Spencer Unlimited

Our Big Move

August 22, 2017 No Comments

I have written and re-written this post several times now trying to figure out how to not receive negative comments, but frankly I realize that’s not possible. When I left my small hometown I never dreamed I’d come back to raise a family there, but here we are gearing up to move there and hopefully get ahead in life again. Now this decision was especially hard because of Jordan–our sweet, sensitive little boy whom we share 50/50 with his mom currently. We’ve toyed with the idea of moving for almost 2 years now and after many long nights of discussions decided that it really will be the best thing for our WHOLE family. Before I get too much more into this I need to address a few comments we’ve already have directed at us thus far:

‘How can you just abandon Jordan like that?’–We are NOT abandoning Jordan, we have been fighting for him and hoped he would be making the big move with us but things don’t always work out how you want it to, so we are going with plan B. We have literally mapped out a way to still get to see him 50% of the time. We have calendars filled with red mark of who’s house he will be at and for how long and who is in charge of transportation. We’ve already figured out a way to fly us to him or him to us monthly plus breaks, summer and holidays. We will make sure he knows that we are not leaving him but that we are trying to create a better life for him and us and the one we are currently living now is not what we want him and his brothers to think is normal.

‘Who’s going to take care of Jordan?’–…..He has a mother, she has helped raise him thus far and even if our parenting styles are not similar she is his mother AND once again he will still be staying with us on our time.

‘Did you even think about Jordan before making this decision?’— Of course we did!! Jordan spends more time with me than either of his biological parents so this subject is very near and dear to my heart. Of course we thought about him, but we also realized it’s better to show him to fight for a better life then live in a depressing state. (I’ll explain more on this in a bit) I have broken down crying while packing up boxes because he was my first child, he made me a mom first and it kills me to think about all the things we will miss out on but I know this is the right choice.

There has been a few other comments but these three are the main ones we get and the ones that really bug me. I’ve cried over this and even prayed for a sign that this is the right thing to do because of course we worry. We worry something with happen and we won’t be here for him, we worry that someone bad may come into his life and we won’t be there to protect him, we worry that he won’t go to a good school, eat healthy food, like his clothes, etc. WE ARE HIS PARENTS, we worry about everything with him just like we do with Ashton and soon Poppyseed.

Here’s the other thing, we only have a one year plan for our move, our goal is to go to Idaho, live with my parents, tackle debt then reassess our situation. IF things are not going well there or here for Jordan we will do what is right for ALL of us. Right now we are both paying off debt that was collected during our previous marriages, student loans and of course regular bills. In order to do this I work from home because daycare cost too much and we have ZERO family here to help out; so Eric works 10-12 hour days, which means even on the weeks we have Jordan he doesn’t get to see him except for when he wakes up and goes to bed, if that. This is also the only time Eric gets to see me or Ashton. Not only that, he works in a job that leaves him drained and unsatisfied, we make enough money to get by and nothing else. We ask for memberships to local Zoo’s and Parks as gifts, that way we can afford to take the kids out but the reality is our kids are stuck inside a tiny two bedroom apartment watching their parents struggle to survive.

We were given the opportunity to get ahead. There is a job lined up for Eric once we get there, where he will make the same amount of money but work less AND get weekends off. There’s also space, time and support for me to grow my home business as well as possibly open a physical shop to sell our products. There is a support system of grand parents, aunts, uncles and friends to help with our growing family AND help us go on a date–we have gone on ONE, yes O N E date since having Ashton. Our second date night was on his one year birthday and only because my parents flew in to Arizona.

What all this also means is a better family life for us. Yes all of us, including Jordan because now the time we do have with him, he will get to actually see his dad and go do fun things with us and see what it’s like for us all to be happy and not worn out and irritated. We are making sacrifices now to better us later. It’s scary and at times makes me want to puke but I trust Eric’s decision to move us, I trust that this is all happening for a reason and I trust that this really is the best thing for ALL of us.

By moving we have the opportunity to make more money, pay off debt, have a support system, get better family time, get better one on one time, and show our kids that life isn’t about working at a crappy job and hating life. So before you start making us feel bad about our choice know that it was not an easy choice to make and that your comments are not welcomed. We hope that it all ends up working out in our favor and we get him full time but realize that may never happen. And at the one year mark of our move plan to sit down and decide if we made the right choice or if we need to move back.

XoXo,

Spencer

Motherhood

Making room for baby #2 in our small apartment.

July 8, 2017 No Comments

Growing up I always pictured myself having babies in a giant house with a big garden out back and plenty of room for all of us to grow and enjoy our hobbies. Then I actually grew up and realized all of that cost a lot of money! Add college debt, divorce debt and getting laid off while on maternity leave with my first and it’s really out of reach now. Yes our place can feel cramped at times, there are days where I wish each boy had their own room and that I could just sit in one room without hearing every noise from inside our place and outside. Something that I will talk about later is our plans for a move but I’m honestly weary of posting about it due to already receiving negative comments about it. None the less I thought I would share how we created space in our bedroom for our sweet poppyseed who will be joining us the end of September.

First we don’t do traditional wood cribs, we have a pack and play for Ashton that he still wont use, (He’s a swing baby just like I was) and the other thing we used ALL the time with Ashton is this mini pop up crib.

I currently have Poppyseed’s going home outfit(s) and swaddle blanket waiting to be packed displayed in it. With Ashton we used the colors already in our room to add space for him till he was old enough to move into Jordan’s room and I loved the way the room flowed together but still had his space for him. So this time my wonderful mom found this lotus flower wall decal that actually was suppose to be a more soft yellow to match the yellow of our room but they sent us gold and Eric and I felt it still fit so we put it up. FYI this was the most annoying thing to try and put up and there is a lot of bubbles and little mistakes BUT again we will move soon so we figure it’s good practice for the next one we try to put up. 😉

Poppyseed’s crib is on my side of the room since I’ll be the one waking up for night time nursing sessions. Now I have a really bad habit of reading many books at once and piling them up on the floor next to my bed BUT with a little one that gets into everything and another one in my belly making bending over exhausting I actually started to break this bad habit and now have a mini stack on my nightstand and one I keep on a tray on our bed. I love this tray!! I remember using it a lot when I would nurse Ashton in bed after Eric would go to work and Jordan would go off to school. I would store my water, books and snack on it while I nursed and napped in the early days of motherhood.

Eric’s side is less set up for baby because there is actually tires on that side of the room (not pictured because I rolled them out of the room to do a little photo shoot.) but my new favorite thing is the little corner that has the pictures of Ashton’s ultrasounds and our hospital bands and the start of Poppyseeds as well as the first anniversary gift I gave him.

One thing I have learned is that when you are nursing you will be sitting a lot and to me I hate sitting in the dark around clutter because I start to feel depressed and just want to sleep so I moved my nursing chair over by our bedroom window and made sure I had things that bring me peace and are calming. One of the shelves will eventually store my pump like it use to but I haven’t dug it back out yet so I have one of Eric’s baby books there and the gold owls my late great grandmother gave me when I was younger.

Lastly a spot that’s just for me is our full length mirror that is now stored behind our bedroom door. This is where I tend to get ready while I sit on the floor and let Ashton crawl all over me and I’m sure where I’ll get ready while I nurse in the future. I wrote about how I started getting ready each day a little while ago that you can read here and it seriously has made such a difference.

With Ashton we moved into our apartment and I was already a few months along and dealing with morning sickness so organizing our place was put on the back burner. I kept saying I’d do it before he was born which turned into I’ll do it after he’s a newborn and basically never happened. So when our apartment complex relocated us to a different apartment with the same exact layout I was dead set on making this place flow. Our closets are still a big issue for me but they are WAY better than before. I honestly feel like I’ve been more at peace the pregnancy due to the fact that everything has a place now and the second something new enters our home I figure out where it will be stored when it’s not in use. I also have crystals placed throughout our house and I’m always diffusing an essential oil which helps keep the whole family a lot more zen if you ask me.

I realized that you think you need all this baby stuff but by time you have your second you realize what you truly need and what will end up being used once (or never) and then stored under your bed or in your exploding closet. I will be adding a post of where I store Poppyseeds clothes, diapers and burp rags soon so stay tuned!

XoXo

Spencer

Life Lessons

Let’s Cut the BS and Stop Making Excuses: Update on my Progress Towards a Better Me.

June 13, 2017 No Comments

It’s been a week since I declared I would stop making making excuses and start doing more for my family and myself. If you have no clue what I’m talking about read this post first then come back to here. 🙂

First let me say that I am so happy I shared my struggles with all of you as well as with Eric for a number of reasons. For starters I had a lot of you reach out to me and say ‘yep, that’s SO me!’ and I even had a few tell me they were so happy I shared because they were starting to feel depressed after becoming a SAHM and knowing they’re not alone meant the world to them. Which means the world to me because that was the number one reason I started this blog, to not feel alone and to connect with like minded people. Finally I’m happy I shared it because it made me accountable, I would start to feel myself slip back into my excuses or when it came time do it I made reasons up why I couldn’t and Eric would say something as simple as ‘you just gotta find a way baby’. And I did, so let’s see where I am after just one week of setting my goals and getting myself up off my ass, I posted my list of things I wanted to accomplish on my post (mentioned above) and this is were I am at.

Learn to Play an Instrument: Eric ordered us two beginners ukulele’s and we spent most of our day yesterday learning how to tune them and the different notes.

French Lessons: I pulled this one out and started it twice then stopped BUT it was due to equipment issues, the mic they supplied me with isn’t picking my voice up so I spent my time trying to reset the whole thing.

Learn Sign Language: I’m happy to report I know my ABC’s as well as family signs for mother, father, brother, etc.

The last two items on my list, yoga instructor and publish something are things that unfortunately do have to wait a little bit. I can’t really become certified while I’m 5 months pregnant so that will have to wait until I’m done growing a life and that 3 month period after where you’re just in survival mode. As far as publishing something goes I’m currently just working on writing more, I try and set aside time daily to write either on here or in my journal to fine tune my skills which to me is a perfect stepping stone in the direction I’m wanting to go.

Now lets talk about the other things I mentioned I do in terms of making excuses around the house….like cooking, ugh cooking. I still hate it, I still struggle with wanting to do it but I’m doing it however, now I noticed my biggest issues is thinking of what to cook and going to the store to get it. Also, when things come up, like this weekend we had Eric’s family in town and then went out of town for a wedding. I bought light groceries and focused more on snacks, however that bit me in the butt when plans changed and we had no food so we ordered in.

As far as my passions go I’ve been trying to do one thing each day for me that is a passion of mine, from reading a book on a subject I’m really interested in, working on my shop, painting or even painting with the kids. I’m making a conscious decision to do something everyday for me now even if that means I have a baby looking at me between my legs, getting food smudged all over my yoga pants while I sit to do these things. I realize I’m showing him and his brother that it’s important to have passions, it’s important to do things just for you even if you feel selfish doing it.

Are you also joining me on making less excuses? What have you done to help yourself overcome them?

Life Lessons, Uncategorized

What I started doing everyday that helped boost my motivation and confidence.

June 4, 2017 1 Comment

It’s crazy to think that I’ve been a SAHM now for over a year, I remember loving the corporate hustle. If I was given a deadline that seemed unreachable I also reached it, it honestly made me feel like I had a purpose in life. Then I slowly realized that yes, having a job is very important but I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life coming home to my job and sleeping next to it every night. For starters I wanted a family, I wanted kids and to go on adventures and grow old with the person that I love.

As you’ve probably read in previous post I was laid of while on maternity leave with our first born, something that wasn’t planned but we had talked about was me becoming a SAHM it just happened a lot faster than we planned but we rolled with it. At first I loved it! I loved waking up when I wanted to, enjoying hot cups of coffee and oh wait… that’s right I had a newborn. 😉 My ma stayed with us for almost a month after Ashton was born and it was great, I thought to myself ‘Ya I got this, I can totally raise a newborn, take care of my stepson, run the household and be a good spouse while I running a stay at home business and blog.’ And I tried to, I would spend all day looking for freelance jobs, blogging, cleaning, cooking, cleaning poppy butts and pumping, don’t forget that glorious pumping and for a few months it worked.

Then I slowly stopped blogging as much, some days I wouldn’t even touch my craft table or laptop and I just sat and nursed, ate, pumped and shuttled my step son to and from school. No I wasn’t depressed but I was defiantly missing something. After a while I would get fed up with myself and make these vows that I would be motivated again, I’d stop making excuses, (you can read about all my good excuses here) and I’d do it all again.

No matter what I did I kept slipping back into my sofa induced coma and just survived each day. The other day it finally clicked, the days that I’m productive, feel confident about myself, speak without my voice shaking and don’t make a million excuses as to why I can’t do something were the days I got ready for the day within an hour of waking up. I know silly right? But it’s true, being a SAHM it’s so easy to stay in our comfiest clothes, order in and put the cleaning off till later because there no one there to judge us or make us feel bad, except ourselves of course. Now I’m not saying that you need to get dressed and put together like you’re going into a corporate meeting or about to pose for a cover of a magazine, I mean you can if you want to but I’m talking about simply putting on real clothes -I count leggings and real clothes- and throwing on a little mascara or lipstick or even blush, whatever makes you feel awake and ready for the day. For me it’s mascara, I feel like it wakes me up and when I don’t put it on I feel asleep all day.

Plus added bonus, when your spouse comes home you don’t feel like a slob and for me, I feel sexy. Even though he gets home late and by then I’m back in pj’s I felt good about myself all day so when he walks through the door and says ‘Hi beautiful’ I don’t immediately reply with something like ‘I look like crap’, ‘I haven’t showered’, or ‘what are you talking about there spit up on my shirt’. Even if those things are true because lets face it moms can go a few days without showering and when there is a baby involved there is always spit up somewhere, I do feel beautiful, I took care of myself that day even if it sounds like a superficial way to do it but I did. When I walked by a mirror all day I didn’t think ‘God Spencer get it together.’ I would instead think ‘I really like my eye shadow today’ or ‘My hair is getting so long and pretty.’ What we think and say about ourselves can really effect us, more than we realize. Self talk is my worst enemy so if putting on a little mascara, a layer of dry shampoo and clean clothes will silence my self talk for the most part then I’ll do it. Doing this daily habit has also led me to add other seemingly normal things back into my life. Like brushing my teeth first thing in the am and not after I had my coffee… or lunch. Taking my vitamins daily and rolling out my yoga mat.

What is something that you can do or do, do daily that helps you feel confident and motivated? Are you like me and need to get dressed and slap some quick makeup on to feel ready for the day or do you prefer to workout and chug a protein shake?

Life Lessons

Let’s talk Sh*t about ourselves, than never do it again.

May 31, 2017 2 Comments

Raise your hand if you want to be happy, healthy, successful, a great mom, wife, friend, etc. We all have things we want to be but… sometimes we don’t want to put in the work to do it. I know I don’t, yep that’s right, I am a lazy sh*t sometimes and want to do all these things but without having to do any work. Now this isn’t true all the time but damn do I make good excuses to not do stuff.

From cooking:

‘I hate cooking because our kitchen is so small and Ashton wants to be in there with me and I have to clean while I cook…’ Seriously. You have an effing kitchen with food in your fridge, a light weight highchair that you said would be perfect for ‘when I’m trying to cook, I can just put him in it and let him watch and snack’ and a freaking dishwasher that as long as you unloaded it in the morning like you said you would do-seriously do what you said you were going to do-then you have zero reasons not to cook and feed yourself and your family.

To my passions:

‘I can never write, paint or read because there is always house work, Ashton needs me, Jordan needs me, I’m hungry or too tired. I never have time to do my lessons or work on my two year goals because who’s going to do the laundry and cook (okay girl you just made a list of reason why you can’t cook and now you’re using cooking as an excuse…) If I stay up late working on the things I want to do then I don’t get to sleep or take baths.’ Now let’s be realistic Spencer… you wash your hair once a week, if that and even though you say every day “I need to take a bath tonight to wind down baby”- to Eric not yourself- you end up sitting on the sofa putting off doing the dishes and binge watching TV shows that you have literally seen so many times you could probably quote them word for word and then go ‘oh it’s too late for a bath now guess it’s time for bed.’ where you again lay there and watch more shows you’ve already seen or play on your phone because you can’t fall asleep… But wait! You just said you’re too tired to do any of the things you are actually passionate about and truly love doing but you can sit there in bed and let your eye glaze over listening to Barney talk about his latest addition to the playbook. To give yourself some credit yes you are tired because you are a mom now and face it moms don’t sleep, we’re always thinking of random crap that really doesn’t matter from ‘why did he fight nap time so much today to should I google what a normal diaper rash looks like even though I’ve already done that a handful of times now?’ BUT you are more than just a mom, even though I hate that saying so much because being a mom doesn’t make you any more or less than anyone else and there is nothing wrong with being “just a mom” but that’s another blog post for a different rant day. You are your passions, you are someones spouse, someones daughter, best friend, stepmom, role model, business owner, etc. The days I squeeze in a quick yoga session and some reading or painting I fall asleep faster at night, I’m off my phone and I’m out of my head. Yes there is always house work to be done and despite my theory that there is a time goblin eating away my hours each day making it impossible to get it all done there is not scientific data to support that. There is just me and my excuses.

I don’t want to wake up one day and be left with just my excuses, I’m not saying that my excuses will lead to my spouse leaving me and my kids hating me but honestly… it could. I spent a good chunk of my younger years making excuses for someone else and apparently I’m good at it because I slipped those jeans back on but this time I’m making the excuses for me. I know I’m not some horrible monster who neglects my children and treats my spouse like garbage but I’m only giving them 10% of me some days and that is NOT okay, just like it’s not okay to only give myself 10%. Here’s my other big issue and after talking to other people it sounds like we all do this, I decide that I want to really focus on changing my life or a bad habit and do all this research. Follow people on Instagram to motivate me, start reading books and declare to Eric how I’m going to start changing my life. And I do, I really do…for like a month or two and then excuses slowly start sneaking back in and I find myself thinking ‘well he didn’t seem to care if I cooked or ordered in so why even cook?’ or ‘It’s not like I’ll ever be a famous painter or writer one day so why do it?’ How f*cked up is that?! Instead of going ‘you know it’s okay, you got a little lazy and lost sight but millions of people have been right where you’re at right now and they pushed through it and got back up.’

The thing with reading all these books to expand my way of thinking is I KNOW BETTER but I never really figured out how to do better. I still haven’t but I can now look at past relationships from friendships to family to love interest and see why someone is no longer apart of my life and how they drove others to leave them and it all leads straight to excuses. I got tired of hearing someone else’s excuses of why they keep going back to the same toxic relationship or hearing the same excuses of why someone couldn’t stay faithful or why it was so hard to keep a job, etc. And they all had an excuse. From; I cheated because I didn’t feel attractive in my relationship to I lost my job because so and so brought alcohol to work and I took a sip while on the clock but I didn’t bring the alcohol. An excuse is just pushing to blame onto someone or something else instead of looking at ourselves and being honest about our downfalls.

I’ve already shown you a lot of my downfalls and I’m honestly not embarrassed by it at all, I actually feel really good being so raw with myself and others. I also really want to kick my excuse’s ass to the curb and start doing all the sh*t I say I want to do. To give you a little more insight on how good I am at making excuses here is a list of things I’ve always wanted to do but was just too “busy’ to do.

Play an instrument- I own a bass guitar, guitar, melodica and ukulele and can play none of them.
Learn French- Two Christmas’s ago my father got me french lessons for us to do together and I don’t even think I’ve downloaded it on to my new computer…that I got last Christmas.
Learn Sign language- Again my parent’s gifted us a book on teaching yourself how to sign and I looked at page one.
Get Certified in Chakracology- I’m again approaching the two year mark of not completing this even though I’ve almost answered all the questions for the final…
Become a certified yoga instructor- I’ve literally done nothing to accomplish this, absolutely nothing but it’s something I magically think will happen.
Publish something- I’ve submitted nothing to anyone ever.

I could list a few others but I think you get the point, so what now? I’ve literally made it public knowledge of my failures so what’s to stop me from making an excuse to keep avoiding doing these things? Nothing. There is nothing that can make me do the things I want to do except me. If someone forces me to do it I will end up making excuses up about why this person is not a good influence. Not because I’m crazy but because this is how the human mind works, there is literally hundreds of studies done on how basically our ego f*cks us over a lot. It doesn’t want to feel threatened, it does not want us to change because then our false self wont exist anymore, aka our ego wont exist. I don’t know about you but my ego is a bitch, she can make a good day bad within seconds. She can also convince me that everything is perfectly fine while deep down inside I know it’s not. She is basically my excuse making machine; Oh honey you’ve cook breakfast so you deserve to put your feet up and watch TV for three hours… Ya, she likes saying that one a lot.

So besides posting this and talking sh*t about myself and probably coming off as a nut bag I’m going to create a plan-I know I’ve created lots of plans before that I’ve never stuck to but this time I will and if I slip then I’ll keep trying and not let excuses run my world. Not only that I’ll share my journey on here and my Instagram feed (@spencerunlimited) so that if you decided that you too are tired of your excuse making ego and want to actually do stuff but realize there is no magic drink, food, pill or person that will make you do it you can at least see that someone (me) is right there next to you trying to figure it all out too.