10 Tiny Fingers, 10 Tiny Toes

First of all I have to say "Thank you!!" to all of you who read the first installment of my blog!  I hope you all keep returning time and again to see what's going on in my world. 

This week's project was to take a few moments to capture parts of Oliver that I don't want to forget. It was inspired by this photo collage pin. I have to say taking the photographs was the easy part, the arranging in Photoshop, not so much. However the world wide web was pretty fantastic in helping me to fumble my way along. Overall the end result wasn't quite what I wanted, I couldn't get the photo sizes uniform, but I give myself a solid B+... 

As with most things in parenting you may not get it right the first time or ultimately, even get it perfect in the end but if you can give yourself a solid B+ you aren't doing so bad.  As I reflect on the past 3 months of my first shot at parenting I'm pretty sure I could give myself a B+.  Before having Oliver I had so many ideas of how I was going to be the best parent to my little nugget. I wasn't going to let him sleep in our bed, I was going to reduce my carbon footprint by cloth diapering, I was bound and determined to breastfeed him for at least a year, I was going to start reading to him right away even if he had NO CLUE what I was saying and the list goes on.  I'm not in any way saying one way is right and one way is wrong but this was my plan.  However, at 4 o'clock in the morning when you're so tired you could cry and your baby falls asleep in your arms only to jolt awake the second you lay him in his bed you just have to say, intentions be damned. So I weighed the pros and cons; what are the odds of Oliver turning out to be a serial killer if I let him sleep in bed with us vs. the odds of both of us completely melting down tomorrow at about 4 p.m. because we got absolutely no sleep the night before? So here we are approximately 100 nights later and I have to admit that more often than not at some point in time during the night he ends up in bed with us. Hopefully he won't be sleeping in bed with us when he's 13 years old because of the choice I'm making now to get a little sleep.

Each day we make choices and after you bring a child into this world the choices you make hold so much more merit and consequence, it can be intimidating and inspiring all at the same time.  Taking these pictures reminded me of a few things. Sooner or later those little feet will be pattering around the house instead of just kicking the air in practice and those tears signaling the end of patience with tummy time will be tears because of some small disappointment in school.  I may or may not be doing an A+ job at parenting but I cherish each day.  So whether or not I used cloth diapers (I didn't) or whether or not I breastfeed for a full year (so far so good), loving him exponentially every single day and showing it holds so much more merit.