Five years ago today, my life changed forever.

It was the most magical day ever, everything a girl could have wanted for her fairy tale wedding.
Why yes, that is a horse drawn carriage. I’m totally not kidding about the fairy tale part.

We were surrounded by friends and family and the amount of support and love in every second of the day took my breath away. We needed it too, at the tender ages of 22 and 24, having just spent our 8 month engagement on opposite coasts with no where to live and no idea how we would get there.

The 60 months since that one day have been the best and most challenging of my life. We were such babies, like little kids playing at being married instead of actual grown ups. Through deployments, months of living in different states, buying a house, and financial and emotional challenges we managed to hang on and survive because of our love for each other and because we’re too stubborn to call it quits.The birth of our beautiful baby boy has totally changed our relationship, one million percent for the better. It took a few months to adjust but right now I can say I am even more madly in love with E than I was the day we said “I do.” He has become a better husband since becoming a father and I am thrilled that our little family is so full of happiness and laughter.
Happy Anniversary honey. I hope you’ll dance with me for many many years to come.

Length: 25 inches (50th percentile)
Weight: 16 lbs 12 oz (75th percentile)
Head: 42.8 cm (50th percentile)

So the chubbiness of his thighs is a medical fact and not just my biased opinion.

I mentioned that the baby’s head is a little flat and the doc said “Meh”. Now that he’s spending less time on his back it should even out on its own, but if I am concerned for “aesthetic reasons” I could get a referral to a specialist. She mentioned the word “helmet” and I immediately decided his flat head is cute and endearing rather than deformed.

He had two shots today, one in each leg, and screamed like a banshee for exactly thirty seconds. By the time I checked out and scheduled his 6 month appointment he was already smiling and cooing at the nurses again. The 60 second car ride home put him to sleep and now he’s passed out in the car seat making all those good antibodies that will keep him from bleeding out his eyeballs or coughing up a lung.

Happy Birthday Baby! How can it only have been four months since this adorable little boy came into my life?

I feel like he’s been mine forever. Baby Evan has such a huge personality, full of laughs and smiles for friends and strangers. He loves tickles and raspberries and being tossed lifted over your head. He’s quite a daredevil already and I am counting the days until he starts leaping off the furniture. He can sit up in your lap or propped up on the couch.

He loves to stand up if you hold his arms or his waist and he can roll front to back but not quite back to front.

He loves animals more than anything and is already learning to pet the doggie and the kitty “nicely”. He can make lots of baby sounds, including all of the vowels, m, w, b, and h, and has started screeching and cackling when he laughs. He sleeps through the night and takes two long and two or three short naps a day, so I get lots of time for chores, cooking, the internet, or naps of my own. He has started to listen when you read to him, looking at the pages and trying to grab the book. I am so looking forward to every moment of watching him grow from a tiny little Gollum-lump to an independent, happy, loving boy. Happy birthday my darling baby. Baby? Hey, baby over here!

DOOOOOOOGGGIIIIIIIIIEEEE!!!!

During pregnancy, all I could talk about (and write about) was my body and all the changes it went through. Huge boobs! Peeing all the time! Huge boobs! Exhaustion! Huge boobs! So hungry! HUGE BOOBS!

Since having the baby everything’s been all adorable baby pics all the time, with a few OMG moments thrown in and almost nothing about how I am doing physically. So here’s what to expect 4 months AFTER you’re expecting.

The good:
My hemorrhoids are gone! I was afraid they were going to stick around forever since I had problems with my, uh, assal area even before pregnancy, but they’re just a distant memory now.
All of the swelling/bloating/largeness of face and hands that wasn’t weight gain related is gone. I finally recognize myself in surprise mirrors.
My arms are going to be CUT. Lifting and carrying the world’s heaviest baby is giving me huge shoulder muscles. Babies are like super expensive, loud, time consuming fitness equipment with a built in weight increase as you get stronger. Plus you can’t just throw your laundry on top of them like that treadmill in the corner.
All the birth-related lady parts trauma is gone, and thus everything in the marital relations department is back to normal. No pain, no problems.
I still haven’t had a period, which means I’ve been free from my monthly friend for more than a year. But since the baby is sleeping through the night (5+ hours without a feeding) I’m expecting to need that abandoned box of tampons in the back of the closet any day now.
I can feel my ab muscles again. They were sooooo stretched out from pregnancy they were totally useless for anything that involved balance or using your core. Now when I suck in, things actually go in.
My belly button looks exactly the same as it did pre-pregnancy.
Almost all my cellulite is gone. I didn’t have any much before I got pregnant, TONS while I was knocked up, and now it’s magically disappeared.

The bad:
I am only down 27 lbs from my pregnancy high. I still need to lose 13 lbs of pregnancy weight, plus 20 30 lbs of marriage-related weight.
The stretch marks on the backs of my knees don’t seem to be fading. A lot of my other ones have gotten lighter but these – the ones on the part of my body most likely to be exposed – are still red and angry.
“Breastfeeding helps you lose the weight” is the biggest lie EVAR. All breastfeeding does is make me ravenously hungry, especially for cookies, ice cream and brownies. The hunger has abated somewhat in the last couple weeks but I don’t think I’ve lost any more weight breastfeeding than someone formula feeding would have.
My hair and skin have lost their pregnancy glow. I’m back to shedding like a dog and fighting off pimples, although I’d say my skin is still 50% better than before all those baby hormones.

The ugly:
The skin on my lower stomach is never going to be the same. It’s loose and wrinkly and hangs over my underwear if I slouch even a little bit. I’m really glad I thought twice about that bikini line tattoo I wanted when I was 20.
My poor boobs. I had no idea they could change size and shape so drastically on a daily basis and all that stretching is taking it’s toll. I will never go bra-less again.

I would say things are far better than I would have expected at 4 months postpartum, considering that 4 months into pregnancy I was a totally mess. It’s really nice to have my body (mostly) all to myself again, womb-invader free.

I had a dream last night that involved every single person I knew in high school attending some sort of carnival (I think a recent discussion of my upcoming 10 year reunion is to blame). Everyone was their high school selves, except for me. I had the baby. He’s in all my dreams now, sometimes crying, sometimes being adorable, but even in my sleep I have to constantly think about his care and comfort. Anyways, I was explaining to a girl I haven’t talked to in a zillion years that the baby spit up a lot, but it was OK because it washed right out. “No it doesn’t,” she said “You stink like puke.” “Yeah,” agreed everyone else “You reek.”

And now I’m sitting on the couch catching my breath after a busy morning of meetings, errands and cleaning and I realize I actually do smell really really bad. Time to go find a new shirt, I think.