When I last wrote you (you being, perhaps, a loyal reader or a new-to-this-space friend), I described a scene of messy chaos, as my husband and I were in the final stages of packing up our island life to move across the sea to follow his career to the Ranger Regiment in Georgia. As I […]
Farewell, Hawaii. *Insert mental image of glistening tear rolling down cheek* </3 With Christian being selected for the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, we have a PCS move on the horizon. As I sit here writing this, our apartment is in complete disarray: we have postal service boxes on the floor that we’ll use to mail […]
I know everyone’s postpartum and parenthood experience is different, and it could be that what I’ve described as mine in this series won’t resonate with anyone else. But I am so curious how it’s felt to other moms – because it is just so big and difficult to delineate. As for what postpartum looks like […]
Sitting down to publish a blog post about my postpartum experience as a first-time mom has taken me 12 weeks (nearly a fourth trimester!), and has coincided precisely and unsurprisingly with the first morning that I’ve awoken from a true full-night’s sleep since my daughter was born. She slept ‘through the night’ for the very […]
Our baby girl is HERE! Marigold “Goldie” Lennox Mapes was born on April 17 at 10:39 a.m. She weighed 7 lbs, 2 oz and was 19 inches long. It was the most special, miraculous event of our lives, and a complete blur of overwhelming emotion. Here is Goldie’s story: I woke up around midnight on […]
Sometimes, I imagine what it would be like if we could literally bottle up certain emotions or feelings. I would line my shelves with little glass bottles full of delirious happiness, sweet nostalgia, first-kiss butterflies, the pure joy of hysterical laughter, intense comfort/relief of canceling plans for a day; warm fuzzies from a blossoming friendship. […]
My wonderful friend Brittany Evans recently captured another chapter in our pregnancy journey with these maternity photos! As promised in my last post, I am sharing them here along with another quick update on pregnancy and life to fulfill my ever-present need to ramble. She also featured a few of her favorites on her own […]
Hi, hey, hello – remember me? Me, who said I’d be better at blogging for the remainder of my pregnancy? (Peeks at reader with guilty eyes through the gaps of fingers partially shielding my face from view). Yeah, hi. My bad. For whatever reason, I seem to love to sabotage my own writing goals. I’ve […]
I can’t believe I am already halfway through my pregnancy! That fact is crazy to me, because it means our baby girl will be here before we know it, and it means that in just the same amount of months that I’ve been pregnant (feels like a blink) our entire lives will change. I had […]
Surprise!!!!!!! We are so happy to announce that we have a baby in bloom, due April 2019! If you follow me on Instagram, you would’ve seen this announcement already – and on there I also disclosed that I was excited to share this stylized photo shoot, which captured the joy and beauty of such a […]
One of my best friends on island, Brittany Evans, recently did this photoshoot with Christian and me! She is so incredibly talented and it can be such a blast and also super romantic (ew I know, sorry) to do a lovey dovey photoshoot occasionally; for no reason other than to create some cool images […]
At one point during our Girl’s Trip to Thailand, we were sitting at a restaurant salivating at the thought of the food we’d just ordered: cheeseburgers all around and one vegetarian meal. (I’d had more Thai food than I could’ve ever dreamed already, and despite its deliciousness, we were all obscenely happy to find a […]
There are a few ways in which I will probably be forever altered by my time of living on an island during this fundamental and important stage in my young-adult life. And one of those core changes to my being will likely be my newfound ability to “just go with it” and observe island time: […]
“After all this time?” “Always.” ⚡ I am a huge nerd. I love books and form close bonds with the fictional characters who inhabit them and truly believe novels are a “uniquely portable magic” (-Stephen King) that take you to new worlds you may otherwise never have had the chance to see. So when, at […]
I’m sitting in an airport as I type this – belly full with a warm chocolate croissant that I washed down with a hot chocolate, the theme for this trip back to Nebraska for the holidays being decadence, and “treat yo self” the mantra. Classic, distinctly airport-y Christmas music is playing over the loud speaker, […]
