Hi, friends! It feels great to be “talking” to you again after twelve weeks! It’s such a blessing to be able to take as much time off blogging as I feel that I needed and wanted after baby girl arrived. That flexibility is one of my favorite parts of this wonderful thing that I’m lucky enough to call “my job.” But I’m so happy to be back now! I’ve been itching to get back into things for weeks, but we’ve had a SUPER busy month (lots of traveling, family visiting, etc…), so I decided to wait until that was all over so I could really put my all back into blogging without quite as many distractions. Aside from the three adorable distractions that I currently have on the reg 🙃.
SO – the main thing that obviously needs to be covered – baby Harper! Her full name is Harper Rae Chesson, and she was born on July 14th. It was a whirlwind day that started in me going to the hospital thinking I was in labor. Turns out I wasn’t, I was having a gallstones episode. So the day started with me being extremely sick and ended with us deciding to induce labor because I was 39 weeks and having repetitive gallbladder issues. They theorized my pregnancy was triggering the issues, so we decided to go ahead and push the labor along. The day started out horrible, but it ended up being such a special and fun birth experience. Maybe my favorite out of all three!
Since then, we’ve just been living life and adjusting to being a family of five! Harper is such a sweet girl, and she’s by far our easiest baby yet. Thanks to that, it’s been a really enjoyable transition (for the most part – DEFINITELY full of some ups and downs). I think the main factor contributing to the smooth transition is Seth’s paternity leave. Another HUGE blessing, Seth’s company offers SIXTEEN WEEKS of paternity leave. How amazing is that?! Much different than what we had with Ford and Colt. It’s honestly just been so nice. So much family time, so much help with the transition – I will be very sad when it’s over!
A question I get a lot is what the boys think of her. They are absolutely OBSESSED. These two images paint an accurate picture 👇🏻
Obsessed. Especially Colt (the little red head). I do want to be careful not to paint this time as all rainbows and butterflies and make it seem like things have been perfectly easy because that’s not real. It hasn’t been all easy and sweet; it’s just been life – a mix of SUPER hard moments, SUPER beautiful moments, regular, every day moments, and just making the most of each day and taking each one as it comes. Our life does not feel simple right now, but it is so, so, so very full.
It’s been a crazy several months for all of us (meaning people in general) with the virus, shutdowns, the election, etc…We just try our best to stay positive, remember what matters, not get overwhelmed, and raise our kids the absolute best we can in a world that is pretty wild right now. It’s a day at a time, week at a time, month at a time situation. But despite all the crazy, we are absolutely loving this family of ours more than ever right now.
So – the plan from here is to get back to blogging as normal. Ideally we’re talking two new recipe posts a week like I was doing before and lots of activity on Instagram (new posts and re-shares of old recipes from the blog). BUT – we’re going to just take it a week at a time and see what works for our family. So that’s my plan, but I’m going to have a lot of grace for myself/family if it doesn’t quite work every week just how I want it 😉.
Congrats
Thanks, John!