10 Month Terror

10 months. Kiddo is almost 10 months old.

It seems like he was born yesterday...that he was a little human pupae and now...

Now he's a terror.

I mean, Kiddo is sweet. He really is. And I'm confident in saying he's probably the most perfect child next to Jesus and Buddha but...but...BUT he's still a baby.

And he's getting into things. And getting sharp teeth that he uses on everything. And purposefully drops his food on the floor. And pulls all the CDs and DVDs to the floor. And eats paper, to the point that NO paper is safe from his tiny chubby clutches. And he whimpers. And he wriggles whenever I try to change his diaper. And he beams whenever I offer him a toy he likes. And then he swings it around so hard it goes flying. And he dumps the kitty food. And he pulls on the drawers. And he chews on any cable he can magically get his hands on. And he laughs when you tell him "no" or scream "ow."

And he grows 2 inches in 3 days. Literally. Thursday night he was short enough to have inches between his head and the table. Saturday he was hitting his head.

He talks all the time. I know he's trying to tell stories, so I respond as best as I can and this seems acceptable. I seem to be fooling him into thinking I understand. This gets him to talk more. Well, a combination of baby babble and real English words.

But he also cuddles, and hugs, and tries to give kisses. And he smells like sunshine and spring. And his eyes are windows into the Divine.

And we made him. He grew in me and came into this world through my efforts. And I think of that every time he falls asleep, twining his fingers with mine.

The Bare Necessities

As part of our family plan, we're sharing all aspects as we move forward. In an effort to get the help we need, I'm going to lay out some of the specifics relating to our tiny house.

First, we need a place to build the house and a place to park it. They could be one in the same, but not necessarily.

Once we have that in place (pun intended), we can start amassing materials In an ideal world, we'd buy everything new. Of course, that's not where we are these days. So we're looking to trade, barter, sell, as well as receive donations, or sponsorship.

Note: I am not a builder. Christian is the construction/assembly/mechanical person. This is the basic/essential/what I can think of list of our needs.

That said, this is a general list of materials we'll need to realize our tiny house dream:

• Trailer or gently used camper - The camper would be ideal because we'll be able to strip it down to the frame and use the parts as desired.
• Hardware (nails, screws, etc).
• Windows - if using a trailer as a base (or upgrades to the camper frame?)
• LED light fixtures & bulbs  - they use less power and last forEVAR.
• Metal roofing - hot tin roof anyone? Cheap and easy to install.
• Ceramic coating - for the roof. This stuff is the same they use on shipping container houses and acts as insulation and siding. It's AMAZING.
• Log cabin faux siding (no reason why we can't have a cool looking house)
• Wood molding
• Wood - for the inside walls, any framing, and built-in furniture.
• Locks
• Cabinet hinges, knobs, and latches
• Finish/oil (for the wood)
• Composting toilet - will remove the issue of black water/sewage.
• Piping - so we can have running water
• Water tank
• Wiring - so we can have power...and the interwebs...and music.
• Outlets
• Switches
• Batteries
• Solar panels
• Shower - duh! Esp with trailer base
• Sinks (br and kitchen) - esp with trailer base
• Fridge - so we can eat...you know...we like to sometimes.
• Ceiling fan? Not sure on this one...but it may be necessary (I don't think AC is happening.).
• Door - I would like one that splits to allow airflow as well as baby containment.
• Hanging screen - this might change because Christian has this cool idea for an enclosed porch...LUV!
• Counter top (kitchen)
• Curtains/blinds
• Washing machine/dryer - to allow us to continue to cloth diaper
• Cushions (for those built-ins)
• Rain water collection system - which will only work in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania (California is allergic to rain.).

SO...and this is important! If you have lines on any of these items, or know of some possible property in Santa Barbara county where we can build and or park this house, PLEASE CONTACT ME! Also ideas for sponsorship or places that might donate materials will be greatly appreciated.

I have a lot of ideas, but I'm also limited by sleep deprivation and baby care. Any and all help solving this problem will be GREATLY appreciated.

Our Family Plan

Every family has to have a plan. You need to have goals as a family that honor your values and hopefully play to your strengths (all while helping you to grow as individuals, a couple, and a family).

So what's our plan? It has two major life-changing points:

• Mobile income - up until this point both Christian and I have required a specific location in order to "bring home the bacon." This has been incredibly limiting. It's also brought a lot of stress because of the kind of income levels our jobs have yielded. In order to realize our goals and dreams, we need to have mobile streams of income, which means spending some time developing and nurturing new ventures (or maybe I should say adventures!). This seems the best and safest choice for us because:
• This would allow us to move anywhere and still support ourselves.
• It will allow us to purchase land in remote areas and still buy clothes, food etc.
• It will allow us to engage our passions.
• It will give us flexibility in work-life balance (especially after it is established).
• We can put as much or as little energy into this as we like.

• A tiny home is a second piece of our goals because:
• We want to keep our overhead low, which this will do (both literally and figuratively!).
• It will streamline our stuff (ooooh! PURGING!).
• It will allow us to build our own home (realize a dream) while putting off determining exactly where we want to end up (I don't want to build something somewhere and then end up leaving it in six months - considering our prolific moving history, this is a real possibility!).
• It will help us to focus on experiences rather than things (a value I want to instill in Kiddo and any other kids we have).
• It will encourage community engagement (there's only so much time you can spend in a small space).
• It will encourage time outdoors (see above point).
• It is way more beautiful than an RV or trailer (duh!). 
• Being built on a trailer can spare us boxing up our crap every time we move (which we've done every year of our married life and I'd rather not continue this pattern).

Now the question is how to realize these goals. Here are some of the steps we've come up with:

• Christian will develop his own mobile income engaging his passions (his steps are his own and I will not list them point by point here).
• I will continue to follow my annual writing goals (publishing at least 7 books per year).
• I will engage social media on a daily basis as well as blog weekly.
• We will create associated video/audio content for our respective blogs and projects.
• We commit ourselves to becoming student debt-free as well as bettering our credit through timely payment.
• We will discuss each aspect of our plan with our friends, family, and followers in order to have the support we need to realize our family plan.
• We will crowdsource, barter/sell goods/services, or receive sponsorship for creating our tiny house.
• We will determine our dream living location and begin pricing land there.
• We will locate a place to build and park our tiny home in order for Christian to keep his present position (or we will find a position for him in our dream living location and place to park our tiny home there).

Seem like a lot? Seem crazy? Maybe. But it's what we want as a family and both Christian and I are committed to getting what we want. It's time to level up as individuals, a married couple, and a family. Our road map may be a little more ambitious than some. Honestly, I don't care how it compares to other people's. I don't care if people tell me "But you can do -insert easier more mediocre option here-." I'm doing things my way. It's going to be fabulous, crazy, and wonderful. I'm going to prove this is possible because I know it is. Anything less is unacceptable. This isn't just dreaming here - it's doing.

Has someone ever told you your dream was impossible? How did you handle it? Share your story below!

Where We Stand

Some of you may have been wondering just where we are in our journey as a family. The past year has been difficult, but we've begun to make some serious choices about the direction of our family and there has been some progress.

1. Christian has a job at a motorcycle dealership as a technician with high probability of advancement. He's realized he wants to manage a team of people or have his own business. The former may be a stepping stone to the latter.
2. I came up with a variety of ideas and tried several, with mixed success. In the end, the thing that seems to work best for me is to blog and write/publish books. I'm going to continue to do that and I think quantity will help me attract consistent readership (though I'm not sure what the quantity needs to be).
3. We're currently staying with my parents, but that has a shelf life (not imposed, but implied). I think the person happiest about this situation is my dad. Maybe Kiddo.
4. Being close to family has been a real blessing as to building bonds between Kiddo and everyone. It's also allowed me to have a little more freedom than I would otherwise.
5. We're making some payments towards our student loans, but they won't be paid down as much as we'd like by the time we really need to get out of my parents' place (if we just have Christian's income). 

This brings us to our series of realizations or admissions:

1. If we were to rely on one income at the present level, we won't be able to do even a quarter of the things we want to do in life (including have another kid).
2. We want to get out of my parents' house and have some time to build ourselves as our own separate family unit. The easiest way to do that and have our work continue to benefit us is to build a tiny house. That said, we will need to barter, have sponsorship, and material donations in order to make that happen.
3. We have to figure out some additional and consistent sources of income (videos? classes? more ebooks? online stores? consulting?).
4. We're creative people and we thrive when we have consistent outlets for our creativity.
5. In the long run, we're not going to be able to stay in Santa Barbara county (and I really don't want to, despite family) which means we need to decide where we're going and start working towards making that happen (jobs, businesses, etc).

The question now is, what do we do? Where do we go? Have an idea? Leave it in the comments below!

Calling All WAHMs!!!

Right before I went on vacation I found another passion of mine (or at least a new avenue for an established passion).

If you've followed my blog(s) you're well aware of the wild difficulties our fledgling family has faced, especially in the past year. Because of our financial situation and my personal role in staying at home, I stumbled into a world of women that I never expected to participate in. I was certainly oblivious to the prevalence of stay at home (SAHM) and work at home moms (WAHM).

I wondered how many of these women were trying to make their lives better through starting their own businesses (between diaper changes, runny noses, and teething). Then I thought it would be really amazing to talk with these other women and maybe help them out (at least a little bit).

For this reason I'm calling all WAHMs! I want to interview WAHMs and highlight their businesses here on Raising An Alien. While I'd particularly love to connect with women here on the Central Coast, I'm quite happy to interview any WAHM who is in the process of establishing, or is successfully running her own business. I want to support my fellow moms, as well as share some of their wisdom and stories to inspire even more moms!

If you know of or are a WAHM (especially in California or the West Coast!) I would love to hear from you (use the contact form or my author FB page.)! Let me interview you and help shed some light on your work!

How To Build A New Life or Our Tiny Dream

I'm this close, this close to doing it. Jumping off into the craziest idea we've had yet.

We're seriously considering building a tiny house.

For a year and a half Christian and I lived in a nice house in Phoenix. It had a fireplace, two car garage, gas grill, patio, and swimming pool. Oh, and a gazebo. And skylights. And it was old, kind of funky, and nearly perfect...with one major exception. It was in Phoenix.

I had an awful job I wanted to leave and Christian needed to find work. We left. We rented the house out. It was a disaster. We sold the house. It kind of sucked, but we didn't lose money. We just didn't make any.

That was not how I wanted my first foray into real estate to go...but it did. We learned a lot. Now we're moving on... (pun intended).

For the past few years we've moved from place to place and paid stupid amounts for rent. Houses were stupidly expensive in those areas (or they were places we wouldn't want to buy) and we already felt crippled by our student debt.

We started thinking about a tiny house.

Now honestly, I have a stuff problem. I'm an artist. It lends itself to stuff collection. Tiny houses require the purging of all purges.
This could be an issue. I mean, my hair product collection alone...well. I'm a work in progress.

Still, I've lived stripped down before and was fine. I could do it again. I know it.

But this was a point of contention. We kept putting it off as something other people did, not something for us. But then we had this idea...

Eventually we want to have something of a compound, with a little collection of out buildings of various purposes. It would be nice to have at least one of those as a guest house...perhaps a tiny house. Where this dream compound will be (if it ever is) is a mystery. But the tiny house? Well the benefit of this is it can be anywhere. It's built on top of a trailer.

It's mobile.

It's also relatively cheap. The potentially expensive bits are the trailer and any appliances.

When I think about this crazy idea of ours, I get excited. Really excited. DIY stuff always makes me giddy, but this would be a whole other level of commitment. This would be our lives.
 
I think it excites me so much because it would be the beginning of realizing some of our deepest desires as a family and a couple. We are builders - creators. We're problem solvers. These are the kinds of things that bring us joy. Sharing our creativity with the world, and living in it (and hopefully making a living with it) is our perfect life.

And now, finally, I see an end to our troubles. And it's beautiful.

The Nice Problems of Postpartum Weightloss

I promised myself I'd be in the best shape of my life thus far by this December (I've got a lot of goals coming due this December). This makes my postpartum fitness plan pretty important.

I don't have my exact measurements but I do remember I lost another couple pounds and an inch off my jelly belly, an inch off my hips, and another inch off my chest. Needless to say, I have some noticeable results.

Remember I'm doing the Body Revolution workout regime without the diet. I have had to modify the exercises for my wrists and knees which have had issues in the past. While I'm trying to eat clean, I'm not significantly cutting my calories. I am however logging my food and exercise.

So with all of those modifications...I still lost a little weight. But weight isn't really the measurement of concern. Inches are a bigger deal. They're a bigger deal because my underwear has started falling off. My bras don't fit as well. My pants and skirts are falling off. It's actually inconvenient. It's inconvenient because while I have some smaller clothes, but not as many as I'd like. And then again the smaller clothes are not nursing friendly which is another issue altogether.

Jeans are my new best friend (Even if they are kind of baggy, it's more that dungaree boyfriend jean look hollering back to the late 90s - oh high school!). Belts would be a second bff if my shirts and dresses had nursing options at the neckline (which when you're well endowed is a huge no-no...heh!). When I don't have to nurse, I'm all about belts and sashes.

It's hard because I'm in an in between shape and size. I don't want to update my wardrobe, but I also don't want to look like I'm a bag lady. I don't feel skinnier, but I am. My brain has to catch up with my body...and my body is continuing to march on ahead to its new incarnation (woot woot!).

Anyone who has lost significant weight can appreciate these problems. They're nice problems to have. But that doesn't change the fact that they're annoying. Until my body's done transforming, I guess I'll just have to close my eyes, belt my shirts, and keep pumping iron.

What have been your challenges in postpartum weight loss/fitness? Leave a comment below!