Find Your Happiness

The children (with a big help from their Dada) gave me a beautiful bouquet of stargazer lilies and iris flowers for Mother's Day. I wanted to capture them in their full glory and Amelia kept photobombing my photos. I had to crop her little fingers and leg off of most of these. But in the end, I stopped fighting it and just let her be near the flowers. Amelia loves flowers (even weeds!) and they just make her so happy. For Mother's Day, I wore the flower pin Nathaniel made at school to church. I love that it him so happy and proud. The three of us went to lunch after church and Nathaniel kept saying I could pick the place since it was Mother's Day. He said we could go anywhere I want... well, anywhere except for sushi. ;)

My husband took this photo of me and our little one during that Mother's Day photoshoot that I guilt everyone to doing :) Edited differently and I'm loving the canvas/painted feel. And speaking of canvas, I ordered the first photo in a huge 20x30 canvas! (Go here for the Instagram pic ).

For my fifth Mother's Day (counting Nathaniel in utero), I was treated nothing less than a royalty by the men in my life. I was showered with love, appreciation, gifts and all day was Mommy's-choice. But I really only asked for one thing: a family photo. To be honest, it was really a gift I can only give to myself. It was a challenge for me to step in front  of the camera instead of behind. I don't want Nathaniel to grow up and not have any pictures of his mother because I always have an excuse to hid: I need to lose weight, my hair is a mess, my clothes are old and raggy. Blah blah blah. So this is for you, my beloved son. We grabbed the tripod, the wireless remote and a blanket. We hopped in the car and pulled over at the first beautiful field we found. No coordinated clothes, no fancy props. Just us.

I am not a good mother. It's true. I lose my patience too easily and I raise my voice more often than necessary. I complain about my motherly duties and say "I give up" more than I care to admit. Nathaniel is deeply loved and dearly cared for. But he does not have the best mother he deserves. And so I hope that when Nathaniel grows up and thinks of me, I hope he thinks of the time I took him to the farm to pick strawberries. I hope he remembers driving to the "forest" (SC state road). I hope he remembers laughing as I pretend to slip in the mud. I hope he remembers how I "saved" him when the bug started crawling off the leaf and onto his hand. I hope he remembers me letting him play in the mud. And I hope he remembers me holding his hand. I pray that when my son thinks of me, he chooses to remember moments like this day.

Nathaniel was sick as a dog this past week. It started with a fever Sunday evening and his temperature just proceeded to go up over the next few days. By Wednesday afternoon, his fever was as high as 105.5F and it took a lot for me as a mother and a former nurse to not just rush and go straight to the hospital. We went to see his pediatrician that same afternoon and she told us that Nathaniel is just fighting a really, really nasty virus. At that point, all we could do is monitor him and treat it symptomatically. He was also tested for strep throat (even though he is really too young to get it) because his throat were red and swollen. Fortunately, the result was negative. So on Thursday, I spent the whole day deep cleaning and disinfecting the house, in hopes that we could get rid of this virus. These first few photos were taken that Wednesday and I should have known something was not right. Nathaniel doesn't nap on his own (he needs someone to lay down with him) and af...

This weekend, Nathaniel had his first big boy food and he loved it! We were going to wait until he is closer to six months but he was definitely showing signs that he is ready for solid foods. I swear he salivates every time he sees food and if only his fine motor movements were in tuned, he'll steal your food too. Anyway, Nathaniel is so ready that he right away prefers his cereal thick and is already eating a tablespoon of cereal mixed with an ounce of breastmilk twice a day! And for the last two nights that we fed him cereal before bedtime, he even slept for eight hours straight (8p-4a). Yay! This weekend, we also noticed a little baby tooth starting to stick out! Nathaniel has been teething since middle of March and we suspected they will start showing but not this soon! It is definitely a big weekend for our little boy: (second) airplane ride, solid foods, and a baby tooth! 5.8.10 He's so proud! Check that out! First try and he finis...