Memory Lane: A Year of 1st Board

As promised, some days we will be heading down, what I call, Memory Lane to reflect on Olivia Madison’s first year of life. For those of you that have been with us from day one (via ShoeAcidal), some of these posts may look familiar. For everyone else, welcome to my world of mini momma meltdowns (aka - Mama Drama) and a whole lot of PROUD momma moments thanks to my AWESOME baby girl. For me, there's no better place to start our journey down memory lane than with this board.

I found a similar board on Pinterest and knew I had to create one for my baby. I just didn’t know that putting together this board was going to be such an emotional project for me.  It felt as if I would work on it, take a break for a few days, call Tabby every other day asking for her help (would you believe I had the nerve to get mad when she had other plans and couldn’t help until a future date???) and work on it some more until it was finally completed (watch out for the tutorial J).

It was just that assembling it gave me an opportunity to reflect on the following:

• How awesome my child is
• How much she's grown from an infant to a toddler
• How much my husband and I have grown as parents
• How joyous this first year has been

It was by far the MOST rewarding project I worked on to celebrate her birthday. Which leads me to the reason I chose to start Memory Lane here...the board really captured the highlights from Olivia's first year of life. We'll get to my emotions behind all her milestones in future posts but, for now, here's a closer look at the images on the board.

View

Car Ride

 Milestones

Summer

Fall

Winter

 Holidays

Isn’t it an AWESOME way to look at life? As of right now, I totally plan to do something similar for each of her future birthdays. I honestly still can’t believe how fast the past year went by and I know the rest of our days will continue to move at lightning speed; I might as well capture each moment. 

Wordless Wednesdays: Winter ONEderland Cake Smash

Olivia Madison

Hey Luvs!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  We finally got a break from Old Man Winter in the DC area so the hubs and I got out and enjoyed it... since Olivia ditched us to hang out with her honoree aunts, lol.  Anyway, that's secondary to the reason I'm here today :).

This is the day that I introduce you all to my External HeartBEAT - the vibrant, infectious, and amazing joy of my world, Ms. Olivia Madison. Today, she's a little over one year old and everyone that has ever met her just LOVES her whole little life; I already know you all will too.

At one year, she's showing us who's boss...

MOBILE. She walks around the place like she owns it.

VOCAL. She yells talks every chance she gets. My little lovebug is very vocal and loves to express herself in gibberish lol.

INDEPENDENT.  She drinks from Dixie cups (for the most part).

Most of all, she's a happy, healthy and beautiful tiny tot who loves exploring the world around her.  She has taught her father and me so much! She is truly coming into her own and I'm certain one day she will leave some very impressionable marks on this world :)

Oh, and for those of you that are wondering what happened during the year that you missed, don't worry!  A trip down Memory Lane is in your future.

The HeartBEAT

Welcome to Life With An External Heartbeat or, as I like to call it, my adjustment to and [hopefully] my beautiful journey through parenthood. I’m Sheena and, on this day 13 months ago, I discovered my life’s purpose when I became the mother of a loving, caring, sweet little girl.

January 20^th, 2013 beautifully ROCKED my world forever as I welcomed my daughter Olivia Madison into it. I was 6 weeks shy of my 30^th birthday and had been married to my college sweetheart for 4.5 years so her entrance was a welcomed BLESSING. Grateful that I had survived ALL 18 hours of her labor, I was overtaken with emotions when I could finally hold my precious little girl.  Holding her in my arms, she was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.  I joyfully cried during our first encounter and thought “WOW this tiny person belongs to me”. Olivia Madison was here and she was all mine.  She was everything I could have dreamed of and, most importantly, she was my PURPOSE.

A purpose that I began pursuing when we first metJ and a purpose I will continue to pursue every day of our lives together. From that day until forever, I’ll be...

• In pursuit of setting a positive example for her
• In pursuit of being the BEST mother I can be
• In pursuit of loving her endlessly the way she needs to be loved
• In pursuit of teaching her to become a wonderful well-rounded being and a productive member of society
• In pursuit of supporting her goals, dreams and life choice

Yup! Pursing her (and my future child(ren)) has become my PURPOSE. I was born to be a loving, caring and giving mother to my greatest accomplishment and my life’s greatest BLESSING; I wouldn’t change it for the world.

There is a beautiful saying I read while pregnant that brought me greater meaning the day I gave birth,

“No one will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all, you're the only one who knows what my heart sounds like from the inside”.

There isn’t a greater love than one shared between a MOTHER and her child.  I, for one, can’t find truer words to describe the bond we share. My daughter is my external heartbeat and I aim to protect hers.