Best of 2016
If I ever get my shit together and start blogging with some regularity again, I might tell you about how the 4-month sleep regression is real and that Duke and I have been operating on about 3ish hours of sleep for the last three nights in a row. Or I might tell you that I finally hit my pre-baby weight and I'm a little excited and proud of that achievement. Or I might pound out the story of how my phone, already damaged like a jilted seventeen year old, hit some really solid tile floor on Christmas Eve and turned into some kind of ouiji board that typed out its very own text messages and was a little heavy on the emojis.
But that day is not today and my 2016 resolution was not to get my shit together -- that's for next year. And anyway, today is when I get to write my favorite annual post -- the Best Of. And for what it's worth, I can't believe I've been writing in this little corner of the internet long enough to have an annual anything. But here we are and thank you for joining me in this blogging adventure.
Anyway, I digress. The Best of 2016:
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The year started with a new addition to the family. No, not that one. This one -
It's crazy that a year ago, this turkey wobbled around my kitchen and could fit in our hands. A year later, he's a 100lb muffin swiping monster with two goals: eat breakfast and "go play poker."
He's tested our limits and I've learned what it means to have an alpha dog. He's mischievous and startlingly smart, and I swear I'm not saying that because I'm his mom. He's a total ding-dong most of the time, but his ability to open doors without any opposable thumbs still kind of throws me.
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Okay, onto the other addition. On January 12th, I found out I was pregnant and managed to keep it to myself for four whole days until Ryan came home from a trip. I took a picture of my abs for memory's sake and on we went with the adventure.
I promptly became nauseas for thirteen weeks, then really really really overheated for the next 30ish. Seriously, pregnancy turned my internal heater on and I've never been so consistently warm in all my life.
My favorite part of every year is the time we spend with our family. Cheesy but true -- it's wonderful to live in the place where people naturally migrate equally for holidays and Saturdays. Speaking of that, we hit our second year living "up north" and if you caught me a few months ago with pregnancy hormones still coursing these veins, I might have just cried a little thinking about how my little boy will always be an actual "local."
My son, who looks like his dad, who looks like his dad. It's like looking into the future.
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We summered.
And as summer wound down, the best day of the entire year -- of my entire life -- rolled in. On September 13, 2016, with Ryan by my side, I delivered the most perfect, beautiful and loved little boy. After 22 hours and a lot of screaming between Duke and I, I would still relive that day a million times. Every push, every pain -- I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
You know what's fun? After you give birth to a child, they will bring you anything you want to eat. And you'll want to eat in such a bad way. Grilled cheese, tomato soup, chocolate milk, a snack-pack, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, some chili and popsicles and keep 'em coming.
You will also not care what you look like. Just bring me more food, please.
And then we small awesomed. All year. My brother and sister-in-law finally got married after pretending they would for the last TWELVE years. Ryan and I camped for the first time together, you know, when I was eight months pregnant. We loved hard, we laughed a lot, and we ate quite a bit of carrot cake.
So much jealousy over Sarah's hair. I mean, it's so rich.
We had a wonderful, unrepeatable, transformative year. We still didn't win the lottery, but that's next year's resolution.
Happy 2017 to you! I can't wait to see what surprises are sprinkled into the new year, although if I can throw it into the universe, just you know, wealth and mimosas, and no pregnancies (for us!), please.
Best of 2013 | 2014 | 2015
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