In this moment

I tend to get down on myself for not always living fully in the moment. I'm naturally just hardwired to always be planning and working towards the future. Sadly I used to have the mindset that "I can really start living when..." Often finished with something along the lines of "when I save up x amount of money","when I finish school", "when I loose x amount of weight (ridiculous I know)" or anything else relatively naive sounding. And while I can say I'm no longer THAT bad I still feel like I need to work on being better at embracing the now. Tonight after coming home from a friend's baby shower I walk into the house to find DJ  upstairs taking a  shower/ thinking he was performing at the Staples center with music blasting and our bedroom door wide open! Talis was crying in his crib down the hall which completely set me off since we've been transitioning him back into his crib (for like the millionth time) and have been trying to have him cry it out). Do men not think of common sense stuff like keep the music down and shut the bedroom door to not wake up the sleeping baby?! After I gave my hunny a piece of my mind (which I guess I could argue I was living in the moment when I didn't hold back on telling him how foolish he was being) I went in to try and comfort Talis. I got him calmed down and got him to fall back asleep when it hit me. I'm getting better at this living in the moment deal. It's been over an hour ago since he fell back asleep but I can't seem to want to leave his room. And I feel this way often. No matter how tired or how long my to do list is there's nothing that makes me slow down and breathe in every single second like night time in my baby boys room. Long after he falls asleep I find myself still sitting in that rocking chair I pull close to the crib listening to whatever piano or lullaby music I've pulled up on my phone for him to listen to as he drifts back off to sleep. Just sitting in his dark room listening to the sweet sound of him inhale and exhale. You know the certain kind of breathing when you know for sure your littles are in a heavy sleep and their little bodies have gone completely floppy? And nothing serious is on my mind. I just sit. Listen. Take it all in. Until I finally sneak out and take care not to make a sound or step on the creaky spot on the hallway floor.

So I guess I'm already better at living in the moment then I thought I was. I guess parenthood helps you improve in more then the million and one ways it already does.

inspiration

I FINALLY got around to scheduling some family photos to be taken this weekend (yay!). I am so excited to get some current photos of all three of us! I have been stressing about what to wear. I'm not the biggest fan of dressing up because well lets be honest that's just not who I am. I still want our pictures to turn out nice though. I'm going for a more relaxed and realistic (slightly realistic is a better way to describe it. I guess it would be weird if I showed up in sweats and a baggy tee.) look so I put together a little inspiration board for what I think I am going to be wearing. What do you think?

casual chic by leilani-ili-reynolds featuring distressed jeans

H&M cotton shirt, $6.33 / Mango distressed jeans, $52 / Converse lace up shoes, $68

current beauty obsessions

Let me start off by saying that I by no means claim to be a beauty expert of any kind. If anything I'd say I'm the complete opposite of a beauty expert (like I am guilty of using an eyebrow pencil as eyeliner for months at a time before I realized kind of expert). And while I might not be makeup inclined I do pride myself in taking care of my skin and hair (I kind of obsess over it) and lately have really been upping my nightly beauty regimen. I credit my new buffed up skin and hair routine partially on sleeping with my makeup on for about two solid weeks straight and partially on being almost 7 months pregnant that feeling rugged and run down by 3 o'clock every day was starting to get the best of me. In the past when I'm feeling tired and ragged I up my workouts or amount of workouts and it usually does the trick but again when your as pregnant as I am these days you're a little limited in the workout department. So for any of you out there that are overly curious about other people's beauty routines like I am (I am fascinated by what works for people and more often then not try everything out for myself) here is a look into what works for me.

Alba Aloe and Green Tea Moisturizer

I've used this moisturizer since highschool and there's a reason I've used it for so long. It's lightweight, hydrates incredibly, and smells amazing. I used to have to go to Sprouts to get it but now they sell it pretty much everywhere (I get it at the neighborhood Walmart market down the street so I'm thinking it's safe to assume they sell it everywhere). It's a little more on the steeper side (at least in my opinion because I hate spending double digits on beauty products) costing around $17 for a 3 oz jar but it surprisingly lasts me (and DJ because I catch him using it all the time too) a long time.

Coconut Oil

I bought my first jar of coconut oil when I was pregnant with Talis to help prevent stretch marks but ended up using it more on my hair during my pregnancy then my stomach. And now you can't skim through Pinterest without seeing the wonders of what coconut oil can do. I use this on my hair and my cuticles and love it. For my hair I've used it as a conditioning mask and to help with fly aways. when I use it on my cuticles I just rub a small amount on all my cuticles right before bed. EfaGold Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil is the brand I use and I just buy it through Amazon.

Clarasonic MIA

I was gifted a Clarasonic MIA for Christmas this year but have been wanting one for a while now. I absolutely love it. My face feels so incredibly clean after I use it almost seems like my skin can breathe better. It's not cheap but it's defiantly worth the investment. 

Pure Argon Oil

Again another purchase I made when I was pregnant with Talis that I didn't end up really using until lately. I use this as a nightly moisturizer. After I wash my face and use toner I rub pure Argon Oil all over my face. I was worried at first that it could clog my pores since it was oil but so far I haven't had any problems. I think because it's more on the thin side as far as oils go that it hasn't been a problem yet. 

WEN Hair Care

I posted about wanting to try Wen here and my sweet SIL suprised me Christmas morning with it (along with some other ridiculously awesome stuff) I have been using it since Christmas and LOVE it so far. The very first time I used it I could feel an immediate difference. My hair felt lighter (in a good way) and left it smelling amazing. It also helped tame my hair a little which says a lot when I typically just let my hair air dry and I don't end up looking like Moofasa. 

What are your favorite beauty finds or habits? 

my mind lately

Thoughts that have been on constant rotation in my mind lately:

-School. This is kind of always on my mind. When should I go back? Is there ever an ideal time to go back when you have kids? (cause it sure doesn't feel like it). What should I go back to school for? Should I continue my education degree or go for something else? Schooling feels a whole lot different when you become a mama that's for sure.

-Finances. We've really been trying to button down our pocket books lately. Okay so maybe I have been constantly trying to button down our pocket book for a few years now but we tend to throw out our budget plan as soon as we're hungry and take out sounds better then cooking (which it ALWAYS does). I have found some (pretty savvy in my opinion) ways of saving money which I might share with you guys later. I have to say, saving money and living frugal gives you a pretty good high (call me crazy but it does).

-House and Home. I can confidently thank Pinterest for making me view my house as a big pile of diy's that need to be done (along with thinking my closet of clothes sucks, I need to work out more, I'm not crafty and a slew of other things that Pinterest so genuinely makes me feel when I'm browsing around it for too long). But none-the-less I now try to turn every weekend into "Home Improvement Weekend" which turns out to be pretty hard to sell DJ on the idea.

-Babies,babies,babies. Everyday I think about how funny Talis is, how handsome he is, how smart he is, how frustrating he is, how stubborn he is, how inquisitive he is, how destructive he is, how cuddly he is, how much I just wanna squeeze his cheeks he's so frikin' cute. You know, the basics of motherhood I suppose. But now I'm really looking forward to watching him be a big brother. And when I really start to think about it then I start thinking of adding another baby to the mix and then I start getting scared. Any advice you might have about entertaining a high energy toddler while toting around a newborn, I'm all ears.  

What's on your mind lately? Are your thoughts as vanilla as mine? (school, money, house, and kids, I think this qualifies me as a grown up right? it's a good thing I like vanilla ;)  )

Talis' Toy

The other night DJ found a fart machine that he had (why my grown husband has a fart machine I do not know but I kind of love it about him) and put it in Talis' diaper to where the cutest and funniest 55 seconds followed. It has since become one of Talis' favorite "toys" to play with. He'll push the remote control to activate the machine and laugh and giggles. He only does it a bit before he gives me a "mama that's inappropriate  stop" look and want us to play with a different toy. He's so full of personality that one.

IMG 2034[1] from leilani reynolds on Vimeo.

our last minute snow trip

Since we didn't get to go up to the snow on Christmas Eve like we planned we were bumming that Talis might not get use out of his sweet new snow gear that my sister Kaylani had spent all day hunting down before our plans got changed. So when a call to your girl friend to ask if they wanna come over for dinner and to hang out turns into them inviting you to her dad's cabin in Heber to play in the snow you obviously get excited and say yes! We love Brooke and Jay, ever since I was young whenever Brooke and I would get together we always ended up with a story to some adventure we never planned on having and just that happened. After arriving at the cabin almost three hours later then we planned due to a ridiculously long drive-thru line at Senor Tacos and a highway accident that shut the freeway down temporarily we got to the cabin to find all the pipes frozen and the heaters barely working. We didn't care so much though because it was still a really fun trip. How can you complain when you have super adorable snow babies, tinfoil dinners, and late night board games? We even got home in time to take a nap before ringing in the new year!

the snowball effect

I've decided that blogging to me happens to be something of a snowball effect. I either blog fairly often with pictures galore or I get caught up in life and before I know it Christmas, the new year, AND our anniversary has passed...whoops! This is my attempt to get the snowball effect moving...

Christmas this year was a little hard because Talis ended up coming down with a fever the night before Christmas Eve that ended up getting progressively worse and in the 105 range by late Christmas Eve afternoon. Instead of spending Christmas Eve with my family going up north to play in the snow and wrapping presents for the family we adopted this year like we had planned we ate breakfast at our house instead and had to skip out on present wrapping to take Talis to the emergency room. He ended up needing antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection and ear infection. I was really bummed that we didn't really get to spend much time with my family AND that Talis looked miserable until we got some antibiotics in him which wasn't until around 10 o'clock that night. On Christmas Day we opened presents and ate at the Reynolds. It was hard enough to get in the holiday mood this year (which I'm not sure I ever really did despite my attempts of constant Christmas music playing and looking for any way to serve others) but I was anxious to get to the new year (do I sound like the Grinch yet? I feel like I do). Don't get me wrong we still enjoyed the holidays this year and feel incredibly blessed in every way possible I just felt like I was ready to start fresh and to see what was in store for us this up coming year.

For New Years we celebrated at our friend's Brooke and Jay's house. Talis fell asleep around eight and woke up about five minutes to midnight to scream all through the fireworks (he wasn't a big fan). After our New Year's smooches we headed home shortly after midnight because we were pretty tired by then. This is the only picture we took that night, a shoddy shot in the dark walking out to our car.

Our anniversary is on January 3rd and I absolutely love it. I feel like I'll never suffer from post holiday sadness because we get to celebrate our love pretty soon after the holidays! We thought about making big plans this year but decided to take the more low key route since I'm feeling quite large and pregnant these days and we both are just drained by the end of the day. We're actually celebrating tonight and we're both not sure what we want to do but yesterday he treated me to flowers and cupcakes while I treated him to a dirty house and an exhausted looking wife...that man sure does love me! Love that handsome man of mine and so glad we've spent four incredible years in marital bliss!

So bring it on 2013, we're all pretty excited for another year of challenges, adventures, growth, and change!