I have been meaning to write a post that isn’t just a weekend recap for…. um five months?? I haven’t had time or motivation and with everything going on in the world and our lives, I’ve felt a fundamental shift in what feels worthy of writing about. When there’s a pandemic and a shooting in Boulder but also just so many fun and wonderful Dempsey moments, is the book I’m reading or the show I’m watching or the dinner recipe I’m cooking really that important? No but also yes, so I’m going to try to be better about sharing those things too. Starting now!

Motherhood

First, some Dempsey updates. He is five months old and his little personality is shining and it’s my very favorite thing ever!!! He knows what he wants, guys, and what he wants is my breakfast bowl, my coffee mug, my cell phone, my beer glass and he would like to put all of that in his mouth. It’s so funny and he is very vocal when he does not get those things, ha ha! We are going on three weeks of sleeping through the night and it has not gotten old. I’m amazed and delighted every time I wake up and discover it’s morning. He has also gotten much much much better at napping. He almost always goes down easy and though he still has some shorty catnaps, for the most part they have gotten much longer. He is still not really rolling, but soon I hope. I’ve been thinking back to his first days, weeks, months on this Earth and I really feel so much more comfortable and confident in my mothering abilities. It helps that he smiles at me, puts his little arms around my neck when I hold him, plays with my fingers and touches my face and hair when I feed him. Gah, he is just the absolute best!!!! I also think that work-life balance has gotten much easier and I have a semi-handle on working from home with a baby, especially on those days when we are on our own.

Reading

If you know me at all, you know I am always reading like three books at once. Right now, I’m juggling a Little Women re-read, A Promised Land by Barack Obama and I just finished the audiobook of Know My Name by Chanel Miller and… well, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, which we were reading to Dempsey but also to ourselves 😛 I honestly wasn’t expecting much from Know My Name and since it’s so hard to get myself to read non-fiction I decided to listen to it. Chanel narrates it herself and I was BLOWN AWAY by it. It’s a few days later and I am still having trouble putting all my feelings into words. Chanel has such a way with words, such a beautiful (but also heartbreaking) way of expressing herself. I want to thank her for her words, for her strength, for her vulnerability, for sharing so much of herself with us. It means more than she will ever know. If you’re so inclined, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend a read or a listen.

A Healthier Relationship to Food

Before I got pregnant, I thought I had a pretty healthy relationship to food but being pregnant forced me to confront some things and maybe realize I wasn’t fully there. I’m not saying I have it all figured out now but I had been living my life around some rules that I didn’t even realize were there. Weird thoughts about how often I ate out or how often I ate meat or when I drank alcohol or had dessert were still in my mind and I’d been doing that for so long that it felt normal. I’ve literally thrown out all of those rules and it feels so much better, so much easier, so much happier. Beer on a Tuesday? Yes! Talking myself out of dessert? Never! Probably helps to have a tiny human around, observing and eventually mimicking our food habits but damn, feels good to be in this place. I want to stay here forever!

And Speaking of Food… Cooking!

Man am I ready for “spring food,” aka not heavy winter comfort food. Meals that involve fresh herbs and produce that isn’t squash! I’m going through a freeze-dried strawberry phase (energy bites and granola!) and wholeheartedly embracing salmon after having an aversion to it basically my entire pregnancy. And I know I have mentioned it a ton already, but I bought way way way too much wing sauce from Fire on the Mountain for the Super Bowl, so we’ve been having wing night every couple of weeks and it’s been such a fun tradition. I think we should keep it up even though we finished off our sauces. I know we have a little ways to go still, but I CANNOT wait to be in summer produce season with a baby who can finally eat foods. I hope he loves peaches as much as his mom!

Looking Forward!

Have I mentioned Hannah is a literal angel and has found vaccine appointments for so many of our family members and just yesterday, FOR US!!!! Joey, Wayne, Chad, Betsy, two of our co-workers and I all got appointments for THIS WEEK and I cannot even tell you how happy and excited I am. I booked my appointment around 3 PM on Monday and was SO DISTRACTED for the rest of the day! I cannot wait to hug my best friend or go out to dinner with my husband or celebrate my sister’s birthday with my family or pass on those antibodies to my son. The idea of returning to normal life honestly doesn’t feel real but I am trying to wrap my head around it and I feel very very excited and just a little bit anxious about being busy again 😛

Eating good, sleeping good, feeling good! That’s how I’d sum up our weekend because we had really good take out, made a really good salmon dish, ate really good wings and… moved Dempsey into his own room! I was really really trying to hold out until the six month mark but I’m such a light sleeper and I felt like WE kept waking HIM up if we rolled around early in the morning. No one likes being up at 6 AM on the weekend! It’s only been three nights but it has gone SO WELL. I’m so proud of him!

This little boy has been a hoot lately! He wants our drinks, our bowls, our phones and he wants them NOW! In preparation for feeding him solids (hopefully at six months), we’ve been sitting him in his highchair when we eat dinner and I gave him an empty bowl and cup to entertain himself with but he definitely still wanted Joey’s beer, ha ha. Also, we ordered from FNG and I really really dig that place. Drinks and entrees were amazing! After we put Dempsey to bed, we queued up The Father and even though I was making fun because we always have to have that one Best Picture nominee that’s about an old person, I kind of liked the movie. It was almost thriller-esque in the way it was formatted and Anthony Hopkins is just so good.

I wasn’t planning to but as we were going up to bed around 11 on Friday, Dempsey woke up crying, so I fed him one last time and then he went right back to sleep in his crib and slept until 7:30 AM when we got up!!!! What a good baby! Needless to say, we were all in happy moods that morning. We made some banana waffles for breakfast and they tasted so metallic and I could not figure it out. Later on I asked Joey if he maybe put baking SODA instead of baking powder and he did. Oops!

The rest of the morning involved outdoor runs for both Joey and I (separately, of course) and lots and lots of smiles from that sweet standing boy. Have I mentioned I love him??? I’m at a point where I can finally make it through my run without walking. Now about increasing my mileage or speed… Ate a vegan roasted veggie bowl for early lunch then headed into Louisville to see my mom for a massage. “Your poor back” is a real thing she said to me and TELL ME but it was so nice to see her and get some relaxation time. Dempsey was just going down for what ended up being a two hour nap when I got home. Joey got to work outside, which I know is his happy place, and I got to watch an episode of Run BTS, which is absolutely my happy place.

After my post-massage shower, we took Dempsey and Andi for a walk then made salmon with horseradish-mustard sauce and Brussels sprouts for dinner. SO GOOD! We had a little play time in the nursery after dinner and Joey was helping “Demsy Thou” spell his name which is absolutely not how his name is spelled! We read him a bedtime story — and by that, I mean we read ourselves a few pages of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and I promise to read more baby appropriate books by the time he can understand anything we’re saying — then went downstairs and watched Whiplash (we hadn’t seen it since we saw it in the theater and it holds up!) and some of SNL even! I did NOT feed Dempsey before we went to bed so he was up and hungry at 3 AM but then went right back to sleep until 7:30 AM again.

Good morning, sweet baby! Fed Dempsey, then fed ourselves. Sassafras is SO fast when you order take out and I love that! Got an order of beignets that really made me wish we were going to New Orleans like my mom and sister are in May. It’s going to be so fun to take Dempsey some day! I spent too long wondering how they make those chicken fried eggs too. Dempsey was yawning and rubbing his eyes at the table so Joey swooped him upstairs for a nap and then he proceeded to just lay in his crib smiling and babbling to himself?? Too funny but then by the time he fell asleep he’d been awake for so long and I think it set us up for a series of short naps and an overtired baby for the rest of the day.

My sis and Wayne came over that afternoon and we sat outside for a bit then went on a long walk around the lake with Dempsey in the baby carrier and he seems to enjoy it so much more now that he can face outwards! We hadn’t seen Wayne in so long! As soon as they left, Dempsey decided to become lively and smiley, go figure! Made oven-roasted wings for dinner and finally finally used up the last of the sauce I over-bought for the Super Bowl. We’ve been putting Dempsey down for bed later since A) he can be awake longer now and B) it’s lighter longer, so we have more playtime with him post dinner and it’s been SO FUN. I put him to bed solo since Joey had a fantasy baseball draft and then we watched an episode and a half of Boardwalk Empire (Season 3, Episode 11 and I was NOT prepared for how it started!!!) and I went upstairs to feed Dempsey and go to bed myself while Joey stayed up to work late 😦 Just endlessly amazed at how easily the transition into his own room has gone for Demps! Though he was awake at 6 AM this morning, eek!

This week is a busy but exciting one with a retirement party for one of our employees, Opening Day, Joey’s birthday and Easter. Here we go!