Eight Months

Eight months old, this little one is.  It's so weird to think of him as a little newborn lump.  I remember being excited when he kinda sorta touched a page of the book I was reading him.  Now he has such a grip I can barely wrench that book out of his little paws.  Everyone who meets him says he's the happiest baby they've ever seen and his smile is the greatest and best thing ever.  I have a feeling he's going to be a funny, opinionated kid who makes friends with everyone he meets.  He's almost never snuggly because he is constantly moving, but lately he's been more clingy than usual when he's tired, so I've been letting him nap and sleep on and next to me.  Today he was curled up next to me on the couch and it was so precious I could hardly stand it.  

I'm trying to figure out the balance of mom-hood and independent-adult-hood.  For some reason, it doesn't seem like men have quite this crisis.  Perhaps it's because our culture tells them from childhood that they are the breadwinners and will work all day to support the family, and then they'll come home and spend time with the family then, and on the weekends.  I don't really feel like 100% stay at home mom life is what I'm designed for, but I also don't want to miss out on Jack's childhood and the moments I can never get back while I'm pursuing a dream outside of motherhood.  I don't know what that balance looks like but I'm pretty sure it's messy as hell.  

Mother's Day Session

I met up with my girl AlisaMarie at Anchorage's Mann Leiser Greenhouses a few weeks before Mother's Day to do a fun little shoot with my little man.  AlisaMarie also did our first family session back when Jack was only a couple months old. In our year living back in Alaska I didn't go out much and make a ton of friends, but AlisaMarie was one person I connected with and while I'm excited to head back to Tacoma, I'm also super bummed I couldn't pack her and her boys up and smuggle them down too.  If you're in Anchorage and need some photos hit up Sons and Daughters Photography, she'll do you right.

Motherhood is a strange and contradictory experience. One moment I'm laughing with Jack, the next I'm screaming with rage, the next I'm snuggled beside him, the next I'm bogged down with despair, and so on. I don't find fulfillment through motherhood, necessarily. I've sometimes wondered if I could "just" be a mom, If I didn't need to bring in an income, but I can't yet tell if I would go batshit crazy without having my own businesses and pursuits.  I know some women who thrive as mothers and find themselves in motherhood, but I feel more like the opposite-- that I've lost some of myself.  Some days it feels more like I've lost my mind, especially on days when I'm alone all 24 hours with Jack, with no other human interaction.  

But I'm learning, slowly, what I need to do to make motherhood work for me.  What systems I need in place so that I don't lose my mind, what things I need to weave into my life to hold on to my independent personhood, and most importantly when I need to ask (or beg) for help or reprieve.  It's a damn messy ordeal, sometimes I'm ashamed at how horribly I've coped with the change, but I also try to remember how much change and transition has happened (and continues to happen) over the past year and give myself grace.  

Tiered Dress : c/o Modcloth (a few years ago) | Flower Crowns : Mojave Moon | sheer dress : brought by AlisaMarie

Seven Months

Time is flying these days.  What with moving, and flying back and forth from Anchorage, and shooting weddings almost every weekend, it's been quite the month.  In the blink of an eye, Jack is one month older again!  This month has been wild in terms of his advancement and skills.  It's almost like he's changing on a weekly or even daily basis right now!  He's started pulling himself up to standing on literally everything, he's now crawling up on his hands and knees instead of his old army crawl, and he's getting better and better at sitting down from a stand instead of falling down, which was tres stressful.  He also got two bottom front teeth and saw his very first movie in theaters!  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, good choice, bud.  

We are still living the transitionary life, staying with my parents in the basement of their new house in Oregon while we figure out how/when we can get back to living in Tacoma.  It's been really hard emotionally and logistically but I feel like there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel here soon.  For now, our next exciting thing is seeing Dan again!  He left Anchorage today and is driving down the AlCan this week!  Hopefully, he'll be here sometime next week!  

Six Months

Two weeks ago this little human turned 6 months old.  Half a year.  His personality is definitely coming out and I'm slightly afraid that I may have created an extrovert.  He is the happiest baby I know (to be fair, I don't know a lot of babies, but also pretty much everyone who meets Jack says the same thing), and he's become pretty much unstoppable in terms of moving around.  He now pulls himself up to standing on anything he possibly can, he army crawls so fast it's frightening, and he's pretty much constantly exploring all the things.  He had his first trip to the Zoo last week, got to meet his dad's cousin and her kids, and has hung out with his aunt and uncles a few times now that we're in Oregon!  

I've been taking all Jack's monthly photos on this couch in our living room but I'm gonna have to find a new spot this month since we're on the road!  It's been kind of fun seeing how he's grown every month compared to the couch.  Month 7 will be an outlier, and hopefully by 8 months we'll have a living room of our own again?  Maybe?  Fingers crossed!

Backyard fun

We dodged mosquitos for an afternoon and enjoyed a sunny day in the backyard a few weeks ago, and I snagged some pictures of my little explorer while we hung out.  It's wild how different he is even just a few weeks later.  I feel like his mobility is accelerating at an exponential amount right now.  Just yesterday he pulled himself up to standing on an ottoman and all of a sudden I look over and he's standing up!  He army crawls everywhere and I almost feel like he'll go from army crawling to walking because he is so mobile with the army crawl I don't think he'll bother with a regular crawl.  We shall see.  Basically nowadays whenever he's not asleep I have to be monitoring him constantly.  Gone are the days of putting him down and going and doing a thing without worrying about him putting everything in his mouth, climbing up on things, and falling over.  It's a weird juxtaposition of feeling proud of his newfound abilities, and disappointment of my newfound loss of independence.  At least when he was less mobile I could get stuff done while he was laying around playing with toys on the ground.  Now I turn my head for a second and he's off to attempt climbing up the side of a couch or something!

Part of me was feeling disappointed in myself for not booking as many photography jobs this year as last year, but honestly I think it's a blessing in disguise.  Shooting weddings with a baby is a new level of stress, and since pretty much all my weddings this year are this month, I'll be pretty relieved to have them all done and under my belt.  

I know a lot of women seem to love breastfeeding but it's one of my least favorite things about having a baby.  I do feel like it helped my bond with Jack and it's a hell of an experience to feed and grow a person with food that your body makes, but it's also this strange invisible anchor that keeps you from being away from your baby for longer than like 2-3 hours at a time.  Like a baby bungee cord.  Oh, did you like that brief taste of freedom?  LOL, too bad, come back and feeeeed meeee.  There are a lot of people with strong feelings and thoughts about breastfeeding.  Women feel bad if they aren't able to breastfeed. Women who have to go back to work shortly after giving birth have to pump to feed their children.  Breastfeeding can be painful, stressful, emotional, depressing, joyful, comforting, annoying as hell, among a multitude of other things.  Part of me feels like saying I find breastfeeding annoying and stressful will make women who can't breastfeed frustrated that I'm complaining about something they would love to be able to do.  That's probably valid, in maybe the same way that complaining about a difficult pregnancy experience would be frustrating to someone who can't conceive.  But I also know there are tons of women out there who feel the same way about breastfeeding and are looking forward to the day when their kids are finally weaned.

I plan on breastfeeding Jack (hopefully) until he's a year old, and then I'll see how things go.  It's definitely convenient to have food for him wherever we go, especially when flying.  Also can we talk about how clean it is?  Feeding a baby solid food is hella messy, y'all.  Sticky faces, fingers, clothes, tables, everything.  Everything sticky.  Breastmilk has such a clean and convenient delivery system.

Okay, I don't know how this turned into an examination of breastfeeding when it was supposed to just be a post about playing on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day. Oh motherhood ramblings.