Okay – you’re 4-6 months into this baby-raising thing. You’re starting to feel like a pro with diapers, naps, bottles and/or breastfeeding. But at your 6-month appointment (or maybe sooner) your pediatrician tells you it’s time to start solids. Baby food. Lovely.
On my 21st birthday, my mom handed me a large stack of papers in a pretty box, all neatly stapled together. She said, “This is something that I have wanted to give you for a long time.” As I started looking at the pages, my mom explained to me that every year on my birthday she would sit down and write a letter to my birth mom… (I was adopted, and I’ll share more on this in a different post). She made a copy of every single letter and kept it; waiting for the right time to give them to me.
It’s important to me to include my kids in the everyday things I do. Whether it’s baking a cake, cooking dinner, decorating or even checking my emails, I want to teach them how to do “real life” tasks. It gives us more time together plus it makes doing those monotonous tasks much more fun. It could even spark a passion inside them…you never know, I may be raising the next Bobby Flay or Joanna Gaines.
I kept seeing all of these really cute mobiles on Pinterest and Etsy and decided I had to have one in my little one’s nursery… until I saw the price tag. There’s no way I was going to pay $30 + shipping fees for a cute accessory my baby will likely not care too much about. I knew I could probably make one just as cute and exactly the way I wanted it (to match her room perfectly). I am proud to announce it cost less than $15 to make my own DIY crib mobile and looks just as good – if not better – than a store bought one.
As I write this, Maddie is officially 38 weeks old—exactly how long she was in utero. “38 weeks in, 38 weeks out.” I’ve been fortunate enough to have an amazing breastfeeding journey with her these past 8.5 months, and while I never envisioned going beyond a year, this weird part of me isn’t ready for it to end in a couple of months.
Is it because she’s my last baby? Is it because it’s actually kind of easy this go-round? Is it because breastfeeding is literally the only thing allowing me to skip the gym AND burn calories? I guess it will remain a mystery… 😉