What We’ve Been Up to Lately: An Update

It has been a bit quiet on the blogging front for the past few months.

Mostly, because I spend my days playing, nursing, singing, and napping with this handsome dude. This past month, I tried really hard to figure out how to balance motherhood, house work, sleep and virtual assistant work. Achieving balance has been a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I am finally starting to find a bit of a rhythm. Now that I have that nailed down a bit more firmly, one of my goals for November is to start posting more regularly on Dandelion Pie! I have a lot of fun posts lined up including a day in the life of Gideon, some fun recipes, and a few posts about budgeting. If there are any other types of posts you would like to see–let me know!

But first, I wanted to just give a little recap of what is going on in our household these days.

What’s Bethany been up to?

As I mentioned, I have been getting back into my virtual assistant work. Right now I am working for three bloggers, and I am about to add a fourth. I do most of my VA work while Gideon is nursing or sleeping, and I’ve even done some work while I bounced him in the lillebaby.

I’ve really been struggling to figure out this new mom life. In the past, I’ve taken a lot of pride in accomplishing a lot throughout the day, bringing in money, having a routine, and being a perfectionist. Taking care of baby G has made all of these things a lot harder, if not impossible. I have had many days when all I have accomplished is taking care of him, which is definitely a full-time job, and the most important thing right now! I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I am no longer in control of my schedule every day, and I’ve been learning to hold my plans loosely. That being said, I still feel a lot better on the days when I accomplish something–even if it is just taking twenty minutes to organize a cabinet, read a book or go for a walk!

I’ve been trying to take my stay-at-home-mom job more seriously. I was super excited about becoming a stay-at-home mom: I couldn’t wait to finally have the extra time to create a beautiful, restful home, cook everything from scratch, and manage our money well. But then I had a C-section, and spent weeks upon weeks barely able to walk down our stairs. Now that I am pretty much back to normal, I’ve been pushing myself to start doing more of the things that I dreamed about, even if it is a lot harder with a baby! I’ve been cooking, and baking a lot more, taking our budget super-seriously, and attempting a bit of housework (although that one is still a struggle!).

I’ve, also, been working on a few dreams of mine every day. These include: getting better at photography, starting a podcast, reading more books, learning Tongan, and exercising daily. I’ve been taking baby steps to accomplish these, and it feels so good to be chipping away at them!

What’s Saia been up t0?

My hunky hubby is still working full-time as a supervisor at a semi truck-washing company. This job is only something he’ll be doing short-term, until he goes to grad school. He doesn’t love the job, but we are grateful that it is paying the bills. For the past month he’s been working six days a week to earn extra money, and we’ve been throwing extra cash at both his student loans, and our savings account.

After he gets home, Hubs often goes to workout with the wrestlers at our alma mater multiple times a week. Gideon and I even went with him to the gym the other day! He lifted weights with friends, and G and I walked around the indoor track for an hour. It felt so good to get a nice long walk in!

He has, also, been studying his music textbooks every evening. He will be applying for Grad schools (for a master’s in Music Theory) this year, and he really wants to be prepared.

Several of you have asked about the status of his psoriasis. You’ll remember that last year we went on the Autoimmune Protocol diet (you can read those posts here) to try to heal his skin. The AIP diet didn’t help at all, so we’ve spent the last year trying different approaches: we consulted a dermatologist, went to a doctor, applied steroid creams, did allergy testing, took antibiotics, switched jobs, did a ton of research, and nothing seemed to make any difference. I finally ordered the only book I could find about healing psoriasis naturally, and a few weeks ago we started a diet to heal his gut. Within a week a patch of psoriasis had healed, and we’ve seen small signs of healing since then. We are very hopefully that we’ve finally found an answer for his poor skin. 

What’s Gideon been up to?

Gideon is growing bigger every day! He is growing entirely too fast! Within the last few weeks, he has become so much more interactive. He really watches what is going on around him, and it is so much fun to see him discover the world!

One thing that has really tickled us about him, is that he is so profoundly touched by music (like his Papa!). On several different occasions, a song has touched him so much that his eyes have welled up with tears, his chin has quivered, and he’s alternated between huge teary-eyed smiles, and a super serious face. He has reacted this way several times when I’ve been singing along to JJ Heller’s When I’m with You lullaby, and on another occasion when my sister and I were watching a musical. It is really amazing to see!

That’s just a few things we have going on in our neck of the woods at this point in our lives.

What is going on at your house this month, sweet reader?