After the semi-disaster of June’s third birthday party, Shep’s first go-round was a sweet relief! Simple, fun, and spent with our favorite people, it was everything we were hoping it would be. Thankfully, the birthday boy seemed to feel the same way :) I have a few pictures to share, if you’d like to see!

Right off the bat, Shep, as opposed to June, has one major thing going for him: his birthday is in the summer. Yes, it’s hot in North Carolina in July, but we’re used to hot. In January, you could get a 65-degree day, but if you don’t, you can’t very well ask people to gather outside on a chilly 40-degree day. So, an outdoor party is pretty much out for her, and indoor parties can get reeeeeeally overwhelming really quickly in our house. The open concept of our downstairs is great for our family, but when you add 5+ guests (especially kids!) into the mix, it’s a lot.

All that to say – the best part about this party from the start was that it was NOT at our house: we rented the Carousel Pavilion at Pullen Park. Pullen is a Raleigh city park with an adorable carousel (built in 1900!), little boats June loves, a train, a wonderful playground, and more. We love visiting as a family and knew it would be the perfect fit for this party!

From Our State Magazine

We invited 25 guests and about 20 could come, which was wonderful! As you might expect for a first birthday, the guests were mostly family members and our friends, since Shep doesn’t really have friends :) Both sets of our parents, my sister and her fam, and several of our dear family friends joined us.

On the agenda? Drawing with chalk, blowing bubbles, playing in the trees next to the pavilion, and eating. We also took a mass ride on the carousel before cutting into the cake (the tickets were in lieu of a party favor!), and that was a big hit.

The party was from 11-1, and this was our menu: pizza from our favorite Oakwood Pizza Box, homemade fruit salad, applesauce pouches, cut veggies and dip, cake, and little Bluebell cups of ice cream. We also had water, juice boxes, and LaCroix in a cooler.

The cake was a lucky find: we had been to a bridal shower earlier in the month that served a multilayer chocolate and vanilla cake covered in chocolate ganache (like this!), and it was delicious!! The hostess shared with me the unlikely source: an IGA grocery store! For $20, it was ours – and every single bite was devoured on-site.

We went with a very light carousel theme to match our location, and balloons, a few tablecloths, fun star plates (inspired by the ceiling of the carousel), and party hats rounded out the decor. The crowning glory, though, (and really the only detail of note) was my party hat animals. These guys turned out SO CUTE! Playing off the invitation (which played off the carousel animals themselves), I crafted the tiniest party hats for our Schleich collection. It was surprisingly easy – I just made a little template to pump them out assembly-line style, and attached them to the animals with hot glue (they came right off without a hitch after the weekend).

I’ll finish with that invitation. I went with a sweet postcard from Minted – they always have the perfect design for everything, no matter what I’m looking for! Love them so much.

Thanks for taking a peek, friends! Currently debating whether we’ll do a fourth birthday party for June in January… I was pretty set on not doing one this year, but after experiencing Shep’s, she’s hot on the idea. Fingers crossed I can convince her to do something fun instead with just one friend or her cousins!

Affiliate links are used in this post!

One of my 2019 goals was to complete our family room – updating the aesthetic and making it function better for our family. We’ve been chipping away at it little by little all year, and I’m happy to say it is just about done!

Our family room is the main play space for our kiddos, and a big part of this goal was finding a better storage solution for their toys. Previously, the toys had been just kind of lined up around the edge of the rug. It was fine, but visually cluttered, and hard for June to put anything away because there really wasn’t an “away.” The before:

A new storage piece was in order. I searched for months and continually came up short (everything was so expensive!). Then, late last year, I spotted the piece below at HomeGoods:

I snapped it up right away. I thought you might like to see how we use it, especially if you, also, don’t have a dedicated play room!

This piece stood out to me because it was mostly closed storage, and I wanted the least amount of fuss – a system that looked good on the outside and was easy for our kids to maintain. (This is why I wanted doors, not drawers – it can be hard for a three-year-old to open and close drawers herself!)

On the inside, you’ll see everything has a general “spot,” but things are not “just so” – and that’s great with me!

Rainbow stacker, rug, and lamp

For example, here’s the lefthand side. On the top left is a stack of our current rotation of puzzles and games, including some chunky puzzles for Shep, June’s Lite Brite, and her favorite matching game. Next to that is a stack of coloring books and loose-leaf paper, with a little caddy of stickers, tape, scissors, a magnetic pad, and other art supplies (markers and crayons are in a bucket on the coffee table).

In the bottom cubby is the Babbler play kit from Lovevery Baby. John’s sisters got it for Shep for his first birthday, and it has been a BIG hit! The toys are Montessori-based, great quality, and perfectly tuned to his developmental age. SUCH a great gift!!

As you can see, everything is pretty loosely organized – but it’s also clear to June where everything lives, so she can easily help put things away.

In the middle, we have a basket for Shep-specific toys – this was particularly great when he was really little, because I could easily pull it out and bring it to wherever we were doing tummy time. As I took these pictures, I stopped to switch out a bunch of the toys, since he’s not so little anymore! Current favorites include his xylophone and these cars.

And of course, BOOKS! We have books throughout the house – in our bedroom, in their bedrooms, in the loft upstairs – but we keep a rotating selection of our favorites here.

On the top right, we have general storage for cars, trains, and bulkier toys, like the bus and music cube. Again, it doesn’t look the prettiest, but as these are taken out CONSTANTLY, it’s way more important that they can easily be put back than they look perfect behind closed doors!

On the bottom we have bathroom cups (they are a favorite!), a cash register, and the pride of every toy collection – a big basket of MagnaTiles. Yes, everything everyone says is true – these get played with pretty much daily and are just as fun for Shep to knock over as they are for June to build with. (We also have the less-expensive kind, and they are great, too!)

Off to the side, we have a basket for building toys – Legos, wooden blocks, etc. all jumbled together! (This drives my sister nuts, ha!) The other basket is for stuffed animals, and a car play mat is rolled up in the back.

And there you have it! We have toys and books elsewhere in our house, but this is the main stash. It’s a tightly-edited collection, and I continually rotate things in and out as they grow and their interests change. I hope this little peek behind closed doors has been helpful! :)

P.S. Two gals whose toy storage I was inspired by: Rhi and Valerie! Affiliate links are used in this post!

In case you missed them… parts one and two!

I’m writing this post just a few weeks shy of Shep’s first birthday, and I’m sure my answers are different than they would have been had I answered them after six months, or six weeks. The neat (and challenging) part, of course, is that life with two kids will continue to evolve! Here are a few more answers to your questions about our transition from a family of three to a family of four thus far…

What are your ideas for one-on-one time with an older child? Did you deal with jealousy from June right away?
Since John and I both work but were home on leave after Shep’s arrival (me for 12 weeks, John for six), June actually got MORE time with us than she usually does, so I can’t remember dealing with any jealousy at all. In general, our focus was and continues to be on fun family time all together, whether that meant all snuggling on the bed while I fed Shep or bringing Shep along to get ice cream as a family. I think that helped June immediately see Shep as part of the family and start to bond with him!

In the first month (August – hottttt), June and John did go on a couple of solo outings to the splash pad, which I think was extra fun because it was so unusual. Even before Shep arrived, we very rarely did activities with just June and one parent, instead prioritizing time all together. (She and I spend time together in the afternoon before John gets home, but that’s not by choice.) We do plan to add in more one-on-one experiences as she gets older, starting this summer with a movie date with each of us! She’s never been and I think she will find it SO fun :)

What have been some challenges and blessings of the new sibling dynamic?
The blessings are sweet, obvious, and abundant! June is by FAR Shep’s favorite person aside from his source of food (me). He adores her and thinks everything she does is hilarious, and from the beginning would get so excited whenever she would pay the littlest bit of attention to him! That is still true today. In turn, she is astonishingly kind to him (loves to give him toys, feed him snacks, and make him laugh!).

Thankfully, the challenges have been few and far between at almost 1 and 3.5. Because Shep ALWAYS wants to participate in whatever June is doing, she can get frustrated when he inevitably knocks over her tower, scatters her picnic set-up, runs into her with his push toy (don’t blame her for that one, clearly!), or slobbers on her stuffed animal. She has always been receptive to our lead, and so I think we’ve been able to help her laugh off these blunders with a mock-exasperated “Oh, Sheppie!” She’ll turn to me and say, “He’s just a baby, right Mama?” :) When I’m able to be in the fray, I try to block or distract him from his most bull-in-the-china-shop moments, which I think helps June feel I’m looking out for her, too, and helps her be more magnanimous.

What does bedtime look like? How do you do it solo when John travels?
This has shifted and changed throughout this first year with two. For his first few months, Shep had a feeding around 8 or 8:30 (the thick of June’s going-to-bed routine), so we pretty much divided and conquered, with John taking June and me taking Shep.

Around 8 months, when he stopped taking as many naps during the day at school, he was generally DONE by 7. This put a major wrinkle in our evening flow, since he was too cranky for me to get dinner started before John got home, and by the time John got home, June was hangry.

Then, we implemented this schedule:
4:45pm: June, Shep, and I arrive home, have a snack, and enjoy each other’s company :)
6-6:30pm: John gets home, feeds Shep dinner, and gives him a bath while I start making dinner
6:30-7pm: We switch: I nurse Shep and put him to bed while John finishes making dinner.
7pm: June, John, and I have dinner, then proceed with June’s normal bedtime routine

We’re basically still following this pattern now, except that about half the time Shep will be able to keep it together enough for me to make dinner before John gets home, so we can all eat together!

Regardless, Shep’s bedtime is at least a half hour earlier than June’s, which, again to the question about one-on-one time above, I think provides a really nice window where she has one or both of our undivided attention (and is refreshing for us, too!).

Thankfully John travels very rarely, but when I was on my own in those early months when June was a little less independent and they both wanted to go down at essentially the same time (and Shep was sleeping in our room, where June also needed to bathe, so she had to be done with her routine before I could put him down…), my biggest trick was putting Shep in our laundry basket with a towel thrown over it while I quickly gave June her bath and just needed to have both hands free for two minutes. HA! Is that weird?! It’s like the really un-fancy version of a Dock-a-Tot :) Do what you need to do, people!

How big of an impact (if any so far) has a second child had on your finances?
You know I love this question :) I wrote a post about how much our first year with a child cost us, and that’s a great place to start for some context. Far and away the biggest impact was adding another daycare tuition, but we were able to soften the blow in a few ways:

A few months before Shep arrived, we moved June to an extended-day preschool from a traditional daycare. Her new school is lower in cost, since we’re only paying for the hours we need (instead of 7am-6pm).

Last year, John also got a promotion. That helped!

Even with both those changes, our 2019 budget is tiiiiiiighter than ever. Here’s the thing, though: in a way, our budget is only artificially tight, because for years and years we have conditioned ourselves to live on much less than we make and put the rest toward savings goals (our mortgage, our 401k, our HSA). This made adding in the significant expense of first one and now two tuitions much easier to accommodate, because we were not used to a higher standard of consumption that we had to cut back.

This is an unexpected bonus to saving – though you never want to cut back on the amount you’re socking away, it’s always easier to shift around money you’re paying to yourself versus money you owe to someone else!

How do you respond when random people ask if you are having more kids?
I don’t mind this question at all! In fact, I love the topic. I have never had anyone ask me in what I perceived to be a rude way, and I think receiving the question with grace, curiosity, and honesty has made for some interesting conversations :)

How has it been to have a boy after raising a girl? What has been different? How do you feel about having a boy now? Will I love my baby boy as much as my first baby girl?
Planning to answer this with a post around Shep’s first birthday – stay tuned :)

What has been the most unexpected thing or biggest change going from 1 to 2 kids?
As a family with two working parents (and no close family nearby), one thing that I did not anticipate was the added complication and weight that having not one but two children who can call home sick from school could wreak. We had a six-week period this winter where at least one child was home sick from school at least one day every week. This overlapped with a season at work for me where I was already fighting to keep my head above water, and a new client-facing role for John where it was much harder for him to take off unexpectedly.

We are incredibly lucky to have gracious employers and a good amount of flexibility in our jobs, and for the most part the pressure and frustration came from beating ourselves up over not meeting our own expectations at work as we necessarily prioritized caring for sick children. However, in sometimes working after hours to compensate for being off during the day, a cascade of getting behind in “life” stuff (grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry) would be set off that could make us feel like we were flailing on every front (which then often cascaded into shorter tempers and less time for fun to recover from them!).

A few things that greatly helped: June is old enough to be interested in TV, and I have ZERO problem whatsoever cozying her up on the sofa with a show while I get work done and she’s home sick.

The second is almost too jealousy-inducing to mention for my fellow working parents, but here goes: John’s employer has an amazing dependent care benefit through which you can hire last-minute (like, the night before) pre-screened and vetted nannies who come to your home to watch your child (i.e. when they have a fever and can’t go to school). And the rate is subsidized by the employer. On days where we both just HAD to be physically at work or get something done, we accessed this benefit – because fortunately or unfortunately, a 6-, 9-, or 12-month-old is neither capable of entertaining himself or being entertained by the TV :) We are incredibly thankful for this benefit!

What has been different the second time around?
1. Everything requires more forethought. Even a simple trip to the park requires thinking through the supplies needed for both kiddos, and working out the logistics of how our plans will intersect with two nap and feeding schedules. Especially when Shep was younger, this felt MUCH more complicated than it had with just June.

2. I have more patience with unpredictable naps. With June, I could get really bent out of shape if she took a much shorter nap than I was expecting. It was as if I felt “me time” that had been promised to me was stolen from me, and I’d be grumpy about it. I generally haven’t felt that way this time (expectations for the win yet again!).

3. Especially in the beginning, I missed June. I didn’t feel guilty, I just missed her. When I was feeding Shep and she and John were playing in the other room, or they went to the splash pad or out for a walk together, I wanted to be with them because spending time with her is pretty much the best thing ever.

4. I have written much about slow parenting, and it is still very much my mindset, but I will say this: it is much easier to be a slow parent when you don’t have an infant, or when you only have an infant. Babies aren’t known for their patience, and there have been many more times this past year when I’ve had to hurry June along to accommodate Shep. Excited for that to ease up as he gets older.

5. The milestones have seemed to come faster this time around, and I can be a bit more impatient for them. I remember feeling on June’s first birthday that it felt like exactly the right amount of time had passed for her to be one – no more, no less. This time, Shep’s birthday and the milestones of the past year have seemed to come a little faster than I expected, but at the same time, I’ve found myself more impatient for them than I was with June – I think because I knew better what was coming (and was excited for it!) and because milestones generally mean more ease as a parent (and ease is more helpful when juggling two!).

I hope these thoughts have been helpful, friends! As your big sister, I’m grateful to go before you in this huge transition :) Sending you hugs as you navigate a sweet new addition, whether it’s your first, second, third, fourth, or more!

Previously:
Part One (all things pre-arrival + June’s transition!)
Part Two (gear)

I’ve shared before some of my Dad’s parenting one-liner gems. His oft-repeated phrases formed the background of my character development, and I am so grateful for that! Paul David Tripp writes that “parenting is about the willingness to live a life of long-term, intentional repetition,” and my Dad was more than willing.

As I became a parent, I fully expected to pick up the mantel of his favorite phrases and impart his wisdom to a new generation – and I have. What I didn’t expect was that these phrases would still be growing and changing me, years and years after I first heard them, years after you’d expect I might have wrung every drop of goodness from them.

One in particular I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. My Dad would often admonish us, “if you’re going to give, give graciously.” In childhood, this meant that it wasn’t enough to simply shove a coloring book across the table at my sister if I begrudgingly agreed to relinquish it; no, I was supposed to politely (graciously) place it in her hands, ideally with a smile. Our parents were not often satisfied with the bare minimum, and they definitely weren’t satisfied until our hearts were in the right place.

These days, I am the parent, and as the parent, many requests are made of me by a certain little girl. Another pancake? One more book? Can we go outside to draw with chalk? Can we go upstairs? Can you play with me? Can you draw with me? Can you carry me??? Sometimes there’s a clear yes or no to these kinds of requests, and that’s that.

But often, it’s up to me. A year or so ago, I found myself often frustrated, saying yes but only begrudgingly. Feeling over a barrel, I’d huff out an acquiescence before tossing the pancake onto the plate or the chalk into her hand with a harrumph. June usually seemed indifferent to my attitude, but I immediately felt the sting of it. Not only did I feel like my child was getting something over on me (never a pleasant feeling), but I realized I was robbing myself of one of the best parts of parenthood: delighting my child by giving her good gifts. And for what? Usually, the no was simply reflexive and not rooted in any particular reasoning beyond my own agenda.

Thinking back to my Dad’s phrase, I retrained myself to pause for a beat when faced with a request. Was there a real reason to say no? I’d say a gentle but firm no and stick to it. No good reason to say no? I’d say a wholehearted yes, and fully enjoy the glee that followed. I let my yes be yes and my no be no.

And now I get the gift of saying with a smile, yes, let’s have another pancake.

Thanks, Dad. Happy Father’s Day to you and to all the wonderful dads out there. xoxo