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Our Family’s First Trip to the Beach

...was a big fat FAIL. This past Saturday, J and I loaded up the car, strapped both girls into their car seats with me sitting uncomfortably between them, and drove a little over an hour to Long Island for a day at the beach with family and friends. I was admittedly uncomfortable with the idea of bringing Aerin to the beach because she tries to put everything into her mouth these days — even my nose! — but J assured me that he would take care of her while I watched Claire. Anyway, back to the story. We had purposely left an hour after everyone else so that the car ride would coincide with the girls' nap times. We figured that the girls...

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Should Mommy Blogs Be Censored?

The praise I receive most from readers of this blog is regarding my honesty. How I am not afraid to tell it like it is. And while I must confess that I have shared some nitty gritty details of motherhood and parenthood  (and gotten in trouble for it in the past), I have found myself censoring my thoughts more and more lately. A couple of months ago, The Skeptical OB wrote a blog post titled "Are the young children of mommy bloggers 'fair game'? Their mothers think they are." According to Dr. Amy, mommy blogs are selfish and damaging to the bloggers' children. She asks, "How would you feel?" if your own mother had shared with the world her woes and...

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Depression and Motherhood

The thing about depression is that nobody can really understand how you feel unless they have been through it themselves. And even then, their experiences could be completely different from yours. When I first wrote of my current struggle with depression, I got the feeling that a few commenters believed the condition to have suddenly come over me one day. Or even over a span of weeks. But the truth of the matter is that I have been down for months now, and what probably precipitated my meltdown was my neck injury; I was no longer physically able to stay strong. It is no secret that I have been treated for depression in the past — in my early twenties, to be exact...

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A Semi-Lazy Post [An Update in Pictures]

Our family is exhausted. Little Aerin is teething — and has been for the past 1.5 months — and she has been extra cranky, in addition to waking up 4-6x a night. Claire’s first teeth sprouted just before she turned 7 months old; Aerin is now 7.5 months old and those pearly whites have yet to appear. Why oh why can’t our children be one of those who exhibit little to no signs of teething?

J and I tell our friends that we can’t remember much from the time period when Claire was 4-9 months old because IT WAS THAT HARD. We seem to have blocked everything from our memory banks. We can only hope that Aerin’s roughest patch will pass soon too.

I realized I haven’t talked much about my girls in a while, so I decided to do a post full of pictures and brief updates, starting from before my neck injury which was more than 2 months ago!

Here we go…

I have mentioned in the past that Claire treats her giraffe like it’s her own baby. (When we ask her, “Where’s the baby?” she will point to Aerin, then the giraffe.) When Claire started to place the giraffe in the stroller as well, we brought out a walker which features a basket and instructed her to try using that instead. And just as we expected, she LOVED it!

I immediately decided that a doll stroller was in order and got a $15 one on Amazon. We were able to bring it over to my parents’ during our stay there, and Claire got some good use out of it. (Just in case you’re wondering, yes, she insists on strapping it in securely before each ride.)

Herniated Disc

I woke up this morning to horrible pain in my neck and shoulders. I immediately called out to J, who had to take yet another day off from work due to my health problems, and phoned my mother to see if she could come watch the girls while J took me to the doctor. I had actually been meaning to go to a chiropractor for some time now because my back, neck, and shoulders are constantly in pain and have been ever since I was pregnant with Claire (so that's over 2 years). As luck would have it, I had managed to find one nearby with good reviews just the other day and called him as soon as his office opened. He would...

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