Our Year of 2021
I started my September update and never really got it finished. Fall is always an insane month for me as it is the peak family photo time of the year. I will go back and at least finish that post later and let everyone know that I have finished the post.
I don’t really remember what I expected our 2021 to be at the beginning of the year. I definitely did not anticipate us to still be thick in the woods with COVID that’s for sure. Alas. It is what it is I guess.
2021 has really gone by fast. We did a lot of fun stuff and there were really struggling times as well. Just like I could say this to every single year, I say that our 2021 could have been easily the worst year, but at the same time, the best year we’ve ever had.
A quick recap for what happened in October through December.
October
With the weather being really nice, I tried to keep the kids busy outside as much as I could. We went to a lot of different parks. We also started a little mommy’s special Monday lunch time with the kids where I would take the kids out for lunch. The kids loved it for sure. We had Megan visiting us in the middle of October and the timing worked out perfectly for our baby announcement. Yup. If you don’t know yet, I’m pregnant. Still pregnant at least at the moment. And we are having a baby girl. It was really nice for me to finally have gotten over morning sickness by October. The months prior were pretty miserable for sure. Thanks to both me and Jonny hard working, I guess eating takeout for a couple of months straight was at least doable financially. Ha.
We switched our girl to private 1:1 piano lesson too and she had her first public performance in the mall. That was pretty cool to watch. While we have no intention to get her to be a professional pianist, it is still really nice to see her progress. At the same time, it has been a struggle too to figure out the best way to help her with her practice every day. How much is too much and how strict is too strict. You know what I mean?! I’m sure this will continue for a while to be a struggle.
Unfortunately, mom broke her wrist on a walk this month. That’s the big oh no for the month.
November
Well, Halloween marked our last fun time…when November hit, my kids started to take turns to get sick with all the bugs there are out there. After being in a rather virus free bubble for almost two years, my kids’ immune system against viruses had a major reset. Then they are back in the world with everyone around us seemingly has never changed their living habit regardless of the pandemic, our kids are just catching up on all bugs. And of course, when you are sick, it’s even easier to get another bug. Of course, as a mom with multiple kids, this is no news to me. It is just how it works—one starts something and then it passes around the entire family.
Luckily, I was able to get our oldest vaccinated against covid as soon as it is available. That helped me a lot to feel better still sending her out to school twice a week. The younger two were not as lucky though.
With me still working, kids still going to school, and me being pregnant, we have decided that we are just gonna get tested for covid in case regularly anyways. Now added in all the fevers, we have been tested so many times. All pcr tests came back negative…till this day actually.
We were able to go and do our turkey trot and Jonny for the first time beat Dad in the race. Wooo! Thanksgiving was pretty simple but good with family. Mom was able to come home for Thanksgiving from the hospital so that’s also good.
After Thanksgiving, we actually went to get a real Christmas Tree this year. It smelled really nice.
December
Well, with holidays and birthdays, December always has been crazy busy to start with. This year, it became extremely busy for me because I actually landed a big commercial shoot job. I was working for a car insurance company and they just launched their policy here in Arizona so they are hoping to get more location specific content. Doing a commercial job is way different from doing a regular family session. I learned so much throughout the entire process and I was so lucky to have friends and teachers to guide me through and to caution me away from some major disasters lol. The shoot was done in one day so that day was intense to say the least. I started the day around 4am and by the time everything wrapped up, it was close to midnight. I got the one shot I really wanted to get—not as perfect as it could be but I was proud of myself for getting that shot done.
I am writing a photography course on in-hospital Fresh 48 newborn photography. It is a pretty neat teaching opportunity but with COVID, hospital policies have been rather strict with how many visitors are allowed for postpartum stay. Miraculously, December we had a nice policy change which opened up the visitor allowances for me to go in to do sessions. I think the policy had changed again on Jan 11th back to be more strict but we will see if it stays that way. Anyways, this led to me having to cram in 3 newborn sessions in December as well. While it is not birth, these moms have been discharged at 24 hour marks so I was pretty much on call. As a matter of fact, I pretty much rolled out of our camp site at the commercial shoot, came home, took my kids to school and drove directly to Tucson for a newborn shoot and came back home.
Everyone was asking me if I was ready for holidays, I was like, well, not yet. I’ve got one more baby to welcome before I can chill. Haha. True working mom fashion I guess.
Probably because of the high intensity of work, while being pregnant and surrounded by sick kids for two months, I finally caught the bug and developed a really nasty sinus infection. I literally had a heating pad on my face for three days straight and still ended up needing antibiotics. My kids were pretty happy that mommy is taking the same medicine as they were. Shake my head.
We also started potty training this month and it has been exciting as it gets. There are days where I was surprised how well he did. And of course there are days where it is a literal Sh*%$#@^t show. The joy of parenthood.
We also now have a 7 year old in the house—full of energy, full of things to say and full of sass.
With a baby coming, Jonny has decided to hold off on applying to go back to school and move across the country for now. Will he ever apply to go back to school? What’s your bet? Ha.
He tried to go back to the office for a few weeks in the fall when it first became an option. That quickly stopped because of our kids seemingly constant fever. It’s definitely nice to have him close by and being able to work from home. I have been spoiled for sure because there are many times I could just go on an errand during nap time and only watch the kids remotely knowing that someone is on the property.
So that’s the last little bit of our year. We closed out the year on a high note for sure and we hope we can have some fun adventures in 2022. Well, I know we will.
Here is a visual for our year of 2021. I have been trying my best to keep up with my daily shooting still but in 2021, after being stuck at home, I started to venture into a lot of different genres of photography just to keep my creativity going. It is still my favorite thing to compile a slideshow at the end of the year and make a physical year book so everyone can flip through the pages retelling stories from time to time.
