A Picture

My son has been driving me absolutely batty today. I am sure it has something to do with the fact that I am in a funk and my patience is pretty much non existent right now. Or maybe its because its FREEZING outside and we are both suffering from a severe case of cabin fever. Or maybe its because I am not in the mood to be creative, therefore leaving us with nothing but his same ol toys and the TV to entertain us during this time of avoiding the cold. Regardless of the reason, he has been driving me batty.

Now I will post a picture of my adorable child. I took this two days ago. When he wasn't making me want to lock myself in the bathroom for hours on end. I am hoping that if I post this I will remember how cute he was acting then. And I am also hoping that posting this will help me ignore the fact that he is throwing blocks all over the living room. Because, quite frankly, I don't feel like dealing with it.





Here's to hoping that tomorrow brings an extra dose of patience!

Rant

I am sitting in the living room with a to do list a mile long. I have pictures to edit, rooms to clean, clothes to fold, and food to put away. Instead of doing any of that, I have decided to sit here and ramble for a while. I bet you are just jumping for joy. :)


I tried on two occasions to go shopping for Christmas decorations today. Hobby Lobby and Michael's are both having some pretty good sales, and I wanted to browse and see if there was anything that struck my fancy. I am very indecisive, so I wanted Daniel along to help me decide what would look best in our house. That meant Zachariah had to come along as well. Which meant that he ended up screaming at the top of his lungs because I did not allow him to roam freely around the store. Which meant that we left soon after we got there. Call me crazy, but I want to enjoy my shopping experience.

I know my last post was talking about how cute my child is, and my opinion on that subject has not changed. But having a toddler really gets on my nerves sometimes.

Oh boy...

I have a problem. I don't delete pictures. Ever. The type of pictures that are under exposed or too blurry to even tell what is in the image? Yeah, I keep those. I don't know why. But I have a problem with deleting. Its just SO permanent.

Daniel has been asking (aka: nagging) me to go through my pictures and delete the crap ones to free up some space. I have thousands of pictures on here of Zachariah alone. They are all organized. Every picture I took within his first year I organized in separate folders by the week. Once he turned a year old I started doing it by the month. So there are a TON of folders and a TON of pictures on this computer. I can probably delete hundreds upon hundreds that are either just horrible pictures or copies of pictures.

All that to say, I sat down to do that a little bit ago. Instead of deleting, I found myself gazing at Zachariah's baby pictures. I started going through, week by week. Just staring. Letting the memories take over.

I started remembering when my baby was one day old. Only a freaking day old! He was so tiny!
Then came the three week old pictures. Oh how I loved this picture!

Four months old...Six months old...
Seven months... GAH! He is so cute!!!!

And then all of a sudden, THIS happened:
Seriously. When did he leave the newborn stage and become a full fledged toddler? This is all a bit overwhelming.

*sigh*

I think I want another one.

Keep in mind that in about ten min. my son will wake up from his nap and shake this feeling right out of me. But for now, during the silence of nap time... I want another one.

I Have Officially Lost My Mojo

Yep. Its true. The mojo for blogging and photography are gone. I think this I know who stole them though...
Then again, maybe not.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here is what has been going on with my mojo's...

Blogging Mojo:
I have been a slacker. Partially due to lack of commenter's, but mostly due to my obsession with other blogs. (Pioneer Woman and MckMamma anyone??) I have been doing some serious blog stalking lately, and it just eliminated my need for blogging. I am hoping to rectify that though, seeing as how my blog is pretty sad looking with only one update a week. And I need a header. I am putting that on my list of things to do.

Photo Mojo:
I have been having some monitor issues. My pictures looked great on my screen, but when printed, they looked bad. They were either too dark or too contrasted. Turns out our monitor was not calibrated, which left my pictures looking funky. And due to that issues, I have not wanted to touch my camera. And when I have gotten the courage to start taking pictures again, I got all depressed when I looked at them on my darn computer. *sigh* Anyway. Daniel was fabulous and re calibrated the monitor, so we should have that fixed now. I just need to locate that mojo so I continue learning more about photography.

So yeah. That's why my posts have been scarce. I hope to return with all of my mojo sometime in the near future.

And I will be totally fine if I never see the word mojo again. That was just too much for one post. Geeze.

tuesday bla's

I have been meaning to post pics of our beach trip... but i am still not done going through them and editing. I took 1,461 pictures over the course of three days, so its a bit overwhelming. To tell you the truth, I am almost done. But I just haven't been able to muster up the strength to edit any more. It will come soon enough. I know you are losing sleep at night due to the lack of pictures I have been posting. :)

In other news, I have a case of the bla's. I need a nap. And a massage. And a pedicure. And a maid. And a million dollars.

Yeah. That should do it. I'm not asking for much, am I? :)

Bla

I need to get out of my rut. I need to get more photography books and "study" more. It has been MONTHS since I have done that. I feel as if I am backtracking with my photography, and that depresses me.

I need to start learning again, or I will be in this rut forever.

Any book recommendations? I am going to see what I can find this afternoon.
:)

Coming Soon

I haven't had time/been in the mood for blogging here recently. I have been posting a video here, a picture there... and that's about it. So this post it to let you know that I am trying to get out of my funk, so bear with me.

Next time I get on here I hope to post pictures of Z playing with Play-Dough! :)

Ideas?

I am in desperate need of some creative ideas for entertaining a toddler. Indoors.
Coloring doesn't really keep his attention for long. He plays with his toys, but that gets old. And with it being rainy/cold we cant really do much outside.

So do any of you have some suggestions?? He is getting stir crazy which, in turn, makes me crazy. :)

Bliss

Zachariah is an EXCELLENT sleeper. He goes to bed in between 7:30 and 8 and doesn't wake up until 8 or 8:30 the next morning. Our night time routine is very simple. We change Z into his pj's, brush his teeth, kiss him and tell him good night. We lay him in his crib and he goes to sleep. End of song.

Last night was a bit unusual. Less than 5 min. after we put him down he started crying. It was the type of cry that told me he wasn't going to settle down unless one of us went in there. So I went in and he reached for me with this pitiful look in his eyes. There are times when I am a sucker for his cuteness... and so I ended up sitting in the glider and rocking him. We sat there for a little while just rocking, listening to his lullaby CD. He wasn't asleep, but he was content... just laying on me. I cant even remember the last time he sat in my lap for that long, but I was soaking up every second of this. I cant even explain how wonderful it was to be able hold my baby, without life interrupting us.

After about 10 minuets had passed, he sat straight up and look at me. Then let me know he wanted to get back in his crib. So I kissed him and laid him down with his blanky and paci, and we didn't hear another peep out of him all night.

As it turns out Zachariah just needed a little mommy time.
I am really glad too. Because I needed a little Zachariah time.

Rant

A door to door sales lady came to my house today. Usually I don't answer the door, because I don't like to be inconvenienced... but my blinds were open and she saw me, so I felt trapped. To make a long story short, she ended up coming in my house and fed me a ton of statistics trying to convince me to buy some cancer insurance from her. I fed her my usual line of "I don't think we can afford that, considering we can barely pay our bills, but I will talk to my husband and give you a call if we decide to go with it". She didn't give me a card, she claimed she was only in town for one week and sat there trying to fill out paperwork to sign me up anyway... saying I could cancel in 30 days if I change my mind. HA! Yeah. Not so much.

She is going to come by again on Friday in hopes of catching Daniel at home... but I am going to make it a point not to be here. I cant handle that crap.

Anyway, if an "insurance agent" from Family Heritage comes to your door, please save yourself 30 min. and shoo them away.

That's all of my ranting for now. :)

Yippie!

As most of you know, I have been griping and complaining about needing a new camera. I am have been wanting to try my hand at photography, but I have been kind of bummed with using my point and shoot. I just cant improve the way I want to with that thing.

Well, Daniel did our taxes this weekend, and we were happy to find out that we are getting a little more money back than we thought. So my fabulous husband decided to order a camera for me!!! You can click on the picture below to get all the info on it, if you are curious. I should be getting it this weekend, and I am super excited!


Excuse me while I go do a happy dance. :)

Ramblings

Weather.com reads that it is 75 degrees, partly cloudy, and winds are at 16 mph. I LOVE this weather. Seeing as how its January, the perfect weather is a little misplaced. But I will take this over the high 80's and 90's any day.

I decided to take advantage of this fabulous weather this afternoon. Zachariah and I had a fun time at the park today, and I am currently sitting under a tree in my front yard listening to some music while my baby naps (with the monitor right next to me of course).

To tell you the truth, I have had one heck of a crappy morning. Turns out Daniel did too. Its apparently just been one of those days. Usually when my morning is crappy, the rest of my day is shot. But its amazing what nice weather will do for my mood.

I am choosing to pretend that I don't have an extremely messy house and a sink full of dishes inside. Once I go back in the house I will probably feel a bit guilty for neglecting my wifely duties. But until then, I will continue to enjoy the breeze blowing through my hair as I browse the net... secretly hoping that my house will clean itself while I am out here.

Did I mention how much I love this weather??

Kill.Me.Now.

I am physically and emotionally drained. It feels like these last three and a half days have lasted for a whole week. Zachariah is still sick. His fever is down, but he has a bad cough and he cant breathe due to his stuffy/runny nose. He is on several meds, which I am sure is helping... but I want an immediate fix. I am functioning on little to no sleep with a clingy, fussy, and sick toddler. Did I mention that he is skipping his naps and not eating much? Yeah. My patience is gone. I need to borrow someones sanity.

We are going to try to go to the Doctor tomorrow or Tuesday. So I will have more info as to what exactly is wrong with my little man. One day I will get around to posting an actual Christmas post. Pictures and all. But that will have to wait until I get a few hours of shut eye.

UGH

I just want to say how freaking tired I am of the weather down here. There is something that is just plain wrong about wearing capri's and a tank top a week away from Christmas. And you know what? It is going to be in the 80's for the next three days. UGH.

Any takers on moving to Hawaii? I hear the weather is fabulous there.

Sick as a Dog

Some type of illness has been going around Daniel's office, and he has now brought it home. So needless to say, I feel like crap.

This is the first time I have been sick since having Zachariah, so lets just say it has been a bit different that being able to lay in the bed all day watching TV. Gone are those days....

Honesty is the Best Policy

For the past seven months I have been struggling with depression. Sadly, I am just now starting to come to grips with that.

I thought that the depression would come immediately after having Zachariah. I had read up on postpartum depression, so I was prepared for it. Days, weeks, and even months went by, and I was just fine. But around his seventh month birthday, depression slowly started trickling into my life. I guess staying at home with virtually no adult contact during the day eventually got to me. I didn't want to admit that I was feeling depressed. I thought it was a sign of weakness. I didn't want people to think less of me. I didn't want people to think I was a bad mom.

So I kept ignoring it, thinking it would get better with time. Until just a couple weeks ago when a friend called me out on it. For the first time, I actually admitted I was suffering from postpartum depression. Talking with someone who has gone through this before has made a world of difference. For the first time in months I went a whole week without having an emotional breakdown. I enjoyed myself and my time with my family immensely. It was great to be myself again.

Don't get me wrong... I still have my moments. And I am sure it is not going to be smooth sailing from here on out. I am really going to have to work at this. I may eventually even need medication. But for now, I just need to talk about it. And so far it has helped.

So yeah. That's what is going on in my life right now. And if you guys don't mind, I think I may try to post about this more often. This "being real" thing is actually really satisfying. :)

My jumbled thoughts

I have been quite depressed today, and I cannot seem to shake it. I blame most of it on the fabulous postpartum depression that has decided to run my life for the past 7 months... but I think part of it has to do with the election results. I have no idea what is going to happen. I do know that the world will probably not come to an end the day Obama is sworn into office. What I don't know is if he will be the downfall of this country, or if he will actually improve the way things are going. Don't get me wrong... I have a guess. But I just don't know. And apparently I have a real problem with the unknown.

I probably need to work on that.
Anyway. Those are my thoughts, jumbled as they may be.

I Heart MasterCard Commercials

I don't know what it is, but this commercial makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Irritable

I went to bed frustrated.
I woke up cranky.
I have been bored all morning.
Zachariah took a REALLY short nap.
Because of those things, I am irritable.
And I see no end in sight.

The End.

I'm Not Bitter...

Before I get into the reason that I am not bitter, here is some much needed background information for you:

I stay at home with Zachariah. I am at home with him all day. Every day. There has not been a day of his life where I have not been home with him. The most I have left him with a sitter (aka: grandparents) has been two and a half hours. I am with him when Daniel is at work and I am also with him when Daniel comes home. I change his gosh awful diapers, I play with him, I console him, I tickle him, I laugh at him, and I love on him. Every. Single. Day.

Often when Daniel gets home from work he will entertain Zachariah while I get dinner ready. It helps me get dinner ready without a one year old hanging on my legs yelling at me, and it gives Daniel some one on one time with his son. So its a win-win situation for both of us.

Now that you have had that bit of information, you may continue with the reason for this post...
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Zachariah took his first two steps today! Or at least thats what I hear.

That's right. I wasn't actually there. My darling son took his first steps in the 30 minute window where Daniel was entertaining him and I was in another room cooking dinner.

Am I the only one that thinks this is just plain wrong?????