Swimsuit Challenge

I smile as I take in the smell of the sunscreen

The sound of the splashes from children around me

The coolness of water with the warmth of the sun

Now knowing that harsh winter days are done

But the comforting thoughts I soon find are stopping

As I remember I still have to go swimsuit shopping!!!

This Messy Mom poem just came to me today while playing outside with the kids. Yesterday we hit 90 degree weather for the first time this year and so I got out all of our swimsuits to play in the sprinkler. I had to wear my maternity suit, which is really like a little black dress.

I love the water, but like most women I do not like swimsuit shopping. I dread it. A few weeks ago when I saw that the Gap outlet had swimsuits half off I wanted to snag a great deal while I could.

Unfortunately, I think what was half off was the actual swimsuit and not the price. Even the one pieces look like an infamous Jennifer Lopez dress. This photo was taken straight off of Gap.com


After my experience at the Gap I went directly to Face book and asked if anyone knew of where I could find a decent modest suit for my postpartum body. I got a lot of responses and I now feel like there is hope. My goal is to find something with a great support up top since I am breast feeding (need I say more) and some tummy coverage for my new to the scene stretch marks, and a bottom half that can cover my bottom. Oh yeah, and I would prefer it not look like something that would be all the rage at the retirement facilties and I want to find it by Memorial Day. Is that asking too much? Is anyone else in this predicament or are you all fortunate enough to have a suit that still fits?

Wish me luck as I embark upon this dreaded journey, and let me know if you have any pointers or tips to share. I will keep you all updated on how it goes.

2 Months

SJ is now 2 months old. She is definitely showing a lot more personality giving little smirks and cooing. She weighs a whopping 12 pounds and the thicker she gets the more she reminds me of myself as a baby. She sleeps all night other than a quick feeding 5 hours in.

We had a church picnic on Sunday and took a photo with all of the babies born within this past year.


We did the same thing with Z. This photo was taken about 2 years ago and 4 of us have had another baby since then.



I have slacked off quite a bit when it comes to taking photos of SJ and I don't think it's because she is the second, but my good camera is broken and it's discouraging. So, today I decided to get a couple quick snapshots to show everyone what she looks like now. Luckily big brother was more than eager to help get some smiles out of the little one and he did a great job at it too.

Stolen Numbers

A couple of weeks ago my mom told me about how her debit card was stolen, but she never lost it. It wasn't even like they had the numbers and were using them to do some online shopping, it was as though they had a copy of her actual debit card and she could see everything that they were purchasing. This included gas, groceries, and a Red Box rental. Red Box of all things! Fortunately the bank was onto the dirty rotten thieves and my folks didn't have to pay for any of it.

Then today I got a call from my bank because there was some suspicious activity on my card. I called back right away and they asked if I had done a "test run on my card at Home Depot". I said absolutely not, I haven't done anything at home depot. I have know idea how it all works, but the lady mentioned something about fishing for numbers. Apparently a couple of one dollar charges from Home Depot showed up as fraudulent in their system and I am so thankful that they caught it because I went online and sure enough hundreds of dollars were spent on my card from Publix and TJMaxx which are stores that aren't even local to my area and I have never used my card at. Right now my business account is $300 in the negative, but I am filing a report tomorrow and was told that it should all be credited back to my account. I hope so because I don't think you can be much more broke than I am right now.

These aren't the criminals that you see in movies, stealing fancy cars and exotic pieces of art from museums. It's almost like my grandma got a hold of my debit to pick up weekly groceries and check out the senior specials from their favorite bargain retailer. Shoot, if I wouldn't have cancelled my card they probably would have hit the drug store to pick up their medications. It's so strange, and very unfortunate.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

My My My...

There is so much going on right now that I have a lot to talk about, but not much time to do it.

My job with the magazine that I work for is not looking too promising right now. I emailed my new boss a couple weeks ago to touch base and make sure I would still resume my assignments next month as stated in the maternity leave agreement, and she casually responded by telling me that other photographers were doing those shoots now going to be shooting both of the magazines that I have been photographing for 2 years! You might be thinking "She can't replace you during your maternity leave for no reason", but I am freelance, not employed directly by the company, so she legally can kind of do whatever she wants. However, ethically this would be wrong so I emailed the person above her and it's been all kinds of crazy office politics and mayhem ever since. I have a meeting about all this on Tuesday (she "stood me up" for our phone meeting this week, so we rescheduled). I should have more info though this coming week. You can pray for me, it's all been very difficult, but I know I've grown from this experience and it's not even over yet.

My little boy is going through some growing pains of his own. It's attack of the terrible twos and I am ready for it to be over. We are also potty training, so that's another topic I would love to expound on in the near future. Other than that he is doing great and still totally loving his new baby sister.

My midwife told me yesterday at my postpartum checkup that I've got to work on getting that gap closed up that happens from the separation of ab muscles during pregnancy. It's a pretty common thing for pregnant women, but you only have a small window of time before it becomes permanent and can get filled up with fat. Getting my body back after baby number 2 is a whole nother ball game. With Z I pretty much bounced right back. I know it's only been 8 weeks and it's only 10 extra pounds, but I've got a good size pooch that I would like to take care of so that I can fit back into my summer wardrobe.

Those are just 3 of the things going on in my life right now and topics that I hope to write about soon. For now it's time to get back to my offline duties as the messy mom.

Earth Day

Last year on this blog I celebrated Earth Day all week and said that I would make earth day an annual tradition for our family. So yesterday J and Z planted raspberry and blackberry bushes. Then this morning we got the kids all ready,

filled up our reusable bottle,

slipped into my "green toes" which are earth friendly shoes (thanks Hannah, I have gotten so much use out of these!)

and off we went to the Dallas Earth Fest.



I am no where near the status of die hard tree hugger, but I do care about the environment and I want to teach my children to be good stewards of this planet so that my grand children and great grandchildren can enjoy it just as much as we do.

Happy Earth Day everyone.

An Easter Full of Firsts

I still have not done an Easter blog post and there are so many things to store in the memory bank from that weekend that I'd better not put this one off any longer.

The day before Easter Z had his first egg hunt. It was a community wide deal at the local park and it was packed. We got there just in time for the 0-2 age group. There were so many kids and parents that Z hardly had a chance, but he did manage to snag a few eggs from some of the higher patches of grass. What shocked me was the parents that were zipping through gathering eggs for their toddlers. Some of them seemed to take it very seriously and almost pummeled over some kids. Then afterwards they furiously cracked open all the plastic eggs to see what they had collected. These were grown adults! It just blew my mind.

It was a beautiful day so afterwards we went to the lake to have lunch and feed some ducks, or as Z would say "we went to eat the ducks". He kept getting confused. It was hilarious.

On Easter Sunday we went to church. SJ wore a dress for the first time.

We had my mom do some snapshots of us in the backyard in front of the wisteria.


Unfortunately it was a gloomy day and the flowers look way better in real life.

Z was spoiled with baskets, eggs, and candy given to him by his grandparents. Even one of our neighbors put together a little easter basket for him.


I thought it was a wonderful way to celebrate SJ's first holiday and she must have agreed because to top it all off she ended the night with her first real smile!
*


*I didn't have a camera ready when she smiled for the first time, but I caught it a few days later.

Meet SJ

If you follow this blog at all you know that when I write I call my husband J and my son Z and since we have had this latest addition in our lives I have just been calling her by her name (Sedona) because S didn’t sound right. I thought about doing two letters, but all I could think of was "baby Sedona" or "baby sister", but "BS" was certainly not an option for my daughters nick name. This was almost as hard as choosing her real name (not really). Now that she is about to be 6 weeks old I think I've got it!

I watched The Blind Side for the first time last night. I know I am behind, but movie watching isn't exactly on the top of my list of priorities right now. Anyway, I absolutely loved it and in the film (and in real life) there is a boy named is SJ which stands for Sean Jr. and I liked the way it sounded and since it is her initials from here on out Sedona Jean will go by SJ. I am not worried about anyone seeing our names, I have talked about that before especially since I am no longer “writing for the masses” or participating in memes and blog carnivals. I have decided to keep the nicknames though because it’s easy, and I’ve been doing it for nearly two years now.

You’ll be hearing about SJ a lot these days because with Z he had his own website that I kept up with until he was two and so I am kind of substituting that with blogging. Here is a copy of the birth announcement we sent out of our little miss SJ...