Perfectly Imperfect Mom

It's Sunday morning and I can't help but feel incredibly blessed. I have three wonderful children, a really amazing husband, a job I love and friends that I couldn't live without. Sure, times get hard, my kids can drive me nuts and my husband can totally do something to annoy me but overall life is good. Like really good.

I think about the hard times. The times when life felt unfair and hopeless. We all go through ups and downs and those times were tough.

But I look at those times and realize why I went through the struggles to have babies, losing my parents and all the other hard times that have come our way and think this is why. This is why I had to go through all of that. If I hadn't I wouldn't appreciate all I have as much as I do.

Losing my parents makes me appreciate my time with my kids so much more. I want them to have special memories with Branden and myself like I had with my parents because one day we will be gone and that's all they will have. I want them to say "I am so lucky because of all we got to do together". I want them to love each other and lean on each other in hard times and be ok without us because they can call on the other one. I want them to appreciate each other because your siblings are the ones who will get you through.

I also think about how hard marriage is. It's ever changing and evolving. And I think that is the point. We go through the rough patches to get to the really amazing times. I recently have been thinking about how hard things were when we had Ace. It was such a change for us. We were all about each other and now had to focus on this little baby. We had no clue how much it would change our relationship and we struggled. We struggled so much we knew we had to do something to make our marriage work or it just wouldn't. We went to counseling and realized we both were just not listening to each other. We wanted to be heard but were not willing to hear the other person. It took time and we worked on other challenges in our marriage and came out stronger.

Now with three kids I see how much easier it is to handle certain things because we went through all of that. We now know we can make it through the challenges that come our way and we have to work on it. We have to work together and listen. We have to be each others partner and confidant.

So thank you to the hard times for making these times even more precious.

September 13, 2015 1 comments

I didn't have a chance to post on Valentina's actual birthday because work has been crazy but today is my baby nieces FIRST birthday party!

I am so excited to get to celebrate this beautiful little girl. She is such a funny baby. She is very tiny for her age so I often forget she is as old as she is but then you see her running around trying to talk and it's like oh yeah, you are tiny but mighty.

I still remember the day this beautiful angel came into the world. My poor sister was in and out of the hospital the week prior and her blood pressure kept spiking. They admitted her I think twice? Then she finally was induced. After awhile they finally broke her water, gave her pitocin and that saving grace the epidural. She slept but kept getting sick (not abnormal) and then her heart rate spiked and I ran to get a nurse. The nurse didn't take it seriously yet Ashley's face was bright red and she just looked awful. Her doctor came in and said she had been watching her contractions and saw the spike and wanted to check on her and the baby. I believe Valentina's heart rate also went up. Ashley wasn't to 10 but they checked her temperature and she had a fever and by Valentina's heart rate the same could be said for her.

Her doctor talked to her about a c-section and told her she had to do it at this point. Her water had been broken and she wasn't progressing (Valentina was early so this could have been why). I think at this point we were all just worried about the baby and they got her prepped to go in.

I went in to the waiting room so anxious to meet my little niece. She was born at 1:17am. After they got my sister out of surgery I got to go in and sit with her and finally hold Valentina. She was all puffy from fluids and we joked she looked like a little asian man because her eyes were so squinty and tiny. She had hair everywhere, even on her ears. We couldn't get over.

Now a year later she has changed so much. She was born an average sized baby but she can still fit into 6 months clothes, ha! She might be taking after her Aunt Brenna in the short department. She has the biggest smile and prefers to just hang out in a diaper. She is obsessed with dogs like I have never seen before. She will literally lay with them in their beds or play with them over anyone else. She knows what she wants and is determined. She is such a sweet, happy girl!