Tis the Season to Forget Everything

If I told you how many times I have been to Walmart recently, I would be ashamed. I have been nonstop busy for the last month, with Christmas presents and starting to become a little crafty. (i.e. attempting to make nice Christmas presents, I hope you like yours Catherine! Also there might be a small hole in the wrapping paper....try not to peek...) and an almost 1 year old, my life is chaos. I am finally starting to enter the phase of "Wow this is why moms are always tired".

Speaking of which, Joshua is 11 months old! He is basically ONE and that is insane!

I am not really good of doing the month to month posts of what my child has learned to do, so I will try to cover the last 3 months right now.

Joshua crawls super fast so my day is mainly spent chasing him around and making sure he doesn't kill himself because he gets into EVERYTHING! Make up, the computer, pulling up the vent out of the floor, the trash, the cords, pulling things off of end tables, opens drawers and pulling everything out, the trash, pulling the toilet paper off the roll, the water bowl and did I mention the trash?

Just recently I was trying to finish my breakfast half asleep (this is surprisingly not normal) and I look over to see he is covered and trash, and not the just paper and easy things to get off. I mean crumbs and other sticky things galore. So he got his bath a bit early.

He LOVES baths! To the point that I just let him crawl around in the tub for 30 minutes until the water is half cold and he seems like he wants out.

Just the other day he figured out how to turn on the shower though. I should preface that with the fact that I let some water trickle out of the end of the spout at the end of his bath so he will look up and I can rinse his hair.

It seemed ingenious until he figured out he can turn the water to freezing and turn on the shower...now I just have to be more careful and it's more of a game/battle.

Oh and the stubbornness! He now is starting to throw fits when we tell him not to touch things. (Boy oh boy....but luckily this is pretty rare)

He tries to climb on everything. He frequently uses me as a stepping stool. He has been climbing up the stairs for a long time, but recently he learned to climb down the stairs and how to get off the bed/couch (mostly) safely. He's fast and strangely careful about it.

He can basically walk. He took 7 steps the other day. He is constantly trying, but I think he likes to try when he thinks no one is looking. It's rather funny.

Also pretty recent is hugs! This started probably 3 days ago but I think he is starting to give hugs and I am loving it!!!!!!!!

This is probably my favorite of his new habits. I miss how he used to snuggle me, so hugs are one step in the right direction. (Though I have come to terms that snuggling may not come back again until he is officially a toddler and probably only when he is sick, but hey I can dream right?)

Along the line of awesome things, is that he eats solid meals now all the time. He still nurses a little bit, mainly before naps and bed. He has cereal for breakfast, and then eats whatever I eat for lunch and dinner. He loves stuffing and bananas and most things. (He HATED baby food, like truly hated it, so that made 6-8 months kind of complicated for me). I had it all planned out in my head that I would start introducing baby food at 6 months and slowly over the next several months transition him to real food, but he threw that idea out the window.

He eats tons though, he can eat a whole can of chicken noodle soup, seriously this kid is insane. It baffles me that he is such a petite baby for how much he eats.

Sadly no teeth that I can see, but I am not good at checking...but I am not too worried. Joshua has proven to me time and time again that he will only do things when he is good a ready. An example is crawling. He could have easily been crawling at 6 months, like he was ready, but he didn't care to learn. He finally decided basically over night to learn to crawl about a month later. When he decides to learn something, he learns fast but no one is going to rush him.

So I honestly expect to wake up one day and he will just be walking perfectly everywhere because that is Joshua.

He sleeps 10pm-8am and I am actually mostly okay with that, but he takes 2 solid 2 hour naps a day and is on a really nice schedule so I can't complain.

Why I feel so busy is because I can only get things done during the 1st nap time. The 2nd nap time is mainly getting things cleaned up before Garett gets home.

We did get to see Garett's family for Thanksgiving this year. It is always great to see them since they are rather far away.

We are also planning on being there for Christmas. We were supposed to go last year but because Joshua was on his way, traveling was out of the question.

Garett is working tons and tons and we were doing pretty well at saving up money, but Christmas slowed that down a bit as it always seems to do.

He also just finished applying to grad school for Microbiology which means we will be biting our nails until sometime early next year when we figure out where on earth we are going to be moving to. We've applied to schools all around the country so we could end up anywhere.

I think that covers most of everything that has happened recently. I would blog more, but like I said, my window of productivity is pretty small.

Late Night Meanderings

Gosh where to even begin....

I've been watching meaningful movies lately and it's caused me to reflect on my life a great deal.

Most recently I watched Interstellar and made me think of what I would tell my past self. What would I change and what would I have worked harder to keep. I would be lying if I said I wouldn't change a thing, but I cannot live in the past, I can only change the future. Along with that movie, someone posted a link to a letter called "dear ex-best friend". It was beautiful and sweet. It made me think of all the people that have come and gone in my life. Believe it or not, if we were friends once, I have probably thought and wondered about you, maybe even Facebook stalked you. I hope you're doing well, that you're living out your dream or at the very least working toward your dream. I find in my 23 years of life there is no one for which I ever wish ill. I find myself rooting for people I haven't spoken to in ages. We may no longer be best friends, but because of the impact so many wonderful people have played in my life, I cheer for them. I've come to learn friendships are never mere coincidence or happenstance. Every person I've ever known played a roll in my life, to help me in some way and I hope I helped them too.

Every year I find myself wondering about someone, debating on whether I should message them and see how they're doing. Alas I almost never do for fear of it seeming weird.

I think I'm going to stop ignoring those feelings. Maybe it'll help me grow some. You never know, right?

The other movie I watched recently was The Imitation Game. It made me wildly sentimental. My little brother can testify, I was quite emotional after that movie. Oddly enough I came away from that movie wanting to deeply hug my little brother. You may be wondering why if you haven't seen the end of that movie, but if you have and you know my little brother, then you'll  know. I'm glad he lives in a day and age where he can live happily with a family that loves him deeply no matter what. Sorry I am getting emotional.....my family is very dear to me.

It is odd to see how my siblings and I have all grown and changed. I think out of us 4, I feel I could only have predicted my own life. Strange how even with living with your siblings for so long that they can still surprise you. But I am happy for them and proud of them. They each face battles I could not dream of facing and a strength I admire most dear. I feel like my life has been so much easier in comparison but maybe it is easy for us to forget what we have gone through. I like to think that my life has turned out so well though because of them and their examples to me.

My sister is so tough, yet I don't think I truly appreciated her soft side until recent years. She is incredibly strong and beautiful. She has a strength that I don't  think even she can see. She works hard for her family and her love is deeper than people can see. She is crafty and makes good food and is always finding cool activities for her kids. She loves her family more than anything. She truly is superwoman. She even helped me when I was dating Garett because she was so loving and protective that if he wasn't good she would have told me. Instead she gave me her glowing reviews and I knew he was good and that my sister loved me fiercely. She is protective which in our younger years came off a bit rough, but it is only because she wants the best for everyone. She puts everyone before herself and is such an example to me. If my life is great it is only because I have tried to model it after my sister. 

My older brother is not so loud and bold as my sister, but like her, he may not know his own strength. He was always my example growing up. I always wanted to be like him. Something I don't know if I ever told him, but I should have, is he is the reason I wanted a son 1st. For as long as I can remember I have wanted a boy as my 1st child. I wanted to have a son because I wanted him to be like my big brother. I want Joshua to be an example to my other children. I want him to be like my protective, loving older brother. I want him to protect his younger siblings and to love them like I was. I have always loved having a big brother and because of him, I wanted that for future daughters too. My brother may not be the biggest, toughest guy physically, but he has a spiritual strength that runs deep and long. He has been faithful in his scripture study and prayer as long as I can remember and I have always admired him of that. He is a great man, that may not be loud, but his voice is still powerful. I hope he has not forgotten that.

And then there is my little brother. We joke he has all the brains and charisma that the rest of us lack. He's not the most humble, but he is loving and sweet. It is his quiet side that I think people don't see. He works hard like my dad and he isn't good at sitting still, but he loves purely. How do I explain his quiet side? It isn't necessarily tangible. It is in the many late nights we stayed up talking on the couch, the silly snapchats, emojis and the way he looks when he sees my parents kiss. I guess it's his romantic side. He's a young man with an old soul. Like the rest of us, he's never wanted a temporal relationship and he is definitely not a fling person. Even in his young age, he looks for love long-term. He's a romantic which I am not sure comes off when people first meet him. He has carried a lot of emotional weight with him over the years and it makes me so glad he was born into our family. I love that we received his wild romantic ball of energy into our family because though being the youngest, he has taught us so much. He taught me to love in a new way, that family is so much more than blood and dna. Family is a pure, perfect love no matter what.

To wrap up I want to talk about my little family, Garett and Joshua. There are no earthly words to describe my love for them. I wish I was more eloquent to be able to fully explain my feelings. So many people fight being labeled and defined as wife or mother of "so and so". But I find myself loving those labels. Without them I am not complete. The world tells you that you don't need man or woman to be happy, and that is sort of true. But I would be lying to say I would be happy without them. My level of joy far exceeds whatever it could be if I was alone. It is like eating the richest chocolate in the world and then going back to some cheap brand. Why would you go back when you can have so much better? I need Joshua and Garett because I am no longer just me. Garett and Joshua are a part of me. When I go to the store without Joshua I feel like I'm missing a leg. When Garett is gone at work, I feel incomplete. I still function and have differences from them, but together we are so much stronger than we would be separately. I love being able to call myself a wife and mother and I don't want to ever take that for granted. I know too many people that long for those labels. To have a spouse that loves them beyond words or to hold their newborn child in their arms. Because of them I am reminded how fragile those labels are, how easily they can be taken. And right now I don't need other labels or distractions, right now I am enjoying my family as we are.