I've been blogging for a ridiculously long time. Decades.
In that time, I've been a part of most blogging niches (or at least tried to). I have so, so many photos from so many moments in life...many of them taken for the sole purpose of blogging them later.
Sometimes I'll go back in my archives to find something and remember all of those outfits and recipes and crafts I did for the sake of putting them into a post and I'm like..."oh yeah, that phase of life. I forgot about that."
Kinda fun to go back.
Fun enough (for me, anyway) to want to start a series of old photos from past phases of life.
The one thing is - I try not to share my kids so much anymore. Mommy blogging was one of my phases, and so they were prominently featured back then. Until my oldest went to middle school and his friends googled him and landed on my blog. He didn't seem overly bothered, but I didn't love that they could see things about his earliest years and possibly come across something embarrassing if they dug hard enough.
So, I include my kids here and there when I don't think it will be a huge deal (there's probably only a handful of photos of them on this entire blog), but I won't be sharing their early stuff. Which is a shame...they were so stinking cute. :)
Anyway, let's start from the farthest point I really have documented. I went allll the way to the back of my photo-hosting site for these ones.
This was my....attempting to gain control of motherhood yet not let it define me era, lol.
I was 24, trying so hard to "have it all together" and mostly not.
It was 2010... swoopy bangs, pants were still flared and worn with boots, knockoff Tiffany jewelery, tiny little handheld digital cameras had yet to retire. I didn't even have a smartphone yet (as you'll see in the next photo).
I spent my days with a toddler - reading books, taking walks around the block, watching Yo Gabba Gabba. My 3pm General Hospital ritual was my only regular appointment, and on Thursday nights I drove down the block to meet my Grandma for Bingo. (That is probably what I was dressed for! haha)
Wow, not even a flip phone. It was one of those slidey types (was that the thing after flip phones? trying to mimic sidekicks or something??). I was shopping for dresses for my sister's bridal shower because I'd given away all of my "work" clothes when I became a stay at home mom. My hair looked identical every single day. Cute dress, though...I still have it! Can't say the same for that patterned thing in the back...why was I even going to try that on?!
I threw my sister a bridal tea shortly before her wedding. I looked up how to make petit fours, piped frosting for the first time, and made everything shades of light purple and light pink like we were in a Barbie dream world. It was pretty small - just the bridesmaids, our mom and Grandma, and we played fancy tea time music and sipped tea out of my tea cup collection. I was *obsessed* with hosting gatherings back then.
My sister got married that summer, and (again, obsessed with hosting and party planning) I basically came up with her whole wedding in a single conversation. I told her she should have it at the church where she went to college, put the bridesmaids in purple dresses both because it was her favorite and the school's colors, and accent everything with white flowers. She did it all! And we had a great time.
I mean...pretty cute, right? I could have made it as a wedding planner back then. PS - I had the hair stylist cut my bangs the morning of the wedding. They had almost fully grown out, but I wanted side swoopy bangs for my hair style and I was like....just do it. Risky move, 2010 Jenn.
By Halloween that year, I was pregnant and sooo sick. I was basically a mess until spring, when I decided I was going to become gardening/fun toddler lunches/low-key home-preschool mom. This was heavily influenced by what was going down in the blogging world at the time. That photo above was Mother's Day of 2011, and I remember feeling alive again that month. It didn't last long...I was miserably huge by July with a gigantic baby.
But honestly? Mothering infant Henry was one of the peaks of motherhood. He was such a chill baby (he is still chill!) and such an overly adorable little dolly of a baby that even his hardest days were a dream. I remember looking at his tiny mushy face when he was only a month old and saying, "I have to do this again."
I also got deeper into the attachment parenting craze. I know, don't come for me with the crotch dangler I'm using - I'd gotten this carrier for my baby shower with Luke because it was a Jeep brand (if you didn't know, Matt used to be a Jeep guy) and I was just using what I had. This, and everything else, eventually evolved. I learned so much about parenting this year.
That fall, I got my "big camera" and entered my photographer era. It's ridiculous, but I can't find a single decent picture to share from that time that *isn't* of my kids, because I subjected them to endless (truly endless) photoshoots. But just know....it consumed my life for months.
I think I'll cap it here, because 2012 was like a slightly different version of adjusting to motherhood. The only things I really remember about 2012 were how sweet-faced Henry was, and how much neon I wore. (Like, a lot of neon?) It was also the year of my last short haircut. Never again!!
Next time, we're circa 2013...and it'll be interesting to see what I dig up there. It was a time...shew.
No comments:
Post a Comment