2023 Mid Year Recap - Whats been happening and where have I been?
Gosh, it is amazing how time can fly and how you can put things off and all the sudden it is 6 months later…..
I was doing so good at blogging consistently last year and then all of the sudden I couldn’t find time. There are a few reasons for that. Let me tell you everything that has been going on since December.
I had to go back to work / maternity leave ended
I ended up going back to my day job in December. That was such a hard transition. I am actually thinking about making an entire blog post about it just to explain all of the emotions. After being on leave for 6 months and having to go back to work, figure out child care as best as possible, and not being able to hang out with your baby 24/7 was emotional. I was a little bit of a wreck.
When I went back to work I only had child care about half of the time. That meant the other half of the time I was working a full time job while still taking care of Junie. I don’t think I did either of those things well. You just can’t. Both things should take 100% of your attention, yet I was trying to do both. Plus I was still trying to:
do all the house things : grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, dishes, meal prep, etc.
fit in my workouts.
Run my businesses
There really just isn’t enough time in the day to do that, especially when you work 10+ hours each day.
Pregnancy got the best of me
The first and second trimester of this pregnancy went so much better than last time, but then all of the sudden things got hard. I grew a lot faster than I did last time, plus I grew a lot more! I am about 7 pounds heavier than last time, but man, my belly is just so much bigger!
I started to get tired really easily, I was overwhelmed with :
Being pregnant
Taking care of a 6-10 month old
running my businesses
working a full time job
taking care of the house
When I got overwhelmed I ended up kind of just shutting down to an extent. I didn’t want to do anything, so I just started doing the essentials. I worked, took care of my daughter, and took care of the house. That was about it. I didn’t workout, I didn’t take care of myself, I started eating poorly, I stopped doing all of my good habits (taking supplements, reading, going on a daily walk, getting outside for at least 10 minutes, exercising, writing in my daily gratitude journal, reading my bible, etc. )
We moved!
Juniper turned 7 months old, I was 4 months pregnant, and we found the perfect house! We decided we needed to jump on it, so we put in an offer and we got it! We ended up moving in December and I am just so thankful for it all working out.
The house is a 3 bed 2 bath on 3 acres! We have so much room around us, and we are out of the city which is just such a blessing.
This place is literally a dream. We have a fenced back yard, a garden, a greenhouse, and a wrap around porch. I couldn’t ask for more.
This winter was brutal!
This winter we got the most snow we have seen in 20+ years. We moved slightly up the hill (about 3000’ elevation) , so we knew we were going to get snow, but this winter was intense. This area hasn’t seen this much snow in forever. We got about 6’ of snow and were stuck in our house for days.
It was definitely an amazing experience, but just confirmed what I already knew…. I never really wanted to live in the snow. It’s too much work and not fun to be outside in for very long.
There was literally no sleep happening in this house
Juniper had 2 things that happened…. she got sick and then she started teething. That basically meant no sleep. We were sleeping maybe an hour each night for about a week. Then when she got over her fever, the teething thing was sooooooo much worse than I could have imagined. I felt so bad for her. She was up every hour and a half for about a month.
Plus, I am pregnant, so that really meant rough nights of sleep no matter what.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I was able to go back out on maternity leave for baby #2!!! Yay! I finally feel like doing things again. I noticed I am starting to want to do all the things like gardening, exercising, going on my daily walks, and BLOGGING! My cup is filling back up! I am no longer running on empty and it feels so good!
It is amazing how life can just stop you from doing what you want to do. How you can get so caught up in doing ‘what you have to do’ rather than doing what you want to do or what you should be doing that is best for you, your body/ your mind, and your family.
For me, I noticed the easiest thing to drop was …. well…. me. I stopped taking care of me. I stopped doing the things that made me happy. This ultimately had a huge impact on my mood, on how I reacted to little things, how I was able to be present for Juniper, and my relationship with my husband.
Something I always stress is to do the things that make you happy. This way everything else in your life with follow with happiness (relationships, etc. ), yet doing the things that make you happy are the easiest things to stop doing because you feel like it is the last thing that needs to happen.
It is odd how we decide that taking care of our body, mind and soul is the thing that we should drop when life gets challenging. It is actually the last thing we should drop and the thing we should pay the most attention to!
So, I just want to encourage you to keep doing the things that make you happy and make you feel good even when life gets busy, rough, challenging, or just overwhelming. Those things that make you happy are the things that are going to help you get through the hard time.
I am so excited to be back and can’t wait to start sharing all the things with you guys again.
Thank you for supporting this crazy journey I call life and for always being there for me. You are amazing!
Bess