It has been one year...

It has been a year since the last time I posted.  It has been less time since I have written but for some reason I never posted those.  And of course, so much has changed in the last year.

• Baby boy, Monkey, as we lovingly refer to him, was born on May 16th.  One day before my 29th birthday.  It was an ordeal - but that's for another post.
• I have postpartum depression that I have been working on since Monkey was 8 weeks old.  It has been a long and tedious road, but I am getting better.
• Sweet Pea has learned to walk, run, climb stairs, etc.  She talks non-stop, narrating her life to us.  RoadTripDaddy and I love it, well...most of the time.
• Monkey is in constant motion.  He moves lightening fast even though he is not crawling on all fours yet. He has perfected the army crawl and can cross a room in the time it takes me to write this sentence.  Monkey is also pulling himself up on things.  As of this morning, he is now able to pull himself all the way up to his feet.  I'm not ready for this.
• We moved Sweet Pea to a toddler bed - her crib converted.  The first night of sleep went great.  Every night since that (over 2 weeks) has been not good.  Most nights we are awoken at 12:45am or 2:30am.  It's awesome...
• As of tonight, Sweet Pea has decided that when we leave her room after the bedtime routine, if she is awake, she will get out of bed and follow us - wailing - into the hallway or our bedroom.  Another awesome finding.
• I have made resolutions (not for New Years) that I have vowed to keep - and my number one priority is making 2011 "the year of our family."

In the last year, I have learned so much from my friends, family, Sweet Pea and Monkey.  I'm trying to keep these lessons of patience, understanding, forgiveness, wonder, excitement, and joy in the forefront of my mind.  I'm trying to take things less personally.  I'm trying to ease up on myself.  As I found this Christmas, there is only so much I can control.  I can't go back...I can't change what has happened.  I can only learn from it and move forward.  

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller

20 weeks

This was Day 5 (I think). I'm not in my flickr account right now and I'm not in the mood to find out. This is the first present RoadTripDaddy bought for the new baby. He brought this and a card home the day after (I think) we found out I was pregnant. It's the only thing we have bought for the baby. I am nervous that if I start shopping for the new little one I will go overboard. And that's probably not a good idea. Also, I would feel like I would need to get stuff for Sweet Pea too. And she will be a year old in two weeks (as of 4:29 this afternoon). So, I think we are set on presents for the moment.

Back to the topic of this post - yesterday was the 20 week mark for this pregnancy. Half way there. I can't believe it. At this point in my pregnancy with Sweet Pea, both RoadTripDaddy and I were convinced we were having a boy. And everyone was all to willing to give their opinions on the matter as well. Because I was carrying like I was having a boy. Or so I kept being told. The week of my ultrasound last time people kept asking me whether I thought Sweet Pea was a boy or girl. And I repeated over and over what I believed, that I was pregnant with a boy. I didn't tell people that I had changed my mind. That I was sure we were having a girl. See, we had a name set for a boy. And we had stopped looking at names - but part of that was that I was just so sick of repeating names over and over again trying to figure out how my child could be teased with each name I liked. I announced to RoadTripDaddy at 18 weeks that it didn't make sense to keep looking at names. We had the appointment set and there was no point in looking for a girl name too unless we were told something different at that appointment.

Going back to whether I thought we were having a boy or girl, the week of my ultrasound I became convinced (although I didn't share this with anyone) that we were having a girl. Because I was totally unprepared for having a girl. Because I didn't have a name for a girl. Because I thought RoadTripDaddy wanted a boy. Because I thought I wanted a boy. So on that day, during the ultrasound as we talked with the ultrasound tech and looked at the different parts of Sweet Pea's little body, we saw Sweet Pea's arms and RoadTripDaddy mentioned our little one becoming a pitcher for the Cubs. The technician looked scanned down further on Sweet Pea, looked at us and said our little one will be more likely waving her arms at a Miley Cyrus concert than pitching in a major league baseball game. Tears filled my eyes. I looked back at RoadTripDaddy worried he would be upset. And there were tears in his eyes. But he wasn't upset. He was happy. He squeezed my hand and we continued the ultrasound. I wiped away the tears and knew that we would be okay. I knew that it didn't matter if we were having a girl or boy. Sweet Pea was healthy and we were halfway to meeting our little girl.

My 20 week ultrasound is this Friday at 3pm. We will once again be finding out if the little one will be a boy or girl. I'm convinced we are having a girl. And having panic attacks that it will be a boy and I won't have any clue what to do. But truthfully, as long as the baby is healthy I will be happy either way.

WGN's Beautiful Baby Contest

Hey everyone!

As you may already know, via Facebook and Twitter...We entered Sweet Pea in this year's WGN's Beautiful Baby Contest. The contest starts today and runs through the end of the month. The winner is awarded $5000 and a professional photo shoot. If we win, my husband and I are hoping to get a big jump in the college fund for Sweet Pea. And you know how much I love taking pictures of Sweet Pea (I think we have well over 2000 pictures of her already), so the photo shoot would be incredible. You can only vote once and you will need to register for the site. I know how much it sucks to register for stuff, but it should only take a minute and it would really mean a lot to us.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! And we would be so honored and grateful if you linked back to this or posted my link from Facebook.

Here's the link:

Sweet Pea's entry

And if you already voted, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!