I remarked to Matt that if I were still pregnant, July would have seemed excruciatingly slow in coming, but as it stands, with a two-week-old baby in the house and with evidence everywhere of the upheaval of life as we knew it before, we hit the 1st of the month without a single new monthly goal written down and with two blank pages where the last two weeks’ worth of to-do lists should have been.
But I expected this–I expected that I would need a grace period to adjust to life as a family of four, to let my body have some time to recover, to have my schedule broken down so that I can build it up from scratch again.
And to be truthful, I’m going to need longer than two weeks to do all that fully–
But I AM feeling a need to at least get my feet back under me somewhat, to at least ATTEMPT a normal daily schedule again. It might look pretty different from how it was before for awhile, but it will at least help me on a whole lot of levels if I feel like my days have an aim other than “survival.”
Before I get into my current goals for July, however, it’s time to recap how June went. Note: There are some affiliate links with Amazon below, which means that if you make a purchase through those links, I got a small commission at no extra cost to you.
June Goals
Get + install car seat- True, this might have happened AFTER we had the baby, rather than before (like I’d planned). But it got done!
Move sewing cabinet + set up Pack ‘n Play in our room for the baby- Ditto for this one–it happened after we brought the baby home from the hospital, but it did eventually happen.
Preregister at hospital- I’m glad I did this early in the month since the baby came earlier than expected! (And I’m sure glad they didn’t ask for my photo i.d. when I went in to the hospital while I was in labor, like they said they were going to when I registered.)
Precook + vacuum seal chicken + beef- As I mentioned in last month’s post, my mom got us a Food Saver a few years ago for Christmas, and it’s been one of our favorite practical gifts ever. Although I only managed to precook and seal up the ground beef before the baby got here, I had at least vacuum sealed a bunch of chicken breasts, and when my mom stayed with us, she prepared a TON of freezer meals, so I’m totally counting this goal as completed.
Order/buy more bags for Food Saver- When we initially got our Food Saver, my mom bought us a bunch of bags to go with it (and it came with some, as well), but as that was a couple Christmases ago, we were almost out. So I ordered a bunch more on Amazon (the kind you cut and seal off yourself rather than the premade ones, which saved us quite a bit). Now we should be set for a couple more years! (Oh, and if you care to hear me wax poetic even further about our Food Saver, check out this post I wrote on the five products that surprisingly make my life better)
- Put up wood trim above windows in front room
- We picked out the wood pieces and even bought the clear finish we’re going to put on them, but we have yet to do this one. Rollover goal for July!
- Get guest room put together
- I at least had the guest room put together enough by the time we needed it to be (aka, when my mom came to stay with us after I had the baby), but although I got the bed all put together and collected some stuff to put up on the walls, I have yet to actually hang up said stuff on the walls. So…rollover goal for July on the artwork.
- Get kitchen knives sharpened
- Nope. No progress whatsoever on this one. And I’m not even sure if I’ll put it as a rollover goal for July since I’m especially wary of putting down goals that require me to leave the house at the moment…
- List stuff on KSL (local classified)
- I guess technically I took pictures of one of the items for this, but I’m basically counting it as no progress made. I’ll put this as a rollover goal, though we’ll see if I get around to it.
- Go through four areas for 50 Weeks to Organized Refresh
- Another big fat nothing. When my mom stayed with us, SHE did a lot of organizing in our house, but I’m only going to count any progress towards this one when I systematically have gone through four of the spaces and touched every item and decided first if we’re going to keep it, and second, where it should go. I will modify this goal for July, as four areas now seems overwhelmingly daunting.
Try a new cookie recipe- I tried the easiest cookie recipe known to man (since it used a cake mix and like, 3 other ingredients), but I’m counting it anyway!
- Complete a blogging course
- Nope. And I think I’ll have to postpone this one for another month, as I now need to get back into the habit of blogging regularly again before I worry about trying to grow the blog again.
- Make night/nap potty training chart
- Technically, I made no progress toward actually making a chart of any kind. BUT, we were making some progress on night/nap potty training up until the time we brought Mathias home, at which point we’ve experienced a bit of a regression on all things potty-related for Raven. It’s been a bit frustrating, but I’m told it’s perfectly normal. So now, our goal is to get back to where we were before with Raven’s potty training before we try to do the night/nap stuff again.
- Build sandbox for Raven
- Matt was making good progress on this one, but then our belt sander broke, so it’s been halted yet again. Once we’ve sanded and put a finishing treatment on the wood, this will take all of about a single night to finish, but all the pre-building stuff is taking a lot longer than we’d anticipated.
Go to the dentist- I knocked this one out early in the month but discovered–to my horror–that I had two cavities (which I’ll have you know are the FIRST cavities I’ve had on my permanent teeth!). My dentist said it’s almost surely because of how sick I was this pregnancy, and I actually had my follow-up appointment to have them filled the day before I went into labor, so…glad the timing worked out well, at least.
- Go to the temple
- By the time I actually had a weekend open to do this, Matt basically forbade me from trying to go because of how intense all my pre-labor symptoms were. Looking back now, of course, it’s probably good I didn’t try to push it, as I really WAS closer than I thought to having my baby! I’m excited for my nursing schedule to be more established in a month or two so that I can start going again, but I won’t count on it happening until at least August or September.
Go on a date with Matt- We ended up going out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants (for free, no less, as there was an energy-saving company we were interested in who gave us a free meal with their presentation) while our friends took Raven for the evening. It might be awhile before we’re able to get out again sans kids, so I’m glad we took advantage of one of our last opportunities to do so!
Go on a family day adventure- The weekend before I went into labor, we went on a little hike in the canyon right behind our house and checked out all the booths at Summerfest in town right after. (I’m partly convinced this day might have been part of what put me into labor so early just because we did so much walking around, but I’m still glad we went!)
- Finish pricing/about me tabs on my photography business’s webpage
- I did some work on the pricing tab (though it’s still not finished), but I have yet to start an About Me tab. Slowly but surely…
- Create folder for second family photo album + add 200 photos to it
- Sigh. Another no-progress goal. This is one I’ll rollover to July since it seems like something I could handle during this transition phase.
- Label photos in first family photo album
- I did at least start this, though I only got about five photos in (which made me realize that this will actually take me quite a bit longer than I thought!). I’m thinking that once I start some kind of morning routine again, I’ll rotate this task in and just label a few every day so that it doesn’t seem so overwhelming.
Find the rest of the names needed for the temple- Genealogy never ceases to amaze me. After hitting several dead ends, I prayed for a couple weeks to know where to look, and I ended up opening up not just one, but TWO direct lines through Matt’s dad! It’s often really hard to find new direct-line ancestors (meaning, great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents)–it’s much more normal to find aunts or uncles or cousins or descendants of those people–so this discovery has opened up HUGE possibilities! In the space of about two hours, I easily found the dozen or so names I was lacking and then some, with the promise of perhaps a couple HUNDRED more, based on how many kids both of these married couples had. Pretty amazing stuff!
And, as always, here are some other things that got accomplished in June that were NOT on the original list (but that are nevertheless worth noting and celebrating):
- Uh, I had a baby! (Which should count for like a bajillion)
- I bought a macro lens, which was one of my 101 in 1001 goals.
- I’ve been wanting a macro for awhile and had already earned the money from my photography business this year to expense it out, so I decided to buy it before the baby came so I could use it to capture some of his adorable little newborn features. I ended up getting this Tamron 2.8/90mm lens, which came highly recommended as a solid budget-friendly option that still had great quality.
- We got Raven officially registered for preschool.
- Luckily for us, the one local place we were able to get Raven on a waiting list for had a spot open up, so we jumped on it! We’ve actually already pre-paid for the year and everything (since doing that saved us $65 and was like getting a month of preschool free). She starts at the end of August and is soooo excited.
- I started the “get the insurance updated” process.
- Since Matt’s employer doesn’t offer us health insurance, we have to go through the Marketplace, which can be a bit obnoxious to work with whenever a life change happens (like a new baby or a raise, both of which we needed to report). I always hate dealing with stuff like this, but I at least got the process underway of getting Mathias added and of updating all our info. Now it’s just a back-and-forth game of sending in verifications and whatnot and keeping our fingers crossed that our monthly amount doesn’t change too drastically.
- We did a little maternity shoot trade-out with our friends, and I was able to finish up ALL photography-business obligations BEFORE the baby got here, which was a load off my mind!
- There are a lot of the pics from our maternity shoot in this post, but there are also some different ones over on my Instagram, as well.
And now, time for some goals for July (though, like I said before, I’m going a bit easy on myself and not being *quite* as ambitious as normal, though the list is still probably expecting too much):
July Goals
- Write thank-you notes for all the baby gifts/meals that were brought in to us
- I’m terrible at procrastinating writing thank-you notes, though I almost always get them out EVENTUALLY. I’m hoping to just knock them out of the way early this time so I don’t have them stressing me out for months.
- Get a binder for Mathias’s important documents
- One of the most useful and unusual baby gifts we got when Raven was born was from my sister-in-law, who got an accordion binder (kinda like this one) and labeled the sections things like “Official Documents,” “Immunizations, Dr.,” etc. It gave me an instant organization system for the influx of paper that comes with a new baby, and I’m definitely going to replicate it for Mathias. (Seriously, if you’re looking for a great baby shower gift that no one else will think of, give this! It’s inexpensive and highly useful.)
- Read 8 books
- Each month, I try to make progress on some of my 101 in 1001 goals, and since I’ve been reading even more than usual lately because of all the time I spend nursing Mathias, I figure eight is a pretty do-able number for this month.
- Put up wood trim above windows
- Rollover goal from last month.
- Hang up artwork in guest room
- Rollover goal.
- Make a new cookie recipe
- I’m still loving that we’ve got a freezer full of meals to last us a week or two more, so I’m not going to try and get too ambitious with trying out new dinner recipes just yet, but cookies? Cookies I can do.
- Pack away maternity clothes
- I made the mistake last time of packing away ALL my maternity clothes within about 48 hours of getting home and discovered (to my horror) that I basically had nothing that fit. This time, I’m just going to pack away the third-trimester (and some of the second-trimester) stuff, keep out the maternity capris/jeans to wear for the time being, and call it good. There are few things that bug me more than looking at a closet every morning where I don’t know what fits and what doesn’t, so I kind of can’t wait to get this one done.
- Go through ONE area for my 50 Weeks to Organized Refresh project
- Four areas was clearly too ambitious to start out with, so let’s try again this month with an easier target.
- Finish typing up second mission journal
- I was making serious progress on this one right up to when the baby got here (as I was typing up a few pages from it daily as part of my morning routine). I’m itching to get my morning routine started again (seriously, I’m kind of shocked at how much I miss it), but I’m realistic in that I know that in my current sleep-deprived state, it’s probably not a good idea to try and start up a strict morning wake-up time quite yet. I’ve been lucky in that on most days, both of my children nap (or have “rest time”) at the same time in the afternoons, so I should be able to use some of that time to continue this particular project, which is another 101 in 1001 goal.
- List stuff on KSL (local classified)
- Rollover goal.
- Build sandbox
- Rollover goal (though let’s be honest–this is basically ALL up to Matt, as I have done pretty much nothing to further this one’s progress)
- Create folder for 2nd family photo album
- Rollover goal
- Start regular exercise program again
- I hit 6 weeks at the very end of the month, which is when I plan to resume my hip hop aerobics classes (and possibly my kickboxing class). Until that point, I intend to keep walking and gradually increase my distance as I feel up to it, and I also will start doing some light weights and strength training in a week or two, if my body lets me know I’m ready. At two weeks postpartum, I’m already sitting about where I sat at almost two months postpartum before weight-wise, so I have high hopes that the whole process of losing the baby weight might not be quite as intensive as it was last time (when it took me almost a year to lose all of it).
Here’s to the REAL goal of July getting accomplished, though–enjoying our new baby and adjusting to life as a family of four!
