedtime and it's zero fuss.

I really thought he was going to nap

on the kitchen floor that day

Having our own space is...amazing. Being able to get our things out of storage, put them away into logical places and organize to my heart's content is really very therapeutic for me. Which is good, considering I've been working 4-6 days per week, my mom is moving out of state, my grandfather is very ill, and we just went through the time change (read: my son is waking up an hour earlier than normal and I find it very depressing that the sun goes down at 5:20 ish).

Sometimes you just need a few

minutes relaxing on the couch

However, in the last week or so I've managed to actually start physically taking care of myself a bit again. Light workouts such as 20 minutes of squats, modified push ups, and windmills some days and yoga other days. I think it's going to seriously help me get back on my game. I always feel better when I'm better taken care of. Working to squeeze this time in isn't easy, but now that we're done with the vast majority of unpacking and I can do small pieces of organizing now instead of mass efforts has made it simpler. Legan has even taking to watching me do yoga and doing some of his own freeform poses and movements on the mats. I'm so happy we can literally leave 5 mats out all the time, plus we have a ton of kids play foam down too so there's a lot of nice soft places for whenever I have 5 minutes.

So much foam flooring!

I think having the mat out and living in yoga friendly clothes (while I'm at home) has been extremely important to getting my routine back into gear. That and my squat workout can be done at work if we're dead. If we're not dead, I just focus strongly on my core as I run around getting drinks and food and everything all taken care of.

Legan tests out the foam roller!

Legan is totally enjoying having his own space to play - not only having all of his toys out at once, but having them in many different spaces in the house and having so much house to run around in. He's also decided that foam mats and/or yoga mats are really awesome, so just spinning around in circles on them really entertains him. I'll throw a few pictures up now, but hopefully more to come as I work on getting updates here at least twice a month!

He's huge into wearing necklaces

Carrying froggy around during packing up week

Picnic lunch at the new house during

painting week before we moved

HFM is no fun

Really, really not fun

Healing up and happy to be naked

He wanted us to fry him up while we were unpacking the kitchen!

Took a break from unpacking to carve pumpkins

Found daddy's old toys!

Trying to recreate his pumpkin photo from last year

Carving his pumpkin!

Such an active daredevil! (Oh, and check out our fireplace!)

Family Halloween photo - Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion,

The Scarecrow, and our little dog too!

Rocking his purple wool diaper cover before bed. Still LOVING our cloth

Had to set up stairs so he can get to his toys in his toy box (and necklace again)

Stacking, and I love how he's using his feet too

Legan and Warren (who is ALSO a year old and

walking now!) are such great buddies

So proud he got onto the chair

New game, if I fits, I sits

Fall weather surprised us! Here's our balloons marking the

driveway for guests at our housewarming party!

For as much as he runs around all crazy, he does love to sit and

read for quite a while too (like, 20 whole minutes sometimes!!!)

New Baby Videos!

Yup, that's all this is.

Legan Pushing Fire Truck!

He loves to push all things lately.

Legan Drinking From the Faucet

He's just so silly.

Legan Doing The Downward Booty Bop

He came up with this idea all by himself!

Monday, September 18, 2017

I Just Can't Stand Paranoia!

Maybe this is more obvious to me as a woman, but it's really become crazy as I've moved into motherhood.

The "whole world" or at least society as I feel it wants me to be paranoid!

Now these right here are actual things said to me....

Don't be naked in your house near a window anywhere/anytime, because people will stalk you through your windows.
Don't leave your baby in the car if you have to run back into the house for your wallet
Don't eat sushi while you're pregnant, you will miscarry
Don't walk alone at night, or just don't walk alone, you'll get raped.
Don't let your baby sleep on his tummy, he'll suffocate.

And there have been many many many more.

But honestly, the amount of paranoia and fear we have about some things is ridiculous.

I'm the first person to admit that bad things happen. Typically they're unexpected and couldn't be prevented. Not all of course, but still. When it comes to the safety of my baby, and it's things I can 100% control and plan for, ok. I WILL strap him into his correctly installed carseat, all the time. That's a no-brainer to me. He will not be unsupervised in a pool, or near a pool. Ok, no problem.

But if anyone thinks that they can prevent 100% of freak accidents, they are not only wrong - but they're going to go crazy trying to stop their kids/families from doing ANYTHING.

I hear often not to do X,Y, or Z because my baby is going to be kidnapped, etc. The reality is that kidnappings (from non-family members) are so utterly rare, that it's absurd to worry about them on a daily basis. In fact, according to this article, far far less than 1% of the total number of kids kidnapped by a stranger suffer mortal harm. This is not to say that I want or support my kid being taken, but I'm just mentioning that they things we worry about aren't the true danger. NPR backs me up on this one too.

The top 5 dangers parents imagine,

Kidnapping
School snipers
Terrorists
Dangerous strangers
Drugs

and the top 5 injury/death causes...

Car accidents
Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
Abuse
Suicide
Drowning

...are pretty much unrelated. Courtesy of NPR.

So I can't in good conscience freak out about the tops 5. I can (and have, and will continue to) leave my little bug in the car for a minute, strapped into his carseat, while I run inside and grab whatever dumb thing (wallet, keys, diaper bag) that I forgot inside. I will let my little guy meet dogs and people at the park. I won't assume that every single man or woman that watches us in public is out to get him/us because honestly I watch other kids in stores. I'm fascinated and usually enthralled with their world view and play.

I can't be paranoid about him choking on every little thing, or about him contracting some awful disease from touching a door handle, even if it's in a bathroom. He has a healthy immune system, unlike some children/people, so I'm going to let him expose himself in his goofy little toddler fashion to germs. This doesn't mean I'm going to let him chew on toilet seats (intentionally let him that is...), but if he's licking a table in a restaurant, there's likely not much I can do about it.

The biggest reason for this is my own sanity. For me, if I have to be paranoid about any one thing that is statistically unlikely, I will feel obligated to worry about every other thing that is that unlikely. If I worry that he might get kidnapped, I have to worry that we're going to get into an awful car crash every time we leave the house, or we're going to get robbed constantly, or that eating one not-organic apple is going to cause cancer. We don't have the money to eat 100% whole organic foods. I wish we did, but even that wouldn't guarantee freedom from all diseases and/or food-borne illness. You can't guarantee anything like that all the time. If I feel the need to be paranoid about all of these, I'm shortly going to end up living in a bubble in my own home. With nothing fun going on ever. That sounds like a terrible life and an awful childhood for my favorite little monster boy.

So I'm going to make educated decisions based on what I can control and what I know is necessary for safety. No playing with the stove, no riding loose in the car, no eating paint chips. But if I feel it necessary to lock my front door at my house all the time, including when I have guests on their way over, or just when we're all home and awake - mostly it's just going to end up with me needing to hide about 1000 spare keys outside, or regularly breaking into my own house: either way it's a huge expensive hassle.

And now, for Mr. Legan:

Climbed onto the table by himself, so proud!

Was supposed to be napping, instead pulled this off the window.

Very first sucker!

Super girly diaper, and he put a colander on his face....he's weird.

Passed out, and LOOK AT THOSE EYELASHES!

He just wants some alcohol, no big deal....

Pushing his wagon everywhere!

Cool dude in Gigi's sunglasses.

Toddler nursing is so interesting.

We went apple picking and he ate apples. But I love this picture.

Doing so much of this lately - standing unassisted!

Licking the bath mat....that's all.

Just sitting on the car eating a snack mom...

Happy happy dude!

We found a dog who was lost. He loved her. She loved him. Now she's home with her family and I love that.

Monday, July 24, 2017

Quick Update!

It's been a totally wild and crazy couple of months and I've really missed making my updates, but here's the basic long and short of what's gone on....

We've moved in with my mother into her basement - which unfortunately leaks water during a heavy rainstorm. It's unfinished, but we've thrown some older carpets down to help soften the floor. We have 4 adults (my sister too), plus the baby and dog and it's maybe 900 sq ft upstairs. It's tight, but temporary.

Mystique sold to a lovely family with an enthusiastic 13 year old rider who has been having a great time trail riding and doing some light showing.

We went on our first camping trip as a family of three (and probably the first trip since we got married). It was awesome, and Legan had a great time, he napped while hiking and ate a bunch of dirt.

Eric is still job hunting. We have until Oct 21st for him to get hired and still have any chance of buying a house this year. If he gets a job after that date, we have to wait until he's been employed for 6 months in order for him to qualify for a mortgage. IF we have to wait through that period, we'll be finding alternative renting facilities, so that we can all have more space.

My computer crashed the week before the move, so I haven't been able to update mostly because I don't have computer access as Eric needs to be job hunting during the week.

I also picked up a bartending job, which I've been working 3-6 days per week lately, plus had a couple of weeks working my part-time theater stagehand job too.

Little Legan turned 1 year old! He's still growing and learning at an astounding rate. Now he spends his days pushing his little zebra cart along. He's not walking independently yet, but I'm sure it will happen soon. He's also babbling up a total storm! He had a really rough 5-6 weeks with this whole transition of moving and starting to sleep most of the night in his crib (and nap too!), as well as mommy working. He's just now finally settled back down in to a bit of a routine and is only waking up 2-3 times per night again, instead of the 7-8 times it was for a while.

I'm back to running a bit as well, with the stroller, or at least with Eric pushing the stroller. So we're all trying to keep our chins up, our feet dry, and just roll with this unfortunate situation for now. At least I know that come October something will have to change, whether it's Eric having found a job and being back to house-hunting, or looking for a rental somewhere nearby so we can at least be more settled.

So, here's some pictures!