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Overwhelmed and over scheduled

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I like to keep busy and hate being bored. But, you hit a certain point where you’re overwhelmed by how over scheduled you are and you crave some downtime that is scheduled with absolutely nothing. The month of May has already been and will continue to be one of my most hectic months of the year.

TRAVEL
This past weekend was a lot of fun, but it is one of those that leaves you exhausted for the week. We drove down to Huntington Beach to visit my in-laws. My sister-in-law and soon to be brother-in-law were also out visiting from Minnesota. It’s always so fun to hang out with family, but it is the drive that is exhausting. Keeping a nearly one year old entertained for 5+ hours is a challenge. I gave in and let him watch movies on the iPad there and back. That is the only way we (yes, both he and I) were ever going to get through it. At one point on the drive back, he started shaking his head, hitting his hands to his head, and was pulling his hair. I could only commiserate with him as I too had reached the point of delirium and wanting to pull out my own hair.

This isn’t our only trip this month.  It is the first of three.  Memorial Day Weekend we head up to Oregon (another road trip) to gather with family and scatter my grandfather’s ashes.  Then just a couple days after we return from that trip, we fly to Hawaii.  I have a feeling this trip will be VERY different from the last time we took the kiddo.  Flying with a 1 year old who wants to walk ALL THE TIME and has to sit on our laps for 5 hours is going to be interesting.  I’m sure the iPad will be making an appearance then too.

EVENTS
I’m probably the only insane person in the world who decides – I know…I’ll throw my kid a first birthday party the day after a 6 figure fundraising gala that I’ve been working on since coming back from maternity leave.  Sure, a month and a half ago it sounded like a great idea and totally feasible.  As it gets closer though, I can’t help but wonder, “What the heck was I thinking???”

FAMILY
The only upside to all the craziness is that we are going to get a lot of family time.  Last weekend was spent with my husband’s family.  This weekend is spent with our little family (my first mother’s day!).  Next weekend is spent with my parents, in-laws, aunts, and uncles to celebrate Nolan’s birthday.  The following weekend we will be with 15+ family members as we remember my grandpa.  And the weekend after that (technically that’s June, but it’s the first day of June) we will be in Hawaii celebrating my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.

I’m exhausted just writing about all of this.  How do you cope with a crazy schedule and avoid becoming overwhelmed?

Life can mean being really tired at work

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When I think of the work-life balance, I typically think of work dominating life. When you have a kid, it can go the completely opposite way.

Been up since 11:30 (after going to bed at 10:30) with a screaming kid who was wide awake and had no intention of going to sleep. He is down now (it is just after 2am), but thanks to him, now I’M wide awake.

I have a feeling tomorrow, er, today, will be a rough one with lots of caffeine. It will be evident that tonight/this morning, life was clearly the dominating force. In this battle between work and life, life wins.

First steps

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It is so interesting to see what kids pick up from one another. And how being around other kids can lead them to hitting a developmental milestone.

This weekend, we did a babysitting swap with our friends (and neighbors…it’s nice that they live in the next building over) so we could each have date night. Brilliant idea, right?! They have a son 7 months older than Nolan (let’s call him R). They watched Nolan last night and tonight we are watching R.

Nolan loves to army crawl. He is always testing to see if he can crawl under things. It was funny to hear when we picked him up after our date last night that R watched Nolan crawl under their dining room chairs and then started doing it too. They said he had never done that before.

It wasn’t too long ago that R started walking. I think seeing R walk last night was the inspiration Nolan needed to take his first steps. This morning, after standing on his own for quite a bit, Nolan took his first steps. He was so proud of himself! After the first three steps, Ryan moved quickly and set up his phone to capture the next few.

Life will never be the same. As exhausting as it will be once he really gets the hang of it and starts running, I’m excited. It’ll be fun to hold his hand and walk to the playground together. I can only imagine the mischief he will get into now.

Ikea solutions for the storage-challenged home

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This weekend, we decided to go to Ikea and see about getting a new bedroom set. We had our Malm bedroom set from Ikea since we got married (almost 6 years ago). It’s been through 5 moves which means it has been put together, taken apart and put back together 4 times too many for Ikea furniture.

We love our condo and have no regrets about buying our place. That being said, the one thing our place is lacking is storage. Previously, we used the guest bedroom closet for storage. And we still do, but most of the space has been taken up by kid stuff since the guest room became Nolan’s room. It’s amazing how someone so small has so much stuff…

Thanks to our tax refund, we were able to invest in some higher quality pieces from Ikea and solutions that provide far more storage than our Malm set ever did. We went with the Brimnes bed frame with storage, the Brimnes headboard with storage, and the Pax wardrobe system.

My husband is an Ikea furniture builder enthusiast. He truly enjoys building Ikea furniture. And he’s pretty quick too. However, I think the higher quality of the pieces we purchased was evidenced by how long it took him to assemble everything. He worked from 1:30pm to 10:30pm on the Pax wardrobe and the Brimnes headboard. By 10pm he looked at me and said, “I don’t think I’m going to get to the bed frame tonight. I’m tired and sore. I also stink and need a shower.” (He was right, he did stink). This was the first time a Ryan Riddle Ikea build spanned two days.

We are extremely satisfied with what we purchased and can’t believe how much more storage we have. Quite a bit of space has been opened up in our closet. We also decided to keep one of our Malm dressers (since it matched). Currently, it is completely empty. However, it is reassuring to know we have more storage when we need it – no point using “if” because the fact that we will have more stuff to store is inevitable.

Here’s a few photos of the new set up:

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