Oh Ollie!

Oh Oliver. How many times a day do I say that? He gives me a great big hug when he gets up, Oh Ollie, so cute I love you. He throws his breakfast onto the floor making a huge mess, Oh Oliver, really... It is so crazy how many things bring out those two little words.

Oliver is in the stage of being a picky eater and he can be very stubborn. Yesterday he came up to Corey with his cup asking for some juice. There was a bottle of un-opened grape juice on the table that he was pointing at, so Corey opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of grape juice that had already been opened and filled his cup. Oliver started freaking out and threw his cup on the floor. Corey, being confused, asked me what was wrong. Figuring out that he wanted the one on the table, I pretended to pour some into his cup. Now satisfied, he drank his juice. Oh Oliver!  

This last week the weather has been so nice we have gone on lots of walks, as we are walking Oliver will say "slide" and "wee" which is his way of saying he wants to go to the park. So we go. He loves playing on the playground and going down the slide, he loves running around with all the other kids and doing what they are doing. It is so fun for me to watch him grow and interact with other children. When it's time to go Oliver climbs into the stroller and as we are walking away he starts waiving and says "bye slide" and "bye kids". Oh Oliver, your so cute!

After Oliver wakes up from his nap and has his snack, he has so much energy. He rides his toy truck, plays tag/hide and seek with mommy or dances to his singing farm toy. He also really loves to run around the house dragging a ribbon around behind him, with our cat Rex chasing it. Oliver loves playing with his Rexy. Sometimes when he plays with him he can get rough, he tries to pick him up, or he lays down and put his head on Rexy's belly or just lays down on him. I say "Oh Ollie, be soft" or "Oh Oliver, don't do that". That poor kitty, but he is so good with Oliver! Those two are so cute together and always have been!

Having Oliver has made our lives so busy and has made our home so full of life. The good and the bad, the fun and the frustrating. So the number of times that I say "Oh Oliver" add up to make a great day, sometimes frustrating but still great!

Cooking

Continuing with my challange to improve, I want to work on my cooking skills. I enjoy cooking and baking and would love to get better. This will require me to get out of my comfort zone and start making more then my 25ish dinner recipes that I make over and over again and stop making desserts that come in a box. 

Food just makes people more happy. For me cooking is relaxing and satisfying, especially when everyone loves the food and are vocal about it! :) The smell of something cooking brightens a home and makes it more of a welcoming and inviting place. Eating yummy food satisfies the hunger and the soul. 

Along with cooking, I love hosting. Having friends and family over, eating my cooking, playing games and laughing around the table. Eating together is a great way to bond, strengthen relationships and get to know new people. 

I want to strengthen relationships and make new friends eating yummy food and enjoying each others company. So I am on the look out for new recipes. I have a goal to make at least 5 new recipes a month, to grow my recipe book and better my cooking. 

If you have a great recipe that you would like to share, I would love that. 

A New Skill

So my last post I talked about needing more hobbies, to gain more skills and to better myself. So this post is about that. I want to have something I can do when Ollie is sleeping and the house is quiet. So this new skill is Sewing. I would love to be able to make curtains for my windows, Halloween costumes for my family, and other fun projects. I think this is a great new hobby for me. It will give me time for myself but it will also better my home and family. So I now have a sewing machine.

I grew up around sewers, my sister Jenessa is very crafty and is pretty amazing! If I ever need help with my projects it is her that I call (she has already helped me in getting started with my first project). I took some sewing classes in high school and learned to do the basics and how to read a pattern, so I have some basic knowledge on this topic. It's been about 7 years since I have done any sewing and don't really remember much, but I am hopeful that once I start it will all come back to me pretty quick.

I have a few fun projects that I think will be great starters for me and I really hope that I can pick it up. I am most nervous with reading the patterns and getting it right. I remember struggling with patterns when I was learning and now I am not sure that I really remember anything about it. This is the one I picked to do first, it's a sewing machine cover and organize pockets. I thought that if I did this first, then I would have them for the other projects that I do.

So wish me luck and hope that I don't ruin the lots of fabric needed for this project. I will keep you in the loop on how this all turns out and show you the finished works.

Balance

Okay so I have been thinking, I need to do something that will better myself, something that helps me feel like I am accomplishing something. I feel that through getting married and having a baby I do less things for myself, spending my time on everyone else or wasting it by doing a lot of nothings. 

In high school I was involved in sports and have always found ways to continue playing them, but I have relized I haven't played much sense being pregnant and having Ollie. I worked and now I stay home. I stayed up late hanging out with friends, reading or doing whatever and now I am lucky to make it to 11. I love being a stay at home mom, I love watching my 1 year old grow. It is one of the most amazing things to be a mom and I would never want anything different. 

I am a wife and a mother, but I am so much more. I need to take more time for myself, to find things that make me a better person. I compare myself to what I used to do, to what I do now and feel as though I am not fulfilling my full potential. 

So basically I am saying that I want to push myself to do more. To play sports, to cook more, to exercise, to keep up on cleaning the house, to gain more hobbies, making more friends and being more social, to get involved in the world around me and still be a great stay at home mom. 

I am not sure how I am going to do this yet but I am determined to find ways to make my life feel more balanced. Are there ways that you have found that help you feel more balanced? Well wish me luck!

Acceptance

Wow it has been a while sense I have been on here! With it being winter we just haven't done much that I have wanted to write about.  I have been feeling like what I do with my time is lame. No one wants to read about the lame day to day, same old boring things that a stay at home mom does. What I wanted to do with this blog is to just write about anything and everything, the same old boring day to day things. So it seems that I am just being to critical with wanting my posts to be awesome, I did this for me and not for who reads it. So no more being critical and judging myself to harshly. I will be better! 

So on the note of being better I am going to write about the thing I am struggling with the most, My body! When we got married in December 2010 I weighed 130, at my last Doctors appointment when I was pregnant June 2012 I weighed 209, and now March 2014 I weigh 155. I have lost about 60 of the 80 lbs that I gained and would really love to lose the rest of it. But the weight is only part of it. 

The weight I gained while being pregnant was a quick gain which of course gave me stretch marks everywhere. And my stomach was pretty much stretched to the max so now I have a lot of stretched out skin. The birth ended up needing to be a c-section giving me a scar and a pouch that will probably never go away. 

So I am struggling with these feelings of not being pretty or sexy. I have a pretty bad muffin top, which is hard for me to find a shirt that looks good on me. So I put on shirt after shirt, getting more discouraged and having more negative feelings about myself. Some days I feel great, self accepting and I look pretty.  On these days I think it is more, state of mind then my actual appearance. 

So on being less harsh and judgemental on myself, I want to be more accepting on me as a whole. To like me as a person and view myself as whole and not fat, ugly and broken. To accept myself on who I am and not how I look, to find talents and hobbies that better myself, to eat healthy and exercise, to be HAPPY!

Cabin Fever

Being a stay at home mom during the winter is a hard thing to be. I have found myself wasting my day with doing a whole lot of nothings. Heating our 150 year old house is kind of hard to do and pricey too, so some days Ollie and I stay in our warm Pajamas, sweats or on the couch under blankets. So those days turn into lazy days reading books, doing puzzles, coloring or watching TV.

The TV doesn't really work for Ollie because he only watches a few movies and for only a few minutes and it is not a good thing for me because I tend to watch too much of it. Once it's turned on it's hard to turn it off. I have this thing that if I start watching movies that have sequels or a TV show, I want to watch the whole series. But I turn it on because I hate my house too quiet or I am bored. It's a hard, deep rut for me to fall into, and it's harder and deeper in the winter.

Being outside is a great way to destract Oliver and me, to get fresh air and to exercise. It motivates me to be better and to fill my day with somethings rather then nothings. When it is winter it is hard to be outside with sicknesses, bad weather and being just plain cold! And a lot of the indoor places to go to cost money, so we find ourselves at home most of the time.

My husband and I only have one car and so we share. During the summer this is quite easy because we usually walk when we can and drive only when we need to, making the car available more often. Corey works about a mile from our home and a park and the library are just a few blocks away. But these close places seem much much farther away when it's 20 degrees outside or worse. So driving the car is done for all needs, big or small. 

Our cabin fevers are burning quite hot and our activities are dwindling fast. I have found myself being affected by a depression that is brought on by doing too much of nothing but have no ideas of what I should do. My poor Ollie has a lot of energy and is getting sick of the same old things. Please share what you do during these winter months that keep you sane and your children happy!

The Dreaded Chore

I have mentioned before that I am a stay at home mom. My day is full of tending to my son, cleaning the house and other such things and love it! But I have something that I hate to do, I do everything else before doing this one thing. I am sure that you guys have one too?! Mine is the dreaded DISHES!

The last place we lived had a dishwasher and it was so easy to just load it through out the day, run it after dinner and unload it in the morning. Making it very convenient to keep the kitchen clean.  Here we do not have the same luxury. I feel like I have to wash dishes all day to keep the kitchen clean. Or let the dishes build through out the day and wash them all after dinner which always takes so long. Lately I have found myself putting them off more and more and letting them build. 

So I do all sorts of things trying to procrastinate doing them (like blogging). I even now like folding laundry more then dishes and would do that all day to not wash dishes. When all else is done or when the counter is getting to cluttered with dishes, I then head into the kitchen to clean in there. I stack up the dishes, clean off the counters, wash the stove, sweep and mop all before I delve into the dishes. 

I don't know why I hate doing them so much and I wish I could just get over it and do them everyday and not let them build up little by little. I love cooking and even more so when the kitchen is clean. Which of course cooking makes more dirty dishes. It's a viscous cycle that I know I can't escape.  I need to come up with some type of routine or some way to stay more on top of them. The next place we live will have a dishwasher!