and the winner is.....

first of all, thank you to everyone who participated! i am SO excited to be a part of someone getting one of these precious little babies!!!

so, without further ado, the winner is.....

CANDACE SHULTZ!!! 

congrats! and thanks again to everyone who participated! 

if you want a precious little moon baby for yourself, cara is giving a discount to all of my readers! see, reading my blog is good for something!! head over to her shop, PaperBird: Crafts on etsy, and message her before purchase. you can customize your very own merbaby or moon baby! 

PaperBird: Crafts giveaway

i have been really in to all things mermaids and space creatures lately. apparently it's a thing. they are everywhere and i love it. 

if you are friends with me on facebook, you have undoubtedly seen me mention my bff's new etsy shop, and you've likely seen me pimping out her baby mermaids, because they are certainly the cutest things ever. 

cara makes beautiful things, anyway, and when she left germany and said she was opening her own shop, i was so excited, because she is way too talented. everything she makes is expertly crafted. honestly, i don't know how she does it, between having the most adorable small people on the planet vying for her time, and taking such great care in her work. 

so, one day, we got an exciting package from her. she made me a beautiful passport holder for our cruise, and with them came the most out of this world moon babies, ever. 

tiny plush smooshy alien children.

the girls might love these alien babies more than the mermaids. which is a feat, to be sure. 

cara recently launched her shop

PaperBird: Crafts

so we talked and decided, what better way to launch moon babies, than to give one away!? because who doesn't love free things? 

cara is going to be giving one lucky reader their very own moon baby to love on. 

here is the nitty gritty:

enter the rafflecopter below! 

the giveaway will run now through sunday, and the winner will be announced monday morning! 

that's it! how easy is that!? 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

once you've entered, let me know what you think! 

it's been a long time. i shouldn'ta left you......

gosh, this space has been neglected. not for lack of wanting. i have had an urge to write for some time, and have noticed my posts on facebook and instagram have been getting longer and longer. there are a lot of things to update, but most importantly, we have less than a month left in germany. talk about bittersweet.

joel and i have been talking about where we want to live, what we want to do and most importantly, our new bucket list! the movers came a few weeks ago and as freeing as i thought that would be, it has left me entirely uninspired and in a bit of a creative funk for a couple of weeks now. white walls, blank space, ugly furniture and no materials are a recipe for blah. i have been doing an instagram series called #100happydaysDEtoDC and that has kept me focused on the happy. working out has kept me motivated to not just sit on my butt (and since i have very little to actually clean or mess with, i have plenty of time to do t25) and i started doing an IG series called #coffeecupconfessional where i draw on my dry erase mug and confess something.....yeah. it's not fully thought out. and there is one post. it's fine. creativity is a process. 

i'll keep this post short for now. it's enough to get me logged back in and making motions like i am legitimately writing! stay tuned for updates on our latest trip, atticus(!) who is growing like a weed, and keep up with us while we get the most out of germany while we still can! 

my thoughts on 3

from the moment random strangers people discovered that my 36 week pregnant belly was full of child number 3, i would brace myself to hear one thing. 

three is hard. 

while i can appreciate their warnings, they were a little ill timed, seeing as how said third would most certainly be coming out at some point. 

atticus is just 3 months old, so certainly we have a log road to go to fairly assess the difficulty of having 3 children, but i can say, with absolution, that three is....different. 

timing. timing is everything. timing can make our days go flawlessly well or catastrophically bad. and every day is different. one day, i am a master juggler, getting both babies down for naps simultaneously, cooking dinner and cleaning the whole house before 5pm, and the next day, atticus will sleep only while being held at a 45 degree angle, with only one sock and a medium weight blanket. in that regard, we haven't quite hit our stride. 

i think babies are easy. they cry, you figure out what is wrong with them. there is very little mystery. five year olds are equally as easy-they cry, you don't even worry about what is wrong with them, because everything is wrong with them, so you send them to their room for a few minutes and they come out better (undoubtedly after flinging themselves dramatically upon their bed, disney princess style). 

two year olds......two year olds are like playing russian roulette with a nerf gun filled with poop and screaming mandrake. sometimes, she is my most delightful child. sometimes, i find her hiding in a closet eating an entire bag of baby bells and i fear the next 24 hours. what was a battle of the minds with bella is a battle of....the....everything with cora. but she is also much sweeter and more snuggly than bella was at 2. and she is funny. incredibly funny. 

i won't say 3 is "hard". three is 3. we have good days and weird days, but very few bad days. and when things start getting bad, we just sit on the floor and play, or sit in the chair and snuggle. i have very low expectations on things outside of that. the house is generally kept up, but we definitely look like a too small house with 3 kids in it. 

lots of outtakes. 

there are things i thought i would be able to do with 3 that are becoming harder, since atticus has finally come out of his "fourth trimester", but i still get a bit done and make a little time for a social life. we still travel, we still eat dinner that i make, most nights. joel definitely has more of a role at home-where before, i did all of the cooking, cleaning and caring, he will often come home and start cleaning or take the kids to their room to play so i can clean or go to the gym. 

i keep thinking things will settle into a routine in a few months, until i remember that we are moving in a few months, so my expectations have become...almost non existent. but i kind of like it that way. 

if you have 3 (or more) kids, when did you start to feel normal? when did a routine take hold? and if you have grown kids, lie to me......

signed, sealed, delivered. the story of atticus james.

joel left bright and early on october 1st, to pick his mom up from the airport. i had agreed (reluctantly) to come in around noon to start the induction process. after taking bella to school, getting his mom, getting her signed in and picking up bella, joel returned right at 11:45am. 

we got his mom settled, and at 12:30pm, we walked to the hospital. 

for the next 4 hours, i sat in the waiting room. they took some blood and ran some tests and i sat. at 5pm, i went back with the doctor, and she explained to me that, yes, my baby was huge. while there is a margin of error of about 20%, he could be smaller, but he could be bigger. and he could get stuck. (side note: i did not want to be induced, and did not agree with the assessment that i couldn't birth this kid, but i was tired of fighting a fight that had been going on for 4 weeks, and with a due date that was relatively up in the air, i was also second guessing everything).

i was resigned to what was happening at this point and so i think i probably muttered some kind of, "letsjustgetthisoverwith", noncommittal statement and sat down.

i was given a pill form of cervidil with instructions to go away and come back in 2 hours. joel and i went for a walk through the vineyards, looking for a place to eat dinner, and then went back to our room to watch some episodes of castle. (another side note: while i hate being induced, i do like the calm moments of "just us" before our new arrival. it's like a last meal.last hurrah before bringing another little munchkin on board) i went back at 7pm and they put me on the monitors and decided nothing was happening and that i could go to bed and get another dose in the morning.

so we went to our room, put back on some castle and i laid down. i fell asleep around 10 and at around midnight, i woke up to a contraction that wasn't painful, but was a little....strong. ish. so i went and sat in the shower for a bit, before climbing back in bed.

at 1:50am, i woke up, pretty uncomfortable, and stood up. i felt something weird, and some pressure, and i decided that it was probably time to go. so i woke joel up and we headed to the delivery ward. the short walk down the hall consisted of walking quickly and then stopping about every 30 seconds to prop myself on the wall and breathe through contractions. i got there, and was hooked up to the ctg machine (finicky machine that measures contractions and the baby's heart rate), while the midwife prepped the delivery room. about 2 minutes later i had had 2 painful contractions and at 2:12am, i rang the bell and told the midwife that things were definitely getting serious.

we walked into the delivery room at 2:15am, and my contractions started to get painful. i want to take a minute to describe the delivery room-it was amazing. there were woven wraps hanging from the ceiling, tied in loops at various points, over big squishy mats to stand on, there was a giant tub on one side and a large round chair/bed thing in the middle. low lights, aromatherapy, music, these blue curtains that looked like clouds woven into the sky. it was a beautiful, very un-clinical, very peaceful room.

over the next 15 minutes, i had contractions that were painful, but short and during the breaks in between, i felt present and pain free enough to joke with joel and ask for water. at 2:30am, i started pushing.

{at 2:36 a,. atticus james came into the world

at a whopping 9lbs, 7oz and 23 inches long. 

ten fingers, ten toes and a perfectly round little head.}

i delivered completely free of any pain meds, and kneeling on the giant squishy bed/table thing. it went too quickly to get in the tub, but that aside, it was better than any birth experience that i could have imagined. no tearing, no getting stuck, no complications.

the midwife was amazing-through the whole process she told me how amazing i was doing, she had this calming presence and voice and was very encouraging. afterwards, when she got me settled into my room, she thanked me for allowing her to be present and share this experience with her. she told joel, "we did a great thing here!" right afterwards.

and unlike my births with bella and cora, this experience was this amazing bonding moment with joel. it was just the 3 of us-the midwife, joel and me. there were no bright lights, no people running in and out of the room, no medical equipment, no sterile feeling environment. and for moments here and there, it was just him, encouraging me through a contraction and cheering me on.

decluttering: phase 1

after i posted the other day about how we wanted to start getting rid of our "too much stuff" i became overly enthused by the prospect of not having so much. especially after i walked into the girls room and saw how much they had covering their floors. 

let me start by saying this: bella cleans her stuff and her room {almost}every day. she is very good at putting her dishes where they go and her trash where it goes. BUT messes still occur, and she doesn't clean that stuff unprompted. usually, right before bed time, we have a cleaning party and she and cora clean the living room, which has become their new favorite place to drag their toys to, despite my protests and threats.  

no, it is not easy. she whines annoyingly complains that "no one will help" her pick the stuff up, and i tell her that's because no one helped her make the mess. but she does it. right after i threaten to vacuum up anything still on the floor.

so when we decided we would be decluttering, i had visions of mess free afternoons dancing through my head. (currently popped by the coloring book and crayons all over the floor. but i can handle that.)

and so, one afternoon, i went to work. and this was my yield from my first go

that may not look like too much, but that is about half of the girls toys. i realized that, while they do have too much, their too much isn't too bad, really. on top of this, i got rid of a lot of baby clothes that i had been hanging onto that wouldn't sell. and there is still more i want to get rid of-puzzles and games and things that make big messes and i dread bringing out. but i will save that for a day that joel can take the girls to the park. 

i've decided to take the house in stages. 

phase 1: kids stuff

my first goal 

is to combine the girls closets into one, with all of their hang up clothes and shoes in one place, to make room for baby stuff. 

my second goal 

is to consolidate all of their toys into the two toy drawers under their play table, and clearing all of the toys out of the stand up closet in the girls room. 

my third goal 

is to find a better system for storing their clothes. right now, we have 2 closets and 2 dressers to split between 3 kids, and all of the clothes are stored between 2 rooms. so getting dressed is a little disjointed. but clearing the toys out of the stand up closet is a big key to doing that. 

i've learned that my biggest problem is organization. we have two very good, though small, closets at our disposal, and so far, they are not being utilized to their fullest. i want to get a second bar cut for one closet, which i have been meaning to do since we moved in two years ago, doubling up on the hanging space. since their clothes are still tiny, i can easily fit 2 rows of clothes in there. the stand up space is all shelves and currently, one closet stores toys and the other closet stores.....random stuff. mostly things that need to be sorted and stored properly and permanently, or sold. 

that all seems a little daunting, but maybe my "nesting" instinct will kick in, making it easier to tackle. especially if i can get a few hours of alone time to do it, without both girls insisting that everything is their favorite. 

i am going to continue to post the progress here to hold myself accountable! 

the start of something new

it is officially official! i have become a jamberry consultant. i'm not sure why it took me so long to bite the bullet, or why i have surprised myself by doing it, but i am excited! 

i am not usually good at selling things for the sake of selling them, but i have been wearing jamberry for a while now and i just love it so much. i really believe in the product and that it is the best of its kind. so here goes nothing! 

if you are interested in signing up with me to host an online party, here is the link. 

and here is my personal website, in case you need anything!