If you’re new around these parts, this monthly series is an exercise in brevity as I try (but not very hard) to summarize each day of our month in one sentence. (Also, I’ve been taking a picture of my daughter–and now my son, too–every day since they were born, and this is a GREAT place for me to share several of those!). Although I’ve almost always included the photo at the top of its corresponding day, the daily captions of what we did and the photos often do not match. (Just to clarify!)
Thanks to the wonderful Rebecca Jo for the post idea!
Sunday 7/1 – Matt and Raven went to church today for the first time since Mathias was born while I stayed home with the baby. Having Raven back into a familiar routine seemed to really help her tone down and be more like her old self (since she’s been pretty difficult since the baby came). It let us see light at the end of the tunnel!
Monday 7/2 – I made my first trip to the grocery store with both kids (totally forgetting any sort of diaper bag in the process), and we met some old friends (the Shipleys) for lunch at Sam’s Club, which was awesome since we don’t see them nearly as often as we’d like.
Tuesday 7/3 – Mathias had his two-week checkup, and while he isn’t quite back up to his birth weight like we’d hoped, everything else looked great (though I forgot–again–to bring any kind of diaper bag! Good thing he just basically stayed asleep the whole time, ha ha). In the evening, Matt’s coworker (who owns a truck) came by to help us rip out some trees/shrubs in the front of our house. While I’m glad the eyesores are now gone, now we have to figure out what to do with the gaping holes they left behind…
Wednesday 7/4 – We drove down to Bountiful early in the morning to make the Independence Day brunch my mom and stepdad host every year, where Mathias was passed around a sea of admirers (most of whom hadn’t met him yet). We stopped by Matt’s parents’ house for lunch and some chatting after, then headed back home for a quiet evening of putting the kids to bed and planting the 5 rosebushes we’d picked up from my mom earlier that day. Apparently, having a newborn makes us Meidells party hard (although Matt and I did at least watch some fireworks outside of our front window together after he’d come in from doing yardwork).
Thursday 7/5 – A day that felt like Monday because of the holiday (which isn’t too bad of a thing, as Mondays always have me in a get-things-done mindset more than most other days). At least Raven got in some fun with Matt when he got home from work, when he took her out in the kiddie pool and they splashed together out in the near-100-degree weather while Mathias and I took advantage of the A/C and stayed inside.
Friday 7/6 – Raven got invited over to a neighbor’s house to play on their blow-up water slide, which she thoroughly enjoyed for about two hours while I got some rest inside (my neighbors are so good to us!). We resumed our normal Friday Grill Night tradition (the first time since bringing Mathias home), and even though it was ridiculous hot and muggy outside, it still felt wonderful to be getting back into old routines (and having barbecued hamburgers).
Saturday 7/7 – A super packed day that started with us waking early to get ready and drive down to Bountiful to take family pictures with Matt’s family (this was my first time being the photographer AND being in the pictures–not an easy task!), then was followed up with some time spent with my parents, a pool party up at Matt’s brother’s house (which I left early since neither the baby nor I was going to do any swimming), and driving back home so Matt could prep for teaching our Primary class the next day.
Sunday 7/8 – Hopefully the last Sunday that Mathias and I will feel like we need to stay home, since he’ll be almost a month in a week. Since Matt took Raven with him to church and Mathias napped like an angel, I actually enjoyed a rather quiet three and a half hours to myself, which was heavenly (especially as the night before was one of the much better nights of sleep we’ve had since bringing the baby home).
Monday 7/9 – A fairly exhausting parenting day between the baby being waaaay more fussy than normal (to the point where I basically couldn’t put him down) and Raven acting up quite a bit again. I did manage to make the grocery store trip I’d planned to in the morning though, which always makes me feel better since life feels a bit more “normal” when we leave the house for at least a couple of hours.
Tuesday 7/10 – We celebrated Mathias’s original due date by having Raven wake up sick with a phlegmy cough, which necessitated that I keep the two kids apart as much as possible. Raven enjoyed the excuse to watch two (!) movies in a row (I almost never let her have screen time), and I enjoyed the time that gave me to read and work on some personal goals.
Wednesday 7/11 – Thanks to the best night of sleep yet and an easier postpartum recovery than last time, I felt good enough that I wanted to go to my Zumba/hip hop aerobics class 3 weeks earlier than planned (at 3 weeks postpartum). Just to be safe, I took it pretty easy, but it felt AMAZING to be working out again!
Thursday 7/12 – Raven was still sick (boo), so while she once again got banished away from the baby and sent to the basement to watch movies (and loved every minute of it), I took on a big decluttering project of all the clothes I own from all three of my wardrobes. I ended up purging two big boxes of clothes, which felt so good that I decluttered a few other easy items (enough to fill another half box).
Friday 7/13 – I got really sick of being cooped up inside the whole week, so since Raven’s cough wasn’t too bad anymore, I took out the kiddie pool for her to play in while the baby slept inside (and I set up my chair in the shade and settled down with I Was Anastasia, which I needed to finish by the end of the week).
Saturday 7/14 – Matt and I have been wanting to hit up some garage or estate sales forever (since it’s something we both just really enjoy doing), and we finally had some spare cash to go! Although I personally didn’t get anything, Raven loved being given charge of some money of her own (and negotiated with the sellers to give her a $3 play laptop computer for just $1) and Matt picked up a couple tools for his ever-growing collection. We then decided we hadn’t had enough fun for one morning after hitting up 3 or 4 sales, so we then went to the garden store to pick up some gallon perennials at a discount so we can start filling in the two holes we created when we ripped out the two huge shrubs in our front yard.
Sunday 7/15 – Since Raven still had a lingering cough, I stayed home from church with both the kids while Matt went and taught our Primary class.
Monday 7/16 – I attempted to take both kids to the park in the morning because it was cloudy and only around 75 degrees out, but after being there for only about 5 or 10 minutes, Raven had several huge coughing fits, and I resigned myself to the fact that this cough apparently isn’t going anywhere and turned us right around to go home (which I could only manage by bribing Raven with the promise of letting her watch a movie once we got there).
Tuesday 7/17 – Went to my hip hop class for the second week, and I was already able to do almost all of the moves at or about at full throttle. Feeling good!
Wednesday 7/18 – A bit of a rough day since we STILL couldn’t really leave the house (with Raven’s cough still present) and with the baby being more fussy than he’s ever been for hours and hours of the day.
Thursday 7/19 – Took the kids to the library (our first time all there together since I had Mathias). Other than my back seriously starting to hurt from hefting the baby around the whole time in the carrier, the outing couldn’t have gone more smoothly! It’s looking more and more like trips out of the house will be about the same level of ease they were before we added Mathias to our family. Also, we celebrated Mathias’s one-month mark by taking about 200 pictures of him (no joke). (More of them in this post.)
Friday 7/20 – We did our traditional Friday grill night out on our back patio, and we let Raven splash around in her kiddie pool after for awhile (and go to bed about an hour past her bedtime). It’s nights like that that just scream summer, ya know?
Saturday 7/21 – I had a little photo shoot in the morning down in Bountiful, so we made it a family affair and took advantage of the opportunity to go spend some time with both mine and Matt’s parents. We always enjoy the opportunity to catch up with our folks, and our moms especially appreciated the chance to snuggle the newest grandbaby!
Sunday 7/22 – Mathias’s first time at church (and my first time back since having him)! Man, it felt so good to go again, even if our Primary class was kind of crazy and I definitely had to re-teach our classroom rules to them (because apparently they can forget a LOT in a month).
Monday 7/23 – We made the mistake of going out on a walk for our family night activity because it initially looked like it was going to be overcast and breezy. WRONG–it ended up being super sunny and about 95 degrees, and we were basically just hot and miserable the whole time. You win some, you lose some.
Tuesday 7/24 – While most Utahns probably had the day off due to the Pioneer Day holiday, Matt went in to work (so that he could take an extra day off the weekend of Thanksgiving, instead), and we literally did nothing to celebrate the holiday this year, which was kind of sad. This was also a super tough parenting day as Mathias was super gassy or something and literally cried himself purple in the face for hours and hours. (Thank goodness he still slept okay that night, though! I was about at my breaking point…)
Wednesday 7/25 – I tried to go to a Zumba class that night (because my usual Tuesday night class had been cancelled because of Utah’s Pioneer Day holiday, I presumed), but it turns out that aerobics classes had been cancelled ALL week long. Good thing I’d fit in two walks to take advantage of how overcast it was this day!
Thursday 7/26 – I attempted to be more fun than I really felt like being in the morning and agreed to drag out Raven’s kiddie pool and have a little morning out in the yard. It took us around 20-25 minutes to be ready to go outside (yeah, just in our own backyard) and have the pool all filled, and then after literally about three minutes, Raven was saying she was done playing outside and wanted to go inside again. But me, refusing to feel like all that effort was for naught, insisted we stay outside for at least 45 minutes to an hour, so Raven rode her bike around, shredded leaves off the trees, and ran to put the baby’s binky in every time it fell out of his mouth. (And I did not get any reading done, as you can see in the pic above.)
Friday 7/27 – We’d gotten an invite from the realtor that sold us our house to attend a company-sponsored BBQ, so we decided to take advantage of the free meal and go. It ended up being a super fun night, as we ran into some friends there from our neighborhood, Raven got to play on the bounce houses as much as she wanted, and Matt and I even won a $25 gift card to Texas Roadhouse.
Saturday 7/28 – A bit spur of the moment, we ended up inviting our friends (the Owens) over for a grill night out in our backyard. Normally we’ve been having monthly dinners with these friends (plus our friend Andrew, who was out camping on this particular night), but we had to put the brakes on them for a couple of months with the whole having-a-newborn thing. While we adults caught up over burgers and the quinoa salad they brought (soooo good), our toddlers splashed each other in the kiddie pool. This is what summer evenings were made for.
Sunday 7/29 – Our Primary class was quite a bit calmer this week, thank goodness, and Matt spoiled me by taking the baby after church so I could get in a bit of a nap (which I sorely needed).
Monday 7/30 – I took the kids to the library in the next town over so Raven could take advantage of the kids’ computers they have, and I foolishly brought a book with me, thinking I’d get in a nice chunk of reading time (ha ha). I’m the eternal optimist, man.
Tuesday 7/31 – Since Raven’s naps have been more miss than hit lately, I decided to try something new and try to put her down an hour and a half later than usual (as she almost always was zonking when we put her down super late for a nap, like after church or something). To kill some time before that, she helped me make cookies, we went on a walk (which I ended up needing to carry her on my shoulders while simultaneously pushing the baby in the stroller because her feet started hurting halfway through), and I let her watch a movie while I (once again, optimistically) thought I’d really tackle the kitchen, which has turned into a disaster zone. But, the baby decided he needed lots of extra snuggles and would like to eat every half hour during the movie, so our kitchen remained as it was. Gotta love how life with kids is a daily lesson in flexibility.
July definitely was full of lots of adjusting, but there’s still something so special about having a newborn that helps you survive all the crazy. Here’s hoping we get a little more sleep in August, though!