Abby’s Saturday // Two Hundred And Thirty-Three

Highlight of the Week

Happy 2019! So far, I have been successful at writing “2019” instead of “2018” in dates, so I’d say it’s been a good year so far.

It’s so hard to believe that “the holidays” are over already – they flew by so fast!! I’m still not quite over them, I’d definitely be okay to go back & re-do Christmas & New Years at least a few more times. As I was so sweetly reminded by another Mom I follow on Instagram: it’s okay to feel a little “post-holiday blues”, but guess what? There is SO much more to look forward to! Christmas isn’t the only event we can count-down to every year – there are birthdays to get excited about (Braelynn’s 4th birthday is right around the corner!), vacations to plan, the Lakehouse to open up, amazing weddings to photograph – so many exciting things in store for this year!

We spent New Year’s with my family – having dinner & playing games. We were up to ring in the New Year simply because Leander happened to be up nursing at that time – otherwise, we definitely would have slept right through it! Derrick pulled up the live feed of Magic Kingdom & we watched the countdown with the castle in the background – it’s way better than watching the ball drop in New York City.

Yes, This Happened

• Leander rounded the corner on one-month this week! It’s so hard to believe it’s been a whole month since our little man entered the world! I took some pictures & posted a little update, if you missed it, it’s here!
• On our way home from my parent’s house on New Year’s Eve, it was raining. 2018 was officially the wettest year on record for our area, so, of course it was raining to end the year. As we drove though, Braelynn asked us when the rain was going to stop. We told her we weren’t in control of the weather – and at that, she said, “Dear Jesus! Please let it stop raining & the sun to come out, so we can go play outside.” It was so so sweet!
• Braelynn has become obsessed with watching waterslides on YouTube. Like Derrick loves to watch roller coaster videos, suddenly she loves to watch waterslide videos! It’s really fun (and makes us wish for summer even more). Derrick already has plans though: he figures he’ll run a roller coaster channel on YouTube, and Braelynn can run a waterslide channel – that way between the two of them, we can go visit all sorts of cool places! Sounds like a good plan, right?
• Like I mentioned, Braelynn’s 4th birthday is right around the corner! We started talking this week about what she wanted for her party & she’s requested a “Rapunzel” party (no surprise there). I started looking on Pinterest for ideas & omigoodness, there are so many good ones out there! I can’t wait to put this together for her – she is going to be so excited!! (Let’s not talk about the guest list though, because in the year 2018, our “regular” list grew by several people simply because of engagements & babies being born! Needless to say, everyone is just going to have to get really comfortable in our little house – I don’t mind packing out our house, but it does make Derrick a bit nervous – too bad Braelynn doesn’t have a summer birthday!)
• Did you catch my “behind-the-scenes” blog post earlier this week of Derrick & I shooting weddings in 2018?? It’s always one of the most visited blogs I post all year long!
• Okay, this statement is going to sound super crazy to most people – but I’m going to make it anyways! I jumped back into cloth diapering this week & it made me so happy. (Yep, that definitely will probably register as the craziest statement I’ve ever made on my blog.) We did cloth diapers with Braelynn, and it took us a while to figure out what we (ha, I’m making all of these “we” & “us” statements, and let’s be honest: it’s 97% “me”. Derrick’s on board with cloth diapering, but I’m the one running that operation, if you know what I mean.) Anyways, with Braelynn, I did a lot of trial & error, and tried a bunch of different types of cloth diapers before I found what I absolutely loved & what worked best. So, with Leander, I knew I wouldn’t have that learning curve. And because I’ve always taken good care of my “stash”, I truly didn’t even need to buy anything – I was ready to go from cloth diapering Braelynn for 2 1/2 years. I didn’t want to put any pressure on myself to jump back into cloth diapering right away with a newborn though. I knew things would be crazy the first few weeks, and I purposefully set in my head that I would wait until all of that was calming down to add in cloth diapers. This past week just seemed to be the right time. And it’s been wonderful. How could something so silly make me so happy? But seriously, I’ve really loved pulling out all my cloth diapering stuff from Braelynn & jumping back in with Leander. Something about adorable rotating covers and big fluffy fluff butts makes me happy – yep, I’m a weirdo.
  And while we’re on the weird topic of diapers – Leander did poop on me for the first time this week. I was in the middle of changing him, when he let loose & literally we had “poop-splosion”. It was just a little bit hilarious.

Feeling Blessed

Like I mentioned before, Leander officially turned one month old this week & I feel like we’ve turned a corner. Thinking back to when Braelynn was born, I remember the “one-month” mark being a turning point too – like we literally came out of a “fog” at the one month point. I hardly remember anything from the first month of Braelynn’s life, except that it was hard. Thankfully, my first month with Leander really hasn’t been quite so “foggy”. Sure, it’s been challenging & we’ve had our ups & downs, but overall, the first month with Leander has been so much better than the first month with Brealynn.
However! I feel like this week, something has started to change. Suddenly, I’m ready to jump back into meal-planning & cooking, I’m back to cloth diapering, I feel like I have a better handle on household stuff, and I’m starting to plan Braelynn’s birthday party. Maybe my body has simply accepted the new sleeping pattern of being up multiple times a night – but I feel like we’re emerging from the “newborn fog” and starting to get back to “normal life”. It’s sad, but also definitely exciting!