Stay Home vs Work Mama

For the longest time I always thought I would stay home with my kids if I had the luxury. When we got pregnant with Jack, I found myself suddenly wondering if that was what I truly wanted. I finally had a job that I loved and wasn't sure if I should give up my position. Plus, let's face it, the first few months with a newborn aren't really convincing to make you want to stay home.
After lots of thought, I decided that I would in fact give staying home with Jack a chance.
At first, I wasn't sure if I liked it. I felt isolated and like I was missing out on some adult interaction. I maybe even felt a little self pity. There I admit it. I am going to chalk those feelings up to my whacked out post pregnancy hormones. But it did seem like all the feelings I had in the beginning made me feel selfish, which in turn made me feel even worse that here I was blessed with a beautiful and healthy baby boy and all I could think about was what I was missing out on.

Fast forward a few months...
A job opportunity was presented to me and I was forced to again rehash the idea of staying home vs. working. After considering what I like and don't like about staying home with Jack, I realized that it was best for our family if I stayed home. However, I then became determined to fix what areas I felt like needed a little work to get more satisfaction from staying home.

Here are some of the important things I have found along the way that I feel are necessary for me to be a great stay at home mom:

• Adult time (without your child)
• Play Dates (a combo of adult time for me and playdate/exposure to other kids for Jack.)
• Personal Time. Hopefully this includes an hour of time to do whatever you want but honestly sometimes it might include even just alone time to use the shower/bathroom)
• A helpful spouse who appreciates what you do and steps in to provide relief when you are completely strung out. Love you Mitch, even though I may be a beast at times ;)
• An escape. For me that involves disappearing with Jack to my parents farm.
• My Scentsy business. I meet new people, sell a yummy smelling product, and make money which gives me that sense of accomplishment that my 40 hr/week job gave me.
• Hobbies. I have started sewing although i haven't spent too much time lately on it. More to come on that in a later post...
• Trips to the Mall, Target, etc. Although this one gets a little tricky for trying not to spend money, it does provide a change of scenery for both of us.
• Exercise. This one has been a hard thing for me to stick with but does give me a break while Jack goes to the daycare and he gets to play with other kids.
• Sunshine. Everybody feels better with sunshine, right? :) That nice weather last week gave me an even better outlook on life and allowed us to get out and take walks.

Even after implementing all these new things into my new life, I still was wondering if I would love being back in the classroom. So I decided to sub back in the classroom for a few days while Jack attended daycare in the same center. Although we were only there a few days and it would have taken more days to fully adjust, we both decided that daycare life was not for either one of us. We like our flexible, stay home schedule.

I no longer wonder if I should be back in the classroom because I like being a stay at home mom. Even on days like today where Jack is sick and crabby and I haven't had much sleep.

When deciding whether to go back to work or stay home, you need to make the best decision for your family and then alter it to meet your needs. For now, staying home is where Jack and I are happiest :)

To end this I must say thank you to my husband who works crazy amounts of hours at his job and with his photography so that I can stay home with Jack. Your work does not go unappreciated with us :)

First Family Vacation.

Holy Cow has it been forever since I last blogged! We are still kicking, in fact, more accurately I should say we are crawling. Yes. Thats correct. Jack, our 8 month old, is crawling! He is growing up so fast and getting more fun by the day. Still a happy go lucky little boy.

This past weekend we took our first family vacation to the cities. We visited the Mall of America, including SeaLIFE aquarium, IKEA, and stayed in a hotel. Jack got to swim in a pool for the first time there and could not have enjoyed himself more! He was splashing like crazy!

Here are a few pictures documenting our trip. I stole them off my husbands facebook page so hopefully they are ok resolution.

Sleeping like a champ in his pack and play. Sporting a green polo for St. Patricks Day too :)

His first meal in a restaurant. Family-friendly Ikea sells baby food :) 

Bananas were on the menu and inhaled practically. 

A collage of his swimming experience.

I think it is safe to say that we all enjoyed ourselves! 

Our next adventure: Jack and I going to daycare for the next several days so I can sub.

 He is going to hang out in the baby room and I will be with the 3's. 

Hope we enjoy it as much as our vacation ;)

Baby's Words to Mom.

Not a big advocate for Johnson baby products but they do make good commercials. Here is one of them.

Caution: It may make you cry.

Aww. Nothing like being told you are doing a good job :)

6 months.

Guess who is 6 months!!

Time has been flying by but man is the time with Jack fun!

I swear he has had a personality from the beginning but his contagious smiles are bigger and his laughter is more frequent.

I just love that little boy!

Here are a few recent videos we have captured lately. You will notice they aren't the best camera views because I must confess our little boy is quite entertained by cameras and pictures of himself. If he sees the camera, he stops what he is doing and smiles. His camera/photo fascination I am sure we had nothing to do with it with my husband being a photographer and us plastering his photo everywhere. It's quite the riot to see him spot one of his pictures. He grins at it huge!

Anyways, this first video captures him laughing at me. As long as I keep laughing, he can't stop.



This second video shows a major milestone our little 6 month-er has hit. Solid foods! He can't get enough. You will see how he eats. He likes to be in control and eat it up!



His most recent photoshoot picture:

That's a whole lot of Jack in this post! 

It's your lucky day ;)

Our year in pictures.

As my last post of 2011, I wanted to reflect on our past year. Its fun to see where we were a year ago. Already a lot has changed. Lots of new opportunities came along with blessings.

Our past year in pictures:

January:
Still in the first trimester but reading literally 100,001 baby names to come up with the ONE name we would choose for our baby.

February

Image 1: Winter. Seems to be a big part of your life in February in North Dakota.   

 

Image 2: We also started our baby registry which I spent the next few months researching and perfecting.

 

March

BIG MONTH! We after lots of discussion decided to find out what we were having. 

Image 1: In front of Essentia Health and shows the disc from our ultrasound and the envelopes containing cards with the gender written inside.

 Image 2: Our ultrasound

Image 3: Our cake that revealed we were having a boy. This picture still gives me strong emotions!!

April: Projects Galore and an Anniversary.

Image 1: Our nursery. A huge project. April was a month of lots of projects to help prepare for our baby.

Image 2: A picture Mitch captured. It is a facebook reminder of our anniversary. :) We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary!

Image 3: Our wedding picture from 2006 but seemed appropriate for the anniversary mention.

May: The month of fruit eating and tons of baby showers.

 

Image 1: I spent a lot of May eating pineapple along with other types of fruit. I had insane cravings for it and ate tons. This picture seemed appropriate! :)

 Image 2: Baby shower 1 with my family's side.

 Image 3: Baby shower 2 with my work buddies. I miss them!

Image 4: Baby shower 3 with Mitch's side of the family.

 

June: Summed up easily with baby classes and a babymoon.

 

Image 1: A picture from 6th floor of Essentia Health where we visited for baby classes and later delivered.

 Image 2: A picture in front of the Sioux Falls zoo. Our last getaway as a couple.

July: A life changing month filled with by the minute changing emotions.

 

August: Our life was Nuts. New baby + Busiest month of photography for Mitch = blur.

 

Image 1: Mitch's life for most of the month. He had booked a few weddings before we knew we were expecting and many of Fargo's biggest events happened that month in which he was obligated to shoot. Busy daddy.

Image 2: Jack in his car seat. We seemed to be on the go a lot and when Mitch had his busy weekends, Jack and I hit the road to visit my parents at their farm to get away and of course to get some help with Jack :)

 

September: Jack. Enough said. 

 

Image 1: A picture I love and we took in September.

Image 2: Jack sleeping. He did a lot of it. I tried to :)

No pictures for this but I decided to stay home with Jack rather than go back to teaching. Kind of a bittersweet decision. As a teacher you invest so much into your classroom and its hard to give it up. However, I do have a pretty great little baby to spend my days with ;)

Lastly, I met a great group of girls who I meet up with to hang out with every month. Definitely something a stay at home mom needs--a chance to get away for some girl talk. For that, I am grateful.

October: The start of Force hockey and an epic costume.

 

Image 1: Daddy and Jack shooting the game. Something that occurs almost every weekend from mid October- April.

Image 2: A cute costume I made for Jack that I swear became epic. I, of course, couldn't have been more pleased because come on, look at him.

November: A getaway trip to San Diego.

Mitch and I were able to get away for a few days to San Diego. Mitch shot a wedding and I relaxed. An refreshing break from my new job of mommyhood.

December: Christmas prep

 

Image 1: Jack as a Christmas elf, smiling because smiling is his favorite--elf :)

Image 2: Jack's Christmas Loot. The kid seriously got the whole toy store. Its fun though because he just got to the point where he likes to play with toys.

Whew! What a year!

Lucky Us!

Here's to an amazing 2012!

Cheers to the New Year!

New Years Endeavors.

I am not one to usually make a resolution. Every year I make a mental note of things I want to work on but I rarely make an out loud statement promising to do something. I kind of feel like the big new years resolution idea is just a hype and typically sets up a person for failure. I do have goals but I want to call mine something different since I don't want to fall under the hype of it all. Then I found the word endeavor. Definition: to exert oneself to do or effect something; make an effort; strive. Exactly. That seems right. So we will call it my New Years Endeavor.

Well what is it, you ask?
My New Years Endeavor is to start recycling.
I am almost a little ashamed to admit that I haven't been. I had good intentions and actually several years back I did. But then I stopped when the items all started to pile up and I quit hauling it to the recycling center.
But now with having a future I need to protect for our little Jack and having tons of garbage (lots of it being recyclable) I have decided that its important to me. I have wanted to start for a while, but never made the move to make it happen. Today I did it. I schemed up a system that I hope will work for us. (I even made it cute and took pictures to show) :)

I first cleaned out under my sink and then found a box that would fit the space. A diaper box! Awesome. Not too hard to find with an infant in the house :)

Then I made it cute!

I simply wrapped them with wrapping paper and then made some clip art and font on the computer. Then I mod podged over the whole outside of the box so that in case something dripped on it, my hard work wouldn't be wasted ;) Then I stretched a force flex garbage bag to fit inside the box.

The finished product at work:

I am excited about the project and hopefully I can keep the enthusiasm. My plan now is to haul it to the recycling center. If that becomes a hassle I guess I will have to figure out curb pickup.

Now that the recycling project is up and running I can focus on some other minor 2012 endeavors of mine:

• Work on my fitness. Having a baby was hard on my body. Enough said.
• Develop a cleaning schedule for my house and stick to it for the most part. I need to work on this.
• Always keep re-organizing to be more efficient. Organizing makes me feel great and who doesn't love the feeling of being organized?!?
• Use my meal planning board more often and eat out less. It started out well....
• Organize and keep printing Jack's pictures so I keep on top of them. We have a million and I am not going to know the dates they were taken in a few months.
• Organize my recipe box. Or maybe find a way to file all the random torn out magazine recipe pages into my recipe box. 
• Enjoy my little guy Jack. He is growing up really fast suddenly and I don't want to miss a thing.

What about you? Do you make resolutions or do you make endeavors? :)

Share the Love.

We are already less than a week away from Christmas and I can't believe it!

Excitement is building though because this Christmas is going to be even more special this year. It will be our first Christmas as a family of 3 (+ the pets). It might make for an interesting car ride but will be so exciting to share our traditions with Jack and to see him explore some new toys!

What brought me to this post today was my facebook status. I simply said "Wouldn't it be great if your mailbox was filled with letters and pictures from loved ones all year around?!?! I love Christmas cards! Thank you to all of you who sent them to us. They are nicely displayed on our kitchen cupboards :)"

Since I took the time to display them a little nicer this year, I figured I would share the pictures of my display. I found the idea on pinterest.

You just run a festive ribbon down your cupboards and clip the cards/pictures to it! Super easy but a little fancier way to display them.

 

Can't you just feel the love? I sure can! I love seeing them up on our cupboards every day.

And to share the love....