July 2013 – Jocelyn Rau

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013

An anniversary, of sorts

It’s very hard to describe what all has happened during this past year of me being out of full-time work, because I’ve experienced such a huge range of emotions. Something bigger than I think I’ve ever felt before.

I started off scared shitless.

We were losing our big salary; we were losing full, employer-paid benefits; we were losing my life insurance through work; we were pulling Della out of a daycare that both we and she loved, taking her away from her friends, teachers, social interaction, and overall daily structure; we were losing our well-oiled routine.

Was I going to be a good mom staying home with Della? Was I going to be able to give her everything she had at daycare? Was she going to miss everyone there more than she enjoyed being home with just me? How long was my severance going to carry us? How long was I going to be home? How much were we going to have to sacrifice? How in the hell was I going to do this?

And oh yeah, I was almost 7 months pregnant. Delectable timing.

But in a matter of days, I went from more uncertain than I’d ever been in my life to so very, very happy.

I spent every day with Della. We went for walks; we went to the park; we went to the zoo; we played; we did little art projects in the basement; we actually met our neighbors and Della played with all the kids on our block. I became her everything, and it was glorious. She began talking more than she ever had, and it had to have been because she was the focus all day long instead of being one in a class where the teachers had to focus mainly on the kids as a whole. I’ll never forget – about 2 weeks after we’d been home the head of her daycare stopped by to drop off some last art projects and pictures of Della, and she was amazed by how much Della said to her when she came to the door. She said, “Oh my gosh, she never used to talk this much at daycare.” I was so proud.

It was the most lovely time. I was relaxed. I was having fun. I was increasing my stay-at-home motherhood ability level daily. I had not 1 iota of any stress from my job left whatsoever. I was loving our “new” routine, and I was so happy.

Then we hit October 21, 2012, and little Lana Marie entered our lives.

And I was doubly happy. Another little girl! I couldn’t believe it. All of my fears that I could never love another child as much as I loved Della instantly vanished. In their place was an exponentially increasing amount of love that I never fathomed could exist.

Our routine changed once again, but this time I didn’t have to worry about maternity leave and having to go back to work and sending them both off to daycare. I can’t even tell you how beautiful that was. Simply being able to focus on our new baby and being a mom to our 2 daughters was amazing.

I became everything to both Della and Lana now. (don’t worry, ryan is and always has been an enormous help and a wonderful father. i’m just referring to the fact that since i was home full-time, i was the one spending all day every day with these 2 little monkeys)

And then I went from being a blissfully happy new mama for the 2nd time to being not. I was lost.

I became overwhelmed by our days at home, all together, just us. I felt like all I ever did was nurse Lana, feed Della and wipe her butt, and clean the house. I began questioning my ability as a mother. I began questioning my worth as a wife. I began questioning me, and I hated it. I’m not good like that.

So our routine changed again. I got a part-time job, and it was a savior. I worked in a place I knew; the girls came with me but didn’t stay with me; their care was good and it was free; I liked my coworkers and they liked me. I was happy.

And that’s pretty much where we are now. I’ve been doing the part-time job gig at the gym for about 6 months, and it has worked out swimmingly. The girls love playing in the kids care room (for free!!); I enjoy doing something so easy and lighthearted as working a front desk; I love chatting with my coworkers and the gym members all throughout my time there; and although I no longer have a big employer-sponsored 401(k) and year-end bonus, there are actually a lot of perks – free gym memberships for me and the girls, discounts on classes and lessons (so della is now in her 2nd session of swim lessons and i’m thinking about enrolling her in dance next time. can you even imagine the cuteness?!), employer rewards for high-quality service (can you say free massage? thank you very much!), recognition by your peers (most contagious smile, that’s me), a non-existent stress level.

And oh yeah, I’m happy.

So I guess a lot has happened, actually. We’ve added to our family; I’ve gotten my first new job in almost a decade; Ryan got to spend a month at home with us for a mini-summer vacation; we’ve taken some awesome trips. My belief in myself as a mother is now rock-solid, my feeling of self-worth is unshakable, and I’ve even gotten in really good shape by running with these 2 beans in the jogging stroller. Can’t beat that, eh?

Sure the thoughts of when this routine will end have started creeping in, but there’s no definite answer yet. Ryan has thrown out October, since that will be Lana’s 1 year birthday, but I now want nothing more than to prolong my time home with the girls beyond any deadline. We have considered some scenarios that may do that, but like I said, nothing is for sure yet.

I’m just riding this wave and enjoying every day I have on it. I look back to those first days home with Della and how unsure I was and can’t help but laugh. Why was I so scared? This is exactly what I’ve always wanted since the day she was born. Just because I didn’t choose the circumstances surrounding how it came to be doesn’t mean it’s something bad. And now I fully realize that.

So happy 1 year of non-full-time working anniversary to me.

I am very happy.

July 23, 2013July 27, 2013

9 month stats

Lana turned 9 months old on Sunday. Now she’s spent roughly the same amount of time outside as she did inside. Crazy.

somebody was very sleepy and much more interested in getting the 9 months sticker off her shirt than having her 9 months picture taken

We had her 9 month well check yesterday, so here are the official stats:

Height: 28.5″ (75%)
Weight: 16 lbs. 15.5 oz. (25%)
Head: 44.5 cm (50-75%, i think)

The word this month is MOVEMENT! She started off doing her army crawl/belly flopping around the place awhile ago, but now she’s a full-on regular crawler. We spent the past couple days down at my mom’s house, and as soon as those little legs hit carpet, up on all fours she went. She loved crawling normally (and fast!) on all carpeted areas, but then she’d flop right back down onto her belly as soon as she hit another hard surface. So weird.

One big accomplishment she had was crawling up the steps at my mom’s house too. They have 2 steps from the living room into the kitchen, and she handled them like she’d been crawling since day 1. It was pretty impressive.

Now that we’re back home she does a combo of crawling and belly flopping, so I have a feeling she’ll stay on her knees for good pretty soon. She has started crawling out of the room chasing Della more often than flopping, so that’s a good sign.

She also started pulling herself up on everything last week. She had begun doing this in her crib the week before so we had to lower her mattress, but I hadn’t seen her do it on the furniture too until almost a week ago. Now she does it like it’s second nature. And she’s very confident in this new found skill. A little too confident sometimes, and I’m constantly afraid she’s going to fall and crack her chin on every single thing.

Let’s see, what else have we got going on now? She’s still sleeping beautifully, thank heavens (knock on wood!). I take her into her room after her nighttime bottle, hand her her big green monkey, and put her in her crib awake still. It’s great. I plugged a little nightlight in right next to her crib, and she’s doing great. Let’s hope this keeps up for good!

I think she’s transitioning from 3 naps a day down to 2, too. Often she’ll take a little later morning nap then a solid mid-afternoon one, so she doesn’t really need more sleep after dinner. Depending on circumstances she does still sneak 3 in some days. I’d say right now it’s about half and half 2 naps vs. 3. Fortunately, though, when she does take an evening nap, she usually wakes up and is pretty much ready to go back to sleep almost right away. I’ll just change her, get her pjs on, and get her bottle ready. This routine is infinitely better than what we had to endure a few months ago!

Eating. She’s a great little chow hound. She eats all solids for lunch and dinner, and yesterday the doctor said to start adding in some more food too. She had Cheerios for the first time yesterday as well, per the doctor’s ok, and she ate them with no problem at all. That’s good, because now I don’t have to worry about buying separate little puffs or anything for her. Cheerios for all.

Teeth. She has the front 2 bottom ones fairly well in, the front 2 top ones are coming down now, and just yesterday I saw the bottom left one right next to the front one coming through. And she grinds them, ugh. No wonder she constantly has to have something in her mouth.

Not a whole ton of “words” yet, but still lots of sounds. “Do” is her big one (sounds like “doh”, not “doo”), and I’ve noticed she says it a lot when I tell her no. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to say, because she hears “no” often. The little stinker is a magnet for everything she shouldn’t have – outlets, DVDs off the shelf, books under the coffee table…

And I keep saying she’s going to be an opera singer. She can scream at an octave that most people could never dream of hitting. It’s practically glass-shattering. And she usually doesn’t do it when she’s upset, rather just to make noise. Lucky us.

For those keeping track at home, these stats are roughly the same as last month – she wears size 3 diapers and size 4 overnights in Seventh Generation (size 2 daytime and size 3 overnights still fit pretty well in other brands), and almost all of the clothes she’s wearing now are 12 month size. I brought all of Della’s summer clothes down from the attic from her first summer, and those are essentially nothing but 12 month pieces. So that’s what Lana’s wearing for her first summer too.

I think that about covers the main things for this month. She is certainly still my little squiggle, and I love her to death.

Not only do I have a photo comparison of the girls this month, but 9 months is apparently when I had started blogging and updating on Della too. So you can read how they compare as well, right here.

i tried to pick a comparison photo with similar facial expressions 😉

July 8, 2013

Great American Road Trip – Part 2

If you need a refresher, here’s where we left off in “Part 1”. Let’s hit the road again…

Day 9: Time to say adios to my sis and nephew (bro-in-law had to go out of town on business a few days earlier). The compass didn’t point east just yet, though, as we took a northerly route home instead of simply backtracking. First up was Deadwood, SD. Yes, the same Deadwood from the HBO show, where we learned of it in the first place. Low and behold, it’s actually on the National Historic Register.

To get there, however, we had to drive through the most gigantic expanse of this country I’ve seen yet – eastern Wyoming. Do not undertake a road trip through this two-lane section of the country with anything less than an overflowing tank of gas and rations for weeks. I’m not kidding – there are literally hundreds of miles between the tiniest hints of civilization out there, cell phones don’t have a chance of working, every gas station we came upon was boarded up, and cows outnumber humans by probably about 20,000:1. It’s no joke. If something were to happen to you out there you’d be screwed. Thank god we got new tires put on the car in Colorado. Wyoming is wide open spaces to a tee.

We did find one diamond in the rough out there, though – Ft. Laramie. This little historic gem is smack dab in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, but is a really, really cool place. We spent a good hour walking the same grounds so many soldiers and Indians did before there was anything out there but wide open spaces. It was once a major stop on the Pony Express, and taking the same sets of stairs that some of the first people to settle this country did was an almost indescribable experience – humbling, maybe?

one sarsaparilla and one cream soda, please

But we finally rolled into our destination for that day, Deadwood, SD, that evening. Unfortunately it was seriously disappointing – every place has been taken over by gaming, with window upon window full of crappy slot machines. We found what appeared to be the solitary business in the town without a casino stuck in it to take the girls in for dinner. It’s a shame too; it could have been preserved as a very cool historic place, but now it’s not so much. I hate casinos, so I was ready to leave. After driving through the famed Sturgis, we decided to stop in Rapid City, SD, for the night.

Deadwood, SD

Day 10: Mt. Rushmore day. We woke up to thunderstorms, however, so got a much later start than we would have liked. On our way to see the big faces, we went to the Crazy Horse monument, a big mountain tribute to the Lakota Sioux leader in progress. Very cool.

the mountain in the back is being carved in the likeness of the statue in the forefront

so far only the head of the statue is complete

Some of Ryan’s friends had said that Mt. Rushmore was very underwhelming, which really bummed me out because I had been looking forward to this part of the trip for a long time. I don’t know from what planet they hail, though, because it was honestly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. From the moment I first saw it from the highway driving in to the last glimpse we got on the way out, I was in awe. I literally could have spent the entire day just standing there staring at it instead of the couple hours we had. Not only is the memorial itself simply incredible, but the park and buildings they have set up around it are pristine. Definitely put this one on your must-see list. You will not regret it.

There are a couple other national parks in that area that we would have liked to have seen, but we just didn’t have time – Jewel Cave, Wind Cave, and the Minuteman Missile Silo. The Badlands, however, we were not going to miss. So we hightailed it out of Mt. Rushmore and headed east another hour or two to highway 240, the Badlands Loop.

This was another unbelievable area. The highway that winds through the park is about 40 miles long, and it takes you from the top to the bottom of the Badlands (or bottom to top if you come from the east). Words can’t really describe its beauty, and I’m sure our pictures don’t do it an ounce of justice, so just go see it for yourself. Again, you won’t regret it. We want to make another pilgrimage out there just to see these 2 places again and get to explore them more in-depth. You can easily spend at least a day at each park.

Badlands, SD

When we left the Badlands it was already evening, and I wanted to get the girls fed at a normal time that night instead of pulling into a hotel super late and getting them all out of whack again. Unfortunately central South Dakota is apparently not known for dining hot spots, so we had to settle for a little hometown diner in Kadoka, SD. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. You can skip that place. Double unfortunately, massive thunderstorms were rolling in as we ate, so we quickly got the girls cleaned up and into pj’s so they could fall asleep in the car until we stopped for that night, wherever that was going to be.

Something else I learned – thunderstorms on the wide open plains of South Dakota are NOT to be taken lightly. We drove through over 100 miles of non-stop lightning, and I have never been scared of a storm like that before. When you are the only thing on the horizon and lightning is flashing around you like a strobe light, you just hope and pray you make it to shelter before getting charred. Thankfully we did, with the storms accompanying us the entire way. Our last hotel for the trip was in Sioux Falls, SD. We had made it all the way across the state!

this was our view for the entire eastern half of SD. too bad we couldn’t enjoy all the daylight on the 1st day of summer

Day 11: Homeward bound! We hadn’t gotten settled into the hotel room and the girls put to bed the night before until about 1 a.m., so we pulled the shades and let everyone sleep as late as possible. We were finally all up around 10-10:30 and got ready to head home. Checkout wasn’t until noon so we took our time and finally left Sioux Falls around noon, after breakfast and a much-needed Starbucks stop. Minnesota seemed to fly by compared to Wyoming and South Dakota, and then we entered the homeland once more.

say french fries!

After a stop in Madison for dinner with some friends at one last brewery, we pulled back into our driveway late that night. Whew!

This was an outstanding trip, and I am so happy we decided to do it. The girls were absolute dreams of travelers – barely a peep from either side of the backseat for all those miles and hours in the car, countless stops, and 3 different hotel rooms. Ryan got 5 new stamps and stickers in his National Parks Passport, Della got her own Junior Ranger National Parks Passport to start, and Lana, well Lana got to chew on a red Solo cup to her heart’s content. (note to self – keep a red solo cup in the car at all times to placate a restless baby)

Thank you, America, for gorgeous scenery, an established interstate roadway system upon which we can travel to said scenery, and memories our family will cherish for a lifetime.

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013

Great American Road Trip – Part 1

A few weeks ago we undertook our longest road trip yet as a family. It spanned 9 states and put 3,172.4 miles on the odometer. And we all survived!

We left Milwaukee on a Wednesday morning, drove through parts of Illinois and Iowa, stopped for a dinner of world famous BBQ in Kansas City, MO, then spent the night in Topeka, KS. That Thursday we drove through the rest of Kansas before reaching our main destination in Evergreen, CO, for the next week. The return drive took us through part of Wyoming on our way to South Dakota, then finally one last day to get through Minnesota on our way back to Sconnie-land.

This would seriously end up being a novel if I tried to describe everything we saw and did, so I’ll just cover the highlights. You’ll notice this is “Part 1”, so in here I’ll show you some of the sites from the drive out and our stay in Colorado. The reason we went out there was to visit my sisters, brother-in-law, and brand new nephew, so we figured we’d see as much of Middle America as we could along the way. Here we go…

Day 1: Our goal of this leg was to get to Kansas City, MO, where Ryan was dying to try Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. So we did, and it was delicious. We had some daylight left after eating, so we drove another hour or so to Topeka, where we called it a night.

yuuummm!!

Day 2: We started off the day by visiting the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. Very cool. But the rest of Kansas is boring. So is eastern Colorado. We finally pulled into my sister and brother-in-law’s driveway in Evergreen, CO, that evening and let the engines rest.

jumping on hotel beds is fun!

don’t do this. and no, that’s not our car

it was very hot and windy on our drive west

Days 3-8: Fun had by all in central Colorado. Our nephew is completely adorable; the girls, my mom, sister, nephew, and I went on a train; we experienced a rodeo parade; we took in a concert at Red Rocks; we tried out as many breweries as we could manage in a day; and we saw some cool petrified stuff. We even got to experience the scare of forest fires starting while we were there. Thank god none reached my sister’s home, and no one we/they know was hurt by the handful of ones raging during our stay.

Georgetown Loop Railroad

rodeo parades and catching all that candy are simply exhausting

happy father’s day!

s’mores!

Odell Brewing in Fort Collins, CO

New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins

Left Hand Brewing in Longmont, CO

Oskar Blues Brewing in Longmont

“Big Stump” at Florissant Fossil National Monument

Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs

cousins! lana was most uncooperative

Ok, that’s enough pictures for today. Stay tuned, for there will be plenty more in “Part 2”. I can sense your anticipation building already, my friends.

Month: July 2013

An anniversary, of sorts

Like this:

9 month stats

Like this:

Great American Road Trip – Part 2

Like this:

Great American Road Trip – Part 1

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