Oh hey.

Hey there. I'm still out here.

Let's do a re-introduction and get you up to speed.

My H and I are in our mid-thirties. We have two adorable kiddos, one goofball of a yellow lab, and one betta fish named Swimmy. Oh and we just picked up our lives last month and moved from the DC 'burbs to sunny Florida. Let's go into that.

Ever since our honeymoon, my husband and I were throwing darts at the map, looking for the beach life. Hawaii, San Diego, Charleston, etc. You name it, if we've been to a place with a beach, we've considered living there. You know how that goes. Life happens, you buy a home, you have a kid or two, the market goes poop, and you're in your cozy suburbs hating winter and wishing you could pop over to the beach on the weekends but alas-you're three hours away. And you have family in your town. And your kid's school. And friends and roots and an attic full of stuff that would be a pain in the ass to go through amirite??

Well about once a year we checked our home value, checked real estate at our favorite places, looked into relocation blogs and all that and it just never happened. I love Charleston-the culture, the beach, the history and the people. We had been multiple times and were ready to go. But for some divine reason, job hunting never went anywhere, the housing market where we wanted to be skyrocketed out of our price range, and nothing went according to plan.

When summer rolled around in 2017, we again started looking at job opportunities near popular beaches with good economies and a variety of things to do. Somehow we narrowed our search to St. Pete, Florida. Our realtor finally gave us good news! And jobs to apply for were abundant. We poked along, shoring up our resumes and researching schools and places to live in St. Pete until the fall. Suddenly (after, you know, weeks of painting and fixing and working on it) the house was on the market! And OMGOMG we got an offer in 6 days. It was a goooood offer. WTF do we do? We accepted just before Halloween and made plans to move into my in-laws' soon to be vacant home down the street. The plan was to rent until summer of 2018, and then re-evaluate. Would we move to St. Pete or decide to stick around and rent in our current spot for another year?

Turns out, instead, Josh was offered a job in St. Pete in mid-November. And they wanted him in town ASAP. OMGOMG all over again. He and I flew in to Florida just after Thanksgiving, had a whirlwind 24 hours of deciding on where and what to rent, and then we flew back. Closed on the house a few days later. Lived in the in-laws house for a week. Then packed the u-haul and moved to Florida.

We are on the bay, 10 miles from the beach and a little under a thousand miles from where we lived a month ago. G is almost 6 and a half and after an anxiety-ridden first day, he LOVES his new school. My dear H loves his new job. And I am currently searching for one while staying home with the adorable terror that is our 2 and a half year old. Just trying to make our much smaller apartment feel like home while getting our bearings in this new place.

That was probably a lot for one post. I'll leave it here for now and then pick back up soon, hopefully in a week or so.

This election year

I am writing something extremely personal that I may remove later. I haven't blogged recently but I need to get this out. This was typed up and only somewhat read over before being posted, because my emotions are real and raw and I don't want to edit them so I apologize for the lack of clarity or eloquence.

Why are we taking this election so personally? Why does today feel so gutwrenching? I think part of the answer lies in the ever present social media. People, young and old, are able to discuss, bash, repost,and tweet about EVERYTHING. And they do. More than necessary, in most cases. I'm not a writer and I won't pretend to be, but I need to get this out. It feels cathartic.

This year, this election feels so emotional to me in part because I have a daughter now. Don't get me wrong, as soon as our firstborn came screeching into this world, my views about a lot of things changed. He's opinionated and emotional and amazing and exhausting. I see a lot of things through his eyes that have forever changed me. I worry about his future and things I can't possibly control.

And then in 2015 I gave birth to our daughter. Suddenly, all of the experiences that I've been through I've started to envision happening to my daughter. The catcalls, followed by the vulgar, disgusting words as you ignore the catcaller. The random guy in a stadium that catches your eye when you're cheering for your team and he gestures for you to lift your shirt up. The van that slows down next to you while you're walking on the sidewalk and the guy inside winks and asks if you want a ride as he stares at your body. Being in a crowd and having a hand grab your butt and having no idea which person did it, but suddenly trying to ward off a panic attack as you inch your way as fast as you can out of the crush, praying that person isn't following you.

Or how about kissing someone and they won't let you leave. They won't let you stop and they block the door, pleading with you to stay while they smile, knowing you have no choice?

If any of these sound run of the mill, you are not alone, or in the minority among women. This is routine- do you get that? ROUTINE. These are not one time things. And if you have been lucky enough to not have these happen to you, you are very likely a man. Who has no idea what it's like to be constantly on watch when you're alone. Who has no idea the anxiety you feel every time you hear a car slow down or walk past a group of men. Who may try and trivialize your feelings about having these experiences, because they don't know. And then. You hear a presidential candidate doing these things. Saying these things. Taking liberties just because he thinks it's ok. But that could be MY DAUGHTER he's grabbing. And all those things above, if you haven't experienced them, there's an excellent chance your daughter will. And very possibly even worse things. Things that I can't type or want to remember or think about. To condone the actions of this man as "just guy talk" or pass it off as "I've heard worse!" brings back every single emotion when you experience harassment. I want better for my daughter than any of this. I will fight until the death to shield her from sexual assault. I will push back against every type of sexual harassment if there's a chance I can change something. Anything. I will never, ever vote for a man who brags about doing these things to women because I've been on the other side and had these things said and done to me. It's dehumanizing. It's WRONG.

My little teeny chubby baby is 11 months old. That's big. She's growing so fast and I just love her so. Cliche, sure, but it feels like our world is so much better with her in it. She was a missing piece to our family.

Juliet...

-is not walking YET. Standing, trying to let go, pushing everything around though. I think she's close but I refuse to really believe it.
-sleeps through the night on occasion. Not every night and not many in a row but we're getting there. I wish both or either of my kids slept in though. That's the worst. They're both usually up before 6. It's a victory if it's 6:30. I'm looking forward to the day it's 7.
-doesn't really talk real words yet. She says mama if she's upset or wants me, but definitely not on demand or repeating if we say it to her. She may or may not say Oliver "awhhh-vahh!" but she babbles A TON and loves crawling and sing-yelling LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAAAA!.
-loves dancing, chasing and being chased, being tickled, and eating. She has not yet developed an off switch for food. And when she is hungry you hear it! We did a combination of BLW and purees and she loves both. BLW was easier than I was thinking, thankfully. We were too nervous to do it with Gabriel for sure.
-loves baths, especially with her brother. No one makes her laugh like he does, and when you combine splashing with that, it's a recipe for a LOT of belly laughs from all four of us.
-has 8 teeth!

As for Gabriel...

-he'll be FIVE in August. Five. Like a real, legit big kid, not a toddler.
-he's registered for kindergarten. How did this happen???
-he loves anything to do with race cars, outer space, and sports. He loves running and playing outside but can't stand getting hurt. I actually told him last night that the day he goes up onstage to accept his Oscar, he better thank his mom and dad. He scraped his shin at the playground yesterday and you would have thought in the tub he was being skinned. The flailing, dramatic hysterics are something else. Actually they're pretty funny once you know he's ok. There was no blood, and he played just fine after the actual incident in case you're thinking I'm a heartless wench. :)

I'm a mom of two kids, one almost in real school and one that's almost a whole year old. This journey is going by at lightning speed. As evidenced by my lack of time to write more about Juliet!

My beach baby

Sibling love and tolerance...for now

This FACE THO.

Two kids is a lot of kids, man.

It's like I've been busy or something.

Baby girl, my tiny little newborn, is 5 months old. FIVE. She had her first tooth pop through on Sunday. She now thinks sleep is for the birds, something she used to do great at. She's a snuggler and a mama's girl and laughs constantly at her goofy brother.

I can't believe it's been more than 5 months since she was rolling around in my belly. My OB asked me how I was doing at my 38 week appointment, and I said "great!". Not because pregnancy is easy-ha! But because I was appreciating so much the finite amount of time we had left together, just the two of us, without the outside world stepping in. I knew she would grow so quickly, and that I'd have less time to cherish just us, with her being a second child. Now she scoots and rolls and flips all around, and I know once she starts crawling, then walking, nothing will stop her. The times I get to nurse her in the afternoons, on weekends, even in the middle of the night, I wrap her in my arms and just relax. Which has varying levels of success, by the way, when you have a four year old dancing around, driving race cars up your legs, and singing crazy songs at the top of his lungs.

Gabriel is doing great with his sister. Better than I could have imagined, though it's definitely not perfect. He gets jealous of not having undivided attention and will act out or purposefully not listen to get us to focus on him. He sometimes gets a little too loud or rough around her. But every night, even if she's upset and ready for her dinner, he wants to snuggle and hold her and kiss her before bed. He's always singing to her or making faces to make her laugh or dancing toys around to entertain her.

From my end, it's hard seeing my little boy have to wait to have his turn for our attention. I just want to pick him up and have him all to myself sometimes, which we have been able to do here and there-we've had two nights recently that J and I have been able to take him somewhere fun and leave Juliet with my ILs for a few hours-but I still miss him being our only sometimes. Don't get me wrong, I am beyond thrilled that Juliet is in our lives, it's just hard with neither kid getting all of the attention they want sometimes. Overall Gabriel has been a champion with the transition.

Now that I'm back at work, life is busier than ever. Last night, while rocking Juliet to sleep after she wouldn't stay asleep for more than 30 minutes from 9-12, I realized that I had not had 5 minutes when I got home from work without someone needing me. I pick her up before I get home. I walk in and greet the boys, who beat me home. I talk with Gabriel about his day and then go change Juliet. Josh is making dinner so I nurse the baby and watch Gabriel play and color. We eat-trying to keep Juliet happy and talk to each other and talk to Gabriel and remind him to eat/not play with his fork/stay in his chair. After dinner comes cleaning up, playing with the kids, and then getting them ready for bed. I read to Gabriel and snuggle him for a few minutes. I go out to the living room and J has Juliet all ready to eat and go to bed. I feed her, put her to bed, get myself ready for bed, and she's awake again. It's 10:30 and my alarm is set for 5:18. Long night ahead!

Anyway, that was an abbreviated round up of trying to get caught up on my blog. I'm once again working on being a better blogger. We'll see how it goes :) I'll leave with pictures of my little loves.

My elf decorating the tree

My five month old beauty

I had a baby!!

Long overdue birth story. Baby Juliet arrived on June 29, at 39 weeks exactly. My labor was two hours longer with her from start to finish than with Gabriel. Here's the deets-

Sunday night I woke up at 12:45 with a contraction but that had been happening for days so I wasn't excited. After an hour or so, I decided to time them since they weren't slowing down. They were steady but not too long for a while, but around 3 a.m. they got to 5 minutes apart, and a minute long. I woke J up and told him I was going to go ahead and call my OB. My OB was already on call at the hospital and since he knew how fast my labor was with Gabriel and how dilated I was last week (I was 4 cm and 80% effaced at my appointment that Thursday), he said come on in. Dropped G off with the ILs around 3:30 a.m. and headed down.

Got checked in around 4:15, and I was 5 cm. They admitted me, the nurse asked me about an epi and I told her I'd like to go natural again, and she proceeded to tell me her epidural horror story. Sheesh. So then she left and I hung around watching crap tv and chatting with J and breathing through my contractions until 6:30 a.m., and they checked me again and I was at 6 cm. My doctor came in at 7 to chat with me, cracked a few jokes, and then told me that my water was bulging and asked if I'd be ok if he went ahead and broke it, and that labor was likely going to go really fast. I said sure and it was done. Ew. Gross, but he was right. I went over to the bathroom and had like 3 contractions in there. I put my contacts in because I wanted to be able to see when she got here! There was a shift change and I got a nurse that let me walk around and labor how I wanted which was nice. Funny enough, ultimately I got back into the hospital bed and wanted to lay kind of on my side.

Contractions came hard and fast, and at 9 a.m. I was 9 cm and feeling a ton of pressure and wanted to push. They called my doctor in at 9:20 and got the bed set up. I wanted to die. The contractions were so hard but MH was a great coach. Started pushing shortly afterwards, and pushed through three contractions-about 10 minutes total- and she was out! OMG. I can't lie, pushing suuuucked but it went so fast. I had one tiny superficial tear that took one stitch. They put her on my chest and it was just awesome. She was 7 lbs, 7 oz, and 19.5 inches long. My little Juliet Anne has a full head of hair and some random hair on her shoulders-LMAO. She's been a good eater and pretty happy unless she gets cold. Med free birth #2! I.E. I'm a little bit crazy. 

Random pregnancy update

Date: April 16, 2015

Due Date: July 6, 2015

Weight gain: 17 lbs. as of last week's appointment

Belly Picture: Yesterday at 28w, 2d. I apologize for the bad bathroom shot! I took one at home and got the weirdest shadows.

Photo thoughts: I feel a lot bigger than this picture shows.

Pregnancy Symptoms/How I'm feeling: It seems like with the arrival of third tri, my back pain turned on like a light switch. I was anticipating it, and had random days where it did hurt, but I knew the mostly all day pain was coming since I'm carrying her the same way I carried G. Alllllll in front. Seriously, when I put my hands on my hips I still feel the same non-pregnant, hipbones and all. But this belly is just going straight out out out. I can probably thank my short torso for that. There's nowhere else to go!

Cravings: I had soft pretzels with crab dip for like the last 4 days in a row for lunch which was glorious but now I'm good. Nothing else really. Just ALL the foods.

Sleep: Eh. Lots of tossing and turning. I also blame the change in seasons because I am so so congested. J and I both started it at the same time though so IDK if it's allergies or a cold.

What I’m loving/I can't live without: The beautiful weather! I don't care if it's making me stopped up or not. I hate winter and this 70-degree stuff is amazing. And Gabriel needs to get outside in it, it makes us all happier.

What I miss? Sleeping on my belly and sipping on a beer here and there.

What I’m anticipating/Looking forward to: Having baby girl's room done. We are making good progress. I'm really looking forward to our maternity/family pictures in a couple of weeks, too.

What I’m stressing about/worries: Money, always. Just paying for a second kid in daycare. Nothing is cheap and I wish we could cut our cable and find an alternative but I don't know how.

Milestones: Officially in third tri! Down to every two week appointments. Yikes.

Differences between pregnancies: Gabriel was a mover and a kicker, but this baby girl rests her whole body right up against my belly so I can always always feel baby parts. She was breech at the 24w scan and I can't really tell if she's moved. I joke with J that she's a transverse octopus at the moment. I haven't had the bad hip pain (yet) that I had with Gabriel but I'm assuming that's coming.

Highlights of the week: Getting baby girl's new dresser!! Found a gem of an antique on FB and once we get it cleaned up and some new knobs on it, it will be perfect.

Goals for the upcoming week: Really, getting a dresser was it. I'll start on her mobile with stuff I found on Etsy next week.

Movement: All the time. No kick counts needed so far. I can tell when she's sleeping and when she starts to wake up though, which is really cool.

Boy or girl: GIRL!

Birthdate prediction: Sticking with July 4th.

The second baby

      Baby girl, I was thinking about the so-called "second child syndrome" with you. When people ask if we're "ready" for you (Uh no, not at 27 weeks and change gestation, thankyouverymuch), I laugh and say "not even close". And they make the usual joke about the second kid and I chuckle and wander away. I hope you know that's not it at all. We know how blessed we are to have you on the way, and I thank God every day for you and your brother.

     Yeah, we have the crib and changing table and strollers and gear that you'll need, so it's less of a rush to get that taken care of, but I'm still Pinning and organizing like mad to get your room ready. Despite what your dad thinks, not only is it fun, but I need it. It's like prenatal therapy. I need to organize the details and put it all together.

     But really, your bedroom isn't really what I'm referring to when asked if I'm ready. It's the bittersweetness that's going to come when you come out into this world. Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to see your precious face and watch you sleep and grow and get to know you. I already love you so, so much. But I don't have the blind excitement that I had when I was pregnant with your brother. Because I KNOW what comes with it. The all-important maternity leave clock starts ticking and I start freaking out at how little time I have with you until I have to go back to work. Trying to build a freezer stash for someone else to get to feed you. Knowing how miserable and teary I'm going to be for the first several days of trudging in to work instead of spending my days with you. And slowly, so slowly, releasing my hold on you while the rest of the world gets to share you. 

     It wouldn’t be right to not include the superficial, short term concerns too. The never ending sleeplessness, you poor thing when you’re screaming and crying when we have no idea why or what to do, the constant anxiety when you're asleep and I'm wondering if you're ok, if you're breathing, am I ruining your sleep schedule by letting you nap too long? Can I get a shower before you start freaking out and getting hungry? All the stuff that seems so burdensome when I’m sleep deprived, but then passes in a flash and then I miss how teeny tiny you once were.

     I know that some of these situations should be easier because I've been through them. Sorry Gabriel, you poor guinea pig first baby! Thanks, dear son, for showing me how your dad and I can literally get through the TOUGHEST situations you could throw at us and come through ok, and mostly sane. It's still hard to send him off to school and hear about a bad day or have him come to me crying. I want to shelter him and fix everything, and I can't. And now we'll have two precious children out in this big, crazy world, and as much as I want to hold onto you both and not ever let anything bad happen, I know that's not how it works.

     So don't think you're getting shorted of anything, baby girl. I promise you aren’t. We’re already closer to choosing a name for you than we were for your brother at this point! We’ll see how that progresses.