One Year Thoughts

7/29/09- Sadie at 5 minutes old

Now that I have been a mother for one whole year I wanted to record some thoughts on motherhood. I thought about the things I wanted to write and realized "hey, I think I wrote something like this after Sadie was first born". Sure enough, pretty much everything I had planned on writing I already wrote in this post.

I do want to add one thing. Before I had Sadie I worried a whole lot about not being a natural mother. I see lots of mothers who just seem to be naturals. I felt like I was not a nurturer. Whenever I expressed this concern to others they told me I was crazy. Well, I was half right and they were half right. The act of mothering has often been difficult. I don't enjoy the exhausting nature of caring for a child. I don't always know the best way to take care of Sadie or teach her things; my caregiving is mostly one big experiment. Sometimes I miss the freedom of no kids. (Especially on the amazing Utah summer nights when we used to go on long walks). On the other hand, the pure and unconditional love I feel for Sadie was immediate and natural upon her birth. I have decided that perhaps the fact that I constantly worry and think about the best way to raise my child indicates that I am indeed a nurturer.

So I guess I will sum up the past year by saying it was the craziest, most life-changing/frustrating/joyous, and overall, best year of my life.

First Date

Last week Daniel and I went on our first real date since Sadie was born. We have gone out to eat without her before, but that was the extent of it. I think it's probably because I feel bad for taking her to a babysitter while I work so I don't want to leave her again at night. Anyway, we went up to Park City for an outdoor concert with Ben Folds and the Utah Symphony. The Utah Symphony accompanied Ben singing and playing the piano. The setting was awesome.

Ben Folds was definitely on my top 10 list of music artists I wanted to see in concert so my hopes were high. We were a little nervous about how the symphony would mesh with Ben Folds, but it was amazing. Some people have said the acoustics were terrible, and there were definitely some places where the symphony sounded slightly off, but we loved it. Maybe we are just easy to please since we don't get out much.

They were very intent on the crowd not taking pictures with a flash, so here was my lame camera's attempt to take a picture without flash at night. One of our favorite songs was about Levi Johnson. Yes, as in Levi Johnson the father of Sarah Palin's grandson. It will be on Ben Folds' next album. The chorus is a little curse-heavy but it is taken word for word from Levi's myspace page. We laughed really hard.

Overall it was a great date night. It took us over an hour to get out of the parking lot so we weren't home until almost midnight and we had plenty of time to talk with just the two of us. We discovered we do like each other a little bit and we are going to stick with this marriage thing.

Alicia & Bryce- thanks for watching Sadie!

Brizzy Boo

Lexie and Briz (Sadie's BFF) came out for a Cottle family reunion and we got to see them a couple times. First, we took the girls swimming.

It was really fun because they interacted with each other a lot. Briz just loved to give Sadie kisses. They also enjoyed eating dried fruits together at the pool. Briz showed Sadie that it is much more efficient to eat handfuls of food at a time rather than Sadie's one tiny piece per hand approach.


Does Sadie look a little pink in these pictures from the pool?


Well that's because she was. Milestone alert! First sunburn. Even though I applied sunscreen twice in the 2 hours we were at the pool, I somehow missed all the skin close to her hairline and all around her left eye.

Great parent alert! First I let Sadie eat and choke on a leaf, then I get her sunburned. All in the same day.

Great View

On top of dumpster diving, Sadie has also taken to watching tv from between the spindles on the stair banister. Guess it's got a great view. We are such great parents.


Speaking of great views....check out the view from the wedding where Sadie ate & threw up a leaf.

Freegan

Sadie has taken to pulling trash out of the kitchen garbage. This particular picture was taken after I pulled a piece of bread crust (from the trash) out of Sadie's hand. She had already managed to eat half of it. My cousin Keri enlightened me that Sadie might just be into freeganism. The all-knowing wikipedia tells us that the freegan "lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as 'dumpster diving'. Freegans salvage the food for political reasons, rather than out of need."


Just before incident #2
Sadie went one step further last week when she pulled a leaf off a rose bush and ate it. She then proceeded to gag loudly and throw it up. (By the way, this occurred during an outdoor wedding ceremony- we won't be invited to more weddings any time soon)

Hopefully she's got the freegan BS out of her system now.

Why So Serious?

We recently made the trek to Provo to one of our favorite restaurants, Diego's. While waiting for our food I decided to take pictures of Sadie being cute. This is all I came away with.

It appears that Sadie has been blessed with a "negative" resting face. Just like her mother, and grandmother, when Sadie is just sitting she often looks mad or sad.

Cousin Elly

Sadie has gotten to play with her {second} cousin Elly twice recently. When we found out I was pregnant with a girl, Daniel said it was okay as long as she was as cool as Elly.

That still remains to be seen, but at least we know Sadie thinks Elly is cool.


Last time we saw Elly she kept calling Sadie "Sade" or "Sades". Elly is really good at nicknames like that.

One of the reasons Elly is cool is that she says hilarious things. After eating the three bites of dinner her cruel parents required before dessert, Elly said the following:

Elly: Dad, come smell my throat so you know I had three bites of dinner
Daniel: Elly, come smell my throat so you know I had 200 bites of dinner
Elly: Daniel, you are silly. I only smell my family's throats.

Obviously.


Sadie also loved licking the crumbs off Elly's table.
Am I a bad parent if I laugh and take a picture instead of pulling Sadie away?