We love holiday weekends, especially when it means we get an extra day with Daddy home. We can’t wait to celebrate tomorrow with family, pool time, bbq, and everything red, white, and blue. God bless America and God bless this little cutie who clearly has a pretty strong pre-game going on.
The toddler stage is my favorite so far, the deeper interaction and engagement, the ability to communicate, and the sweet loving silliness as they explore and discover all day long. Then, there’s the tantrums, and a 2 min toddler fit can feel like it lasts an eternity and sometimes you can sense your own emotions start to bubble up. In our household the toddler tantrums have just begun, still nothing too extreme but they are enough to make me count backwards from ten in my head. I have found 5 easy steps to help me deal with toddler tantrums calmly and, most of the time, effectively.
Being a mom is the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It is certainly not for the faint of heart, and requires you to be brave. Brave, it’s a word that has been on my heart in a deep way since the day I gave birth to Elouise. Yet, even the agonizing pain of pushing 9 pounds and 4 ounces of perfection out of my body with no drugs (that’s a whole other story) isn’t the thing that required the most bravery. No, in fact the thing that requires me to exercise the most bravery began the moment the doctor handed Elouise to me. I will never forget seeing her for the first time, holding her close and looking into her eyes. I knew at that moment that my life was changed and I felt this inexplicable responsibility toward this little person, I want to keep her safe from the world and I don’t ever want to let her down.
This afternoon we decided to head to the fun little shopping center across the street to play at the splash pad. Elouise was decked out in her suit, hat, and new water shoes, ready to get her summer fun on. As we strolled over the the empty play area, Christian noticed a tiny piece of paper taped to a pole that said three words “Out of Order”.
Believe it or not, this pregnancy is halfway over already. We just had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday and I feel like this whole baby thing is finally official. I’ll be honest, it’s mostly due to the fact that I had an irrational fear that our initial gender ultrasound would be proven incorrect at our mid-way scan. I kept imagining having to return all of the sweet baby boy clothes I have been collecting (or hoarding if you ask my husband) and my heart would sink. Well, our sweet ultrasound technician made it very clear that we are in fact having a boy! So now I can finally relax a bit and hope that the rest of this pregnancy will fly by and be super blissful. I mean, a girl can hope!
