Road Blocks

I feel like I've got a huge road block in my life. I'm at a complete stand still. I thought I could just cruise through postpartum depression and make it through to the other side but things are crumbling.

The past few months have been insanely difficult. My girls are missing out on a happy mama and I'm missing out of happy times with them. Every day is a battle to be happy. On Monday Gibbie actually asked me when she would have her happy mama back. That was the most completely heartbreaking moment of all of this.

The Hubs has been so amazing through this. He's kind and patient with me when I feel like the worst human being around.

I finally saw my doctor yesterday and was given a prescription, told to look at the blue sky whenever I can, and to workout whenever possible.

I'm eager to get back to normal. I miss feeling good. I miss wanting to be around people. I really miss feeling like a good mama.

Almost There

Hello Darlings.

I feel a breakthrough coming on. I think I'm getting close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel a little bit better every day but only just a tiny bit. I'm inching my way through postpartum depression.

When I get depressed I can't bring myself to write. I tend to feel really bad about it because it is a great outlet and a lot of fun for me. I don't care if anyone reads this but I love to share my life. You would think that it would help me through the depression to share but I just can't now.

I'm hoping that by the end of July I will be back to blogging regularly. The girls are great, The Hubs is great, my progress is great. I've been working out a lot and trying my best to eat healthy and get plenty of sleep. I am determined to make it through to the other side and I hope you will be there waiting for me.

Until then, be happy, be blessed, and be yourself.

Weekend Wrap Up

As per usual we escaped to the mountains for The Hubs' birthday weekend. We usually stay in Ruidoso, NM but this time decided to go to Cloudcroft, NM for a change. It's about a two and a half hour drive from where we live.

I absolutely love going to the mountains. It rejuvenates me and makes me so happy.

We didn't realize it when we booked the trip but it turned out to be the exact same cabin group we stayed with last time we stayed in Cloudcroft which was almost exactly 4 years ago. I couldn't resist taking a picture with Gibbie in the same spot we took one when she was almost 8 months old:

(Side note: Squish is only 5 months old and that same sweater Gibbie is wearing above at 8 months old is super tight on her. Big baby!)

I hiked for the first time and absolutely fell in love with it. I can't wait to go again.

We're actually planning on going up again just for the day next month (maybe) just to go hiking again since it isn't too far away. Squish loved being carried on my back in my Ergo carrier for the first time:

The Hubs and I never get good pictures together but we decided to give Gibbie a shot at taking a picture of us. I think it turned out great!

Poor Squish is such a home body so she wasn't thrilled with vacationing. This was her second trip and she did much better the first time when she was about 3 months old. We forgot to bring the pack and play so she had to sleep in the king size bed with me (I'm not a cosleeper so I was nervous the entire time about rolling onto her). She screamed for over an hour each night before finally falling asleep. (We don't do cry it out so it was super hard to hold her and hear her screaming.)

Gibbie on the other hand is a great traveler and loves the mountains as much as The Hubs and I do.

The drive home wasn't as bad as the last time for Squish. Last time she cried for an hour, this time was only about 30 minutes! Progress!

Now for the downside of the trip. this is what my Weight Watchers food tracker looked like when yesterday was over:

Definitely not proud of this but to be completely honest I am not letting me bother me one bit. When I obsess about the numbers I get really down and then give up for a while. This time I'm not going there. I had a kick ass awesome weekend and I loved every bite of delicious food I took. It was food that I don't normally eat (and I am not feeling as well because of it haha).

Today I actually took a 3 mile week first thing this morning and hardcore stuck to the plan. I'm not sweating the weekend and I'm not sweating my Friday weigh in this week!

How was your weekend?

Friday Weigh In

When I changed from meetings to online only with Weight Watchers I also changed my weigh in day to Friday. I'm super excited about today!

I'm finally at a 10 pound loss! This is the first week I've been super tracking and I got in a 15 minute cardio workout on Monday and a 25 minute workout yesterday. I know that's not much but between never knowing when the baby is going to wake up and dealing with postpartum depression it's been hard to get out of bed in the mornings.

The Hubs' birthday is Saturday and we're going to celebrate all weekend. After posting this I'm signing off for the weekend to spend some quality time with my family. I'll have a lot of fun pictures to share on Monday.

What are your plans for the weekend?

June Goals

I'm going to completely ignore the goals I didn't reach for May. If you didn't read my post about May you can find it here. Here are my goals for June:

1. Talk to my OB/GYN about postpartum depression ASAP!

2. Have at least 30 minutes of alone time every week (a walk, a solo store trip, anything).

3. Eat at least 1 fruit or vegetable at every meal and at least 1 for my morning or afternoon snack.

4. Finish 1 book I've been reading for over a year.

5. Fit into favorite jeans.

I am still doing Weight Watchers however I just started tracking again last Monday after ditching the entire idea for about a month. I am only doing online now though. I started dreading the meetings so I'm thinking I'll do much better if that's something I don't have to worry about.

Do you have any goals for June?

May Recap

May was an extremely rough month for me. I still haven't quite recovered from it yet but I'm working on it. Occasionally I get little bouts of depression and I just take St. John's Wort for a week and I'm all better. The week turned into over a month this time and in the middle there was a lot of anxiety on top of it. I'm sharing this because I find it very important for every person who has children... it turns out I have postpartum depression. It looks like having a c-section rather than vaginal, taking hormonal birth control, and not being able to breast feed has just hit me very hard. Especially the not being able to breast feed. No matter how many times I've told myself it doesn't bother me it really does. I'm in the process of grieving over it now and I'm already starting to feel better. Allowing myself to grieve instead of just pushing the feelings down has made me very emotional but is helping the process of overcoming depression tremendously.

So, since it's been exactly one month since I've written a blog post please allow me to catch up on my family!

Squish was baptized in early May. Here we are with her Godparents/aunt and uncle. As you can see Gibbie is absolutely thrilled to have to wait even longer for some cake:

Squish decided to start rolling from front to back and we all missed it. I did take this picture before flipping her back over:

Mother's Day happened. For the most part it was pretty good. I had a much better day the day before Mother's Day so I consider that the official day for me. I feel like kids work very hard to make Mother's Day not so great for some reason. This is the one decent picture I took on the actual Mother's Day:

Gibbie had her preschool graduation. Kinda. We're putting her back in prekindergarten one more year before heading to kindergarten so she'll have another preschool graduation next year:

I cried through the entire thing even though I know she'll be there again next year. I think she could have been fine going to kindergarten next year but since her birthday is the day before the cut off date we chose to give her another year before having to get down to the hardcore learning stuff. It's crazy to me that if she was born 1 hour and 47 minutes later she wouldn't have even been able to go to prekindergarten yet!

Here's my favorite picture lately:

I can't believe how much she's grown and changed!

We celebrated out 6th anniversary on the 24th! Squish doesn't like being away from mama so we only had a short date but it was fun. Here's one of my favorites from our wedding:

Photo Credit: Leslie M. Harper

Gibbie was promoted to a white belt with yellow stripe a few days ago:

Finally, at only 5 months old, Squish can sit on her own. She's good for about 30 seconds before losing her balance:

How was your May?

Goodbye April, Hello May

April 2015 Goals:

1. Lose five pounds.  **I failed at this one. Actually, I succeeded but then gained some back.**

2. Work out three days a week. **Again another fail. I have a lot of excuses.**

3. Finish one book that I'm in the middle of.  **Finished reading Red Letter Revolution.**

4. Start using Gibbie's chore and consequence chart regularly again. **Half fail. I'm using the consequence chart but tend to forget about the chore chart by the end of he day.**

5. Do one thing just for me once a week. **Fail.**

I'm going to cheat and use a few of the same for May!

May 2015 Goals:

1. Lose five pounds.
2. Work out three days a week.
3. Finish another book that I'm in the middle of.
4. Meditate every day.
5. Cut back to only drinking once a week.

Do you have any goals for the month?

Weigh in Tuesday

I'm borderline embarrassed about my progress, or lack there of, on Weight Watchers. When I was a member two years ago it worked for me because I did the work. This time I haven't been consistent and therefore I'm not getting consistent results. Here's how I ended my Weight Watchers week:

The only reason I had weekly points remaining was because I didn't track everything. I had a few binge days in there and feel terrible as a result. Here are my charts:

I binged today too. I don't know what my trigger is but I need to figure it out. I need to find my motivation to do this again!

Today was the busy day. I'm eager for summer break so that I won't be so darn busy on Tuesdays! Gibbie is still loving Taekwondo:

Today she got her name written on her uniform in Korean:

Here's me being exhausted during Taekwondo practice:

That picture of me actually weirds me out a bit. It doesn't look like me for some reason. I don't know if it's the angle of what but I've looked at it over and over again. It's just strange to me. Do I look weird or different to you?

After Taekwondo I finally achieved a successful car to crib transfer with Squish:

That has never happened with her. I was always able to do it when Gibbie was a baby but Squish really likes to be swaddled still so she usually wakes up the second she hits the bed.

I've been checking for news updates on the Supreme Court hearings for marriage equality all day. I'm so eager to see how this goes. I'm really hoping they make the sensible choice for equal rights.

I'll just add one more picture in case you're wondering where I stand....

Never Ending Monday

We had a much lower key weekend than last week but it was fun just the same. Gibbie picked out The Lego Movie for Friday night movie night. She actually sat still and watched the entire thing. Squish fell asleep 15 minutes into it.

Saturday we went to a different farmer's market and it just wasn't as good as the one from last week and we didn't end up getting anything. I took the girls to a four year-old's birthday party. Gibbie had so much fun. It was Frozen themed and there were seven little girls dressed as Elsa and one dressed as Anna! Squish cried and fussed the entire time. I just stood around listening to mom's talk about the cruelty of not piercing a baby girl's ears which I found hilarious as I stood there within earshot of this conversation with my baby girl who has no extra holes in her ears. I have a strict "to each, their own" policy on parenting so this conversation was just fun for me to listen to (especially while they were throwing me some awesome side eye). A little while later those same moms made a snide remark about me ditching the Ergo when it was no longer keeping Squish happy. I didn't know moms actually did this bitchy talk about other moms thing until Saturday. I'm totally cool with it. I didn't know any of them before the party and I never plan on seeing them again.

Saturday night was date night! We started with the absolute most amazing sushi I've ever had this city! This is the closest we've gotten in town to the good stuff we had in San Francisco eight years ago. We then went to Sprout's grocery store because going without kids is a fun grown up activity for a date night. We bought super adult stuff like face cleanser, muffins, and Sriracha beef jerky. To finish our night we wanted to go to a new bar that has old school arcade games. The parking situation was so bad we ended up going to a different bar. Bad idea due to a bad cover band. Luckily, half pints were on sale so we each had one and headed home.

This was our second date night since having Squish and I'm still not able to loosen up. I was tense from the moment we left the house to the moment we got home.

Sunday was the highlight of the weekend. After church and a Whataburger lunch we headed to the plant nursery for tomato, basil, and flowers. We ended up with a stowaway! Gibbie named our big snail, Wormy:

It's always the most seemingly mundane things that make for the best days when you have a family.

This morning, Squish had her first rice cereal! She did great for her first feeding, having several spoonfuls before getting frustrated with it and having a bottle.

How was your weekend?

Friday Link Party

Happy Friday! I'm really excited about this weekend. Tomorrow is date night! Above is a (not so great self taken) picture from our last date night which was on my birthday. I'm super excited to be trying a new-ish sushi place that opened when I was pregnant and a new bar that has old school arcade games. What are you plans for the weekend?

Here are some links to hold you over. I've thrown in a few to Mother's Day gift ideas since it's just a few weeks away:

I love Etsy. I especially love all of the cute and quirky cards you can find on there. Here's some Mother's Day cards to check out!

If you're crafty and you're looking to make your mom (or your kids' mom) something special try these awesome DIY photo magnets!

I found this on a list of things lazy people need and I definitely think it's something that I would use.

Does the mom in your life seem to already have everything? I just know you can find something for her at Uncommon Goods.

I've seen many Pixar Theories but this one blows the rest away!

Words are awesome. Words are my favorite. These words had me rolling and The Hubs rolling his eyes!

I love using Pinterest! This was my most popular pin from last week!

Have a great weekend!

Weigh In and Craziness

I didn't think I'd ever get around to this post today. Crazy Tuesdays are just too crazy!

First up was Weight Watchers. I knew I wasn't going to have a loss going in but I was totally ok with it. On Saturday I wore some work out capris that I hadn't been able to wear for a while so I was just happy about that!

This is how I ended my week:

Not great. Not terrible. I need to work on not going into my weekly points but it's so hard for me!

Here's what my weight looks like this week:

I'm not too upset over a 1.4lb gain. I'm shaking it off and looking ahead.

Squish played in her walker/activity table thing for the first time today. She was totally digging it:

That was really the only free time we had together today. From play time we went to Weight Watchers, to grocery shopping, putting away groceries, feeding her, picking up Gibbie, coming home to change clothes and have a snack, then to Taekwondo and finally home to make dinner! What a whirl wind day!

I have to share something that made my day so great yesterday. I was at Target with Gibbie and Squish and we were cutting through a craft isle to get to the kid clothes. I'm usually in such a hurry to get through the trip and I don't end up having much fun. I'm constantly telling Gibbie to stick with me and catch up and don't be so slow. This time was slightly different. In the middle of the craft isle Gibbie yelled, "MOM! Look at this! What is it?" I turned to see her holding up a bottle of red glitter glue. Telling her it was sparkly glue put a smile on my face as I remembered using that stuff when I was a kid. Then when I turned around a lady just happened to pass by and say, "You are so blessed." It took me aback and almost made me tear up. I am so blessed. Sometimes I have selfish moments and wish I could have a day all to myself and forget how blessed I am. I am so blessed. I have these two beautiful girls who drive me absolutely insane but I wouldn't trade my life for anything in the world. I am so blessed because I am Gibbie and Squish's mom. I am so blessed.

Weekend Review Farmer's Market

To make up for last weekend's lack of photos I decided to take a whole lot this weekend! It started with movie night on Friday night. The Hubs teaches a class that night leaving me with my girls to watch movies and eat popcorn. Gibbie decided she is totally into Star Wars. In actuality she totally wants it to be on in the background while she plays and every now and then exclaim how much she loves Darth Vader. So this Friday we did our nails while watching it:

Check out her Spider-Man pajamas. I love how eclectic she is!

Later that night Squish decided she didn't feel good so we hung out after Gibbie went to bed:

Our Saturday was mostly spend in a different city. I love living so close to the city north of us. It's a smaller city but there's so many more things for us to do there. First stop was the farmer's market. Squish is such a homebody so she wouldn't eat for us but I think she was happy to be outside:

Gibbie had her face painted for the very first time ever! She got to pick what she wanted and then she held perfectly still for the guy and it came out super awesome:

Check out The Hubs. He's so handsome:

Along with some awesome shopping we were also entertained by dancers from Nepal:

Our final stop at the farmer's market was to check out the dog adoptions. I don't know why we do that to ourselves. We are in no way ready for a dog in our house but it doesn't stop us from really wanting one. We picked one, named it, and walked away. Now I'm sitting here wishing that Sadie, my made up dog, was here.

So to cheer me up we went to a little pizza and wine restaurant. I was better in no time:

This is our view of the drive home through pecan orchards:

I got a new phone Sunday so the next pictures will probably be sharper than the last few. We went to my in-law's house where Squish enjoyed some tummy time and Gibbie got a new board game:

The Hubs found his old Star Wars toys from his childhood and brought them home for our girls to enjoy:

I'm pretty sure he's having fun playing with them as well!

And finally, my favorite picture from the weekend:

How was your weekend?