And Now There's a 3 in Front

Thanks Dori for your birthday post!

In the past I've always heard of 30 being one of the toughest ages to admit reaching. Being in the 20s age bracket is glamourous; it's when we're establishing our course in life while looking the best one will probably ever look.

I never feared turning 30. I still feel like I could pull off looking in my mid-20s, so physically it's never been an issue. It wasn't until my brother Nathan's university graduation (in which he graduated Magna Cum Laude) did I begin to feel the years.

I saw how different the university I received my bachelor's looked, and only then did it occur to me that it's been over 6 1/2 years since I graduated. I saw some old professors literally look older than I remembered, and kept thinking in my mind how young the graduates looked.

It was then that I first used the word "old" when describing myself. I felt like I should have more that I should've accomplished by now. I should have life figured out better than I do.

I let these toxic thoughts seep into my mentality for a few days, feeling more and more sorry for myself that I haven't done enough. Now that my day of birth is here and I'm officially thirty years old, I'm realizing how much I've been able to accomplish just in this year alone, let alone the years after college!

I was one of five organizers for the International Babywearing Conference, about to pop!

I have so many new friends and viewpoints on life after this experience, and as stressful as it was to be a part of it so heavy with child, I am eternally grateful for all the good that came from this momentous event.

I got to reconnect this year with a few of my old roommates from my Sophomore year (my most favorite year in college, in which I'll post more at a later date, but I digress).

We're all moms, facing life's challenges in nearly the same way, despite looking 10 years older from when these pictures were taken.


But we learned how to have fun together which has continued into motherhood!

Speaking of which, I can safely say that the greatest event this year was the birth of my third child, Liam.

So many events in my life have led up to being the mother I want to be. It's a continual desire, and I eagerly look forward to future events that will continue to shape who I am.

I've truly found joy in motherhood.

Ultimately my life is measured by what kind of a mother I am for my children; a lady for my little lady,
Teaching her how act like a lady so that only gentlemen will be around her.

It's the toughest experience I've ever ventured into...

But also the most rewarding.

For my boys, teaching them t0 treat others with respect is a constant desire.

I have been taught that unconditional love is more fulfilling than a bank account full of money (though the latter definitely wouldn't hurt!)

My children are forever a part of me, and that is truly divine gift.

I'm only getting started on all the fun parenthood brings!

From graduations to international conferences to weddings, the last year while in my 20s has definitely set precedence for what may come now that I'm in my 30s.

The Celebrities of the IBC

Disclaimer: These "celebrities" are entirely of my own opinion, and many an attendee was much more involved in the babywearing world either as carrier owners, head honchos, or just all around cool individuals well known in the medical and babywearing community.


As we (meaning the fellow organizers and myself) were planning for the conference, donation after donation kept coming in. From the form of carriers for our lending library (which has become quite the envy of many a conference attendee), money for the conference, or miscellaneous, rockin' items for the goodie bags.


First off, ergo. Not only were they super generous with their multiple donations, I'm falling more and more in love with their carrier because they're SO extremely comfortable!

I now own this green one, and will get LOTS of use out of it, for sure!

Technically, I could still put Eliza in it even while super pregnant, but this picture was taken a few months ago and I now have a large beach ball instead of melon ball for a belly. I can barely find a comfortable position for ME to be in, let alone wearing another child! I could still do it though, for the record.

Here's some amazing ergo women. Elizabeth Strong on the right also taught the Mama and Baby Yoga class in the mornings and read the questions for the medical panel (more on that later). Basically, if it wasn't for ergo, the Conference wouldn't have been nearly the success that it was. Ergo rocks, that's all I can say.
OK, the story behind the fake baby. They provided a "realistic baby" to test out carriers which was weighted according to the average infant to help mommy or daddy's figure out how to wear their kiddies comfortably, even if they didn't have a "baby" with them at the time.

The Conference had a couple of these fake babies. They came in handy when teaching classes on how to use carriers or demo putting them on.

Hannah was helping Diane Pepin try out a carrier, and this definitely isn't the last you'll see of Diane's sweet babywearing skills.

Stay tuned for the next IBC Celebrity post featuring...well, you'll just have to wait and see!

First Day at the IBC

The much anticipated June 9-12 Conference had finally arrived, and I could hardly sleep the night before because I was so excited and a bit nervous for the unknown.









The night before I was a bit worried because of the locking the keys in the house incident. It required that I crawl through my bedroom window at nine months pregnant (funny now, but pretty exasperating at the time!) much to Seth's amusement.



Wednesday morning I awoke and arrived nice and early to the City Library where Command Central was set up and begin manning the registration table.

Just ignore the water retention. Blach!

I also had to rely on other people's photo taking during pretty much the whole conference because of manning the registration table, but if I linked it right, you can check out our Conference Pictures on Facebook. Or just search in facebook for the "3rd International Babywearing Conference."

Classes began and I am still shellshock with the caliber of instructors that we had. Here's an on-line viewing of our Conference Program so you get a little feel for how supremely cool it was to be in the presence of such amazing people.

The day ended with our Keynote Speaker, Kelley Mason.

She was SUCH a fun person to get to know and extremely personable. I was a bit starstruck with how many baby carrier owners and VIP in the babywearing world came, but that's for the next post.

Stay tuned!

Old Faithful

Our Yellowstone adventure continued onto Old Faithful.

While at the Fountain Paint Pots, Seth and Eliza got the biggest kick out of the geyser there, so we knew that Old Faithful was a must before heading back home to rest up for the beginning of the 3rd International Babywearing Conference.

Chris knew what was in store at Old Faithful, so he wasn't as amused.

Until I brought him inside the Old Faithful Inn which he had only seen from the outside when he was a little kid.

Needless to say, that's his kind of architecture and kept taking pictures:

It made the whole trip worth it to see the look on his face! Check out this online photo gallery to see what I mean.

He LOVES exposed beams in architecture.

After going up a few floors to get different angles, Eliza was getting quite squirmy, and Old Faithful was due to erupt within the next 1/2 hour, so we decided to treat ourselves to some ice cream in their little shop.

We got a pre-show with another, much smaller geyser that went off while we were settling into our bench eating our ice cream.

Happy and content with some assorted flavored ice creams to try, we enjoyed listening to the different languages around us until Eliza decided she was done after two minutes and Chris strapped her back on her back.

We were sitting next to a sweet Japanese family that kept themselves highly entertained with our little monkey on her daddy's back!

And then, after all that waiting, it erupted!

The continued eruption was oohed and aahed by the international crowd. We heard Japanese, Chinese, Finnish, German, and many other languages mixed with British and different American accents from around the U.S.

Having Yellowstone so close by makes it fun to see all these different cultures and nationalities right on our doorstep!

So what did the kiddies think of it all?

I accidentally cut half of his hand off while taking the picture, but when I asked Seth what he thought about the geyser, and he just looked at me, smiled and gave a thumb's up.

Good enough for me!

And then it was time to go home. Too bad we missed being able to see the new Visitor's Center currently under construction (it's scheduled to open sometime in August this year), but we'll just have to come back!

Stay tuned for the first day of the Babywearing Conference, in which I was manning the Registration Table and forgot to take pictures of my own, so I'll be "stealing" pics from fellow babywearers. :)

Babywearing in Yellowstone

Today I've been nesting, so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to share how amazing last week was with the International Babywearing Conference.


We went for a day trip to Yellowstone on Tuesday with a few early arrivals, and when I volunteered to help with that I was NOT pregnant so needless to say, sitting in a car nearly all day was not a favorite for my little bun in the oven.

We stopped and got some Burger King breakfast sandwiches on the drive up though, so the other kiddies felt like royalty with their BK crowns!

Seth took the crown quite literally and wore it in the car pretty much all day.


Eliza also took her crown literally and purposely put her sippy cup so shield her from unwanted photography. SUCH a princess!


Then, we arrived using the West Entrance through West Yellowstone to the park, where others in our group spotted a bear while we glanced bison, pronghorn, and some various birds (they just looked like spots on the camera, so sorry, no pictures!).



We also enjoyed road construction and traffic jams, but I didn't think it was necessary to take any pictures of THAT experience!




We set up our "make your own" sack lunch area sponsored by:


Olives and Applesauce baby carriers, and so we had applesauce to go with the lunches (we thought about olives but didn't have a feasible way to store them in sack lunches).

Some of the fellow babywearers getting loaded up with food for the day. We had roughly 100 people sign up for the day trip, but only a 1/4 showed up for the free lunch, so we used the leftovers for lunches during the rest of the conferencel, which REALLY helped us keep to our budget (we had SO many generous donations, but more on that in another post!).

Chris is on the right with Eliza strapped in his camo mei tai mostly so she wouldn't escape (she has the nickname "Monkey" for a reason!) so there's a lot of practical reasons to babywear.

Everyone grabbed their goodies, introduced themselves, showed off all the different kinds of baby carriers (which is nothing compared to later on in the week!), and eagerly headed off into the park.

All fully stocked with delicious sack lunches, we took off to enjoy the sights of Yellowstone!

We stopped at the fountain paint pots, which had thermal pools of a beautiful turquoise that also smelled like rotten eggs (Seth nearly gagged and held his nose...he also didn't think I was being funny when I tried blaming the smells on him).

Stay tuned for more pictures and fun from Yellowstone soon. I don't want to overcrowd the posts. :)

In the meantime, here's our Idaho Babywearer's post on a bit of the day. We all had SO much fun!

A VERY Busy Week!

No, the baby's not here...yet. That may be this time, next week, if this baby follows suit with his big brother and sister. They came on their own exactly three weeks before their guess (due) date. At 36 weeks, I'm in the home stretch!

Between the International Babywearing Conference (just ended today), my brother's wedding (tomorrow) and everything else inbetween, I'm exhausted, but in a very happy, fulfilled kind of way.

Next week will be a great time to share pictures and experiences, so stay tuned!

One Week From Now....

The Conference will begin!

We did goodie bags last week, and boy, are they awesome! The link is stolen from Kimber's blog, who's the main organizer and crazy person that had the idea to mention Rigby as the host for the Conference in the first place, so click on the link to see most of the main Organizers in action (we were just missing Heidi) and you'll also get to see some prego pics of me slouched on the floor.

I'm doing a lot of dotting the i's and crossing the t's now with my Organizer duties, but as excited as I am for the Conference, I'll be SO relieved to see it done and over with.

I'm nearly 35 weeks along now, and I'm feeling it. I've worked so hard with fellow hard-workers to make this historic event a success, that I want to see it in its completed glory!

Then there's my younger brother's wedding to attend (I've been making the silk wedding flowers for it) next Saturday.

I also have my precious baby boy to look forward to, but he'll have to wait just a tad longer. He better, anyway. I don't want my water to break while manning the registration table!

Herd Mentality of Women

Apparently, I'm insane.

But, I also have an excuse because I'm a female and can't do anything on my own like going to the bathroom or getting a pedicure. This herd mentality (description stolen by Kimber) especially applies when it comes to multiplying and replenishing the earth right now.

Remember when I first informed blogland that I was expecting? Well, I blamed it on my cousins then (and I still do), but apparently that herd mentality in the family dominoed towards my friends.

Maybe it's because I don't have sisters, and I was one of the last cousins to be pregnant this go around, so this female need had to go somewhere, and girlfriends were the next victims. Sorry.

Whatever the case may be, pregnant women are all around me in the form of fellow cop wives, playgroup pals, and even my visiting teaching companion.

On top of it all, one of the biggest events I'll most likely ever be involved in as a main Organizer is coming RIGHT before I give birth in the form of the International Babywearing Conference.

Why do things the easy way, right?! In fact, since I'm pregnant, why not get some of the other Organizers involved?

Kimber, Heidi, and myself (I'm at 30 1/2 weeks here)

Thanks for reminding me of choosing the tough route, Kimber! Oh, and you're welcome. ;)

BABIES!!!!

I just had to share this adorable trailer for the movie Babies that I got from a Pampers e-mail.



My favorite little scenes are at the very beginning (Seth and Eliza are like that) where they beat on each other, one reacts, and the other just keeps playing away pounding the rock. Awesome. I also love all the babywearing!

We get to watch a special viewing of this precious movie during the International Babywearing Conference, and I'm SO excited for it!

I'm also getting more and more nervous as the time quickly approaches (just over a month away, ACH!!) and just hope that I can be organized enough for the Registration Table to go as smoothly as it can, since that's what I'm mostly in charge of.

After we found out we were pregnant, that was the "safest" job I thought I could have as one of the Organizers for the Conference, but I may retract that idea as the first day of the Conference begins.

Deep breaths....I think I need to do some prenatal yoga and listen to my hypnobabies CDs (more on that in another post).

What was something you loved from the trailer?

Babywearing

This post is first in a series.

I just love babywearing, which is simply the act of wearing a child in a carrier. It just seems natural to me to have them "close enough to kiss," the motto for BabywearingInternational.org, while keeping my hands free for daily tasks. Especially now that I'll have three little ones to nurture soon.

First and foremost, I want to make sure my children are safe as I raise them in this crazy world. What mother doesn't?

Check out the interview on proper babywearing that our local news did after this article came out on infant deaths in slings.

As the host of the 3rd International Babywearing Conference (IBC) this June, education towards proper babywearing is one of the main goals we have for the conference, and what better opportunity to share this knowledge then to show HOW to properly babywear?!

In fact, it's one of the things I look forward to when our third arrives this summer because of all the cute carriers that have been donated for our Idaho Babywearers. To see pictures of what I'm talking about click here (the Martins are frequently throughout the photo gallery)

Or see it firsthand this summer by taking a trip to Idaho!