5 months, where have they gone?

Tomorrow will mark Leilani Maxine's 5 month birthday!  Whewww...what a roller coaster ride it has been.  I can't believe how the time has flown and how incredibly our lives have changed.

Here are the top 10 things I have learned from becoming a mother:


1 )   Everyone was right.  It is the most difficult, but most rewarding job in the world.  I have never done anything harder in my life and never will.

2 )  It is perfectly normal to say 20 times in one day, "Lord, please help me."  I sometimes back that up with, "No, really.  I am begging you."

3 )  It will be the only time in life when you can blow in someone's face and they will laugh incessantly and want you to do it over and over again.

4 )  It becomes second nature to cry over every child on television who has suffered hardship.

5)  Mother's guilt is the worst guilt and I don't think it ever gets easier, it only makes you a better mother.

6 )  You learn to laugh at yourself when you and your husband have become "that couple" with the crying child that everyone is staring at.

7 )  There are days when you feel like you have been thrown in the washing machine and hung out to dry while the world around you keeps going. 

8 )  The pride you feel when you take your child out for the first time is like no other.  And it only gets better.

9 )  A whole new love for your husband develops when you see the amazing father you knew he would be when you married him.

10 ) There are snippets of life that you will cut out and put in your pocket and cherish forever.  Dancing with my newborn baby girl, sleeping cheek to cheek in the whee hours of the morning, giving her zerberts, watching her smile for the first time, seeing her love our dogs, watching our parents adore her, seeing her become her own little being. 

Becoming a mother has been difficult, amazing, emotional and incredible.  But I've also learned its important to keep your sense of self, thus my blog and my art.  Thank you to everyone for all of your support and for reading!

No one can ever prepare you for becoming a mother, that's for sure.  And I wouldn't change a thing.