Blake - And our crazy, happy, dreams-realized, never-again year

I recently picked this blog back up after a year or so hiatus..and boy (pun intended) what a year you've missed. To be honest the only reason I started this blog back up again is because I've found myself routinely coming back to it to check out my own advice on what worked for my daughter as far as sleeping, eating, nursing, etc. That's when I realized the last post I made was about giving up the binky when she was 19 months old. She turned 3 in August.

So where have I been and how did I get here? There's no easy answer, really because 2011 has been the most stressful and best year for our family all rolled into one.

Let me back up a little - in August 2010 my husband and I finally took our long awaited fifth anniversary trip to Hawaii. We left Olivia with the grandparents for two weeks and took the trip of a lifetime in Maui and Kauai.  (I blogged daily from Hawaii on our trip and later turned my journal into a scrapbook). We'd been holding off on baby #2 until after the trip because I didn't want to be pregnant on another vacation. In May 2011, Blake was born. (Since I know you're doing the math - I'll just make it easy for you - yes, he was conceived in Maui.)

I had a relatively easy pregnancy at the beginning, despite running after a toddler during those tiresome and nauseous first trimester days. But then in December a job transfer back home turned our world upside down. For 12 years my husband and I had been taking jobs and making moves getting closer to 'home' but this job would finally land us there. The place we'd both grown up, the place all our family still lived, the place we'd always wanted to raise our family, the place we'd finally be able to call home again. I'm getting all teary typing this remembering the emotional day we found out we'd finally be making our last move...we had more than half a dozen moves and six states between us in the 9 years since college. This was it.

It was December 24 and I was barely 4 months pregnant.  Bob was starting his job after the holiday season and he'd be out of town and not able to come home every night. I had a toddler, a dog, a growing belly, and a house on the market - which we stood to lose a lot on. These were the most stressful, sleepless nights of my life.  Within a few days we decided it would be best if we all moved out of the house and simply left it staged to sell. On January 9 we moved out and into my mom's house with the plan that we'd be into something by April - giving us at least a month before the baby was born.

Thank the real estate Gods our house sold in 2 months, bought our dream house, and we are now 'home.'

A month later we were complete - Blake Robert was born May 16. And yet again our world was turned upside down by all that an infant brings.

And that my friends is our crazy, happy, dreams-realized year that I will never do again!