Hey everyone!

Dropping in to say hello and share a guest post I wrote for the Breastfeeding Diaries series over at The Girl In The Red Shoes 2 weeks ago. I know, I’m awful for not sharing sooner.

I usually don’t talk about boobs around here, but breastfeeding is hard work and if I can help someone else along the way, I’m going to.

I’ve been working full time for the month of June, plus late hours and even last weekend. Easton has been staying up until 9 or later most nights so that I get some quality time with him, which means I’ve barely had time to shower before its time for me to hit the hay. Our house is currently a land of weeds and unfolded laundry. Hardly blog worthy. Mike and I keep reminding ourselves that we are just two people holding down 3 jobs, so it is okay.

But, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have 4 more days of working full time then I go back to 30 hours a week. I give those of you who work full time and manage to not eat cereal for dinner several times a week major credit. Also, please tell me how you take your coffee and how many ounces per day I should be consuming.

I miss this place and I miss you guys.

The past two or so weeks here have been a hectic whirlwind. So much to say, so little time. What’s the easiest way to tell you about the chaos without putting you to sleep or writing 20 posts? A little life by numbers summary!

1 first hair cut

4 house guests for 4 days

1 stomach bug for me

(sorry there’s no picture ;))

12 trees planted (7 right here)

65 birthday party guests

12 mason jars as centerpieces

75ish cupcakes made

0 pictures taken of party 🙁

5 garlands made

2 shoes muddied from family photoshoot

2 runny noses (Easton & Mike, no picture necessary)

1/2 of a countertop frame complete

2 heads in a hole at the Please Touch Museum

7 bags of stuff donated to Goodwill (and one closet cleaned!)

2 walking legs

1 one year old boy.

Some of these topics deserve more detail (yes, I’m talking about you, 12 trees). We’re hoping to get some good weather over this 3 day weekend to work on our ongoing landscaping project, snap some pictures of the trees and get back to work on the outdoor kitchen. Also, I’m hoping to summarize Easton’s first year in photos and steal someone’s pictures of his party.

But yes, my baby turned one yesterday. Holy smokes.

It’s me.

I didn’t plan to formally say this, but I also didn’t plan to take a break for as long as I did. So, yeah I needed a blogging break.

I hate to bog you all down with the “I’m busy”, woe-is-blogger type of posts, but I also know that many of you can relate. I’ll start out by saying that being a working parent is hard, scratch that, being any parent is hard. Mommy guilt is a killer. I’ve said it before when my maternity leave ended and it’s gotten better in a lot of ways. But in many others ways, it’s still hard. This blog is one of those ways.

I still struggle with how to fit this blog into my “new” life. Don’t get me wrong, me, myself and I love everything about what I write here. I will always be watching HGTV, browsing Pinterest and coming up with things to change around our house. That is what I love to do in my spare time. The problem is that it’s not about me anymore.

I went down to part-time in about October, but I still work 30+ hours a week. Two weeks ago, I worked full-time for several days and it sucked. I don’t know how many of you do it. I don’t know how I did it for months. My longer working hours contributed to my break from here, as did some family commitments, technical issues, Easton not sleeping well for a few weeks and just being dang tired and it goes on and on. And repeat. You’ve heard it all before.

Truth is, about 3 Mondays ago I started my week as usual, checked my blog stats and started to plan out my projects and posts for the week.

Monday: Photograph weekend project before Easton goes to bed but not after his dinner or when he’s in clingy meltdown mode

Tuesday: After bedtime edit and upload photos, hoping computer cooperates and doesn’t continually freeze, write post

Wednesday: Work on new project after bedtime

Thursday: Photograph, upload and post? Eh I’m short a day here

Friday: Collapse.

Saturday/Sunday: Scope out new project and work on it during naps/bedtime

As I planned out my week, I got mad at myself for not accomplishing enough over the weekend. “I should have painted x!” “Why haven’t we finished the office?” “We need to get those shelves up!”. I stopped myself for a minute. What the hell am I doing?

I wish this blog was my job, but it’s not. I would love to work hard enough that it is my job, but I know that idea is far fetched. I don’t want this blog (or reading other blogs) to make me feel like I’m not good enough– not working hard enough, not crafty enough, not organized enough. I started to feel like that, so I needed to step back.

This blog is fun for me and if it ever gets to feel like work, I need to step back and take a deep breath. My time with Easton when I get home from work is for Easton. I didn’t go down to part-time to blog or for projects. My weekends are for Easton, not for this blog or projects. If some weekends I have loads of energy and I’m inspired to get things done, then great! If some weekends I just want to take a nap with Easton, then I can’t get mad at myself. Easier said than done, but I am trying.

I’d rather give you posts that I am proud of than posts I threw together because I was tired…or because I had a great weekend with Mike and Easton…or because I was busy rolling around on the playroom floor when I should have been photographing in natural light.

When I had this discussion with Mike a few weeks ago, I asked him why I should keep blogging. His response was a) because you like it and and b) because some day, when we look back, we’ve created an amazing journal. Maybe I don’t post 6 days a week like I did when I first started (say whaaa?), but just like real life, this blog has peaks and valleys. Lately, more valleys than peaks, that’s okay with me. And that’s all it has to be.

Just when I started to get back into my former blogging habits, last week happened. Mike and I spent last weekend prepping for the hurricane– making sure our new generator worked and had gas, stocking up on food, picking up prescriptions for the cats. We felt pretty prepared and so, we picked up some paint and started working on our project for Young House Love’s seasonal Pinterest Challenge.

We also spent some time last weekend at our neighborhood Halloween party. Easton was a pirate.

He had all of the clothes and the day of the party I ran to Michael’s and picked up a solid red bandana and a skull one. I tied the red one around his head with a ponytail holder and used the skull one as a belt. They cost me $1.79 each… Halloween costume for under $4 🙂

We planned to post about our Pinterest Challenge project on Monday night, but our power went out at 4:30.

If you saw the recent picture on our Facebook or Instagram pages, this is what we were working on…

Oh yes, those bookcases live on. Mike finally gave them the caulk and paint they deserve. Some areas still need another coat, so we’re not ready for after pictures yet. Oh and the wall is covered in primer because… we decided to change the color of the room too.

Once our power was out, we surrendered and put down the paint brushes. After Irene last year, we were more prepared this year with a small generator, flashlights and candles. We also set up a pack ‘n play in our formal living room, which is on the main floor, towards the front of the house (away from the tall trees in the backyard) and kept Easton as far away from windows as we could. We closed all of the bedroom doors upstairs to keep the cats from hiding up there incase a tree fell or we had a tornado warning.

During Irene, I barely slept all night because the wind, sirens and transformers exploding were terrifying. We knew Sandy was expected to be much worse for New Jersey. Once the storm started to get bad, Mike herded the cats into the former office/soon to be playroom. We wanted to make sure that if something happened to the house, or we had to make a run for it, we knew where to find them. Easton slept in his pack ‘n play and I slept next to him. I was blasting his white noise machine (which runs on battery) so I slept for a few hours.

Thanks to social media, we were very aware of how things were going around the state all night. We were able to keep our iPhones charged thanks to our generator. Once it was daylight and the pictures started popping up in our Facebook newsfeeds, we were in shock. Our yard was covered in leaves and branches, but our basement stayed dry this time. We were very, very lucky.

Our power was only out for a day– less time than it was with Hurricane Irene last year. At one point we were told it would take a week, so we were so excited when it came back on so quickly. We had Easton all bundled and sleeping with us for just a day, since it was cold and we had no baby monitor. Our hearts break for those who weren’t so lucky. And there are so so many of them.

My parents are still without power and the area I grew up in was hit pretty hard. New Jersey is a small state, so it seems that we know people in every badly affected area. My family is originally from Hoboken and I still have family there, Mike is from Staten Island and still has family there, we have friends down the shore everywhere and we spent time with Easton in Manasquan and Seaside this summer.

If you haven’t seen pictures of Seaside, that boardwalk is not even there anymore. Once we got power back I watched the Weather Channel for 3 days straight. We spent much of the remainder of the week hosting some family that didn’t have power and needed hot meals and showers.

It seemed wrong to post about superficial things, particularly our house, when so many people close to home (literally and figuratively) are suffering. We also planned a road trip to attend the Young House Love book signing in Connecticut on Friday, but because of gas shortages and traffic getting into NYC (which we’d have to cut through), we decided not to go. Everything was sort of put on hold last week, including my job, which was without power all week. Seeing familiar areas destroyed really put everything in perspective.

I know we have readers from around the world, so if you’re looking to donate to Sandy victims, the easiest option is to text “Red Cross” to 90999. If anyone would like to give another way or has any creative ideas, feel free to email me and I’ll see what I can do for you 🙂

I realized something recently. While I’ve been writing this blog for over 2 years and talking about myself, I’m not exactly sure who is reading.

I think I always assume that my readers know me personally (hi mom!) or are the faces behind blogs that I regularly read. But then as I get more emails and scroll through my Facebook page, I realize that I don’t recognize many of the faces there. Okay, I don’t recognize over 400 of the faces there.

Nope, don’t know any of those lovely people. But I want to 🙂 (in a non-creepy smile, way that is) Funny note though, when I first went to steal that screen shot I had since logged into Facebook and the names that appeared were indeed the few people I do know who like this page. Threw me off for a minute.

Anyway, obviously, our lives and blogging habits have changed in the past four months. While we still have many, many projects in the works and my mind is constantly going, our time for them has decreased. As I receive questions about our crib choices or cloth diapers, I’m beginning to think many of you are new parents as well and in the same boat? But I can’t be sure unless I ask!

(moodboard from this old post about my baby shower)

So here’s your chance to fess up. The questions below can be answered completely anonymously– no email address or blog URL needed. I just want to know who I’m talking to when I type these things, why you come here and what you want to see in the future.

Here goes!

You know what’s funny? My class last semester included survey design. We had to make a survey and pass it around to make sure it was a good survey. You know, that all options were included, the wording was easy to understand, not offensive, that there was one clear answer for each question. I just disregarded everything that I spent 18 weeks learning and typed whatever I wanted. I tried to compensate with open ended questions at the end. My professor would be so disappointed right now.

Anyway, please respond if you’re reading. If there’s anything you’d like to tell me that I omitted, or anything you just want to tell me, please do! I love hearing from you guys, even if it sometimes takes me forever to respond 🙂