Cafe de Valentine

Life has gotten crazy (as it often does with kids & jobs) and I haven't had time to blog in a long long time. I would love to document my kids lives here for out of town family to see and for me to be able to look back on, but the fact of the matter is... I'm busy doing life with my kids, watching them grow, being involved in the daily grind with them and that is more important to me. I hope my memory will just serve me well enough to remember the little moments I didn't have time to document. If I don't remember a stat or what day they started doing a certain thing or reached a certain milestone I hope it's because I was busy making lasting memories for them by sitting on the floor and playing or dancing, or reading a book or baking a cookie, or making a run to Target (because that's EVERYONE'S favorite place in our family)! All that aside, there are times in the daily grind that something catches my attention, or comes up in conversation, or I read ...

 I'm back! I want to attempt to document this pregnancy as well but boy, I really underestimated how tired I would be the second time around and how busy my toddler would be. I'm not really certain how people do this more than once! We found out what we were having on Monday, February 4th and had all our family over that night for the reveal because I simply couldn't keep it a secret any longer than that!  We took pictures of everyone with their guess, mustache for a boy, lips for a girl.  I think people's "guess" was more their "want" but some went with their gut.  The Gridiron's (above) have a sweet boy that is 4 months younger than B and they are due with a baby girl 3 weeks before I am due. They were really hoping for a girl this time around so the kids could be playmates & friends for years to come! Sweet Ella (above, my niece) will be just 7 months older than this baby of ours and her older brother is 1.5 years o...

If you don't have this application on your iPhone, you should! We use it often to add words to our iPhone photos and send them to family or friends! It's my current favorite!

 Baby Gage, Cousin Carsyn & Bear. These boys will grow up like cousins and best friends. Gage's Mama is like a sister to hubs and his sister and both families are very close friends. I forsee lots of touble these boys will get into together!  This is what teething looks like in our house. Our sweet boy runs a low grade fever about a day before a tooth comes in. He cut his first tooth (bottom left) on March 12th at 9 months old.  This is what crazy hair looks like before Mama chops it off! He now has a summer hair-do! Pics coming.  This child is in pure bliss when he's in his bath tub. He is holding his toy turtle bath toy that is his favorite.  This was on his 9 month birthday. Just a sweet little grin with bed head. And last, but not least... this is the vision of a redneck baby. Sitting in a field on a blanket playing with toys. This boy would live outside if he could. He loves it.

I wanted to share a few photos from my phone since that's where most of my photos are these days. My mom actually sent me the one above while I was working one day. This is his favorite new face to make. The lighting is horrible on this one (above) but he had on a new camo vest. I put him down awake for all his naps so he knows how to put himself to sleep but at night for bedtime I prefer to rock him to sleep. This was the end of a very long day so forgive the lack of decent hair and make-up. This one is taken in the dark so you have to look hard but when I rock him he likes to have his little hand on my face. It's the sweetest thing, I hope he still does that when he's 20. You know, when I rock him to sleep. :) This is the usual face I get when I get home from work. I long for this moment ALL DAY LONG. I don't want to forget these sweet moments, they go by so fast. *all photos taken in the last 2 weeks. 7 months old.

I wrote this post mid September and I never posted it. Now that I've been back at work for over 4 months I thought I would add to the bottom my current schedule (things have changed a bit) and my current thoughts/struggles. I'd love the feedback from any other working Mom's. ******************************************** I am officially 3 weeks into being a full time working mom. It's probably the hardest job I've ever had. Parenting is a 24/7 job that I love and it brings me so much joy, but when we add all the things that I used to get done each evening, weekend & early morning outside of work to taking care of a little one that's a tough task. I will say that I had zero post-pardum depression and never even really had a difficult time transitioning to being a Mama. It came very naturally to me. I loved it from day one and there wasn't really anything for me to get worked up over. I will share with you, however, that transitioning back to work has been h...

I forgot to post this back in July when it happened but I don't want to forget it. Bear is a fourth generation with his name, most go by their middle names. It was a fun day having all these boys together. Bear, his daddy (Hubs), his Papa V & his Papaw. He's so blessed to have such great guys in his life.