Random Bits and Pieces

I'm tired today. For no real reason to be honest, just tired. Kaylee is FINALLY starting to sleep better. Out of the past 10 days she has slept through the night (about 10-11 hours) 7 nights. The other nights she has gotten up once. Compared to what she was doing the past 4 months this has been SUCH an improvement. It is so nice for Vince and I to actually be getting some sleep again. (now I am just praying that I didn't jinx this by saying something)

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Last Monday I put in my 2 weeks notice at work. Totally random, I know. I wasn't planning on it. I honestly wasn't even out looking for a new job, it just kind of fell into my lap.

It's kind of a long story, but basically I got offered a position to work as an office manager for a company I used to work for during breaks while I was in college. It's corporate run medical practice. They currently own 9 offices and are in the process of acquiring a couple new ones. One of their current managers left unexpectedly so my old boss contacted me about the position. I will be training for a few months before running one of the offices. I am really excited about it. The office is still very close to home and the hours are about the same. I will actually get home a little earlier every day which will be nice. Also once I am done with training it will be a pretty significant (to me at least) pay raise, which is one of the main reasons I couldn't pass the job up.

So, even though I am a little sad about leaving some of the people I work with now, I am really looking forward to this new opportunity. I start on March 1st so this will be my last week at my current job and then I will have a few days off between to relax and spend time with my baby girl.

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This weekend Vince and I got so much stuff done around the house. We cleaned top to bottom. Like really cleaned. Cleaned the baseboards, shampooed the carpets, organized closests, put away old baby stuff that K doesn't need anymore, etc. We finally hung a new picture in Kaylee's room that I had bought about 6 weeks ago and has been leaning against her changing table ever since and put up some pictures in our room that have been there since we moved in SIX months ago. 

It felt good to get it all done. Now I just need to get the motivation to paint all 3 of our bathrooms. Maybe I will try to get at least one done on one of my days off next week. Maybe.  

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We signed Kaylee up for swim lessons. She starts next Saturday and I can't wait! She loves bath time and is constantly bending over and dunking her head under the water so I am really hoping that she will enjoy actually being in a pool.

I am however not looking forward to putting on a bathing suit. I am WAY too pale for that right now. Also, I only have bikinis. I don't own a single one piece or tankini and I think I would feel odd wearing a little bikini to an infant swim lesson. So I guess that means I will have to go bathing suit shopping, which I hate, sometime before next weekend.

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Speaking of bathing suits. I have not lost as much weight as I want yet, but I am working on it. So far I have lost 7lbs. Which I am happy about, but I just can't seem to lose anymore right now. I am going to try to start spending more time working out and see if that will help some.

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Ok that's really all I have got for right now. Now back to work (which by the way it is very hard to stay motivated when I know I am leaving in a few days).

A Simple Valentine's Day

This is my 12th Valentine's Day with Vince. Yes, twelve. But this is my FIRST year not getting him a gift.

We decided a couple weeks ago that since there was nothing either of us wanted or needed this year, it kind of seemed like a waste of money to get anything. So we agreed to not do gifts, we said not even cards this year.

Well of course last night on my way home from work I started feeling bad that I hadn't done anything so I at least stopped and picked up his favorite candy and 2 cards (one from me and one from Kaylee) so I could have something to give him this morning. And I'm glad I did. Because when I came downstairs this morning there were a dozen roses and two cards (one from him and one from K.. yes we are both cheesy like that) sitting on our kitchen island.

No big gifts, but still something small to let each other know we were thinking about one another. And tonight we are getting sushi, a bottle of red wine and watching the Bachelor that we recorded last night.

It's been a sweet simple Valentine's Day.

Don't get me wrong I always liked the bigger gifts in the past, but I still like this Valentine's Day just as much.

Plus this is the first Valentine's Day we got to share with this little girl and really what more of a gift could we want anyways ;)

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

A Little iPhone Recap

I know, I know I have been MIA again.

I didn't mean to take a break from blogging, but sometimes it just happens. So anyways I'm back now and I figured what better way to recap than by scrolling through my iphone pictures from the past couple of weeks, right? ;)

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We have had a couple family dinner date nights. Thankfully Miss Kaylee been really good lately about going out to restuarants and just sitting in her highchair playing with toys. It's been nice to get to go out to eat once in awhile.

We have been working on trying new foods. Pasta seems to be a favorite right now.

I have gotten flowers from the hubby (twice actually). 

We have stopped using any kind of baby bathtub or bath mat and she now just sits in the tub like a big girl.

The past 2 weekends while the baby napped I have curled up and napped with this guy.

We had a fun night out at Vince's work party.

A few weeks ago Kaylee had a reaction while taking antibiotics. So last week I had to take her to the allergist for testing. Over 3 hours of lots of tests and crying... all to find out it wasn't the medicine. Fun. Poor baby.

This past Saturday night Vince and I had a date night just the two of us and on Sunday we stayed home in our PJ's and watched the Superbowl with our favorite girl.

Yesterday was my mom's 50th birthday and we sent her these cute cupcake flowers (since her actual gift is a little late and won't be there until tomorrow). She also got an iPad from my dad so now we can FaceTime. I'm not sure who is more excited about this me or her ;)

And basically we have just spent a lot of time playing and cuddling with our little lady.

So what have you all been up to lately?

Plan M

I randomly saw this quote the other day and I thought it was kind of perfect for some things going on right now.  So I saved it on my phone and sent it to Vince. He called me and jokingly said "So what are we on now, plan M?".

The thing is Vince and I have been together since we were 15 years old. Basically since we were just kids. So over the years we have made lots of different plans and that have either not turned out like we thought or that we chose to change. And last week was one of those times where we decided to make some more changes. Career changes, for both of us.

I have mentioned before about my personal debate about whether or not I wanted to work full time anymore. To be honest even though Kaylee is now 8 months old I still hadn't made up my mind. I was starting to lean heavily towards switching to part-time. So last week I went to talk to my office manager about what she thought about it and what sort of schedule I could make work. But when I went in there before I could even say a word she said she was glad I came by because she had been wanting to talk to me about changing my position.

Our company is made up of about 90 offices nationwide. My office manager runs our office and one of the other local offices. She wants to transition me into running her other office. It's a promotion which means more money, but also more work. It is a position that I really want and would have jumped at without a second thought before. Now, I'm not sure I want to take on a bigger job. So, after talking to her about it I am going to slowly start transitioning in February so that by spring I would be able to take it over. If I want to. She said we would use these next few months as a test run to see if it's something I want to do or not. If not, then I can stay with what I am doing and go part-time. It's completely up to me. I'm not going to lie I am a little nervous about taking on a bigger role, but also a little excited and happy that she trusts me to do it. So for now I am taking it one day at a time and seeing how it plays out.

Like I said we both made changes last week.

For the past 2 years Vince has been working 2 jobs. Not because he had to, but because there wasn't anywhere else to move with his old full time position and he wanted to switch to a different career. So he had to start at the bottom with the new company and work part time until he was able to move up. He has worked so hard the past couple of years trying to earn his spot. Well before the holiday he was finally moved up. He quit his other job and was back to only working 1 job. It's what he had worked is butt off (literally, he lost 40 lbs because of all the work) trying to get to for the past 2 years. And now that he finally had the position he wanted, he hated it. Seriously. It was a really hard thing to see him work so hard and be so disappointed. He wasn't going to switch jobs, he said he would just deal with it. But hating your work is miserable and I didn't want it to be like that for him.

So last week after a lot of talking we decided it was best for him and our family if he quit. We are lucky that his mom's company was able to take him on full time so that it was an even an option for him to quit. He is now in the process of looking for something else. We have a pretty good idea of where he will end up, but I don't want to jinx anything until that's finalized.

Honestly, I am just happy to have my husband working a normal schedule so we can actually see him again. 

So for now we are both working on figuring out "Plan M" and seeing where this takes us. 


Happy Monday!

Friendship

I've always loved this quote and find it to be so true. I don't alway get to spend as much time with my friends as I would like, but I know that they are always there no matter what.

I think I get so busy with working, being a wife and a mom that I sometimes forget how important it is to still make time for my friends too. Lately I have been lucky in the fact that I have gotten to spend a lot more time getting together with some of my closests friends. Whether it was going away to see some of them, having them come over to see Kaylee, or having a friend come over with her husband so we can all hang out together, it's definitely been nice to see more of them. It's amazing how just spending a little more time with them can really make me happy. 

I want to start making more of an effort to do more things with my friends. Everyone needs some quality friend time every now and then :)

Happy Friday! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Busy January

This year has started off extremely busy. Which is why I haven't posted much recently.

The past 3 weekends we have been traveling. We went to Avalon, NJ for New Years with Vince's family, Vermont to go skiing the following weekend with my family, and then this past weekend I went down to DC on Friday night so I could go dress shopping on Saturday for my friend's wedding. The past few weekends have been a lot of fun, but also exhausting. I am looking forward to a quieter more laid back weekend coming up.

On top of all of that work has seemed none stop hectic lately. I'm honestly not sure why. It's always like that at the very end of the year, but usually by January things start to slow back down to a normal pace again. Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later.

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Kaylee is sick. AGAIN. You can tell just by looking at her that she feels miserable.

She was acting ok on Saturday night when I got home from DC and she went to bed like normal. But at 11pm she woke up screaming and that didn't stop until a little after 2am. She was exhausted from all the crying by then and finally passed out in my arms, where she stayed asleep until morning. So we went to the urgent care center on Sunday and the poor baby has bronchitis (with the croupy cough) and a double ear infection. Ugh. I just want winter to be over and her to get healthy again.

I hate when she's sick. The ONLY upside is that she is super clingy when she isn't feeling well and just wants to be snuggled. These days cuddling is rare since she usually just wants to be on the floor playing, so I am trying to at least enjoy getting to just hold her more. 

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I dyed my hair brown yesterday. I get bored easily and like to change my hair a lot. Vince's cousin came over and we went to CVS and got some dye. The first time we did it, it was a a lighter brown and too much of the blonde was still showing. So when I went back the the pharmacy to get Kaylee's medicine I picked up a darker color and did it again. That made it look so much better. I'm happy with it. I've always liked being dark. Unfortunately my hair doesn't usually hold dark color too well so if I decide to keep it I will have to dye it quite a bit. So knowing me I will be probably get sick of that and be blonde again by summertime. But for now, I like the change.

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Sometimes I feel like I don't give my husband enough credit for how much he does. He works about 60-70 hours a week, he's great with Kaylee, he helps with the cleaning, the cooking, you name it whatever I need him to do he does without complaint.

This weekend I was going to originally wait until Saturday to leave for DC, but he called and told me I should go Friday night when he got home from work. He said I needed time with my friends and a night to be just me. I have never had a night away from Kaylee before because I always get too nervous about it, but he was right I needed it. I obviously missed her, but it was nice to just get some time with the girls.

There were multiple times this weekend I found myself stopping and thinking about how grateful I am to have him in my life. I need to take the time to tell him that more often.

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All the TV shows are finally back. It's kind of sad how happy that makes me. My dvr is already packed again. I am really looking forward to catching up on some of it this weekend (and maybe today if Kaylee takes a nap).

OK well that's about all I have for now. I hope everyone had a good weekend! Happy Monday :)

My Personal Struggle

A friend of mine at work has been trying really hard to lose weight. So far she has dropped about 25lbs mainly just by starting to exercise regularly.

Friday last week she was in my office talking about wanting to join Weight Watchers to lose the last 20lbs. She wanted someone to do the program with and since she had heard me talking about wanting to lose some weight too she asked me to do it with her. So on Friday we both signed up. I honestly didn't even really look at it much until Tuesday after the long weekend.  

I put in my height and weight and I am in the "healthy" weight range for my height, but I am pushing towards the top of the range. I would ideally like to be closer to the bottom. I made my goal to lose 20lbs. Realistically I think I will be happy if I can just lose about 15.

I want to explain WHY I personally decided to join. At first I wasn't going to post about this but I seem to be getting a lot of questions when I tell people I joined WW. Even my mom and Vince questioned me when I told them. I know I don't need to lose weight, but the thing is I want to. And if I am going to do it I figured I should make sure I do it in a healthy way.

The reason I want to lose the weight is more of self confidence issue rather than a number on the scale.

After Kaylee was born I struggled. 

It's taken me awhile to be able to admit that and say those words out loud. I got pretty depressed for awhile. You may have noticed I completely stopped blogging the first few months and that's why.

Around 6 weeks after I had Kaylee my Doctor diagnosed me with severe PPD. I honestly do not think that I was "severe", but I was depressed. I literally did not talk to anyone but Vince about it. Not my best friends or even my mom. I kind of shut the world out for awhile. I was embarrassed and it was a really hard thing for me to admit I was going through.

It really had nothing to do with Kaylee, I love being a mom more than anything. It had more to do with other things going on at the time. I don't want to go into the details about it, at least not right now. But about the time Kaylee was 4 months old I started to feel a lot better and by the time she was 5 months old I was able to talk to my friends about it some. I had a pretty long conversation with 2 of my best friends from college while they were visiting one weekend. About a week later one of the girls sent me a book she found about PPD.

It may sound funny, but it was the book Kendra Wilkinson wrote after she had her son. I never would have thought to read her story, but it really did help. She wrote a lot about how she struggled with PPD afterwards and a lot of what she said hit home. One way that she was able to get back to feeling like her normal self was through diet and exercise. She wanted to get her self confidence back. And that's where I'm at now.

I feel happy and healthy, but I am still missing something. I want to have a positive self image again.

So without dragging this post out anymore than I already have, that's why I joined Weight Watchers. To work on myself. To be able to feel confident when I look in the mirror again.

I have no idea how much of a challenge it's going to be to lose the weight, but I know that I am ready to try.