Who's It Gonna Be?

One of my favorite hobbies (I guess you could call it that) is trying new foods. I get SO excited when I see a new flavor of Doritos on the shelf, or a new kind of cereal or ice cream or gum, etc. A few weeks ago we tried Peanut a Butter Toast Crunch. Not a fan. Sometimes I like em, a lot of times I don't. 

I love trying new recipes and new restaurants. The bottom line is this: I love trying things.

Apparently this extends to diapers, as I learned this week after getting probably a little too excited to open the new bag of Huggies diapers. You see, we'd been using Pampers up to that point. The Pampers worked well and they had cute sesame street characters on them but I was so excited to try something new. The Huggies also work well. They have Mickey and Minnie on them. It was probably more fun than it should have been opening that new bag of diapers to see what would be on the diapers. I probably get more excited than I should as well when I grab a new diaper out of the bag and I wonder, who will it be this time? Minnie? Mickey? Cookie Monster? Big Bird? 

I need some excitement in my life don't I?

Wu-Wei

Back in the day, when Darin and I were engaged, we took a World Religions class together. Besides getting to see Darin at 8am on school days, competing to see who could get the best quiz scores and watching our teacher teach from on top of the piano in the room... I learned a few things. One of those things has become one of the Darin and Brillante Self Family Motto's. It continues to be so.

WU-WEI

"Wu -wei Darin, wu-wei." 

"Brillante, Wu-wei. Just, wu-wei."

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the concept of wu-wei, shame on you. It is a Taoist concept that means non-doing or non-action, basically, it means to let life take its course. Don't try and change the natural way that things are to happen. Don't fight it. 

I've been reminded by my dear sweet husband of our family motto many times over the past month. For example, at night when I have trouble falling asleep because I know that the baby will start crying in two hours, three hours, four hours...sometimes I feel like trying to fall asleep is pointless because I have to wake up again so soon (obviously not true, just roll with me). Darin turns to me and gives me the Wu-Wei speech. Relax. Just let life take it's course. Don't fight it. 

To me, the below pictures explain Wu-Wei in all it's glory. When it's between 4-7am and the baby does NOT want to go back to sleep in the crib, Wu-Wei. Just, Wu-Wei. Do what works. Don't get frustrated because you would rather be sleeping in your bed. Don't get frustrated because the couch is short. Just let life be. Don't fight it. Do what works.

Is it just me or does Shae's cutey patutuey "i'm in paradise" baby face look like it is saying "ha ha ha...i win again." That you do my son. That you do. (He's the boss. That's just how it is. Accept it).

Accepting

I just had a moment. One of those mom moments that you hear about. One of those moments that makes it all worth it. Just a simple moment. Probably nothing that merits much attention from the rest of the world, but one that I can cherish. Shae was being cranky and as I tried to calm him I pulled him close to my chest with my hand on his head and rocked back and forth. He calmed down and I just kept holding and rocking him. As I did so, I had my mom moment. 

This week I've realized that I need to accept my new role as a mother. I realized that I was getting mad at myself so easily for not being able to spend as much time on school, or for not working as much as I was before, or for not cooking dinner as often as I would like, or all of those together. But then I realized that IT'S OKAY. I can't do everything I did before in the same way that I did before and that is OKAY. 

We went to the temple on Saturday and I couldn't stop thinking about how I need to accept this new role that I am in and treasuring it as the precious blessing that it is. Not gonna lie, it's a pretty drastic life change from one day to the next. I went from being able to work and do schoolwork with no problem for 8 hours a day, to feeding a child for 8 hours a day. And you know what, that is OKAY. 

Some days I feel like I do nothing. Then I hold my child as he calms himself on my chest as he did not too long ago and I realize that I am doing something. Accepting this new role will surely take time, but I'm starting to understand it better and appreciate it more. 

(Even when the kid teases mommy into thinking that he is asleep enough that she will get to sleep and as soon as she lies down, decides he should wake up).

And just for fun, we went on a walk last night and this was the face that kept staring up at us. That's it. I accept him. I accept motherhood. Done. Babies are cute for a reason.

(He smiled at me this morning!! yay!)

Happy One Month!

Our little boy Shae is one month today. One month! It's been a hard month as far as adjustments go for Darin and I. (The sleep deprivation really gets to you). With that said, it has also been a wonderful month holding, caring for and getting to know our boy. Sometimes we stop what we are doing just to stare at him. We always end up turning to each other and saying, "Is he really ours?" He is ours! And we love him. 

Here's what you need to know about Shae at one month:

He loves eating his hands. He gets so excited when he finds them and starts sucking away. I swear, one of these days he will figure out how to put both hands in his mouth at once. He's also started to discover his thumb over the past two weeks. We'll see if that turns into anything.


He hated bath time for the first two weeks. Probably because he couldn't be submerged and mommy and daddy had no idea what they were doing. Now, he loves it (at least that's what we like to think. We like to think quite often that we know what our son likes and dislikes, let's be honest, we really don't). He kicks around and waves his arms around. It's pretty cute.

He loves being swaddled. We've started only swaddling him at night with the hopes that it will help him distinguish "awake time" from "sleep time." It seems to have helped a bit.

 

Doesn't that face just scream: I love to be swaddled! Told you we know our son.

He likes taking some time out of his day to do some intense meditating. 

He's gotten quite a bit better at being laid down but still doesn't like it much. He LOVES being held. He LOVES being in our arms. It made bed time quite hard for the first few weeks. He's getting better. Slowly.

When he is put down he goes from happy baby to sad baby quite quickly. Here's proof:

 

Other facts:

-Vitamin D time is hands down his favorite time of the day.

-Neck stretches are hands down his least favorite time of the day.

-Daddy is wwwaaayyy better at putting him to bed than mommy.

-Poor kid ALWAYS has the hiccups. (He always had them when I was pregnant too and they last forever!)

-He started sleeping for 5 hours straight a few nights ago (crossing our fingers that this continues).

-He's freakin' cute.

We love you Mister Mister!!
HAPPY FIRST MONTH OF LIFE!

We Miss Grandmas

Our boy has the best Grandmas in the world. THE BEST. He misses them. Okay, let's be honest, Darin and I miss them. They saved us those first few days at home with the wee one. What a blessing to have had both of them sacrifice time and money to be with us. They cleaned, cooked, brought us gifts/food, gave us (me!) emotional support and held the boy through the night so that we could sleep. They are both absolutely amazing and we feel eternally blessed to have them in our life.

I have to include Aunt Amelia in this post as well because she has been just as amazing as the Grandmas. She's pretty much Darin's second mom. If it weren't for her he would still be wearing high water pants and shirts with dumb sayings on them. She has also sacrificed a lot for us and we love her SO MUCH!

The older I get the more I understand the importance of family. Family is everything. Life would be a lot harder without them.