End of 2012

Above is how my year started... the middle of the year... and how my year ended.  What a life changing year!

As the year quickly comes to an end, I am becoming reflective on my year of change.  This is the year I became a mom.  Giving birth to Cooper has been one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done!  Those first 6 to 8 weeks of Cooper's life are still mostly a blur... but let's start at the beginning.

In January I started my last semester of course work towards earning my degree in Early Childhood Education.  I finished my classes at the end of April.  At the end of May I had my last day of work at the child development center I worked at for over 2 years.  This job taught me so much about children! And it cemented the idea that working with children was going to be my career.  Not to mention, this job taught me what to do with a baby... because before it, I had no idea!

Then on June 25th at 4:30am, I had pains that I knew meant my life was really about to change.  Twelve hours and one minute from the beginning of those pains, I had my baby boy!  I won't lie... recovery and having a newborn was way harder than I realized.  However, I can already look back at those pictures from the hospital with rose-colored glasses and smile.

Also, just as a beautiful life was brought into this world another wonderful life was taken away.  My father-in-law had a 4 week stay in the hospital that he did not know would be his last few days.  Life is precious and we should try to enjoy minute of it with the people we love!

The last half of the year I have been playing a stay-at-home mom and housewife.  It has not all been easy, as my perfectionism doesn't exactly blend with parenting an infant.  Soon I will be starting my student teaching and Cooper will be entering daycare.  I am both sad that I will not be with Cooper all day anymore; and excited that I will be returning to the land of adults and finishing my degree.  Cooper is now a sitting up, two teeth, babbling, smiling, laughing, food eating, half bottle feeding/ half nursing, amazing, 6 month old boy!