Eleanora's first nap in her new room,
Eleanora's first breakfast in her big girl booster seat,
Her first bath at our new place,
Her first birthday gift, grandpa Ron brought it over the day before her party and she is obsessed with it. She brings her baby dolls over to it and climbs in and sits for up to 20 minutes!
And the main event, Eleanora's first birthday party!!!
Babies and grandmas,
Keaton showing off his bib from his favorite Auntie,
Eleanora and Keaton chewing on their hands,
Mary, Lily, Me, Nora, Angie and Emily,
4 generations of women,
She had a blast opening presents,
These board books got several screams out of her! (props to Paul and Jackie!)
Showing me her new baby doll in her new rocker,
Family photo,
"cousins" birthday picture. I have a picture of all my cousins and me in front of my birthday cake every year,
Getting messy and enjoying her cake!
Splashing away (I am sure this is the first of several b-day parties with a pool, gotta love summer birthdays!)
We call her the "baby manager" of the building. She loves walking around the halls, shaking the building keys and banging on the doors. Here is she going over our paperwork, no doubt checking we didn't make any mistakes on HER building's paperwork.
We are loving our new place. It's been busy. Lots of appointments to show apartments, lots of training and lots of cleaning. But our hard work is paying off, we rented 2 of our 4 available apartments out today! Next step is learning how to do move-outs/move-ins.
Eleanora had such a great time at her party. I cannot believe my munchkin is about to be 1, feels like just a month ago I was sitting next to her in the backseat on the way home from the hospital. I can see how some people would feel sad around this time, but she is just too much fun to be sad. I love hearing her say "bup" when she wants "up", walking around the apartment, climbing on furniture, giggle at being chased, taking care of her baby dolls, etc. Toddler-hood is so much fun that I haven't had time to miss babyhood.
My first year of motherhood was all that I expected, but at the same time not at all what I expected. I had wish someone had told me the following as I entered this journey:
- Post partum is much much much harder than people like to talk about. Sleepless nights, pain from recovering from birth (c-section and vaginal alike my friends tell me), figuring out your new baby, figuring out your marriage with a baby, hormones going absolutely nuts, breastfeeding, pumping and no break from it all is a really rough adjustment. You love it and want to press fast forward at the same time. This doesn't make you a bad mom, just a normal one.
- Everyone wants to judge. It took me a good 6 months to stop giving a crap what someone thought of my mommy decisions. People want to tell you the "right" way to do everything. There is no right way, only the right way for YOUR family. Every family is different, what works for some might not work for you. I used to worry about the judgement, and being confident in yourself as a mother comes with time.
- You will not believe how much you love your baby. Sometimes I cannot even believe how much I NEED her. I say to Bryce about 1 hour after she goes to sleep at night "I miss Nora!". Motherhood truly is accepting that your heart is walking around outside your body.
- It's cliche, but it does go fast. Enjoy the moments while you are in them as best you can.
- Mommy instincts are real and should be listened to! Once you are a mother, it's like a whole part of your womanhood is awakened and with it comes mommy intuition. Listen to it.
- You will truly understand "selflessness" and it won't be a struggle or a process, you just will no longer care about anything but your baby's happiness and well being. Everything and everyone else be damned.
Bryce is loving his job, I love my job and we are enjoying caretaking more than we thought. We love our apartment, our neighborhood and walking to the Lake. Eleanora is doing amazing and surprises me everyday with how lovely she is. Things are really great for us!
You are welcome to stop by our new place anytime!
Thank you to everyone who came to the party, Eleanora got such wonderful gifts and we are so lucky to have so many people who want to celebrate her birthday with us.
