dyer [not so] diy: kitchen edition

after five years of dreaming, planning, and also procrastinating, we officially said goodbye to the original 78th street kitchen on august 12th. and a very, very, very long four months later, we finally have a working kitchen again! as someone who is not great at making decisions and loves to overanalyze everything, a kitchen remodel that we plan to enjoy long term was quite a daunting task. throw in the fact that i'm kind of a perfectionist with impossibly high standards and it's borderline impossible....

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jack's first flight

the original plan was to take jack's first flight as a family for our mostly annual trip with the pullens to visit the taltons in north carolina. unfortunately ku had other plans and scheduled the opening of their new freestanding psych unit on the same weekend. so long story short, donald had to stay home. never one to pass up an adventure, i decided i was up for tackling the flight with jack solo. we arrived at kci as prepared as we could be and hoping for the best. i was already slightly concerned...

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life with jack

after a few months in survival mode and an insane amount of pumping and supplemental bottles [which in hindsight were probably largely unnecessary] we've settled into a good routine. jack typically wakes up for first breakfast after sleeping eight or nine hours, a feat which mom and dad are both incredibly thankful for. soon after he and i both head back to bed for a bit because the love of sleep is one of our core family values. jack does his sleeping in a bassinet by our bed partly because he...

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the baby blur

no matter how much you try to prepare for bringing your first baby home, there's just no way to really understand what it will be like until you're in the thick of it. your friends try to warn you, the books and blogs give you advice, but ultimately you just have to jump in and hang on. looking back i can see how the days and weeks unfolded, but at the time it was all a blur. that first month was literally all about survival. i heard this a lot when i was pregnant, but it's hard to comprehend just...

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the day that jack was born

donald went to work as usual on a regular monday night with plans to meet me at the doctor's office early the next morning. it was to be a routine appointment, and while this wasn't our first choice, we expected to have a conversation about potential induction dates later that week or early the next since there was no indication my body was gearing up for labor and my doctor did not want me to go past the due date because to my advanced maternal age. which incidentally is a delightful phrase to...

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anniversary number six

from the beginning of this pregnancy we knew we were in no particular hurry to find out our baby's gender, but i was also pretty sure we wouldn't wait to be surprised in the delivery room. when the day of the revealing ultrasound came we had the tech seal a photo in an envelope, and donald was in charge of hiding it when we got home. i didn't think much more about it, but there was a close call one evening when i was home alone and accidentally discovered donald's hiding place. i was confused...

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