Diaries of a working stay-at-home mom

The main benefit of my job is that I get to be home with Farrah. She is my reason "why." Every appointment I hold and phone call I make is to ensure that I get to be home with her. However recently, as I mentioned in a previous post, I started putting her in daycare one day a week. Every Thursday I drop her off at daycare in the morning and pick her up in the evening. I'll admit, it's very hard for me to do. I'm selfish like that I guess :) But I know she needs to get past this clingy, scream my head off when mommy leaves phase. It also allows me one solid, uninterrupted day of work and we need a financial boost so it's helping us a lot. I have to tell you, I've never accomplished so much in one day as I have the past few Thursdays. I know it's because in the back of my mind I'm thinking "If I'm going to be away from my baby, I better get as much out of this day as I possibly can." I line up back to back appointments, make phone calls, catch up on emails and usually find time to squeeze one chore in before I go pick her back up. She's been hit or miss with how it goes at daycare. There's been times she's been totally fine, there's been times when I get a report that she cried the majority of the day (insert mommy heartbreak here), there's been days when she's a combination of both.
This was one of the first difficult mommy decisions I've had to make and although it's tough, I know it's the right choice. Because I'm able to accomplish so much on those Thursdays, I feel like the rest of the days when I'm home with her, I can really enjoy her so much more because I'm present. I'm not thinking about what I have to get done, or checking my emails while watching her out of the corner of my eye.
Yesterday, Abe was working and I had a Mary Kay party scheduled at 1pm at my house which was perfect because she was napping while it was going on. When everyone left, I put my sweatpants on and spent the rest of the day crawling around with her, I let her pull every blanket out from under her crib, all of my underwear out of my underwear drawer and all her clothes out of the bottom couple of drawers. Then we read pretty much every book we have. Then we went to Rubio's for dinner and I shared my bean and cheese burrito with her. This is one of her favorite treats. She loves cheesey tortilla and beans and guac. (who doesn't really?)
When it was time to put her to bed, it was the first time I can ever remember that I was dreading putting her to bed because I wanted to keep playing with her. I'm usually so tired myself that I look forward to putting her down for the night and having a few hours peace. It reassured me that I've made the right choices for myself and my family. It was a good day.

Walk walkin

She officially took her first steps! It was so fast and took me by surprise that I didn't even have time to react let alone take a picture or grab the video camera. She was standing in our room hanging on to the corner of our bed and I was sitting on the floor a couple feet away and the cat was over by me and I was petting her so I think that must have been her bait. All of a sudden she just let go and took 2 steps towards me and then stumbled and I caught her. I guess she was just ready. Now I've been having her stand and then letting go. For the most part she either takes one step and then sits, or she just sits. I think it might be a while before she's walking all over the place but for now, a few steps here or there is fine. The picture of her in the black shirt with the pink pants was taken just afterwards (She didn't pee all over herself, she spilt her water all over.) I felt like I had to memorialize it somehow. The rest are just randome pics from the last month or so including one of me and hubbs on a recent date night. I'm hoping to post some video of our girl walking very soon!

14 months

A few days late on this one. I've really been slacking on taking pictures. It's like, her first 6 months there was always a camera in my hands, the next 6 months when she did something cute I grabbed my cell phone and used the camera to take a quick pic, and now I don't even know where my camera is. This pic is one of the few I have taken recently and it is one of my new faves. Her face just melts my heart. She is such a sweet little girl.

I can't believe my little itsy bitsy peanut that came home from the hospital is now 14 months. Here's what's new with Miss 14-month-old Farrah:

-Still not walking on her own, although she walks all over if we're holding her hands, if she's got her little push cart toy, or if she's holding on to some piece of furniture. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she is.

-Lucky for us she never took a pacifier so we don't have to go through the process of getting her off of one. As soon as she turned one we started weaning her off the bottle and we did it relatively quickly so I'm proud to say we are a bottle free family!

-No more formula either, only whole cow's milk. She doesn't particularly love it or hate it. She'll drink a little bit, but doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as her formula.

-Loves these mini cheese raviolis I get from Trader Joe's. I have to limit them to a 2-3 times per week. She would have them every meal if I offered it. Also loves bananas, puff cereal, sweet potatoes, apples with peanut butter, yogurt, carrot juice (but not carrots), peas, corn and turkey meatballs. She's a good eater. Definitely her dad's kid (who am I kidding, I love to eat too!)

-Sleeps from about 8pm-6:30 everyday with a 2 hour nap from about 12:30-2:30.

-Says mama, sometimes dada, and pretty much everything else is "ca" or "ga" or somewhere in between the two. We started several months ago pointing to our cats and saying "cat" and then she caught on and started pointing and saying "ca" and so now everything is "ca." I hoping she starts learning other words soon. "Ca" is starting to get old.

-She knows where her eyes, mouth, nose and toes are and if you ask her to point to them she will.

-Loves to read, loves our walks to the park followed by the swing at the park.

A funny story to sum up what a big girl she has become...

We decided to put Farrah in a home daycare one day a week. We felt she needed the socialization because she would cry non-stop when I would leave and I didn't want my kid to be "that kid." Plus it's allowing me one extra day to work and right now we need the $ so I figured I would be willing to sacrifice one day a week with my baby if it meant she would become more independent and I could contribute to our income. So I found a mom through my mom's club that does a home daycare. She's very nice and Thursday's she only has 2 other babies close in age to Farrah so I thought Thursday's would be perfect. Last Thursday was her first day. We were starting her with only a partial day instead of a full day to ease her into it. I always hear from working moms what a hard time they have going back to work and here I am so fortunate that I can make this choice and it's only one day a week and yet I was still a little sad about it. I knew she's be fine I was just going to miss her. So Thursday morning comes and Abe drops her off because I had a facial scheduled (probably better that way so I didn't turn into a hot mess when I had to leave). He said she did fine and he was able to sneak out without her noticing. I go to pick her up about 4 1/2 hours later and expect her to squeal with delight when she sees me and come crawling over, and instead when I walk in I see her sitting on the floor with 2 other babies playing with some toys and she looks up and sees me and then looks back down and continues playing as if I wasn't even there. Can you believe that? Here I was worrying that she was having a meltdown the whole time I was gone and she didn't even notice my presence or lack thereof!

All I could do was laugh. I guess we are doing something right. What an independent, smart, little toddler she's turning into. I love her love her love her.

What will you choose?

Ok so I warned you with my last post that I might be posting about my business from time to time so those of you that are only here to see cute pictures of my baby, you can go check on your farmville or something.

Ok so. I know there are lots of you out there that read my blog anonymously. Here's your chance to come out of hiding. I'm working on building my Mary Kay business and Mary Kay has just come out with this fabulous new tool called the Beauty Profiler that allows you to input your skin information, colors you like, lifestyle, etc and it will give you tips, suggest products and colors. It's amazing! You can check it out Here

Now here's what's in it for you. For every 5 people (including yourself) that you have fill out a beauty profile and save it (you must save it or I don't know you did it) you will get ANY item you want at 1/2 price!!!! There should be a spot for them to put comments and they can put your name so you get credit. If not just email me at kristanaldjian@gmail.com Might I suggest our Microdermabrasion set. It's my fave. So tell all your friends! I'm so excited about this. It doesn't matter if you life here in the Bay area or on the east coast. The more the merrier! :)

Ready... set... go!

B is for busy

Which we have definitely been recently. I hate that blogging has taken a back seat but it's for a good cause....money! haha I've been busy with my business so I haven't been able to keep up with some things and this is one of them. I do apologize.
Here are some pictures from the holidays that I never posted.
We decided against a Christmas tree this year so instead we decorated our pack n' play and put the presents around it. Our dog Jimmy Choo is in the pic too.... smile Jimmy!

Farrah opening a few of her presents

but really the wrapping paper was her favorite part.... "books for Christmas?" lol

This kid loooovvvees her some puppets. So of course I went all around town looking for puppets. Those things aren't easy to find. Target, Kohls, Babys R Us, and Tuesday morning didn't have any. I finally found a couple at the Toys R us one town over and of course, she doesn't even like them that much. Oh well I tried.

Then for New Years we went to Arizona to visit with Abe's Dad. I didn't get too many pictures with our camera but we did get some good ones of the fam with my sister-in-laws camera so pics to follow. There was a good one of Farrah and I on New Years eve though. She went to bed at her normal time and we ended up going to bed around 10:45 because we were exhausted. I feel so old saying that. The first couple nights she didn't sleep well because of being in a new place so we were up several times the first couple nights. This is my "I know it's 7:30pm on New Years Eve but I'm exhausted, is it too early to go to bed?" face.

Just to give you all a heads up, I'm going to start posting every once in a while with fun things regarding my business. Makeup tips, new product info, etc. So if you're only here to see pictures of the baby... well then, don't read them I guess.

Starting off the New Year with a photo shoot

You know how I love my photo shoots. Well this time we went with the professionals. Peters Photography located in the Bay Area did our wedding pictures so we decided to go with them for Farrah's 1 year pictures. It was our first time having professional pictures taken of her. I wish we would have gotten them done when she was a newborn but we more than made up for it in the amount of pictures we took of her.

We were standing behind the photographer trying to get Farrah to smile and she just kept giving us these looks like, "what the heck is going on?" The things we do that always make her smile weren't working. She was just staring. So we got a few of her smiling and the rest are just of her beautiful face which I don't mind at all. There are almost 200 pictures but I narrowed it down to a few (ok more than a few) of my fave. Enjoy!

What I've learned in my first year as a mom

I laid in bed last night thinking about the past year of my life. I think for any woman, the first year as a mom is probably the greatest change in your life you could possibly have. I got to thinking about all the things that I've learned, all the things that have changed, and I was surprised to realize how much of it wasn't baby related. So many things about my life are completely different than they were a little over a year ago. I thought I'd take the time to write them down so I can look back at this time and show Farrah how much she's changed us for the better. Here they are... some are on the serious side and some sound a bit silly, but they are true just the same:

• The first few weeks seem like they will never end. I won't lie, I was pretty miserable at first. I was so tired, nervous, overwhelmed, and emotional. I didn't think it could get more difficult than those first few weeks. What I've come to realize as time has gone on, is it only gets more challenging, but that you are more prepared. While the getting up every couple hours may be over, I now am dealing with teething, and tantrums and watching her every second to make sure she doesn't put something in her mouth or get into something she shouldn't. The majority of my stress from those first few weeks was just in not knowing. I think with the next baby those first few weeks will be slightly (only slightly) less stressful.
• Friends are more important now than ever. Yes, it might be a little more difficult to find the time or the energy to get out of your door past 7pm to go have dinner and drinks with your best girlfriends, it's also more necessary for my own sanity now more than ever. I realize now how important it is to maintain those relationships and I also realize the difference between a true friend and an acquaintance. True friends I have time for, acquaintances not so much.
• Before Farrah, I hated it when people would say "when you have kids, you'll understand." I hated that people would think I was just this silly naive lady who was clueless because she didn't have kids. While I still won't ever say that to someone without kids, I now see what they meant by that. Abe and I still ask ourselves what the heck we did with our time before we had a kid.
  
• The best baby toys aren't actual toys... they're boxes, remotes, dvds, pretty much anything they're not supposed to play with. Don't waste too much money on toys.
  
• EVERYTHING is a phase. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad. She loves her bath one week, hates it the next. Loves her baby Einstein DVD one week, hates it the next. Gets up at 2am on the dot for no apparent reason 10 days in a row, and on day 11 is back to her usual routine. Now that's she's started with the tantrums, I close my eyes, breathe deep and say to myself "this is just a phase, this is just a phase." (Even though I know this one might last a little longer.) The faster you can learn this as a new mom the better.
• A new level of empathy. That mom in the store whose kid is throwing a tantrum and she yells at the kid?... probably not a bad mom just having a bad moment. Someone can't make it to a special event because they're super busy?... don't take it personally, they probably are very busy and I know what that's like.
  
• Getting out of the house is vital to my sanity. I used to think I was a homebody but if I don't get out of the house for a couple hours before Farrah's nap and a couple hours after her nap, I might go insane. I'm the first to admit I've carried her around Babys R Us playing with the toys in each aisle and then leaving having bought nothing. You can steal that idea, I won't mind ;)
• I've definitely developed a whole new level of respect for my husband. Our relationship is completely different than it was a little over a year ago and that's a good thing. I can certainly see how having a child can strain a relationship but I can also see how with the right 2 people it can strengthen their relationship. I'm proud that I'm part of the lucky few whose relationships have strengthened in this past year and although it hasn't been easy, it has been a lot of fun.
• The biggest thing I've learned this year is how strong I am as a person. Me, as a person. Not Abe and I, not me the mom, not me the businesswoman, but me, the person. There's something about this little face looking up at you that is counting on you, that makes you get yourself together when you don't feel like it and do what ya gotta do to make a life for her and for your family. Multi-tasking is my middle name ;) But I'm learning now that while there's a time for multi-tasking (ok well a lot of time), there's also a time for unwinding and doing, well, nothing. I learned that lesson the hard way. It's not easy being a stay at home mom, and a working mom wrapped up into one. Oh yeah and there's that husband of mine and that house that needs my attention too. :)
  

By far the most challenging and rewarding year of my life wrapped up into one cute, pint sized, brown eyed package. I'm as ready as I'll ever be for the toddler years. I hope I can have as many good things to say about them when I'm done with that phase as I have for this last year. Something tells me it's going to be an interesting ride.