st george, life as a happy person, mental health updates. little of this, little of that.

my boys are sound asleep.
i am high on birthday preparations, as tomorrow is travis's twenty sixth (!) birthday. sadly for him, he has HAZMAT school all day and has to be up super early. i have been downstairs doing all the prep work for his birthday breakfast i'm going to be waking up to make him.
i am not one of those wives that gets up every morning to make breakfast for her husband as he leaves for work.
props if you are! my mom is that kind of wife and mother!
i'm sure i'll make remy breakfast before school when he goes. because it won't be quarter to six.

anyway. as i'm wide awake, i thought i'd play some catch up.

last month we took a family trip to st. george. both sets of my grandparents have winter homes there, so we are spoiled and have free lodging.

funny thing about vacations once you have a child.
they aren't really relaxing. actually, it's a lot more work, because you have to pack your whole freakin' house. somewhere for him to sleep, all the bottles, his blankies, a thousand outfit changes for him, diapers, wipes, bath stuff, etc etc ETC!

then a loooooong car ride with a child who would rather be anywhere but buckled in his carseat.

then you get there, finally, but he doesn't want to go to sleep because he's not in his comfy, familiar bed. so he cries for several hours, and then at ONE A.M. you load him in the car to drive him to dreamland, but he still wakes up every hour until 7, when you give up and take him out to your mom and beg for help.

so yeah, it wasn't really a vacation, but we still had an awesome time.
my family and a family from their neighborhood also came. the family, the hults, are hard core canyoneering and rock climbing people, so we were spoiled to have guides and teachers. we did some crazy hundred foot repels that i never would have attempted before having remy. having to spend all those months on bed rest really made me appreciate having the ability to try new things and use your body.

and what a thrill, to be so high, backing up over the top of a cliff until you are almost horizontal and then bouncing down the rock. until the rock part disappears and you are free falling like a spider on a thread into a beautiful blooming pink tree at the bottom of a ravine.

we also shopped, swam, ate out, hiked, and spent time with my grandparents.

what else.

the past few weeks of warm weather have been such a treat.

travis is enrolled in a hazardous materials class, so he has been working days instead of his usual 48/96 schedule. i've actually hated it, because we've seen even less of him. on top of being gone all day, he has also had a lot of TOSH night shifts, so then he is gone from 7pm to 7am. sometimes i dream of travis having a normal 40 hour workweek, instead of the 80+ he usual works. maybe if the fire department would unfreeze their raises... but this is turning into a rant. eh hem.

here are some more phone pictures, mostly of remy, because he is my life.

feeding the ducks at our "beach."

doctor visit, stomach bug and ear infection. SO MANY POOS TO CHANGE.

basking in the sunshine. can i tell you how much i love wearing shorts and tanks again. SO MUCH.

we do a lot of morning runs to the beach, hence the pjs.

swinging with damien, his mom-appointed bff. (lilian's cute guy.)

obsessed with his horse.

"hat!" he calls pot lids, bowls, actual hats, or anything else you put on his head.

running wild naked style. because sometimes chasing him down and wrestling a diaper onto his bum is harder than hoping he doesn't pee everywhere.


in other news, my mental health is doing pretty fabulously.

every month at my psych check ups, i would tell the doctor, "yeah, i'm feeling happier, but i'm still having those weird thoughts / images about remington dying, or me hurting him."

he told me it could take over a year for them to go away. postpartum can really hang on, even when you are taking drugs.

finally when remy was 11 months, for the most part, i stopped having the scary thoughts. i stopped seeing him dead everywhere i looked. feeling less and less crazy. and, i've only had a couple weeks worth of the old sadness days i used to have daily. i still have anxiety, still have panic attacks, but less than before.

so that's cool.


my baby boy turned a whole year old. will get to that in another post.
travis wants to join the national guard. it may be putting a strain on us a little. not sure how to deal with that.
mostly, life's pretty good. i go to bed feeling like i have everything i want. how many people can say that? i'm very thankful.

hope you are doing well too.

xo.