You have to begin somewhere....

Where to start? I wish I had started a blog sooner in Noah's life. I had such high hopes of keeping scrapbooks and baby-books up to date. I just had no idea how time consuming this whole child rearing thing was going to be! Every day I realize there is something else I was wrong about before I had a child of my own. (but that is enough to fill an entire blog site) All those preconceptions and ideas and "i'll never do THAT when I have a kid"--yeah, all out the window. Noah teaches me grace and humility every day.

So why now? Why after 18 months am I finally starting a blog? Aside from some gentle prodding of my friends' (who's blogs I spy on daily) there have been some recent changes in our Nelson household that has prompted me to finally get this thing going. The main change is that I officially cut the strings this week to my job. Up until this week I was working part time (ok, VERY part time) as a Labor & Delivery nurse. After being a L&D nurse for nearly 10 years I was clinging to that job instead of quitting cold turkey. Nursing can be a wonderful career in that you can do it part time, fulltime, overtime or barely-time as I did it (1-2 shifts a month). However even the occasional night shift can wreck havoc on one's sleep schedule and poses some interesting childcare dilemmas when the childcare need is so sporadic. We decided that the best situation for our family at the moment was to have me home fulltime with Noah. (Actually I think David decided that he was tired of coming home to a raving lunatic after I had taken care of Noah all day, then worked all night, then taken care of him all day the next day with no sleep....but that is another story).

Soooo, it has been very strange to close that chapter of my life. While I know I may very well go back to work some day, the reality is it probably wouldn't be to the same hustle and bustle of a busy maternity ward. After taking a 5-6 year "sebatical" it would be very hard to go back to the crazy life and death situations of moms and babies potentially "coding", hemorrhageing, needing stat-c/sections and all the other occasional stressful OB emergencies. That stuff was challenging and adrenaline pumping when I did it fulltime, but now that it has been so rarely that I work and I am "out of practice" it was nothing more than some very unnecessary stress and worry.

So basically, I thought with all the recent changes this was as good a time as any to start this blog thing....finally. Hopefully I can keep it somewhat updated and it can be a great communication tool for my friends and family--many of who live so far away now. Since I am starting it 18 months into Noah's life I am going to post some of my favorite photos of him from the past 18 months. Hope you enjoy. And wish me luck in this endeavor!