Green plaid and styling maternity in the snow

This weekend has been a flurry!

Between having my son’s sixth birthday (SIXTH, I can’t believe it!), posting a ton of 1950’s vintage on my Facebook sale page, and then celebrating Asa’s actual birthday today, I’ve barely had a second to breathe! But in these few spare moments I wanted to share this outfit, which features two of my current favorite things – green plaid, and maternity style.

I took these photos last week when the snow was still hanging around. Being a Washingtonian, I never expect snow to cling to the ground for more than a week. To our surprise, it snowed daily in small amounts for five days! This meant I got to bring out this excellent green plaid jacket-vest-thing to keep me warm. Despite being sleeveless, it is a very cozy garment of wool and keeps the chill out in a surprising way. If you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel, you’ll have already seen this outfit in my last video.
Dress, Amazon | cardigan, vintage (similar) | tights, We Love Colors | shoes, Amazon | brooch, CHC Vintage

The weather outside was frightful…

… but I felt quite delightful in this maternity dress! The deep forest green color is one I don’t have much of in my closet, and the stretch is so comfortable I wore it for three days straight. I always feel like I need at least two actual maternity dresses in my closet for lazy days, and this definitely checks off my list of requirements. Long sleeves that stay up when pushed up? Yes. Stretchy and feels like a tee shirt? Absolutely. Stylish enough to pass for retro? Surprisingly, yes!

Alongside my other maternity dress which you saw in my last post, I feel adequately covered until this baby is born.

The busy-ness continues this coming week.

Though I feel more settled in our house, there never seems to be an iota of time where I shouldn’t be doing anything. Whether it’s cleaning, posting things for sale, or chasing after kids, life has become busy. In the very best way! I hope this year to build my vintage business into something real and tangible as a business, and not just a side hobby. This means posting new stock every two weeks, and cross-posting sale posts into other groups and onto social media platforms. I’m lucky to have my best friend helping me with that, but phew! It’s still a lot of work.

But one big change will be coming this year that is bittersweet: Asa will start going to Kindergarten. After a year of giving homeschooling a go – since I loved being homeschooled, and love having my kids around me – I’ve realized it’s just not going to work out. Between the busy-ness of just having more kids, running my own side job(s), keeping house, and staying sane… there’s also the fact that my sweet, stubborn, perfectionist boy would learn so much better from someone who is not me. We butt heads so much, and through homeschooling I’ve realized that I don’t have the capacity to be a teacher amongst everything else I do.

And that’s okay. It does make me a little bit sad, because I’ll be missing a chunk of his days as he goes off to school by himself. But, I think he will thrive in school. He loves making new friends, and lives off the energy of others. His creativity will do well in a classroom, and his brain will develop far better with a trained teacher than it will with me.

It’s bittersweet.

This almost feels like the last step into letting him “grow up” and start to become his own person. He’s not my baby any more, or toddler, he’s a little boy growing far too fast for me to keep up with. In many ways I fear I’ll miss his growing up entirely because he’ll be gone half the day. Depression has stolen a lot of my memory, and that’s something I didn’t realize until someone pointed out that depression causes some memory loss. I fear it’ll cause me to lose even more memories.

But, I know he’ll be so happy. He’ll love the challenge of learning things I can’t teach him. Making friends outside of our small circle will help him thrive and grow and mature. And, I know it will improve US. He’ll be my boy coming to tell me all about his day. And I can be JUST his mama, and not his teacher keeping him on a strict track.

Change is coming this year in so many ways. It’s bittersweet, but it’s good.

Dress, Amazon | cardigan, vintage (similar) | tights, We Love Colors | shoes, Amazon | brooch, CHC Vintage