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Saturday, March 22, 2014

Advice for new moms?

Saw this article and wanted to include it on my blog.  It serves me as great reminder or maybe  (for any new mom) to help appreciate this point in our lives and to really enjoy it. 


But first here r some of my fav pics from this month :) 😘


You stole your dads steak! I guess it smelled better the the carots & peas I was trying to feed u!!




Helping me water flowers with the mismatch socks


Beach day-- love them so much with u




Dj Alex


Ring around the Rosie 

Disney land ( ill post more later)

Diva!!!!!! 

A couple we randomly run across here on the beach- we met them and their adorable daughter when she was only few days old.  Here we ran to them on the boardwalk and u girls connected 

Yep this is how I get woken up most mornings.  Foot in my face !! Hehe yaya still cute

With daddy



Can't wait to get you into dance class

Yogurt convention in LA

Head first 


Our friends son Aiden.  Although he is 8 and just become a big brother- he tolerates you torturing him most times ;)

On the boat


Swim class

Kisses with grandma in the back

Cornado 

Hmm someone isn't watching your chocolate in take 


Sky zone 

With grandparents visiting 


         ~~~~<<My two loves>>~~~~


~~~~<<<<here is the article >>>>>~~


A LETTER TO A NEW MUM: “GIVE YOUR BABY THE BEST OF YOU, BUT ALSO GIVE YOURSELF THE SAME CARE.”

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babiesfeet A letter to a new mum: Give your baby the best of you, but also give yourself the same care.
Motherhood will challenge, reward and amaze you.

Dear new mum,

Congratulations and welcome to the next chapter of your life!  Motherhood will change you in ways you could never have predicted. It will challenge, reward and amaze you. It will exhaust, confront and enlighten you. It will stir up emotions within you that have a new origin. And it will most certainly be the greatest accomplishment of your life.

As you navigate the sometimes rocky path of motherhood, don’t be afraid to trust your instincts. Listen to your heart and learn to ignore the critics. Try not to concern yourself with what others may be doing. Instead, focus on what works for you. Follow your internal cues and be strong in your resolve.

When you experience troubles, as you often will, try to focus on what you are doing right rather than what is going wrong. In this way you will learn to ride out the parental storms and emerge a stronger, wiser mother.

Try not to worry too much about “losing” your identity. While you may shed layers of your former self, you are creating a new existence. Adapting to your new life can be lonely in the early months, but know that nothing is forever. Your old self might rest dormant for a while, but it will burst into new life, as you become a more evolved version of yourself.

You will receive advice from well-meaning friends and from complete strangers. Do not be burdened by their intrusions. Learnt to insulate yourself from the “noise” that pervades the parental landscape. Do not let the judgement of others have a place in your mothering story. You are the protagonist of this story and you will find your own path.

Try to find a new way of parenting. Adopt the best parts from your own childhood experience and create a new way forward. Allow your partner to help shape the future of your growing family. Parental love is not only a revision of family love; it is also an investigation of self-love.

first steps A letter to a new mum: Give your baby the best of you, but also give yourself the same care.
Cherish each and every moment.

Don’t let guilt overwhelm you. There is no benefit in self-blame. Make the best decisions you can based on your unique set of circumstances and be sensitive to other parents’ decisions. Just as no two children are the same, no two mothering journeys are the same. Don’t compare yourself to others. Don’t measure your happiness against what you think you see. Avoid comparisons; move to your own mothering rhythm.

Through motherhood you will experience many complex emotions. At times you will laugh so hard you will cry, other times you will shed tears that sting with pain. You will experience the force and discomfort of raw emotion. There will be times of sheer frustration and times of pure, unadulterated joy. Don’t be frightened by these emotions – rather embrace them. They are an essential part of your journey.

Give your baby the best of you, but also give yourself the same care. Be gentle to yourself. Find moments for solitude and reflection. Reserve a part of yourself that isn’t for sharing and nourish that side. Prioritise time just for you and it will pay dividends for the whole family.

There will be times when “good enough” parenting is all you can do to survive, and then there will be times when you thrive. Know that every stage will pass, and often all too quickly. The days can be long, but the years pass fast.

Try to maintain a sense of humour in the midst of the chaos. Laugh often and laugh lots, and surround yourself with happy, helpful people who will form part of your village.

Yes, it’s true life will never be the same. But if you had wanted your life to stay the same, you wouldn’t have had children.

Finally, while it’s impossible to enjoy every minute of mothering, grab hold of the moments that are joyful with a firm grip. There is no app to freeze time but your rich experiences are like deposits into your family’s memory bank.

You are on the most significant journey of your life.  Cherish the ‘firsts’, savour the ‘lasts’ and love your children intensely.

Michaela Fox is a freelance writer, blogger and mother. She has three young daughters and sometimes wonders why she had them in under 3 years! She is hoping that short-term pain results in long-term gain. You can follow her onTwitter, join her on Facebook or read her honest musings on motherhood at Not Another Slippery Dip.

Love this article I found called " Best years of my life"??

Screen shot 2013 02 11 at 10.24.54 AM What if the best years of your life, just..... arent?
“The best years of your life.” Seriously?

The elderly woman wrapped a warm thin hand around my forearm and leant in close. At first I thought she had stopped to steady herself as she shuffled down the long aisle at Broadway Coles. But with a smile on her lips, she leaned in so our faces nearly touched and said: “These are the best years of your life. They will go quickly. Cherish them. Don’t have regrets.”

She gently patted the sling that held the 12-week-old bundle snugged softly against my sore, leaking breasts, nodded firmly and walked away.

It was the first of many times over the following decade that I would be stopped by a stranger and given the same advice. But I’ll never forget that first old lady, because at the time her warning bemused me. “The best years of my life.” Seriously?

I was 21 years old and had found myself 1,000 kilometres away from family and friends, unexpectedly navigatingparenthood, university study and work. I wanted to arrogantly scoff “I’m educated, I have ambition, I haven’t slept in two months, I sing nursery rhymes 18 hours a day and I accidentally left the house in my pyjama bottoms this morning – surely this is not as good as it gets!”

But time makes fools of us all. Flip forward 13 years and I’ve just sat down at my desk after seeing my fourth, and last, child off to her first day of school. It’s the end of an era; a great big chunk of my 33 years of living ends today. And the old lady at Coles was goddamn right.

In the years between then and now, I carried four wonderful people, nurtured them, saw their characters develop, independence blossom, talents emerge, vulnerability morph into resilience and ideas become beliefs and opinions.

baby 290x338 What if the best years of your life, just..... arent?
“Those little things slip through our consciousness and become tiny memory fragments we will never feel, hear or smell again.”

There have also been countless career opportunities passed up. Jobs I’ve stepped away from so my husband could step up to his, without removing both parents from the household from 7am to 7pm. Press releases written with newborns at my breast and toddlers under my desk.

Brainstorms punctuated by nappy changes and playtime. Potential clients turned down because there simply weren’t the hours in the day to give them, and my family, the attention they deserved. And I wondered, hoped, prayed I wouldn’t come out of that period with regrets.

Years later, and the little bundle that lay in the sling that morning at Coles will become a teenager this year, and begin high school next year. I try to conjure her voice at age two; the pitch, the tone, the divine mispronunciations. Those little things slip through our consciousness and become tiny memory fragments we will never feel, hear or smell again.

And so today, no regrets. Sure, I could have earned a bit more money. Could have chased bigger fish. But the times when I tasted that life – missed class presentations, half-cooked meals at 8pm, holidays spent stressing over poor internet connection and missed emails, fights with the husband and kids who fell asleep on the hardwood office floor at night, waiting for me to finish work so I could spend time with them, made me realise I didn’t want what came with it. So like many other women, I down-scaled my career just as it was taking off. Because I knew I could never go back and do this ‘mother’ thing again.

When I was a teenager, schoolbags were plastered with bumper stickers that said “girls can do anything”. Career counselling consisted of lectures about law, medicine, physiotherapy, stockbroking and journalism. Home economics was removed from the curriculum. It would have been considered downright sexist to point out the paradox. Some careers can accommodate the needs of a family better than others; those choices – whether we like it or not – exist. We can do anything. But if we want healthy, happy, satisfying lives – we can’t do it all simultaneously. Man or woman, there are choices, sacrifices and losses down either path.

We do not raise boys or girls to think like this. We don’t educate them to jobshare, downscale, work from home. We raise them to take every opportunity, rise to the occasion, get a bigger office, build a more impressive client list, fulfil their potential. No one mentions what we have to surrender, on the professional or personal front, to do this.

Earlier this month, the girls and I stood by the bed of their deceased 92-year-old great grandmother. As her body lay surrounded by family members, the room was filled with love and gravity. It didn’t matter how much of the planet she had traversed, who she had impressed or how many degrees adorned her office wall.  She had raised sons, grandsons, nursed a dying husband and buried a son.  She had been a community member, friend, devoted great-grandmother, card writer, tennis player, book lover and never forgot a birthday. And in that moment of death, that is all that mattered, that’s all that remained, treasured.

mother son 380x316 290x316 What if the best years of your life, just..... arent?
“I can promise you one thing. You will never regret the sacrifices you make for them now.”

Our children are the warmth that we leave in the world long after our own fires are extinguished. The gravity of those early years is hard to imagine when we dream of writing headlines, performing surgery, drafting legislation or publishing books, as opposed to changing nappies, mediating Lego disputes and doing the bedtime routine – but it’s profound.

Once kids start school, they enter a vortex from which they never return to be fully, totally ours again; time with them is negotiated around a timetable of school days, weekends, social lives, activities, term dates and holidays.

And they emerge young adults, with dreams, plans and all those forks in their own roads to navigate. Much of their journey will be done without us. We will never stand by their side as we do in those first five years.

So for those of you fidgeting at home today with a restless baby at the breast, for those who have been interrupted by a toddler 20 times while you read this, I can promise you one thing. You will never regret the sacrifices you make for them now.

It may not be possible to fully appreciate the beauty of this time while you are in the midst of it. But one day, sooner than you can imagine, you will be standing on the other side of this chapter, trying to remember how their skin smelt, how their body felt sitting on your hip, head on your shoulder – and you will be filled with gladness for every moment, good and bad, that you experienced with them.


Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Oregon Visit ~family ~ back In March of this year

Visiting Jeff's family.  Your great grandparents Jane and Larry, grandparents Connie & Jed, cousin Paige and auntie Kayla & hubbie Aj.  Good times. They have been my family now for almost ten years 🙀🙀 and it was cool for you to get so see them all again and meet some for the first time. I know Jeff loved it .




































































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