Life Update: April 2022 - Abby Saylor Armbruster

Welcome back to the blog! I have a lot to catch you up on! I’ve had a few hectic, change-filled months in the new year, which have included weaning from breastfeeding, Justin getting COVID, cutting six inches off my hair, taking Clay down to one nap a day, my business computer crashing, filing taxes as a full-time business owner for the first time, CLAY FINALLY WALKING and our house getting a leak in the hot water line under our foundation… whew. Let’s get into it.

WEANING

Weaning feels like forever ago now (January 22 was the last day, when Clay was 14 months old). Since I has a ton go milk and was super susceptible to mastitis, I had to slowly drop feedings weekly ever few weeks for a month or two. There are a few reasons why I decided to wean, with the main one being that it just felt like the right time. Though her nursing sessions were 5 minutes or less and nursing her didn’t take up much of my time, knowing that she no longer needed my milk, I wanted to give myself some freedom back. I had mastitis three or four times during our 14 months of breastfeeding, so I’ve felt a lot of peace since stopping knowing that I don’t have to worry about the possibility of that coming back now. Clay handled weaning super well and we transitioned to whole cow’s milk in a sippy cup instead.

Also, for those of you who haven’t menstruated postpartum yet: my period came back five days after I dropped our last feeding!

COVID

I don’t know how we completely dodged COVID for nearly two years (actually, I do… I’m a germaphobe 🙃), but it finally got Justin in January. He quarantined in our bedroom for a week and I took care of him and Clay by myself — every meal, nap, bath, bedtime, etc. It was a hectic week with no breaks and I very quickly learned that I have even more respect for single parents! Also, I didn’t follow my original dropped breastfeeding plan during this time in hopes that I could continue to pass on some antibodies to Clay so she wouldn’t get sick, and neither of us did, thankfully. If that did help, I’m really glad I was still breastfeeding at the time and was able to do that.

CLAY UPDATE

Clay is so funny and cute, guys. She LOVES music and dancing, she copies everything I do (I captured an adorable video of her “putting on makeup” with my brush and closed brow container the other day), babbles and talks all the time, loves petting Lucia (and petting stuffed animals and cuddling them too) and she’s finally walking now! We’re so excited! She took her first steps on February 7 (15 months old), but didn’t take off after that like we would thought she would have. She would take a few steps here are there, but she’s stubborn and only wanted to walk when SHE wanted to. As of last week (16 months old, just shy of 17 months), walking has become her main source of transportation and she’s doing it all the time now. I’m SO proud of her. Time to get her some more shoes!

Some more things I want to remember about her currently:

She’s so giggly, smiley and screechy — I love it!
She dances and claps in her crib alone in her room when she wakes up
She mimics dogs panting
She wants nothing more in life than to walk Lucia on her leash
She does this kicking ballet/karate-like dance move that I can’t get enough of
She LOVES Ms. Rachel (specifically Icky Sticky Bubble Gum and Wheels on the Bus) and she does all the motions
She yells at Lucia when she barks, waves her finger and sometimes says “no, no, no” like we do
My favorite thing she says lately is “uh-oh”

Also, quick update on her schedule: after she refused a second nap for two full weeks in January (at 14 months old) and would just flop around in her crib, we decided it was time to drop the second nap. She’s done really well with the transition and once I adjusted to the change too, I’ve loved having a long chunk of time to myself to work in the middle of the day. On a normal day, she wakes up between 7:30 and 8 a.m., has lunch at 11, naps at 12 (until anywhere from 1:45 to 3), has a snack when she wakes up, dinner at 5 and bed at 7-7:30 p.m.

BUSINESS

Business is going really, really well. I’m so grateful for the growth and that I’ve been able to match/exceed the income from my previous full-time job consistently in my first 9 months in business. All I wanted for the longest time was to be a mom and to work for myself (two of my biggest dreams), so I sometimes have to remind myself to step back and take in how cool this is every once in a while. The balance of being a stay-at-home mom and running my business full-time is heavy some days, and somehow feels completely seamless on other days. I almost never get dressed nice and do my hair or makeup (for instance, I’m still in my pajamas at 2 p.m. while I’m writing this), but Clay and my business are thriving — and I often put myself on the back burner. I’m self-sacrificing to a fault, and though that helps me be successful in some areas of my life, it causes me to neglect myself and it’s something I’m working on.

Let’s get into the story of my business laptop crashing…

If you’re a designer, you know how FATAL this can feel, especially when you don’t have your files backed up anywhere. Basically my laptop had been giving an error message intermittently for a few weeks, but it would return back to its normal state after I restarted it. It got stuck on the error message one night and was no longer useable, no matter how many times I restarted it. I talked to Apple Support and they told me I lost everything.

I SPIRALED because I have countless projects on there that aren’t saved anywhere else and I’d have to start over and rebuild ALL OF THEM. I was physically ill over it and as a working mom who already feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, I couldn’t think of worse work situation to be in at the time. I kept questioning Apple Support on how it was possible that everything was gone suddenly because this error message has been intermittent for a bit. After a couple more failed troubleshooting attempts, Apple ended the chat.

Justin tried something he found online and it magically turned back on and everything was there, so I began frantically backing it up. This whole thing was a 7-hour ordeal. Just when I thought I was *maybe* in the clear, the next day, my computer stopped working again and Justin finally convinced me to buy a new laptop, which was physically painful for me because: frugal. Once we bought one, naturally… my old laptop starting working fine again. Isn’t that how it always happens? Regardless, ol’ gal wasn’t reliable anymore.

I wanted answers as to why this happened and I suspected my computer may have had a virus and that was causing the error message, at least partially. After some digging, guess what I discovered had infected my computer… THE R KELLY DOCUMENTARY THAT I (maybe illegally) DOWNLOADED TWO YEARS AGO. R Kelly did this to me… his reign of terror never ends.

So yeah… that’s that.

P.S. Filing taxes as a full-time business owner for the first time wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Luckily, we didn’t owe nearly has much as we anticipated, which ended up working out in our favor due to what happened a few days later: 👇🏻

THE LEAK

Well, wasn’t this a nice surprise. We had a warm spot suddenly appear on our floor by our kitchen sink, and knowing our house is on a slab, this was not a good sign. We suspected we may have a leak and the pros came out and confirmed it. Clay and I stayed with my brother for the day while Justin was at home with the plumbers, jackhammering into our foundation under our sink to fix the leak under our house. Thankfully, the leak was contained under our kitchen cabinets, so they only had to take out that section of cabinets and not any of our flooring. It’s back to it’s normal working order now and you can’t even tell it ever happened!

PERSONAL UPDATE

As for me, as previously mentioned, I’m constantly working toward balancing everything in my life better. Justin just went back to work after having two weeks off for spring break (he’s a teacher, for those who may not know), so Clay and I are back to our regular schedule. I’ve been really busy, so my blog has taken a backseat and I want to change that — I’ve put off writing this post for so long just because I knew I had SO MUCH to say that it would take a while to write (and it has).

Ok, I’ve gotta stop at some point, so I’ll close it out here. Thanks for catching up with me and let me know what you’d like to see on the blog next!