A growth spurt could look like:

• increase in night sleep and naps
• decrease in night sleep in naps

Teething:

• decrease in night sleep and naps
• increase in night sleep and naps

Sickness:

• decrease in night sleep and naps
• increase in night sleep and naps

Are we seeing a pattern here? Clearly there is no answer to this, hence why I decided parenting an infant is just a big game of troubleshooting day in and day out.

Here’s to an increase/decrease in night sleep and naps…and maybe a glass of wine every night to soften the blow.

Weekly Loss:

Total Loss:

Workouts Completed:

Days staying within caloric range:

Other Updates:

Annnnnd, this weeks stats:

Weekly Loss: .6

Total Loss: 11 lbs

Workouts Completed: 2…better than last week! However, next week I am starting to teach again so I need to ramp up my cardio BIG. TIME.

Days staying within caloric range: 4 (Sunday-Tuesday I had to increase my calories)

Other Updates: Feeling great and happy with the progress! Getting close to my pre-preg weight!

Weekly Loss:

Total Loss:

Workouts Completed:

Days staying within caloric range:

Other Updates:

Annnnnd, this weeks stats:

Weekly Loss: 2.5 lbs

Total Loss: 10.4 lbs (this made me really happy!!)

Workouts Completed: 1…I seriously need to figure this area of my life out. Between juggling work and being a mama, it’s hard to fit this in, but I am DETERMINED to get back into shape, not just down to the weight that I want to be at!

Days staying within caloric range: 5…not too bad! Last week was AWFUL after our trip, so it felt good to get back into a healthy eating routine

Other Updates: One thing I have really learned these past 5 weeks is when to stop. That is not something I am very good at, but I have been making myself STOP when I am full, which is such a better feeling at the end of a meal rather than feeling stuffed and sick.

So, here’s to a healthy week for everyone!

So, in my efforts to be as real and candid as possible on this blog, it’s about to get real around here, y’all! As much as I would like you and the Facebook world believe that my house is always perfect and Pinteresty, my hair/makeup always looks fantastic, and my baby never cries…that would be impossible. So, let’s go on a journey!

Side note: originally this post was going to be about the day that I will be able to hire someone to do specific tasks around my house, but let’s get real here…I am married to a church planter, that’s probably never going to happen!

This is the current state of our hamper. Hampers are supposed to contain your dirty clothes so they don’t get scattered all over your room…ours is currently a different story:

it’s like this because I am too lazy to take the towels out of the dryer, which means I can’t move the clothes from the washer to the dryer to free up the washer, etc, etc, etc…it is a vicious, vicious cycle.

If you have not met our dog, you may not know that he sheds the fur of 1,000 dogs, and I am not exaggerating. As soon as you walk into our house you will immediately have a layer of hair around the bottoms of your pants. It’s disgusting and horrible. So, even though I obsessively vaccuum (no joke…it’s my hobby…) this is the current state of my family room (disclaimer: since taking this photo I have vacuumed…I just couldn’t handle it any longer…oh yeah, and my baby was whining the entire time I vacuumed.)

And here is the current state of my shoes. We just got back from a trip where I wore sandals instead of winter shoes, so instead of organizing them and putting them away, I just shoved them all in a pile.

And here is a picture of my dining room chairs. The picture below what I would typically post on FB because it is so overexposed you can’t see what they really look like…cue photo below that… Think they need to be recovered? That has been on the project list for 3 years now.

Facebook Life:

Real life:

So…here’s to being real! Do you have a Facebook life?

At 4 Months Elliot is:

• 14.8 lbs
• 23 inches long
• bald…very, very bald
• smiling whenever she sees mommy or daddy
• smiling when people talk to her
• giggling…especially at night when it is time for a bath!
• watching Jack walk around her
• chatting up a storm, typically at the times when it would be nice for her to be quiet (i.e. in church, when someone is praying, etc…)
• sleeping 12 hours at night (woohooo!)
• rolling from tummy to back
• tripod sitting
• grabbing toys and immediately putting them in her mouth
• drooling like Niagra Falls
• standing in her Jumperoo…but not quite jumping yet!

Still waiting on her to roll from back to tummy, but it will happen soon enough! I can’t believe how fast she is growing and changing. Love that sweet girl.

I never really wanted to have kids – I thought it would mean I would miss out on all of the “fun stuff” like traveling, seeing movies when I want, doing what I want whenever I want, and losing my own social life which seemed like the most horrible thing in the world. I babysat A LOT in high school and college, spent several summers nannying and thought I knew it all about raising kids…which is what made me not want to have them! When I babysat all I wanted to do was put the kids to bed as early as possible and just get on with my own agenda of watching TV, I got super annoyed when they actually wanted me to play with them, and just generally hated babysitting, so I figured I would hate having a kid because it’s just babysitting for the rest of your life, right?

Wow. I can’t even begin to say how very, very wrong I was. I just don’t even think I have the capacity to describe how much I absolutely adore being a mom. To love someone so immensely from the moment they are placed in your arms is an absolutely unexplainable feeling…I honestly can’t even comprehend the magnitude of God’s love for me knowing that what I feel for Elliot is only a fraction of how He loves me.

Yes, our social life has definitely changed, but not in a bad way. We have dinners with friends at home a lot more than we used to instead of going out which has led to deep, deep community and such rich conversations (and saving a lot of money!!)….all while our sweet girl snoozes away in the other room. We still have weekly date nights out and I treasure that time so much more than I ever did before…time to focus on my husband and do the things we love to do. Traveling is definitely different (and a little more complicated now), but I am so excited for the fun adventures we will take our little family on and the experiences we will get to help create for our kids…how fun will it be to see these things through their sweet eyes and imaginations?! At the end of the day (usually!) I am not ready for her to go to bed yet because I just love playing with her, seeing her sweet smile and hearing her little giggles…what a treasure those sweet moments are. I really can’t even explain it, it has been the most beautiful surprise I have ever been given in my life.

I think the biggest lesson I have learned in my short time as a mom is that it’s not all about me. I don’t think I realized before how much I focused on myself. I’m not trying to say focusing on yourself is a bad thing, but I think without realizing it, I felt like the whole world was rotating around me. It was all about making more money so I could:

• have more stuff
• have a cooler house
• travel
• buy clothes
• go to nice dinners
• etc, etc, etc

but in the past few months I have really learned it’s absolutely not all about me, and life is absolutely not about obtaining “stuff” to achieve happiness. It’s also not all about Elliot, or Chris, or our family…there is so much more! My prayer as we raise our children is that they are always thinking of and caring for others before they think of themselves. They aren’t going to have all of the coolest toys or the nicest clothes, all the newest gadgets or live in the biggest house…I want our family to be outward focused…loving our neighbors, our friends, the widows, the orphans, the homeless, the hurting….all for the sake of the gospel.

Have you had the moment in your life when you realized it’s not all about you? What was that like for you? Did it change the way you acted?

more lessons from motherhood to come!

Weekly Loss:

Total Loss:

Workouts Completed:

Days staying within caloric range:

Other Updates:

Annnnnd, this weeks stats:

Weekly Loss: 1.8

Total Loss: 7.9 lbs

Workouts Completed: 3

Days staying within caloric range: 5

Other Updates: I am feeling so so great this week! I had a BIG NSV (non-scale victory) in that I put on all of my pre-pregnancy jeans and they all fit!! Wahooo!! Now, mind you, they were pretty tight and I am not going to wear them quite yet, but it made me feel really great that they all buttoned. We are headed out of town next week for a few days so I won’t be able to weigh-in, but I am going to try really hard to keep my eating pretty clean!

Hope you are feeling great as well if you are following this journey with me!

I feel like so often we get caught up in chasing the “dream”: having more money, having a big house, having the coolest “Pinteresty” decorations, cool clothes, purses…you name it, you know what I am talking about. I am not saying that wanting to have a successful career (heck, I absolutely LOVE what I do and absolutely want to be successful in it!) and some nice things is a bag thing, but they can absolutely own us and what we are living for. Jen quotes:

“What does it communicate when half the global population lives on less than $2 a day, and we can’t manage a fulfilling life on twenty-five thousand times that amount? Fifty thousand times that amount? It says we have too much, and it is ruining us.”

This quote hit me square in the chest. Recently I have been complaining about how we need more money, or we need this, or we need that, and I have really realized that we absolutely do not need any of these things, and what we really need is to be more faithful with what we have. One thing I am praying God helps me get a hold on is being faithful and generous with what I have, I don’t need any more, I want the Lord to be enough for me.

Honestly, I wish I could just type out all of the sections I have highlighted in this book to share it with you, but that would take me hours and hours, so all I can say is go get this book. I pray that I put my pride and selfishness to the side and really listen to the nudges the Lord is giving me in regards to excess in my life…how I long to be free of it!

More on this later…I’m stuck.

Lately I have been reading several books that talk about excess, obsession, lack of focus, etc, etc, etc and I have been feeling the Lord is trying to tell me something that I really need to work on. I need to learn to be present. I feel like in the age of smart phones, iPads, computers, and all of this AMAZING technology, we have lost the ability to be present where we are. How many times have I been riding in the car with Chris and instead of talking to him I am checking Facebook or reading something pointless on line? (I will answer this question…99.9% of the time) Or how often am I sitting there holding Elliot and reading ridiculous posts on Babycenter instead of soaking in every sweet moment I have with her? I think I have just realized that I really need to discipline myself to be all in, and be present where I am, because I am really missing out on the richness of life. When I am with my family I need to be there…fully there. I never want Elliot to feel like I am always on my phone or always working, because she means SO much more to me than any of that stuff. I never want Chris to feel like I am not listening or invested in spending time with him, I want those moments together to be rich…not empty.

So my prayer and desire (and I know this is going to have to take a lot of discipline) is to be all in and present in whatever I am doing. Put the distractions aside and give my focus to the things that truly matter.

Do you feel like this is something you struggle with, or do you feel like you are able to maintain balance?

I mean seriously, what could compete with this?!