another day at the lake

...it's summertime and the living is easy...

today's the day

Today is the day. It's finally come. No more being a kid. No more childhood. I know that may sound weird, since I am a parent myself. You would think that childhood flew the coop the moment I found out I had a bun in the oven. Well, no it didn't. Not completely - not for me. I was 18 years and 4 months old when I found out I was pregnant. It was my first semester of college. I found out over Christmas break, transferred to a local college close to home and moved back in with my mom full-time. Justin and I had already decided we weren't going to get married and move in together. It was enough of a change to deal with understanding the fact that we were going to be parents all too soon; marriage and co-living would only complicate a very delicate matter. And when Sidney was born 9 months later, I decided staying home was still the best choice for us all. I've thought a lot about that decision over the last 21 months. Did I do the right thing by keeping us all separated? Should I have moved in with Justin and Sidney and tried to get our little family up and running from the get go? Did I harm their relationship in the early days by keeping them in separate houses?

I think the answer is no. I was a full time college student who was working full time. Justin hadn't been working at his job for hardly a year when Sidney was born. We both were just learning about bills and life and saving money and all the things that go along with "growing up". It was hard enough on us to try and be the best parents we could possibly be for our daughter; we didn't need to make the situation any harder than it had to be.

I don't want you to think I took the easy way out and stayed home with my mom so that she could pay for everything and give me free babysitting. That's not at all how I took to the situation. Justin & I have payed for everything for that child as though we were living out on our own from day one. My mother has never been my go-to babysitter just because she's there and convenient for me. I've never taken advantage of my very advantageous situation. It's something I pride myself in as a person and as a parent. I've always taken care of my child and so has Justin. We've never relied on anyone to help us with our daughter. If I'm having a hard time feeling proud of anything else in my life, I can always take shelter in that simple fact.

Living at home with Sidney has been a great experience. We've both been able to grow up a little together at home with my mom and her "Gran". Now I feel confident moving in with Justin and continuing our little family all under one roof. There are no feelings of fear or anxiety or the worry that goes along with making possible mistakes. I'm older. I'm wiser. I'm a better parent every day. We're all ready for this step. Sure, it's not how a lot of people do things. Sure, it's taken us a little longer to get to this moment than it does for some people. But this is where we are in our lives. Tonight will be our first official night staying in our house together. Ideally, Justin will come home to supper cooked and the house a little more lived-in than before. But more than likely, they'll be no supper on the stove and Sidney will be watching me have a nervous breakdown because I can't get her crib back together in her new room. Either way, we'll be making some memories tonight as a family together in our house. Finally, our house. It's been almost two years in the making but we're finally here. And I couldn't be happier.

florida vacation

I don't feel like going into detail about our vacation: let me just say this. I took my 20-month-old daughter to the beach. How do you think it went? In all honesty, it went about as good as it possibly could have gone. She wasn't too afraid of the water. She didn't mind the sand getting everywhere too bad. She never really got too hot. She was never too tired by the end of the day. All in all our beach experience wasn't too bad at all! But like I said, I'm not going to bore you with personal beach vacation tales; instead I'll just post up some of my pictures from the trip and let you enjoy those instead!

puppy update #2

SidMo & I had a wonderfully lazy day today and it was great! We slept in, snuggled on the couch watching cartoons - and then very casually decided we'd go ride the chairlifts up at Natural Tunnel. I love living so close to the park and I love knowing almost everyone who works up there; I have a feeling Sidney and I will spend a lot of weekends up there just hanging out and enjoying the outdoors. We also got out in the yard today and played with our adorable Basset Hound puppies! They are 7 weeks old now and we've still got 8 out of 11 puppies left, so we're really pushing hard to get them sold. Lord knows they're super cute but no one wants to be stuck with a pack of dogs (especially goofy Basset Hounds, god love 'em)!! I'm posting up some pictures from our afternoon with the puppies because they're just too darn cute to ignore. Hopefully my life will slow back down soon and I can continue to blog a little more regularly, but until then I'm going to distract you with the sweetness that is smushy, cuddly, wrinkled, long-eared puppies!!! :)






















and here's one of me + sidmo enjoying the hot afternoon :)

a moment to spare

I'm only blogging to say I can't really blog much right now. We're in the midst of our vacation in Ormond Beach, FL & so far we're loving it! SidMo loves the beach - the waves not so much but the actual sand part is awesome for her! She likes being in the water if someone will hold her up, so it's almost perfect for her. We're in the middle of the great sea world debate; who knows if we'll end up going or not!

I'll be back home Thursday so regular blogging should commence again Friday! See you all then - I feel like I have so much to catch up on reading my favorite blogs! :)