The Beauty of Scars

As our vacation to Ocean City, NJ quickly approaches I have found myself vainly obsessing over my imperfect "mom" body.  Self-image is something I have struggled with greatly in the past and although it's not something that has complete control over my life anymore, I find myself struggling with it in a different way now.  As we all know, having a baby does CRAZY things to your body.  For me, it made my hair turn dark, my hormones go completely out of control, and made me gain 40 pounds! Although all of these side-effects are insane, nothing has had a lasting effect on me aside from the physical scars.  My hair has turned back to its original blonde, my hormones are slightly normal again, and I've lost 50 pounds.....but my scars on the other hand, are still hanging around.

Looking at this belly, you may have never guessed that it is now covered in stretch marks.  To this day, I'm not really sure how it happened because they were never visible while I was pregnant.  It wasn't until after little Wes was out that the marks started to appear.  Honestly, they are pretty bad.  When I look at my mid-section all I see is stretch marks and a c-section scar.  At first, it's very frustrating! Especially when you think about all the women who are lucky enough to make it out of pregnancy with neither of the two.  As I have been thinking about it more, though, I have noticed the beauty in my scars.  They are a constant reminder of who I am.  I'm not perfect--I  am a broken, sinful human who will never be perfect while on this earth.  They are also a constant reminder of what I had to go through to receive the blessing of the most amazing gift in my life, my son, Wes.  I am a mom now, and I am proud of my scars and my body.  Not to mention, they make a ton of super cute one-piece bathing suits now! Here's a couple that I found.  That's right....I'm going to rock my first one-piece at the shore this year!

http://www.target.com/p/merona-womens-bandeau-shirred-one-piece-swimsuit-silver/-/A-13021279


Here's my last words on this topic: if you are a mom, regardless of what your body looks like now, you are absolutely beautiful.  Don't let the world make you feel any less.

Who Has Time For Gardening???

When Brandon and I moved into our house two years ago, we were extremely blessed by the previous owners.  They took great care of our house and left us a beautifully landscaped front and back yard.  Not having any idea about how to take care of this beautiful yard meant that I was in desperate need of some assistance from Mom.  She came down for a week and showed me around the yard, pointing out various flowers and explaining how to go about caring for everything.

Until Wes was in the picture, I felt that I was doing a pretty good job of maintaining our yard.  Now......not so much! The question I continuously ask myself: how on earth is it possible to be a mom AND find time to keep a clean house as well as a maintained yard.  I mean seriously, it is at the very bottom of my priority list!  It almost makes me sick to look outside and see the weeds taking over, but what can I do?

Reducing the amount of flower beds is one task that Brandon and I have been working to accomplish.  Without completely destroying the yards charm, we are simply trying to reduce the amount of beds that will grow weeds.  This will hopefully limit the amount of time spent maintaining the yard.  Once we get our hospital bills paid off we are going to start saving to do some major renovations to the outside of the house in the fall, including:

1. Painting the outside of the house
2. Trying, once again, to plant grass in the backyard
3. Ripping out four huge raised boxes in the backyard and replacing with ground cover/mulch
4. Eliminating large bushes covering the front beds of the house and replacing with lower to the ground bushes/ground cover

 Before:

After (The Plan):  

SIMPLE--Clean :)

Just Keeps Getting Better!

Brandon and I are celebrating our 4 year anniversary today, and I will definitely say this year of our marriage has been the best so far.  Having a baby has been the most bonding experience for us and our relationship.  We have been able to share in so many more joys these past five months than we have in all four years of our marriage.  Celebrating our anniversary each year brings me back to where it all started.....

Brandon and I met our freshman year at Geneva College--actually our first week at Geneva College.  Brandon was living in the same dorm as one of my friends from home and it was during an event at our freshman orientation that I caught Brandon's eye and according to him it was "love at first sight."  Love at first sight, until he found out that I had a boyfriend....

Although I was in a serious relationship, that I had no intentions of ending, Brandon was going to stop at nothing to make me his woman for life.  After a couple weeks of pursuing me I realized that I needed to give this guy a shot.  We continued to date through all four years of college and in August of 2007 Brandon surprised me at the shore and proposed on the beach.  It was an absolutely amazing and unforgettable engagement that we were able to share with my entire extended family.

We were married on July, 19th 2008 in Harleysville, PA at the Indian Valley Country Club.  It was a wonderful day with friends and family, and one that I will never forget.  After returning from our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic, we were headed to Apex, NC.  I landed a teaching job in Cary, NC and although Brandon didn't have a job yet we were confident that he would find one once we relocated.  After living in Apex for a year we quickly decided that we wanted to be in the city.  In April 2010 we bought our first house in Raleigh.  We are so blessed to have a home that we can grown into, raise a family, and possibly live forever--if we want to. 

Brandon starting pushing me to have kids as soon as we were married, but being the woman I am, I wanted to have everything organized and in place before we started a family.  Once we bought the house and fixed it up I told him that I was ready to get started! We have always wanted to have a big family, but being that I am a teacher and Brandon is currently working as a Personal Banker at Capital Bank we are not too confident that this dream will ever be a reality.  Brandon has had such a hard time finding a job in his field (PR) and it's so frustrating because he is honestly the most talented, hard-working person I have ever met...and I'm not just making these claims because he is my husband! Maybe one day the Lord will bless him with a job that will allow us to have the family we have always dreamed and for me to be a stay at home mom (which is what my dream has always been). 

We are so blessed in so many ways, and I know we will have many more years of happiness together!

Sleepy Baby....

Or not!  Sleeping is the number one issue that has stressed me out being a new mama.  I'm not exactly sure why I let it get to me so badly, but I do.  I guess it has a lot to do with my type-A personality and wanting Wes to get a certain amount of sleep during the day and have some kind of predictable schedule.  So here is my experience with sleep thus far:

When Wes was born he was essentially sleeping through the night from the day we brought him home-- crazy, I know! Don't hate me though, it's nothing that I did, no special secret technique... he was just born that way.  Napping on the other hand has not been nearly as easy.  Obviously when he was a newborn he just mapped off and on all day.  But once he was old enough to start implementing some type of napping schedule, that's when things went downhill.  Wes decided at this point to only take 30 minute naps.  This completely stressed me out!

When I went back to work Wes finally started sleeping more than 30 minutes at at time and was taking three 2 hour naps.  Since I have been home for the summer he has been boycotting his third nap making me think he doesn't really need it.  Brandon has been wanting us to move to a two nap schedule for a long time now to free up our schedule some and I felt like Wes was telling me, "it's time, Mom!" So I decided to give it a whirl.  The first day was great! He slept from 8:30-11 for his morning nap and then 1:30-3 for an afternoon nap and went down to bed at 7:30.  I was super pumped until we tried the same schedule for day two.  I tried to put him down at 8:30 again only this time he was up at 9:05!  I let him stay in his crib for a while thinking, he will go back to sleep, which he does a lot. Sure enough I let 45 minutes go by and he was not asleep! Instead, he laid in his crib chatting with himself and blowing spit bubbles. Gahhhh!

I know there is no solution, and babies have good nap days and bad nap days, but it is still frustrating.  I certainly feel like he needs more awake time. When he wakes up after 30 minutes of sleep and starts playing in his crib I highly doubt he was really tired in the first place.  His awake time was just not long enough.  I'm going to keep playing with is schedule--but ultimately I'm going to try to move to the two nap schedule.  Maybe I will try keeping him up until 9 tomorrow instead of 8:30.....trial and error I guess! I will let you know how it goes! Any advice is MUCH appreciated :)

What's For Dinner Tonight?

Sweet Apple Pork Tenderloin

Another quick, easy, and cheap crockpot meal!

Ingredients:
One whole plain pork tenderloin ($4.50 at Aldi)
2 cans of beef stock ($1.00)
1 small onion (.50)
3 small apples (.50)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Place tenderloin in the crockpot, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and cinnamon.  Add two cans of beef stock.  Chop onion and skin free apples and add to the crockpot.  Sprinkle brown sugar on top.  Cook on low for 6 hours. 

$ Total meal cost from Aldi = about $7.00

* Substitute beef stock with apple juice for an even sweeter taste

I usually pair this meal with a baked sweet potato and some carrots.

Gluten, soy, dairy, and egg free!

One Clorox Wipe A Day...

Keeps the dirt away! I have been asked by many friends how my house is routinely clean.  My answer to them is, "one clorox wipe a day."  Okay, maybe not just one...but however many it takes to get just one job done.  Here's my theory on cleaning.  I want a clean house, and I want it to be clean all the time, BUT I don't want to spend a ton of time making it that way.  For this reason I have created a cleaning chart where I simply do a different task every day of the week.  Each task takes between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on what the task is.  I have one job a day Monday-Saturday, and I take a well deserved break on Sunday.  For jobs that don't need done every week, such as dusting the baseboards and cleaning the windows I put them on a "once a month schedule."  Here is what my cleaning schedule looks like:

Notice the wonderful DIY wall decor made by my extremely talented husband :)

Here is the schedule close up:















Monday - Sweep and polish the hardwood floors in the dinning room (15 minutes)
Tuesday - Dust the whole house (20 minutes)
Wednesday - Vacuum the entire upstairs
Thursday - Clean all three bathrooms (30 minutes)
Friday - Vacuum the entire downstairs and swifter the kitchen floor (20 minutes)
Saturday - Clean the kitchen - appliances, countertops, wipe down cabinets (30 minutes)

Where It All Started

A week before my due date I was excited to arrive at the doctor's office for my final visit before meeting my baby boy.  Everything at the appointment went well until the end when my doctor decided to check and see if I was dilated.  He seemed a little bit shocked when he said, "Oh, wow you are 4 centemeters already." Ok, I thought....what does this mean? My doctor explained that most women are in labor for hours before getting to 4 centimeters.  He said the baby was super low and since I was 4 centimenters he suggested an induction on my due date.  He assured me the delivery would be easy and  as soon as they started me on the pitocin the baby would pop right out. Well, he was wrong. I should have stayed strong, but I was miserable and I was so sick of waiting for this baby to come.  I willingly gave into the induction.  I was still going to stick to my plan though of a completely natural delivery: no pain meds, no nothing!  My hubby, Brandon and I showed up at the hospital at 6 am hoping to meet our little guy in a few short hours.  I was started on the pitocin and 5 hours later realized this was not going to happen nearly as fast as I had originally thought, or as the doctor had thought!

The doctor came in every hour or so to check on me and ask, "are you feeling anything?" to which my answer would be "nope." They continued to increase my pitocin level after putting in an internal monitor to check on the baby.  Once my pitocin was up to a level 20 the doctor determined that maybe my water had not broken correctly the first time, so it was checked again!  Apparently my water had sealed back up and needed to be broken again. Once this happened, it was go time! The only problem was I was still cranked to a level 20 on the pitocin.  Needles to say, I started having immediate insanely strong contractions with no breaks in between for about 3 hours.  I was making progress at this point, but very slow progress, so I gave in and asked for an epidural.

At about 9:00 pm I was finally ready to push, so the doctor came in.  The look on his face was not exactly what I had expected though because to his surprise I was now running a fever of 104 and the baby's heart rate was jumping fast.  At this point the doctor looked at me and said, "you have 30 minutes to get this baby out!" "Sure, no problem," I replied. HA!  I was pretty confident in how this delivery was going to end, and I was not too happy about it.  I pushed for 30 minutes so hard that I had to be put on oxygen so that I didn't pass out.  The doctor tried to help get big Wes' head out with a vacuum but he was stuck.  Into the OR we went!

I was slightly relieved at this point because I knew it would all be over soon, but the C-section was a whole experience in itself!  Because we had worked so hard at trying to get Wes out the normal way he was stuck in the birth canal.  As a result, the doctor had to stand up on a stool over the operating table so that he could get at a better angle to pull Wes out.  I thought for sure Wes' head was going to pop off! FINALLY, I heard my sweet baby boy cry and I was so relieved for this day to be over.  It was by far the most amazing moment of my life, regardless of what I had to go through to get there. I will say this for sure though, C-sections are the only type of delivery in my future and I am perfectly fine with that! Sign me up :)

What's For Dinner Tonight?

Chicken Tortilla Soup
I often try to plan meals that are cheap and easy.  I have found it very helpful to get dinner ready during Wes' 4-5pm nap even though we don't usually eat until 7:00.  Once Wes gets up from his nap at 5:00 I feed him and try to spend time playing with him since he goes to bed at 7:30.  If I get dinner ready during his nap I am able to play with my boy during his last awake period of the day.  We eat as a family and Wes hangs out with us.  After dinner Brandon cleans up and I feed Wes and put him to bed.  I feel like having some sort of routine really helps make the dinner hour 100 times less chaotic!  I LOVE to use the crockpot and tonight I am making one of my all time favorites: Chicken Tortilla Soup. 

Ingredients:
Frozen chicken breasts
1 cup salsa
1 can tomato sauce
1 can black beans
1-2 cups of frozen corn
2 cans diced tomatoes

Directions:
Throw all ingredients into the crockpot (you can throw the chicken breasts in frozen) cook on high for 5-6 hours.  Take out the chicken, shread it with a fork and place it back in the crockpot.  Cook on high another hour and serve over tortilla chips and sprinkle with cheddar cheese.

I bought all of these ingredients at Aldi and the total cost of the meal is $10.00. It is serving four people tonight! That's less than $3.00 a person!

ENJOY

Tip Of The Day

Here is a tip for both ORGANIZING and SAVING MONEY:

              If you are like me, you have thousands of pictures stored on your computer.  You may have posted them in a nice little album on facebook, but other than that you have no proof that these pictures have actually been taken.  I used to be an avid scrap-booker.  Then I got married, and now I have a baby and it's not too high on the priority list.  I do, however, have a desire to keep my pictures in a place where I can easily look through them and show them off to others! So here it is: register for an account on Shutterfly. I know what you are thinking, "seriously, Anna, that's your million dollar advice?" Well if someone was paying me a million dollars for advice, it probably would be better than suggesting that you register for a Shutterfly account, but they are not, so that's my advice.  Once you register on Shutterfly you will receive emails about deals on printing pictures, photo books, etc.  See my example below!  I received an email for a $5 sale on photo books.  I simply logged on, uploaded my pictures and paid 5 bucks for this adorable book of Wes' birth and first couple months of life.  It took zero time, and it was completely affordable!

My photo book:

Sign up for Shutterfly:

Sign up now!

The Daily Scrub

I have often wondered what it would be like to be a "blogger." It's not really me, but as I am now a Mom for the first time I have decided that I have a lot of things I would like to share and receive feedback on.  I do however realize that my only dedicated followers may very well be my best buddy and blog following queen, Anne Parker, and my number one fan, my Mom. I'm okay with that though because I realize I may not have as many good things to say as I think I do.

My son Wesley Jackson was born on February 7th, 2012, which makes him just over 5 months old.  He is the number one joy in my life and the reason for starting this blog.  Being a new Mom is extremely scary, overwhelming, financially stressful, and the most amazing gift in the world....all at the same time.  I have wanted to be a wife and mom for as long as I can remember but my husband and I wanted to enjoy a couple years of marriage before we took the plunge of starting a family.  After three years we decided it was time, only the Lord didn't agree.  It took us four months to get pregnant and although that is not a lot to many, it seemed like an eternity at the time!  I found out I was pregnant in May, 2011 and the next nine months were the most annoying and awful months of my life. I hated being pregnant, every second of it in fact, but the result was worth it!

I was able to stay home for 12 weeks after Wes was born, but then it was back to work at Davis Drive Middle school.  I love being a teacher, but my heart is with my son and I would have loved to be able to be a stay at home mom. Maybe someday.  My husband is an extremely amazing and wonderful provider, but we just could not make it on one income, and as a result I was back to work.  I have always been an extremely organized, type-A individual and I certainly was not going to let having a baby change that about me.  I will say that it has though, in some ways, but it has made me even stronger in others.  I have a lot of ideas on organization, cleaning, meal planning and saving that I would like to share--as well as some entertaining stories about everyday life with my little Wes...so if you're interested, follow along!