So if you want to read my other 2 posts, they are here:
Mother's Day
Riley's Blessing Day
Finding the time to blog has been hard to come by lately. My last blog here (aside from the ones today) was April 26th. It's already the 21st of May so it's almost been an entire month.
I'm not sure if it is because my memory is bad and I am just forgetting how hard life gets with a baby, OR if it is true that having 3 kids is harder than 2. Either way, I have kept very busy lately with the role of motherhood and it has left me little time to do things (like blogging).
Wait.
I will say that I do get some things done - but it's just takes me three times as long to get not even a quarter of the amount accomplished.
With that said, here I am at 12:20 a.m. while the rest of the house sleeps and I'm going to finish blogging tonight gosh darnitt. Because who knows when my next opportunity to do so will be.
Oh and beware this post will probably be long because obviously I have a lot to catch up on now...and I shall do so in chronological order.
April 27th - Home Decor Projects
No he wasn't my project. But he did sit in his bouncy and watch me hang pictures on the wall for a bit, or was in the Baby Bjorn being toted around while I worked on projects.
He was 6 weeks old in these pics...
Ok sorry, I just love taking pictures of him and I usually only select a few to post on social media, but in my files I have TONS and want to remember them. So I try to always post more selections on our blog.
Now to the projects...
I have found a website called Wallums.com, and of course there are a lot of websites that sell wall decals, but I just happened upon this one from Groupon I believe. I have been wanting to do some decals for a while, just "one of those things I'll eventually get around to doing". But I finally spent some time and found the perfect ones...
This one is our family name over our fire place...
I will say that decals are NOT easy to put on your walls. They are extremely sticky. You have to get them aligned just perfectly. And it takes quite a while to rub them on/off the paper onto your wall. Sometimes the letters would rip and I would have to manually stick them back together and hope for the best. But in the end, it was worth the hard work.
Now hopefully with the humidity here in the Northwest they will stay on. :)
Now this next project was printing photos of baby Riley and getting him up on the wall so that he was part of our family. :)
It's hard to tell what I did - but I had to take down almost all of these frames and move them in order to fit in new ones just right. It took a bit of coordination and leveling to get it all right. But you will see we now have photos of all 3 boys at 2 weeks old, and also a maternity photo of me.
Next is the wall in my music studio. I didn't take a "before" but this wall had some vintage Steinway piano ads on there and all of my CD plaques. I took those all down and put up the decal that says "Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I'm possible." - Audrey Hepburn.
I also finally framed all of the awards and red carpet photos that I'd had laying around for the last year.
This last project I'll post about is something I've been working on for a while. I have been printing off family photos to put in this frame so that our boys can get to know and recognize their distant cousins and aunts/uncles. However, we have too many family members to fit in this frame so I will be buying some other frames to fit the rest I couldn't fit in here.
I have more framing projects I'm working on but they are not done yet. Will made the comment that I've been doing a lot of framing lately - but really it's because I've had these things sitting on the floor undone for a LONG time and I want to get them off my floor and hung on the walls.
The one I'm currently waiting on (it's at the frame shop right now) are some very special rare projects. One is an original penned tea-stained print of one of my original compositions (upper left). Another one is the front page of my first manuscript book that was signed by the world famous violinist Itzhak Perlman.
And the last one is a print of one of my Dad's photographs that he took of me at the Paramount Theater in Seattle for my last album. I have an old gold picture frame that was my great-great-grandmother's. I'm having them frame that print in the frame and it will eventually go next to our piano in the living room.
April 28th - Fun with Riley (6 wks old)
Again, I can't help myself with the camera around this little guy...
Before those pics were taken, this happened...
Yup. Sometimes I wake up with this guy in my bed between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Usually he feeds and I'm too tired to put him back in his bed. He is sort of a bed hog though :)
More April 28, 2014 - Stroller walk
This was actually a special day because it was the day I got clearance from my OB to return to the gym. Kinda a big deal for me!
And I totally would have raced home to go to said gym, but things with the kiddos didn't work out. BUT I was there the very next day. We did go on a stroller walk instead.
Photos between April 29 - May 3rd (from Facebook)...will try to caption as we go...
Ahhh my first day back at the gym! Had to document it...
Proof that I brought Riley with me too! My trainer, Monica, holding him and in baby heaven. She says she got her "baby fix" holding him.
I got to visit my friend Missi - who had a baby 10 days after me. So cute to see these two friends together (Mack and Riley!). Love Riley's cute smile on his little face...
Of course I had to take Riley's pants off to show off his chunky legs, since Mack had his pants off.
Trying to get Riley acquainted with his crib...which he has yet to sleep in.
Had to take a picture of the tiger on his bum. So cute.
Straight hair...rare for me.
Good morning! Are YOU feeling cute today? I sure am!
Cutie froggie jammies.
My little church men...
Our neighbor's house across the street from us had a garage fire...
...And the boys had to get their firetruck out to play with. Of course.
April 29th - It's midnight and guess who doesn't want to go to sleep?
Preston's very talented drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which they called "Tinja Nurtles").
May 1st - I hate going to the dentist. My teeth and the amount of work I get done on them pays for my dentist's vacations. And whenever I go for a checkup it's never a happy little cleaning. But it's, without fail, a guilt ridden soul crushing hour of my life that I loathe. An hour that turns into several more soul crushing follow-up visits.
May 1st - Family walk to the park in the evening...
And getting eaten alive by mosquitos!
May 3rd - Sometimes you are so desperate for your baby to take a much needed nap you will drive to the grocery store and sit in the car just so they can snooze. Why haven't they invented a baby swing yet that simulates a car ride?
Help. I'm stuck under a pile of napping kids and I can't get up.
Riley taking over the bed in the morning...
All ready for his bath time!
Milk coma...I actually have a very cute video of him here on my phone but I'm not sure how to upload it.
May 4th was of course Riley's baby blessing, which, again you can read about on the previous post.
May 7th - The joy of cleaning and re-arranging furniture after company leaves. :) No really, I like it.
May 6th - An awful day.
I remember this day. I won't go into details, but it involved my first day at the gym with ALL THREE kids which took me 2 hours to get them ready and out the door, lunches packed, baby fed, shoes on, everyone fed and happy...and then Will called and said he locked his keys in the car and had been waiting at REI in Issaquah for 3 hours for us to come rescue him. Plans out the window. Fussy baby. Preston was late for school. and yeah...this was pretty much a great picture depicting the day!
May 8th - A great stroller walk!
May 8th - Yep, you guessed it. More photos of our Riley Finn...
May 9th - Seattle Mariner's Baseball Game
I have to say the SafeCo Field Park is awesome because they had a mother's lounge with recliners, TVs (to watch the game), changing tables and more. I walked in there and never saw so many boobs. Great to know I wasn't the only breastfeeding mom in the park and that they created a space for it. One time we went to a football game at the UofW stadium when Preston was 3 months old and they didn't have any space like that. One time I fed him while sitting on a toilet seat in the bathroom, and another time in a hallway (with my nursing cover). I still got weird looks from people sitting there. Sigh. So THANK YOU Safeco Field for having a Mother's Lounge!
Famous garlic fries...which gave us garlic breath for 3 days.
May 11th was Mother's Day...which, again, I blogged about separately so go back to older posts from today to see that one.
May 13 - Riley had his 8 week doctor appointment. We have a very healthy little guy! Weighing in at 12 lbs, 10 oz (65%).
He really struggled with his shots for a few days afterwards. He was super fussy, feverish, and sleepy. Our other boys didn't really react badly to shots so this was something new...
Getting things done while he sleeps in the Bjorn...
May 15th - Preston had his Kindergarten musical "The 3 Piggy Opera" which was SOOOOO cute. Our little farmer sang his heart out!
May 16th - New Hair Color
Ok so I debated for weeks about my hair color. WEEKS about whether to keep getting blonde highlights or to go back to my natural color which is pretty close to this:
I finally decided it would be nice for a change to go red again. I brought in several pics to my stylist. I showed her the following one ONLY to illustrate the sort of highlights I wanted up front. But apparently she misinterpreted what I said to mean I wanted that color of red.
Which is pretty funny since I told her the two things I specifically did NOT want was the purple-ish kind of red, or a fake looking red. And that is exactly what I got and I really hated it. I wanted to cry. She tried to lighten the color right afterwards but it only made it more dull.
So I ended up having to come back the next day. They had to "lift" the color by bleaching my roots for a while, and then the rest of my hair. Then they conditioned it. And then they put in a different red color. But apparently my roots took to it much better because they still ended up quite darker than the rest.
Sigh.
In the end I got hair that was a color I did NOT want. It is way way too dark. However, in certain lighting it looks great. I only wish it looked that great in natural light. Here it is...
I was trying to match my babies...and sort of missed the mark. Oh well. He's perfect.
"Uh, Mom, what did you do to your hair? Wait, ARE you my mom?"
Taylor actually said he did NOT like my hair - haha. At least he was honest.
Anyway those photos are all beautiful and I do like my hair in them, but today I took some selfies in the mirror and I would say this is more like the real color in real life.
So anyway. 11 hours total sitting in a salon chair for hair color I'm not really happy with or didn't want. So I will be going back in a week or two to get it lightened and fixed AGAIN. I just need to wash it some more to see if the color will lighten and also to give my poor hair a break. My scalp actually got a slight chemical burn from the bleach and it still itches.
What did I do with the boys during that time? Well Grandpa played with the older two, and my poor mom came to the salon with me (which is at the mall) and watched Riley the entire time only bringing him to me for feedings. I felt SO bad.
Oh well. Lesson learned.
May 18 - My view at church (with Riley in a cute church newborn onesie).
May 19th - Boys in trouble. "Let the punishment fit the crime."
So like I was saying, it's not been easy adjusting to 3 kids and finding time to do everything. So when I DO find the time to actually clean our home I would really appreciate it if it stayed that way at least for 24 hours. Well, while I was breastfeeding Riley upstairs (which ties me to a chair), I later came downstairs to discover that these two had made a huge mess of the house and also were playing in the dirt outside.
They had tacked in mud through the house and also dumped piles of it onto our walkway and on the porch. Also left their toys out everywhere.
So for about an hour I made them clean. We also had a big lecture on obeying their mother (because earlier that morning I had to use the scare-tactic of pretending to leave them at the park because they were not coming to the car when I called them). They cleaned their bedroom, made their beds, did their own laundry (well, put it into the washing machine), cleaned their bathroom, and then finally I made them sweep up all the dirt outside off the cement. As you can see Preston wasn't too happy about this part - haha. But since then their room has been super clean and they haven't played in the dirt - AND it's been 2 days since. Success!
May 20th - A family picture that Preston drew.
Here is a family portrait drawn by Preston, our almost-6 year old. He is getting so creative in his drawings. He drew each of us and wrote our ages on our bellies. Although, apparently I am taller than Will and I am only 16 years old. Oh, and Riley is 3 and he is 0 years old. Whoops. Still cute.
May 21st - Still working hard.
Just thought I would throw together a little comparison of myself from last summer to now. Obviously gaining this weight was part of bringing a baby into our family and I am so grateful to have him here. But I do have my work cut out to get my body back and I have been busting my rear at the gym. The progress is slow going but I am determined.
I am also trying to eat healthy of course. I still love my chocolate and have to have some every day but I am making healtheir choices and saying no to lots of things.
Protein waffles - YUM.
Veggies, veggies, veggies...
May 21st - Morning time with 2 of my boys (the other was watching a movie).
Today was one of those days where this little guy just wanted to cat nap. He's fall asleep for 15 min and then wake up, cry, and need to be held or fed or rocked. One of those. Then fall asleep again, and repeat.
So it's pretty safe to say I didn't get much done today - which is why I am now still blogging at 1:58 a.m. because I know it is my only chance...
Oh this was yesterday....
Oh, and I can't end this blog without including Will's many adventures...
May 17th - Traversing up an avalanche shute on Mt. Si...
May 12th - Will rode his bike to work. About 70 miles round trip.
May 2nd - view of Tahoma
April 30th - Race Day - Done! 10 laps, 37 miles, 35,000 cumulative elevation change. 12h18m
Ok and the rest of these are pics I grabbed off of the sky drive from Will's phone. He does take photos but just forgets to tell me about it or show me or post them, and so here are some funny hidden ones...
Preston reading an entire book (yes the entire book) to Riley. SO thoughtful. So cute.
A deer party in our back yard.
Apparently the boys thought it was a good idea to eat mom's brownies. All of them. For breakfast. And Dad thought it was funny to document it.
Grandma T holding Riley at the Mongolian Grill...
This was last night at Costco. Check out Taylor's face - haha. Anyway,we bought a smoker. We shall be having many smokey salmons and other yummy meats in the coming years.
Anyway. Whew. SO that is the picture update for us.
Other than that, overall we are doing really great. I think we are still adjusting to having a baby but it is getting more routine as time goes on. We haven't had a date in 2 months - but the thought of having a date with a baby with us sort of spoils it. So then we say we will just have an at-home date night after the kids go to bed. Except Riley takes sometimes until 11 or 12 to get to sleep (but he stills until 6 or 7 a.m.) so that sort of kills that idea. Haha.
Having a baby is always an adjustment for a family though. The dynamics are just thrown off a bit, not everyone gets enough attention, moms feel exhausted and like a milk machine, the kids just want their mom but she is busy with baby, dad tries to help out but he's exhausted as well because he's working and trying to relieve mom when he gets home at the end of the day. BUT it's all good. We know it's just a transition period. We love each other and are surviving it and having some good times as well (obviously, as you can see from my blog post).
I will admit that I do struggle with music and wanting to get back to it - but not having the time or inspiration to do so. Some days I feel like well this is it. I'm done. I can't do music any more with 3 kids, it's too hard. But I don't know that the Lord would bring me this far into my career to say "that's all, you're done." Don't misunderstand, I am LOVING having a baby and am so grateful for him and our family. I wouldn't trade it at all. But the Jenni part of me (not the mommy part) does want to have that creative outlet again and right now it's just not there, nor is it possible for me to really find time to locate it. Every waking moment is really spent taking care of people, with the few moments in between I can try to stuff some food in my face and take a shower. :)
So anyway. There is a time and season for all things. I know that. I am just trying to learn to accept it. And I hope and pray that when the time is right again Heavenly Father will bless me with inspiration.
All right. Well it is now 2:17 a.m. and I am going to be paying for this tomorrow! Whew! Goodnight!
