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Well, we did it. We survived the first year (actually 14 months now!) with a baby! And we definitely celebrated. It certainly wasn’t easy, and we certainly didn’t do everything right, but we’re all still alive and well, so we’ll call it a success. We may even do it again some day!

Looking back at Roo’s first year, I can pinpoint a few things we did right, and also a few we did wrong. Some things we knew were wrong immediately (like realizing we forgot to buckle her into her car seat on a 20-minute car ride when she was 3 months old…) and some things we didn’t realize were mistakes (or successes) until much later on.

Please note that there is rarely a right and wrong that spans all families. Some of the things we did right for our family wouldn’t be right for yours, and that’s totally fine!

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There was a recurring question that popped into my head during Rooney’s first year of life:

What kind of parents are we going to be???

There’s pinball parenting, attachment parenting, helicopter parenting, Babywise parenting, French parenting, Montessori parenting…and the list goes on. I don’t necessarily desire to fall into one of these categories for how we parent, but I feel like as a parent there are so many decisions to make and at times it can be really overwhelming. I did a lot of research during Roo’s first year…a lot of worrying, a lot of laying in bed awake wondering if we were doing the right thing.

I think I always had an idea of what we might be like as parents, but it took us a while to settle into our parenting practices. Often we’d try something and then decide it didn’t feel right for our family, so we’d make changes and repeat the process. It’s all a big experiment, and there’s certainly no right way to do things.

Many times I wished we had the perfect answer – or at least a list of things that would be right for our family. But that would have been taking the easy way out, which is never quite as rewarding. So after a year of parenting, I created a list of the things that worked best for us the first time around. We’ve dabbled in different philosophies and created our own way: the Williams family way!

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I thought it would be fun to document what my days are like as a working mom of a 1-year-old (so weird to say that!). Here’s a play-by-play of our fairly typical day yesterday.

See also: A Day in the Life…of a New Mom from (almost) one year ago. Things are a lot different now!

Monday, March 25, 2013

6:20  Eric wakes me up with three kisses. He’s been up for over an hour already and is ready for the day. He tells me we got some snow overnight and his run will have to wait til after work. He leaves for work and I go back to snoozing.

6:30  I wake up slowly, read the Parenting by Design daily devotional on my phone, check my personal email…and then decide it’s probably time to get up.

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I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s been quiet here the past week. As someone who calls herself a writer, it’s been somewhat concerning why I haven’t felt the desire to write. I’m still sorting through it, but I think it has something to do with the fact that we recently celebrated a year of life and I was stopped dead in my tracks by how much we’ve all changed.

I wanted to take a step back and think really hard about the past year. Did I make the most of it? Did it feel like a year, or did it go too fast? Did I miss out on anything? I am glad I have documented so many memories here, because I’ve been able to fill in the blanks on her baby book by going back through our posts. But, my priority is to be present when I’m with my family. Looking back I know there were times that I was simultaneously writing a blog post in my head while Rooney did something cute that I wanted to write about. It’s honestly kind of crazy how much time I spent documenting memories, and I just want to make sure it’s the best use of my time.

That said, I had a blast putting this post together. These are all the family photos I could find from the past year. I was amazed that there are 12 photos total – almost one from each month. I didn’t remember that we took a lot of these.

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