Me Time

I had a break-down last week.

Charlie had been screaming all day (thanks teeth!) and my nerves were shot. In that moment, it hit me hard that I have had zero time to myself since Charlie was born. I had spent just about every waking (and sleeping) moment with him for 5 and a half months. Throw in the first 3.5 months of breastfeeding hell and a baby that never slept longer than 45 minutes at a time, the last 2 months of teething and what was left of me was a frazzled, stressed out, physically, mentally, and emotionally drained new mom. I know that working moms would kill to be able to stay home with their kids and would tell me to get over it, but it's really, really hard being stuck in the middle of an ocean, with no one around to help with Charlie and to give me (and Dennis) a chance to breathe. I absolutely LOVE Charlie, but I am so glad that Dennis and I waited 4 years before having a baby. That gave us 4 years to learn about each other and to strengthen our relationship. Charlie is the kind of baby that if he was born to a couple that chose to have a baby in order to "fix" their relationship, they would have been divorced before they could even blink. He has definitely put a lot of stress on Dennis and I, but if we can survive Afghanistan, we can survive anything! I am counting down the days until June when we are all in Virginia before we head to Connecticut so I can have a date night with my husband!

But back to me...
After having a complete meltdown on Dennis last week, we decided that I need to make an effort to do something just for me. I have been in such a rut because I have had no outlet for creativity. I put it out there on my photography facebook page that I wanted to start building the 'Maternity' and 'Couples' part of my portfolio and would be doing 2 free sessions if anyone wanted to help me out. Immediately, I got a response (who doesn't love free stuff!) and I set up a maternity session for this past Saturday afternoon and a couples session for Sunday afternoon. I had such an amazing time getting out of the house by myself, blasting the music in car, and being about to focus on something that did not involve feeding or changing a baby. I am absolutely in love with how both sessions turned out. You can see them here.
It turns out, I have done something the last 5.5 months. All that time stuck on the couch feeding Charlie and holding him when he wouldn't sleep anywhere else, I had spent browsing the internet, reading and learning as much as I possibly could about photography. I didn't realize just how much I'd learned until I got out there again with these last two sessions. I am blown away at how far my photos have come since I started a little over a year and a half ago.

A couple of weeks ago Dennis and I also started running in the evenings. I learned that even though, running SUCKS... I love that it gives me some chance to blow off steam. In the last 3 weeks, I've lost 10 lbs of the 50 that I gained with Charlie and even though I have a long road to go to lose the rest...at least I'm going in the right direction!

....and just because no blog post is complete without a picture, here are a couple shots of Charlie from the other day: