I’m back! Excuse me for a moment while I dig myself out from under burp cloths and dust off my laptop.

Oh man, I’m not even sure what to say about these last three months other than they have simultaneously felt like the longest and shortest three months of my life. I guess having a new baby will do that to you, huh?

In case you hadn’t heard, Adam and I received an extra special Father’s Day gift this year with the birth of our our little guy, Ryan Davis, on Sunday, June 15th. My due date was June 16th so it wasn’t entirely a surprise but it did work out to be perfect timing since we’d just picked up my mom at the airport the night before.

My labor was thankfully what the nurse referred to as “easy and straightforward,” despite a new-to-us on-call doc who insisted on waiting to send me to the hospital because she in her words she “didn’t want us to be there waiting forever.” All I can say is huge props to the ladies who go all-natural for child birth because by the time we arrived at the hospital I was already 6 cm dilated and more than ready for an epidural. Just three hours and nine pushes later he was here!

While I was pregnant, people would often ask me if I was nervous about labor and I’d always say I was much more nervous for the part after labor and well, I was right about that. I went into motherhood expecting it to be challenging but it’s been challenging in so many ways that I didn’t expect – and awesome in so many ways as well. Not going to lie, those first few weeks were ROUGH for us and there were more than a few moments when Adam and I both looked at each other with a panicked “What in the world have we done to our life???” 

But I’d heard from a lot of people that around six weeks things start to gel and I’d say that been true here as well. The turning point for me was actually when Ryan started to smile because it transformed him from this raging milk monster (I say with love, haha) into an actual tiny human. And it’s only gotten better since then. Now at almost twelve weeks he smiles and coos and faux giggles and it’s so neat to watch the wheels in his little brain turn as he tries to make sense of this big world we live in.

One of my biggest lessons from this whole new motherhood experience has been a reminder of how important my business and creative adventures are for my mental sanity. While I love our little guy, there’s only so many diaper changes and feedings I can do before things start to feel like a real-life version of Groundhog Day and well business and branding and design are things I do for fun. What exactly my business will look like moving forward or how I’m going to make it all work yet, I don’t know. But I will most definitely be making some tweaks and simplifying but I will share more details about that when I know for sure what I want to do.

In the meantime I have some new products in the works as well as some fun posts planned for here at Nettio Designs. I’ll warn you, September will likely lean a bit baby heavy because it fits with the product I have planned, but I promise it will not be all baby all the time here moving forward.

My dad actually asked me the other day if now that I have a baby will my scrapbooking be all about him, since I’ve always been against that, to which I answered, “No way!” I’m still just as committed, if not more so, to telling my story. That is and always will be at the heart of why I scrapbook. The fact that I’ll now have adorable baby photos to scrap as part of that now is just icing on the cake.

And with that I’m going to wrap this up because I have a little man who’ll be looking for milk very soon, but first I wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you who have stuck with me through this whole Nettio Designs journey. With being pregnant, stepping down from Sweet Shoppe Designs and trying to find my own way with Nettio Designs & Kickass Scrapbooking, it’s been a bit of a crazy year for my business, but right now I’m feeling optimistic and excited for this next phase in my journey and I hope you’ll come along on this next adventure with me.

How do I purchase Levitra without going to the doctor