A few of the favorites

I don't know what's going on, but my computer isn't letting me upload any new pictures! It's saying that I'm at 100% capacity, whatever that means. Anyway, until I figure it out, here are a few favorites from the bloggular over the last few years :)

Wine tasting in Paris with the hubs. :)

After I got my Canon, I was really obsessed with taking all of these artsy-like pictures and guess what? I actually like them! So even though I'm a far cry from the editing master I hope to become, here is one of them!

...and another.

The first baby girl onesie I ever purchased. :) It hung up in our room for a good three months!

Little man having a moment last year when we were decorating our tree in the good ole' apartment. I was pregnant with Kota here!

A product of nesting in 2011...

...which appeared in Carter's old room right before we brought home girly-girl.

And this preciousness :)

Anyway, love these pictures. :) 

Yay!

And so...

It's sad to me that I haven't blogged in so gosh darn long. Truly! And the only reason I'm writing this post is because I decided to check up on the ole' site to poke around a little bit and got lost in my archives. I've just been sitting here, reading all about the days when Carter was taking two naps per day, when Chad turned 23 and that wonderful night Kota was born. 

This blog, my friend, is a keeper of our young family life. I used to sit down every day to document whatever the heck was on my mind, the result of which being a diary of sorts. The posts I've been sorting through bring me back to silly days and lovely feelings. 

The real reason I've faded out was because I got weirdly wrapped up into my stats. It became depressing! Every single morning I would check to see how many unique visits I got, what pictures people were clicking on, etc. etc. etc. Did I have any emails from people who were interested in working together? If there wasn't, why not?! Hmm... It looks like my main blog peeps didn't like my last post as much as the one before, I wonder why? - were a few of the usual thoughts. Anyway, in no way do I have a monstrously large following or anything, but for a small amount of time I wanted to build, build, build - so I forgot about how much I enjoyed just sitting here and talking (to myself) about how awesome my family was.

So there it is! Of course there are other reasons why I haven't been blogging, the main reason being that if I'm going to take the time to sit down and write, it has to be for one of the websites I'm working with, therefore leaving me with no me time. However, busyness is never going to go away, in fact it will only increase, so I don't want that to be the reason why I can't remember what sort of outfits I dressed my darling 11-month-old little missy in. I hope that I will write again consistently just for the love of it instead of for the "gain," you know what I mean sista? 

Anyway! Cheers to documenting young family life and to remembering what it was like to write about the everyday - and not feeling bad that the everyday can be considered boring to other people! Yay!

(Reposted, super old pictures from my pal Jenanae - I think fall of 2010?)

Everywhere

Alright, my mind is all over the place! One second I'm content, the next I'm bored. Deep cleaning the kitchen sounded nice but then sounded horrendous. Swiffering ran through my mind, but nah. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

1. Carter is on the stairs and he's supposed to be in bed, but tonight I'm just going to let it go. I'll just let him think I don't know he's there, playing with his cars and saying, "Boom! Crash!" It sounds cute, so hey! What can you do?

2. Speaking of bed times and the fact that Carter isn't actually in bed asleep, every once in awhile I'll think, So really, what is this whole "strict" thing all about, anyway? Why can't I just let them do whatever they want, like watch 19 Kids and Counting with me? Why do you actually have to enforce rules to raise model citizens? Can't we all just stay up until midnight together and eat s'mores? It would be fun and oh-so easy! Surely that would require much less will power and strength than "getting down to business!" But then I'll remember that I'm not hanging out with purse-sized chihuahuas, I'm raising my kids! Kids that need to know boundaries in order to learn respect, etc., etc., etc. Anyway, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to bend the rules every now and again because we've definitely done that (EXAMPLE: Chad watching the Avengers with Carter until 11:30 when I was down in San Diego for a few days), it's just one of those random let me question the universe and why I do what I do type things.

3. Speaking of me spending a few nights in San Diego, therefore placing Chad on two-child-daddy-duty for the longest stretch he's ever gone, here's a nice little fact: he let Carter go COMMANDO for almost 4 days! Yes! When I was reunited with my crew I saw that Chad was putting Carter's pajama pants on sans underwear so I asked, "Woah, what's going on here? Aren't you forgetting his underwear?" To which he answered, "Oh no, babe, it's totally fine, he doesn't need underwear." He doesn't NEED underwear! What the heck?! It was one of those unbelievable holy moly daddy has been alone with the kids for the past few days moments!

4. I started buying organic milk and I have to say, it's tasty. Like milk shake tasty. In fact, I'm going to go relieve Carter of those evil peanut-bearing candies he raked up last night with a big ole' glass of the good stuff. Until tomorrow (hopefully)!

Update week: workin' 9-5

My men, last year

For a little bit longer than the past almost-three years, I've had a plan when it came to what I was going to do with myself regarding "work." It goes way back to when I was pregnant with Carter: finish my undergrad, secure a low commitment, easy-to-figure-out-babysitting occupation, have another baby, then figure out just what the deal was in the "real" work world. Would I be working 9-5? Kickin' butt and taking names? I had no idea! It was all a big mystery, but something I was excited to tackle once the time arrived.

Well, three out of the four steps had been taken as of a few months ago, leaving only the whole work thing on the To-Do list. Kota was about six months old when I started to seriously think about my financial contribution to the family/house buying/Cisneros-legitsky cause, and to tell you the truth, I was quite thrilled to begin my very own pencil-skirt-and-heels job search! There were so many options! Did I want to get started in PR? What about banking? Or possibly marketing?!

Little did I know, though, that my fun little search was the beginning of a torturous labyrinth of second-guessing myself and mind-changing. It all became a torrent of


Should I go to work full time, or shouldn't I? If I don't, is that the right thing to do for the kids, or isn't it? Zillions of moms work a whopping 5 days per week, so am I just being a big weirdo for feeling any trepidation about it? Let's say I do go to work, what shall I do in regards to employment? WHAT SHALL I DO?!

I mean, it went on and on . . . for months. For a few days I would be stoked about entering the workforce, ready and willing to drop the babies off at a daycare, completely fine with the whole thing. After about 72 hours of psyching myself up though, I couldn't keep ignoring the fact that I felt like my mind was shouting words into my consciousness like, "JUST DO IT! YOU'RE GOING TO BE FINE! THE KIDS WILL BE FINE! STOP THINKING ABOUT IT AND JUST GO!" just so that way I wouldn't be able to hear the, "okay, woah, are you really going to be okay dropping the babies off for so many hours per day?", more true-to-myself thoughts.

Once I would finally recognize the more tame sentiments, I would think things like, "alright, clearly you are just one of those women who has no grit." It was awful, torturous even! I felt like I had a responsibility to help provide for my family (and the awesome vacations I envisioned for us), but couldn't put my thoughts into actions! I was a talker, not a doer. Chad one time told me that he liked how I was a dreamer - EXACTLY what I didn't want to be! What the heck? Dreamers are folks who look into the distance and say things like, "hmm, I wonder what it had been like if the South had won the Civil War. . . . Hmmm, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? . . ."

NO! When I was a young whippersnapper, I had always envisioned myself as some corporate badass. Now that vision sounds horrendous, as priorities have shifted drastically - EXCEPT FOR THE PART ABOUT ME BEING A BADASS!

Then one day, tired of my wishy-washy ways, I sat down to really figure out what was going on with our lives. I compared and contrasted various day care costs, my possible yearly earnings, how early in the morning I would have to leave to drop the kids off, on which days Chad could pick them up/which day he could take off so that way the kids wouldn't be with a babysitter 100% of the time, along with the emotional stress (yes, I calculated this - I have no idea how, but it was like an actual calculation). When Chad got home from work that night, I showed him what was up and asked him what he thought. After taking a look at the cold hard facts, we decided to forget about me working for The Man. It just wasn't worth it, especially the emotional stress.

From that point on, I stopped freaking out about my status as an unemployed human being, mainly because I felt bad complaining about it. I mean, it wasn't as if I was doing the most important thing on earth or anything: raising our family! I just needed to get a grip and relax - allow my I-need-a-project-at-all-times self chill out. You know, take some time to smell the roses. So that's what I did and out of nowhere, a few opportunities popped up in none other realm than what I love to do: WRITING!

I couldn't believe it! I'm now working with a company called The Parent Tree and another one called Healthy Living Healthy Life. It has been glorious and I can't wait to see what other doors these relationships will open for me.

BUT the BIG KAHUNA of working motherhood has just been put into motion, making my awesome writing gigs more of a "for the love of" type thing! More information on this will come next time in update week! Woohooo!

Update week: Our move!

Okay, so not to be one of those people who says "it's been way too long since I've blogged last" and nobody had any clue that you were gone, but it's been way too long since I've blogged last! Holy moly, it's been AGES. Anyway, some major things have been happening around these parts, so I'm just going to do one, big fat week of updates since the things that have been going on have been pretty significant.

So update #1: our move and living situation! Man, oh man, where do I begin when it comes to the saga of where we have been taking up residence over the past few months . . . To say the least, it's been nuts. Here are the cliff notes:

1. March - April: We were in the last few months of our lease in Irvine, and were looking to buy a condo next. With those intentions, we decided that it would be better to just crash at the in-law's house so as not to jump into another lease. Well, once we hit the pavement and really started looking at what our glorious pre-approval allowed us, we decided to take a step back and reevaluate our options. Now I'm relieved that we didn't try to plow ahead to make it happen because we would have outgrown those places in about 30 seconds.

2. May - mid-September: So yes, the in-law's. Although I feel very blessed to have such gracious people in my life ready and willing to open up their home for our little family, it was quite the trying experience. In hindsight though, living there really put the nail in the coffin when it came to us buying. Since we occupied two rooms in the Cisneros home, it showed us that where ever we lived next, we had to have three bedrooms. It became a non-negotiable. I thought we would be able to manage with a two bedroom place with two kids, but turns out, we couldn't. So that was a positive . . .

3. Beginning of September: Despite the obvious financial awesomeness that living in Yorba Linda provided us, we decided to put the kabosh on the whole thing and move on, mainly because Kota was still in our room and I felt like there was no way I could put the two of them in the same room, what with her waking up every few hours, AND keep my sanity at the same time (picture this: no talking, no TV watching and walking on tip-toes for 8 whole months in your own bedroom! Far too long!). So we decided to take the plunge and start looking outside of the OC for some affordable, spacious inside-and-out properties in good ole' Corona. Yeah, it was going to be weird, but hey! We would have a yard, a minimum of 4 bedrooms and space for us to breathe. It was going to be awesome according to us, not so much according to both sides of our families. Anyway, we went a'lookin' to absolutely no avail. It was horrible. Talk about stress.

4. Mid-September: While I was on a walk wallowing in the misery which had become plain ole' normal at that point, my parent's realtor three-way called me with my mom on the line to talk about a listing he had in Lake Forest (right up the street from my parents' fabulous city of Mission Viejo), and that he could make it happen in one week. ONE WEEK! So I immediately packed the kids in the car at 7:30 pm, drove from Yorba Linda to Lake Forest to meet my mom and Gus, drove back, told Chad about it once he got home from class at 10:00, called Gus at 10:30 and WABAM! We had a new home which met all of our criteria!

5. September 14th: MOVE IN DAY! I swear I heard the choir of angels all day long!

Anyway, I'll tell you what: when you're feeling outrageously low because your peace of mind has been compromised thanks to a lack of sleep and tight living quarters, pray on it and try not to become desperate! Toward the end of our Corona search I was commiserating with my dad about the current state of the four of us, and he told me,
"Honey, I know it's tough, but don't become desperate. When you get into that state of mind, you make rash decisions." 

After hearing those words of wisdom I really did relax, and shortly after I revised my prayer message from "Okay, we REALLY need to figure out our living situation, so could you help a gal out?" to "Wherever you see us, lead me there," it all fell into step. Glorious, I tell you, glorious!

One of those moments

Today I experienced one of those moments where for just a split second, I couldn't believe where life has taken us. It was short, lasting less than a full minute, but oh-so-sweet. 

I was prepping for Chad and my pasta dinner by chopping up the goods, Carter was eating his little tot-sized dinner and Kota was satisfied in her exersaucer. As I was cutting the onions, my eyes started to water so I backed off from the counter for a second, shutting them to try to stop the burn. After a few seconds of me standing there in all my shut-eyed glory, I realized that we were all three existing in complete, sweet, happy silence, each of us inundated with the separate things that we were doing. 

I was chopping. Carter was examining his food with great intensity. Kota was calmly going for a world record in teething-toy-brutalization with those uncomfortable gums of hers.

I took a look around at the madness that had become the kitchen and had this thought exactly:

I love the chaos that is raising these two babies. I LOVE IT. Carter ramming the back of the couch with his push-along choo-choo from his early walking days, Kota clawing the left side of my face off with her perpetually overgrown fingernails, the two of them laughing it up like hyenas simply because Boomer walked by. It's wonderful. Unbelievably wonderful. 

----

Completely unrelated, another kind of profound thing happened today, also. 

We have this little Bible book for Carter, and when we were at Target the other day he asked if he could get the "brother" book, which is a sort of how-to on praying for babes. I read it to him for the first time today right before his nap, and came across a prayer for patience and compassion. I realized that in that exact moment, I needed to pray for more patience. 

The half hour before nap time is by no means my favorite time of day. I genuinely get angry at how long it takes to settle Carter in for his daily snooze, sometimes resorting to yelling like someone who has a teenager instead of a two-and-a-half-year-old. The way I rationalize the rise in octaves is by thinking, It's okay, I never yell, so this will really sink in this time. 

Anyway, it got me thinking. God puts things like pre-nap time book reading sessions revolving around prayer in your life for a reason, and today the message couldn't have been more clear. So cheers to a calm day thanks to none other than the Big Man upstairs!

Oh, the inspiration

The house is quiet, the laundry is running and I'm devouring a slice of cake.

I can't think of a better way to spend these sacred moments of silent bliss than to rack through the wonderfulness that is pinterest.

Ahh, the joys...

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When Chad and I heave-ho out of this transitional living situation (in a few short weeks . . . Can you hear the choir of angels heralding?), this amazingness is either going to be gracing Kota's nursery or the play room. Well, if there is a play room, that is.


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If I didn't see myself botching those pretty poofs of delight so severely, they would be hanging over her crib, too.


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...and in a few short years, this is what I have to look forward to... Tear!


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Lastly, Chad doesn't know it yet, but we're also going to be painting Kot's crib this color come the new house situation. Yep, we are...

And I can't forget about Carts! Basically, this is what his room is going to be looking like, thanks to her fabulous expertise...




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ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA! ALLELUIA!
Beautiful, I tell you, beautiful!

Anyway, moving on from the babes, I would really appreciate it if Fall could just hurry on up so I can pretend to be good at things like...

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THAT. Or wear things like...


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THIS.

Anyway, Fall also brings back

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my favorite beyond favorite show, which can be watched after attending my newest obsession, Stroller Strides, where I will be wearing an outfit no less cute than


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...the likes of those.

Anyway! I'd love to keep racketeering, but the couch is calling my name so . . . You know what that means!
Real Housewives of New Jersey, baby!