growth – Katie: Homemaker

02
Jan
2017

2017 Goals

Like many people, I enjoy spending some time at the beginning of the year drafting goals for the next 12 months. 2016 was a great year in some aspects (Ben potty trained and started school! We road tripped to Disney and Colorado!) but there were some hard bits as well, like Teddy spending time in the hospital with viral-induced asthma. There’s no doubt that there will be similar ups and downs in the coming year but perhaps having lived through 2016, we’ll be better prepared to deal with them. Looking back on my personal and our family life over the last year, I’ve come up with 3 goals to help focus my energy in 2017.

Less Waste

I’ve grown frustrated by how many resources I waste due to carelessness or laziness. I buy but don’t cook food because it didn’t feel convenient and it needs to get thrown out. I sit on my phone or computer instead of making use of the very little productive time I have and the house and family suffer for it. My goal is to waste less by planning more. If I plan our meals better, less food goes to waste. If I set daily goals, I don’t waste time trying to figure out what I should be doing with my free time instead of just doing it. This is a pretty far-reaching goal since the “less waste” mentality spreads into so many aspects of my life (waste less space in the house by purging things we don’t use, use up the craft supplies we have on hand instead of buying new, etc). I’m hoping there will be some positive financial side effects from this goal as well.

Grow My Business

I started working as a virtual assistant (VA) for Brian Krogsgard at Post Status in 2015. I’ve always had the capacity to work more hours but haven’t made an attempt to promote my VA skills and expand my client base. That stops this year. My goal is to increase my client load by 2 and max out my available work hours. As a subsection of this goal, I bought a domain and started creating a site by myself to promote my work. Marketing myself is a huge stretch; I didn’t know it would be so challenging! I foresee lots of learning in this area over the next year.

Complete One Large House Project

We bought and moved into my grandparent’s house in the summer of 2012, a few months before Teddy was born (I don’t recommend moving during the third trimester). We painted, cleaned, and did minor renovations very quickly so we could get settled with our then 22 month old before the new baby arrived. Since that summer, we have done very little to improve the house. It’s in great shape but, as expected since it was owned by people two generations older than we are, there are lots of aesthetic changes we’d like to make to make it fit our family better. I think this means we’ll finally be replacing the flooring in the kitchen, dining room, and bedroom hall to something more kid friendly (we currently have cream colored carpet in the dining room!).

Do you set goals or make big plans at the beginning of the year? What are your goals?

03
Dec
2014

Two Months

categories: Growing Boys

My head tells me that Teddy was just born yesterday but my eyes are telling me something completely different. It’s so hard to believe how fast he is growing!

Teddy is two months old today but doesn’t go to the pediatrician until next week so I don’t have any fun growth stats for you yet (I’ll update when I do). I haven’t even gone for my postpartum follow-up appointment yet. The doctor who delivered Teddy is probably the busiest OB at the practice so it was hard to reschedule my appointment and I will, no doubt, have to wait quite a while to be seen. I’m feeling pretty good except for the complete lack of weight loss but that’s another post entirely.

Teddy started out an inch longer than Ben so it shouldn’t surprise me that he is wearing 3 month clothes earlier but I’m still sad about it. My tiny baby is a beast! He’s wearing all 3 month clothes except for pants. He’s pretty slim still, even though he has very kissable rolls and dimples, so pants slide right off. We’re using size one disposable diapers at night and have already packed away all the small prefold diapers in favor of the 5 fitted diapers + covers and 7 BumGenius all-in-one diapers in the stash. I’m still wrapping my head around how I want to split the stash of BumGenius pocket diapers between the two boys but that will happen soon since Teddy is well within the size range.

Teddy consistently wakes up to eat only once during the night, usually between 5 and 7, depending on when we go to bed. He eats, burps, and goes back to sleep with little fuss or effort on my part. We haven’t used a shield for a few weeks (YAY!) so those are packed away now. We’re starting to loosely implement a 7:30 bedtime to get him used to having set sleep hours but success is hit and miss at this point. I feed him and Brian changes his diaper, puts on PJs, and swaddles him and we put him down in his Rock n Play (highly recommended, especially for a second kid) until we go to bed.

Teddy is a smiler. He loves to smile; smiling is his favorite. He has a hard time not smiling so he can eat or keep his pacifier in his mouth. He smiles at all three of us but it’s especially heart-melting to see him smile at Ben. Ben loves to help Teddy play in the gym (Teddy is not as big of a fan, however), throw clothes down the clothes shoot, bring Teddy pacifiers, toys, books, or other things Teddy doesn’t play with yet. I’m looking forward to how things change as Teddy grows up and becomes more of a playmate than a novelty. Ben is really a fantastic big brother and a great helper most days. His molars are taking their sweet time coming in so some days are horrible (looking at you, yesterday, with your 20 minute nap) but the times that Ben throws his arms around my neck and asks for kisses and hugs that make up for the rough stuff.

That’s all I can think of for now. Any questions?