Our baby turns one tomorrow. This is way more personal of a blog post than I normally share, but the words just seemed to flow. Looking back this post is probably way more for me than it is for anyone else. But I have so many friends with new babies, friends that are pregnant, or for those mommies who's babies are all grown up maybe this post will be a fun walk down memory lane. So this is my view on how we survived the first year of parenthood.
He's sure cute, but what are we doing?
It seems like a blur remembering the first two weeks. What I do remember is we had no clue what we were doing. I remember being frusterated, I remember just wanting a minute to take a shower, I remember bursting into tears at the dinner table cause I felt so " overwhelmed". I remember going to bed at 7pm cause I didn't know how many times we'd be waking up at night. I remember nursing being hard and I remember the night that Leo screamed for 3 straight hours. We lived in a duplex in Portland and we felt so bad for our neighbors that we sat in the car in our garage from 12-3am and just held him while he cried. We were worried why he was crying and also that we'd wake up the neighbors. It was one of the worst nights of our lives. Pure torture not being able to help him and not knowing how to stop the crying. But it did stop and he went to bed. I remember crying when my mom left and Jay and I looking at each other wondering how in the hell we were going to do this alone.
Jay went back to work in Portland at 3 weeks and I stayed in the Tri-Cities. I cried when he walked out the door wondering how I was going to do a night alone. I also remember wondering how I would handle 24 hrs having no one else hold the baby. How was I was going to make dinner, how was I going to shower? And then the first night alone came and went and I DID IT! I survived and it felt so good. This lead to many things I did alone, first time getting him in the ergo baby alone, going to Nordstrom alone, taking him to coffee alone. We did it and it felt so good being able to handle him all by myself.
He Slept 18 hrs a Day but I SEEMEd to Get Nothing done.
I was surprised how I got NOTHING DONE despite him sleeping all the time. It was amazing. I watched so much HGTV that I still can't turn that channel on. I was bored yet didn't have time to do anything. The minute I'd start a load of laundry or start dinner he would all of a sudden wake up. It was back in the day when the naps were unpredictable, was he going to sleep 20 mins or 3 hours?
It's amazing how the little tasks that we took for granted changed. These two pictures are some of my favorite capturing how we did things to get by. It's comical to look back cause I thought in this moment it would be like this forever. And now he just zooms around the bathroom playing with toys while I get ready every morning.
We are totally killing it as parents... or maybe just barely getting by.
We did it! We flew for the first time. We went on vacation, We survived Portland in 80-90 degree weather with only a room AC unit. We spent ALOT of time in that tiny bedroom. We survived teething, his first black eye, and the best part is he was finally sleeping all night and life was starting to go back to normal. It wasn't always pretty, but the hard part was finally start to feel like it was over.
We did the same things we used to. Trips were different but they were still fun. Traveling with a baby is do able, but I rather opt for a driving vacation vs a flying one. And we changed from hotel rooms to condos.
I managed to pack up an entire house with a 4 month old, we moved back to Washington. Jay started a new job, I got a little part time job, and we bought a new house..... and I decided to add more to the table and take on a big remodeling project. FYI we still are not in our new house.
I remember thinking we'd never go on another date, we'd never stay up past 9pm. But then we did. We found time for us, through all the craziness we made it a priority. We are lucky to have both set of Grandparents and babysitters. But I love that through all of this we haven't lost our relationship. We love being Leo's parents, but we also love being Husband and Wife.
Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas came as we started making wonderful memories. Leo's personality developed and we started figuring out our roles as parents.
In the moment we thought the hard part would last forever. But it didn't. One day he was crawling and the next he seemed to be walking. We still pack him around on our hip but he doesn't fall asleep in our arms anymore. He is so big and he is SOOO FUN!! We love being parents to him and we love the crazy ride this past year has been. This past Saturday night Jay and I sat on the floor with Leo after bath as he thought it was hysterically funny when we put the lotion bottle in our mouth between our teeth. We proceeded to do this for 15 minutes and we all laughed till we had tears in our eyes. It was one of the the best Saturday night I've had in a long time. We love this little Monkey more than anything in the world. This past year was challenging, but it was oh so wonderful!
And Just Like That..... our baby is one!!! and It has been the best year of our lives!
Wednesday I'll be back with our favorite baby products over the past year. Thank you for coming along on this ride with me and letting me share everything over the blog.