Naps are everything.

I fully understand the phrase: It takes a village to raise a child.

Being a first time parent, many times you wish your baby came with a manual.

I'm constantly reading parenting articles and texting my sisters and friends, "Is this normal?... Did any of your babies do this?"

We are extremely blessed with our little one, for many reasons. One blessing has been that she started sleeping through the night pretty early. I remember that first morning my husband turning to me and asking, "Did you get up and feed her? I didn't hear her crying. You better go feed her!"

Naps have been a different story.

My husband would come home from work and ask how my day was.

"Oh, it was good. Ceci took two good naps. I was holding her, of course, so I didn't get anything done on my to do list."

We kept asking each other when she should be falling asleep on her own. Every time I tried to put her down for a nap it was cry-fest.

At Christmas, I got together with my good friends from high school. All of us now being Mamas, we have a lot to share and compare as most of our little ones are close in age.

In our story swapping, and in further reading, I learned that my little one should've been falling asleep on her own for some time now. As in months ago.

(Before I get the eye rolls, may I remind you that I am a first timer. This is all new to me.)

I immediately had a break down.

Being a stay at home mama is great. I get to be with Ceci all day and snuggle with her all day. Well, yeah, but in the meantime, she trained me to be her pacifier and she learned to fall asleep with me.

An outpouring of more texts to my sisters and girlfriends went out.

Ceci needs to learn how to fall asleep on her own.

This is when the clouds parted and I found out that not all hope was lost!

We are slowly getting a napping schedule down. I have time to crochet, blog, bake and clean... now I don't have any excuses anymore.

As my friend Susan said after I told her about Ceci's first good nap in her crib:

"Naps are everything."

To you veteran mamas out there, this probably all seems very silly, but how else do we newbies figure things out?

We need to be supportive.
We need to share our experiences and mama-wisdom.


Now I'm going to share a little gem of a tip for you. This is something I took from my sister Alice and did last week when Ceci was napping.

When I bake cookies, my husband and I don't need an entire batch all at once. (That's just dangerous.) I bake about half a dozen and scoop out the rest and freeze on a sheet pan. When the dough is frozen, I put them in a zipper top bag and bake more cookies when we want them. I label the bag with the oven temperature and how long to bake them for. Because they're frozen, they'll take a few minutes longer than usual.

Any baking hacks you want to share?
Parenting hacks??

I'll take any wisdom I can get!

Colleen <3

Let's be real.

New year.
New season.
New blog.

I'm not much for New Year's Resolutions. I have made some goals for the year. I guess "goals" sounds better than "resolutions" because they are something that I can continue to work towards and don't feel bad if I totally forget or fail to do... like working out and eating less sugar.

A few things I have started this year are:

Bullet journaling, which is basically my to do list for the day in a pretty journal instead of on a scrap piece of paper. I like to make lists and cross things off. I feel more accomplished, also in the journal I can doodle and work on my modern calligraphy writing.

Choosing a word for 2018, well actually words. I picked two: contentment and intentional.

Being a Mom is no joke. It is giving of yourself and putting your child(ren) in the fore front.
I want to take a long hot shower and blow dry my hair and put makeup on and crochet and paint and sew and blog, but that all can wait.

My little one is almost nine months old. I can hold her in my arms and snuggle with her.

She won't be little forever.
She is on the verge of crawling, which reminds me, I totally need to order that baby gate from Amazon...

I need to be content with this short season of life. Someday she won't want snuggle and lay her head on my shoulder.

I need to be content with the fact that I only wear the same five nursing shirts, however unflattering they are because I need to be able to feed her when she's hungry. Why are most nursing friendly shirts so loose and resemble the construction of a tent?

I also want to be intentional about my choices.

I went grocery shopping and was intentional about buying vegetables and fruits, but not really intentional about the fact that everything I bought came in some form of plastic.
I want to be intentional with what I'm bringing into our home. I don't want to be bringing in junk or waste.

I want to be intentional with my time.
Am I paying attention to my little one or am I on my phone looking at nonsense?
Am I giving my full attention or just putting on a show?

I want to be connected.
I want to be living an intentional life and not just sitting back watching other people's lives on a screen. Which is usually a front... we all have our stuff we don't want others to see, but we find a cute filter and put on a smile.

It's time for us to be real.

We don't have it all together.
We have our struggles, our fears, our insecurities.

We need to be open.
We need to be vulnerable to let others see that we need each other.


Here is my real moment for the day:

I went to church to work on the church newsletter this morning. I brought the exersaucer for Cecilia to play in. I had a feeling it wouldn't cut it since she was starting to fall asleep as I was nursing her before we even left.
I brought her in the office, set her in the exersaucer and after about ten minutes she was already fussing. She's teething and she was sleepy. Not a good combination.
I tried to nurse while I hunted and pecked at the computer. No dice. I put Cecilia back in the exersaucer, reassuring her that I was almost done. (Of course, I wasn't almost done, but it made me feel better...)
It also doesn't help that she can say "Mama" and raise her arms indicating that she wants to be picked up.
I finished what I could and finally picked her up. We'd been at church about an hour and a half and I didn't have much hope for more time there.
I took her into the nursery and put her on the changing table, only to find out she had a blow out. (Insert Mom guilt here.)
I changed her diaper while getting poop everywhere in the process. I looked in her diaper bag to find no appropriate sized clothes. The diaper bag is a black hole on Earth. You have no idea what could be in there. It is bad, you guys...
I put Ceci in something more resembling a 3/4 length sleeved onesie and some high waters.
I got her loaded in the car along with the exersaucer.
Two minutes into the ten minute drove home, she was asleep.

There is no perfect.
Let's be real.
Let's be honest.

Here's to sharing more real moments!

<3 Colleen