I wanted to put shelves in both kids’ rooms so I could put fun things on them. I have yet to buy more but I already like the way they turned out.

Nathaniel’s shelves have a print by Kal Barteski, a drawing by gingerwinks, a few stuffed animals, David’s first pair of shoes, and a lot of books.





David’s shelves have two photos of him that I love, the letter D, a favorite book, some more stuffed animals, and a small pring by Kal. There’s more coming here, but I already love it.





and here’s a sneak into Nathaniel’s closet. His clothes are color-coded where orange and pink are 0-3 months and green and blue are 3-6 months. I know it’s a bit obsessive but it makes it easier for me to find stuff. Also the boxes on top are sorted by year for one, two, three and newborn (stuff he’s already grown out of).

As we move into our new home, I had some projects I wanted to try out. This is me documenting some of them.



The first one is creating a new scrap space.

When I unpacked all my scrapbooking stuff, here’s how the living room looked:

And then little by little, I put stuff away, so my table ended up like this:





isn’t that much nicer? and here’s everything else:





All those black buckets store a LOT of stuff. And here’s a peek inside the drawers:





Tim Holtz stuff.





More Tim Holtz stuff.





Paint. All of the drawers are organized by categories that make sense to me. I’ve been using them for ten days now and so far the system is working great.





And here is the wall I look at when I work. A wreath from Pottery Barn, a sign I bought from a yard sale, and a beautiful painting by Kelly Rae Roberts. The other wall has a beautiful bird drawing from this etsy shop (which you can see in the “after” photo.)



So far, I’m loving this space to bits. Very functional and very tidy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about validation lately. And the motivation behind why I do what I do and why I don’t do certain things.

One of the things I do as a design team member is post my scrapbook layouts to a few sites. I have come to abhor this practice. Mostly because I’ve noticed that posting my work online anywhere immediately turns me into an obsessed psycho. Once I know it’s up there, I hit refresh every five minutes for the next few days just to see if anyone left a comment. And my sun rises and sets with those comments. On the rare occasion when I make it to a top ten or get a special mention, watch me dance.

A part of me used to think it’s just a silly reaction that comes from lack of confidence (which I have a lot of) but recently I’ve been thinking about how it’s more than that. How it’s damaging and how it plays to my insecurities even more so they never heal.

There are times I find myself scrapping a certain way (and this is not specific to scrapbooking, I used to write fiction and did the same exact thing back then or with photography) just because I know the community will like it. Just to get the comments. Or the approval. The validation. And, honestly, to me this is a big deal.

Everyone has their reasons for scrapping (or for thinking scrapping is stupid, low-class, waste of time. yes, i’ve heard it all) and I don’t judge people who do it for pure art. But, for me, it’s about the stories. It’s about capturing and pausing life. So I can remember it forever. So I can look back and smile, laugh, cry, appreciate. Cause life is worth remembering. Every part of it. Even the bad bits.

So, while I appreciate other people’s artsy pages, I want to journal on every single page I make. I want to do it without worrying about how much space it will take and how much the journaling might interfere with the rest of the design. I want to say all that I need to say. I want to be able to look at my page and know that I captured exactly what I wanted (needed) to capture. (Of course, I do like doing artsy things too and use other opportunities for that, like my tags.)

Yet, I seek validation nonstop. As soon as a page is finished, I have to show it to Jake. I have to post it on a board somewhere. It’s like if someone, somewhere hasn’t seen and liked it, it didn’t happen. It was the same way with my writing. I’d make Jake read my stories and we’d spend hours fighting about his comments (or lack thereof) and he doesn’t even read fiction!

So I need to find a way to stop this cycle. I need to learn to trust myself. Trust my pages. Trust that I am doing what I want to do and I don’t need someone else to tell me it’s beautiful. I don’t need someone else to approve. I just need to do what I do and learn that the person whose approval and validation matters is mine. And just mine.

So how do I do that? Do I stop posting on the boards altogether? Do I post but ignore the comments (or lack thereof)? Do I just post on my blog? Do I not even do that?

I honestly am not sure. But I think the first step is to take a little break from posting elsewhere. My blog only. The second step is to go through all my layouts and figure out which ones I like the most and why. Find my true north. And then make peace with it. After I find what’s “me,” I think the second step will be deciding what I want from the people “out there.” Maybe I want some true criticism or just techniques to learn or just cheering. Depending on what that is, I shall go look for the right community. I think that’s the most important step. Finding the right people. Not trying to become something I am not. Not trying to fit into a place that’s obviously not right for my goals. But finding the place that’s right for me (and I don’t mean the superfluous this-is-nice comments either. i don’t like giving those and don’t want someone to feel like it’s a chore they need to fulfill.)

So what if there’s no such community? Well, then I have two options: post nowhere or create the community I seek.

The most important step though is to stop seeking validation. Especially in the wrong places. How can I ask others to value my opinion when I don’t value it myself?

I want to capture this before I forget all the details.



When I went to the doctor on Thursday and she told me I was 4cm dilated, I sort of had a hunch that the little one might come that night. I even went to bed telling Jake that tonight was likely the night, (tho I must admit I’d said similar things before).

Around 3am, I woke up feeling a bit funny. Had to go to the bathroom three times in a row ad had a bit of pain but nothing too strong. I lay down in bed but couldn’t fall asleep. Jake had to get up to go to work at 4am so I didn’t want to wake him up and decided to get up. As I got up, I felt some water and thought maybe my water broke. A trip to the bathroom showed some fresh blood so I got worried and called the hospital. They told me it could be my water and to come in.

So I woke up Jake and told him I thought it was time. We packed up the few things that were left, got some clothes for David, woke him up and piled in the car. Halfway to the hospital, we realized we didn’t have any shoes for David and went back home to get them. I still had no pain and was starting to worry that maybe it was all false and Jake was going to miss work on a particularly bad day to miss work. He kept trying to send an email as we drove to let them know he might not come in. We pulled over to do that, too, and then finally got to the hospital.



He dropped me off and went to park with David. I got one of the guards to walk me to the labor and delivery area and one of the nurses put me in a room to check if my water had indeed broken. It was 4:20am. As it turned out, it hadn’t. While I felt terrible about hauling everyone to the hospital, the nurse said she wanted to keep me there a while longer to see how far apart my contractions were. They were about 5mins apart. This normally would mean going back home but since it was my second labor, she said she wanted to check how dilated I was and that I might have to stay since things might progress pretty fast.

As it turned out, I was 5cm so she told me I wasn’t going home, it was likely that I’d have the baby in 4-5 hours. At this point it was 4:45am or so. Theoretically, Jake could still go into the city, trade and come back. But we decided that wasn’t a very good idea and that he should stay just in case. They moved me to the labor room and another nurse came to get my information. By now it was a little past 5am. As she put in the needles for the blood collection (for cord blood) and for the IV, I called my mom and told her Jake was bringing David over. The nurse couldn’t get my blood to come out so she put the IV in and decided to try the other arm. My arm is very black and blue even now. And she still couldn’t get the full 3 vials the cord blood registry requested. She sent them 2.5 vials.



The nurse asked me if I wanted an epidural and I told her that I thought I could wait a bit longer. The contractions were pretty bad when they came but they were still pretty far apart and didn’t seem to last very long. She got a bunch more infromation and asked me a few more times about the epidural in the next 20 mins. I finally told her to go ahead and call the anesthesiologist. As it turned out he was beginning someone else’s epidural and would be over in around 20 mins. Around 5:40 or so Jake came back. He had dropped off David and gone back home to get some chargers we forgot. A few minutes after he came, my contractions got pretty bad. After one really really bad one, the nurse decided maybe she should check me right then so she dropped everything and checked. As it turned out I was 9.5cm dilated. Which meant I was in full labor mode and it was too late for epidural or anything else.



They put an emergency call to the doctor on call and asked a resident to come over just in case. Two more horrifying contractions later, just knowing I wasn’t going to get the epidural was freaking me out. The resident told me that the baby was coming so I just had to push. She popped my water (which still hadn’t broken) and told me to push. As I felt I might be splitting in half, I pushed once really hard. Just then the anesthesiologist came and, with one look at me, he reaized it was too late for him and left. I begged the resident to get the baby out and pushed one more time. On the third push, I felt the baby come out and we were done. It was 6:04am.

As I had requested, they gave the baby to me immediately and cleaned him while he was on me. He was really really purple. And it turns out his cord was wrapped around his head so it’s a good thing I didn’t have to push too long, we might have ended up in a c-section. He turned pink pretty quickly and his 1-min apgar score was 8 and his 5-minute one was a 9.

At this point, the doctor showed up and when she realized the baby was out, she started to collect the cord blood as the little one and I bonded.

And then they finally took him away to weigh and measure him. 6lbs 7oz and 20.5 inches.

After that, we spent some time relaxing in the labor room, calling our parents etc. The nurse left for the morning nurse who turned out to be the mother of one of David’s classmates which was HUGELY lucky because she got us a highly-desired private room at the hospital. On the way to our room, we stopped by the nursery for a K-shot and his first bath. And then we finally got to settle into our room and start the recovery process.

All in all, an extremely quick labor. It was 1 hour and 44 minutes from the time I arrived at the hospital to the time he was born. Thank God Jake didn’t go to work and had he spent an extra few minutes at home, he might have missed the whole labor. I got realy lucky and had no tears, nothing at all really so I had almost nothing to cause recovery issues. Most importantly, the little one turned out to be perfectly healthy and wonderful.



Here’s to life as a family of four.

For being gone for so long. It’s been a rough and busy few weeks. Thank
you so much for all your kind messages and I am so sorry I had you
worried. All is ok, I assure you. More soon. Very soon.

A long while ago, I wrote about this concept of the
in-power you and the out-of-power you. And, lately, I’ve been
thinking about this a lot. I’ve had these incredible six weeks where I
had the whole life changing experience that led me to eventually start
creativeTherapy and
then I took this amazing energy class (which I still plan to write more
about) and then I took this innovative leadership class. And my whole
life changed.

Since then, I’ve been optimistic, happy, and much more fulfilled. This
trickled over to my family and our relationship got more solid and I am
now spending so much more time with David. I feel like I am definitely
the in-power me. Strong and generous. And so very thankful.