Happy Birthday Tobyn!

I wrote a post on Tobyn's birthday about this past year, you can read that here.

Yesterday though, we celebrated his birthday with all our friends and family. 

All of my family lives at least 3 1/2 hours away, but that didn't stop them.

It was a wonderful day!

The theme was elephants, simple and adorable. 

I handmade everything with a some help from family, and all the food was made by my sister and her huge family. Seriously, they were like a catering team, all 6 of them helped in some way or another.  

And it turned out so beautiful!

The cake stand was one of my favorite pieces, did you know how expensive cake stands are??

I wasn't about to go broke for a cake stand I liked, so since the theme was elephants, I made a elephant "pedestal" like they use in the circus. I bought a $13 flower pot  from Lowe's, turned it upside down and painted it with some paint I already had for the party. Voilà!

I love all the details from the chevron napkins, to the paper straws. The napkins were from the  Oriental Trading Co. Straws, plates, cups and balloons were from the very affordable Birthday Direct.

You can't see them too well here, but these platters turned out so good.

Again, I wasn't going to pay $40 a platter. So I found four ( two small, two large) gorgeous pale blue plates on major sale at Kirkland's for $.78 a piece! (That's what I'm talking about!)

And then two candlesticks on sale at Hobby Lobby for $2 a piece. I painted those red. 

A little bit of hot glue and BANG. Perfection. 

Vintage Roasted Peanut Bags from The Sugar Diva, they had elephants on them. So cute!

Nutella Bruchetta is the bomb. Just as a side note, do yourself a favor and make this.

The platter they are sitting on, you can't see very well, but I just bought an out of season plastic platter at Hobby Lobby and painted grey, red and blue chevron, It turned out precious!

We love the Starbuck's coffees you can buy at the store, so I just collected the bottles for a few months for a "vintage milk bottle" counter. We offered cold milk, because with all those sweets, it was a must. 

Our "First Year" Window.

We used golf tees to sick balloons in the ground and lined the walkway all the way to the door!

Got this idea over at Life's Little Celebrations. I love it!

 And he obviously had a great time!
This "One" banner was made by me, it turned out so well and was super simple!

It was a wonderful day, but there were some things that worked and some that didn't. 

Things I wish we'd done but forgot.

I'm going to write a post about my First Birthday Party Tips in the near future, so keep a lookout!

Lyz

one year has passed.

My baby, he isn't a baby anymore. He's walking, jabbering, laughing. He has his favorite things, foods, people. 

He knows how to say "light" and "uh oh","hot", "dadda", "momma" ( sometimes). 

I have heard it a million times "Don't blink, you'll miss everything". 

I don't think I missed anything, I feel like I honestly can say I did my best to not take one moment, one stage, one developmental change for granted.

I photographed EVERYTHING this year.

But, I did blink, somehow it's a year later. And my sweet baby is 1 today.  

Happy Birthday Tobyn Iver, I hope we can bless you as much as you've blessed us.

We love you.

Lyz

photography by me.

my perfect pumkin

We are horrible parents.

We put our child in a pumpkin.

But you know what?

He loved it!

He was perfectly happy in there.

I swear I could eat up his perfect little self.

Lyz

3 months of joy... free house cleaning printable.

My baby is getting so big.

I enjoy waking up every morning to his big smile.

He is such a morning boy. :)

I'm working on my cleaning skills, as far as keeping up with and taking care of a whole house.

It's a lot different than an apartment.

I try to keep it clean and have it clean for when Jonathan gets home, because he deserves that, but I'm not perfect.

I tell you what, Pinterest has been such a lifesavor. I am also learning and improving to cook. Pinterest is my go-to for everything.

Here is a link to a free printable that has really helped me out with getting my cleaning and housekeeping under control:

Weekly Cleaning Free Printable Calendar

Also here is the link to my Organization Pinterest board, follow if you'd like ;)
Pinterest Organization Board

Lyz

getting to know this "mommy" person that I am.

It's been a while since I've blogged. I've been getting my bearings on being a mom. 

If that ever happens? 

I had some rough spots at first. 

Engorgement issues, 

small case of Mastitis, twice. 

Really yucky baby blues.

But really, other than that, this whole mommy thing I think I can do.

Tobyn is such a perfect baby.

 I'm slightly bias, but he only cries when he has a reason to.

And he lets us sleep a pretty fair amount.

I think we were blessed super huge on this one.

We recently moved from the town we lived in, where Jonathan and I met, where it all began. 

That was hard, but we moved into a house, so no worrying about keeping up neighbors in an apartment with a crying baby. Super awesome. 

We are close to family, his family.

 Even farther from mine now, which is difficult.

  Going to see them is a huge ordeal and very stressful. Tobyn is NOT a "ride the baby around in the car to get him to stop crying" kind of baby. He hates the car. 

Trying to think about my future, my families future.

 I want to go back to school, I know I need to do it now. Or so I'm told I will never go back. I'm seeing what I can do. 

   My issue I'm having right now, as far as mommy business, is balancing being a mom and being myself. I'm still trying to understand that I, myself, am a mom now. 

They are not two people, but one that have to coincide with one another. 

It's like I sometimes have an issue taking off the mommy hat and putting on the Lyndsey hat when needed or necessary. I'm trying not to loose myself entirely.  

Did anyone else have this issue? What helped you?

Lyz

one month already?

When did this happen?? He's growing leaps and bounds!

looks so much like his daddy, I wonder if he's mine ;)

sent from heaven.

the best day of our lives.

 Sweetest day of my life. 

No words could truly come close to describing it. 

But I will try my hardest.

I was scheduled for an induction at 5 am the morning of June 20th.

I didn't want to be induced but he was getting to be quite a big boy, they were worried I wouldn't be able to get him out.

We got there and they got me hooked up to the IV, after 3 attempts of finding my vein and blowing out all 3.

They started up the pitocin and we waited, and waited and waited. 

 I was told I should rest (Jonathan and I both had about 1 1/2 hours of sleep, we both agreed it was like Christmas Eve night on steroids) but of course, I couldn't sleep a wink.

At 11:30 am the doctor came in. I hadn't had any discomfort so far at all.

He broke my water, and kaboom.The contractions came flooding in. So the next 2 hours or so are a complete blur to me. Pain does that I guess. I ended up getting the epidural, they had to hold me down just to give it to me. I actually made Jonathan throw out his back from holding me down, sorry baby :(

  Once it kicked in I was able to relax a little, but after about an hour the epi wore off quite a bit and I was miserable again. It had only been an hour since I was at about 5 cm, so I was very discouraged at this point. I didn't want to do this anymore. Then my midwife came in, check me and said the best words I've ever heard, "You are a 9, we can start pushing." What!? YES!! I all the sudden had a new wind, our sweet, perfect boy was going to be here soon! I couldn't even believe it. Well, I won't get into too many of the details of the actual birth, but lets say it is by far the hardest thing I've ever done. I reached a point of "I CAN NOT do this." But Jonathan, my mother, my sister Tiffany and Jonathan's mother Tonya then all became my strength. I was so surrounded by love and they each brought some sort of strength to the table to get me through.

  At 4:32 pm Tobyn Iver Hobby was born.There were some complications and he had fluid in his lungs when he came out, he was put onto my chest and I was so overwhelmed, overjoyed and exhausted. But then they took him right away. I didn't know what was happening. They had him on my left and were suctioning out his mouth, over and over and over. I was petrified. I kept looking to Jonathan for reassurance, he was so strong. The kept saying he was fine, they just didn't like how his breathing was sounding and they were going to take him to the NICU for a little while. While it could have been so much worse, that's nothing anyone wants to hear about their baby. 

They took him away, I got all cleaned and stitched up and ate the best cheeseburger of my life.

They decided within the first hour of him in there that he was perfectly healthy. That was at about 5:30. 

We didn't get him in our room until 11pm that night though! We thought we were going to DIE. 

But oh, when he finally got there... That moment of him being handed to us, our sweet son, and getting to hold him without anyone taking him away was absolutely priceless.

  I slept maybe an hour that night. I didn't want to waste any time not just looking at him, and holding his super tiny body. I will never forget the love that quickly grew and multiplied just in that one night. Its unreal.

Lyz