+ How did you meet your husband?
I met my husband when I was 18 years old at some college party that he was throwing for a friend of his. In reality I had no clue that I was attending this party, my simple college minded self was told that we were off to get slushies at the local gas station and decided against changing out of my pajamas and simply threw my hair up and put on some boots.. as you can imagine I was radiating beauty. We showed up and my blue stained slushy mouth was spitting a few choice words about the situation I found myself in and refusing to go inside to this party I sat outside in protest. AJ decided to come out and sit with me and we ended up spending hours on those porch steps and that was that!
+ What are you and AJ's Love Languages?
If you have yet to read the Love Languages book I highly recommend it. My husband and I read it together and learning that we show and give love in entirely separate ways transformed our marriage! Personally I relate most to "Physical Touch", I feel most loved when AJ holds my hand, kisses my forehead, cuddles with me at night or simply sits right up next to me on the couch. Because of this I would always show him love by loads of kisses and cuddles which is not his love language! He relates most to "Quality Time", he wants us to do everything together, which I didn't see as necessary. He wants us to do yard work together, go to his games together, spend his lunches together or even sit down and watch a movie together. I could give him all the kisses in the world to show him that I love him, because that is what makes sense to me, and it wouldn't mean as much as spending time with him. We both had to make changes but the key to our happy marriage is learning what life is like through each others eyes.
+ What was your reaction to finding out you were expecting Carter?
When I saw the little stick turn to a big blue plus sign my heart sank quickly as I muttered the words "I'm pregnant" to AJ (at the time my boyfriend) who sat there and hugged me. He played with my hair and assured me how much he loved me and of course he promised everything was going to be just fine, although he himself was terrified. We were not married. We were not finished with school. We had no idea what we were doing. Yet in the backs of both of our minds there was a peace, we were at peace with what was happening. We had shared with all of our friends and family that we were planning to be engaged, and we knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were meant to be with one another. This little baby was not going to change anything, and he didn't he simply made our hearts even bigger.
+ What was your experience with labor with Carter?
Well, nothing went as planned. But what does? Having all my plans thrown out the window and revolving the entire process around my son only introduced me to what life would be like with him! Nothing ever goes just as planned anymore, it was simply my initiation to the idea of motherhood. And it was ok. I was induced at 42 weeks along and after a long and tiring 49 hours my son was born via c-section. Him and I had contracted an infection and all in the span of ten minutes everything headed south, his heart rate went through the roof, I spiked a dangerously high fever and in trying to come out he separated bones in my pelvis causing an indescribable amount of pain. I knew what had to happen and truly I was okay with it, I knew that it was best. Because of the infection he was in the NICU for the first few days of life and because of the damages to the bones in my pelvis I was held in the hospital for a week to work on rehabilitation. Yet.. I would do it over and over and over again. There was nothing more empowering to me as a woman. My husband is my birth coach and will openly admit that the process of labor was truly the most exciting and romantic experience of his life. I love it all!
+ How did you get your blog/instagram to grow?
This is a fun question! Truly I started my blog when Carter was only about 1 month old in order to have something to do for myself to keep me sane. It didn't take long before I found out that it was a passion. My first readers were family and facebook friends, and a few random people who found us through searches. In order for our page to grow I came to the realization that I had to step out of my tiny little comfort zone and expand my relationships. I invested a lot of time in collaborations on giveaways, reviews and shout outs that were able to help my in growing our blog audience and followers through instagram and it was no easy task. Some suggestions is to link your blog/social media sites to every platform that you have, take the time to respond to those who follow you and leave comments and questions, use your hashtags, and have patience as it is a lengthy process!
+ Being a young mother, how did you decide you were ready to have another baby? Did you care what friends and family thought about adding to the family?
This is a great question, and one that I have spent loads of time thinking on. Truly, the decision to add children into our family is the choice of my husband and I. Our families were much different in how they chose to have a family. Both of our siblings are more spread out, so we were certain that they would think we were nuts. But that never bothered me! We know beyond a doubt that they love us, and they support everything we do whether or not they agree with it. Something that I fall back on is that this is my family, and no one else has the liberty of choosing how I raise it. My husband and I were well aware that we wanted a few children and we wanted them close in age, financially we waited until we were absolutely sure that we were stable to add another life into the mix. My husband worked hard for promotions that we thought were necessary before adding another baby. I stay home with out little ones and we have decided that is what is best until our children hit the age where they will start attending school, however here shortly I will have my Bachelors in something that I am passionate about and cannot wait to pursue, so having our children close together I am able to get into my field sooner! Being that we had Carter out of wedlock I think that adding more children is automatically a touchier subject with others but it went well, we've never given anyone any reason not to believe that we couldn't do an amazing job!
+ Do you plan on having all your children with the same age gap as Carter and this Baby?
I couldn't tell you! I think we will have to wait to meet this baby and learn what he or she is all about before deciding whether or not to have any more. We both want a larger family, but space between children will all depend on how our family functions with each addition!
+ How do you handle all of the things that you do?
This is flattering because sometimes I feel like a hot mess, and handling it all becomes quite the task. Staying organized in my days certainly helps, but whats helped me most is realizing that each day will come with its own individual struggles. Sometimes Carter will be happy and allow me to get a lot done, and other days he is off and we spend all day in pajamas and don't bother touching anything around the house. Coming to the mind set that its OK to have those days changed the way I viewed my work load. I did lots of research on how to create effectiveness between laundry, dishes, working from home and raising a family and can offer a few tips on things that helped me. Regarding laundry, if you are like me you get loads going and they just pile up unfolded and some sit in the wash and soil and you have to run it over and over and over. My trick is to get one load in the washer, change that ONE load to the dryer without loading another load, fold that load and put it away. Only when that one load is entirely finished do I move onto the next one. With dishes we learned rather quickly that is it ALWAYS easiest to put everything straight into the dishwasher, no leaving things on the counters of in the sink letting it pile up. While dinner is going I wash whatever it was that I just used and can escape having any dishes left over once we are finished. My key to working at home with Carter is nap time.. always work through nap time. And never forget to allow yourself days where you know nothing will get done, without allowing these kinds of days you will beat up on yourself for your lack of success within that day.
I loved answering your questions, we have many more and look forward to answering them in the future. Thank you all for following out little journey through life, we hope that you are able to find joy in our page and connect with us on a personal level in one way or another. Motherhood is something that we all have in common, and something that we should all be able to lift each other up on rather than creating frivolous competition. One of my favorite sayings "Welcome to the sisterhood of motherhood", that's exactly what we are. We are human creating, messy, tired, empowering sisters that all share the same common goal. Lets get there together.
-T
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