Life On the Brink
Life On the Brink
I’m back! Life as a mom and preparing for a new season
Hello hello, and welcome to Episode 116 and Season Five of Life On the Brink!
It’s been a while- I hope your summer was lovely, because mine was life-changing! I’m now a mother, and I’m looking forward to this new season of life, the podcast, and to the upcoming autumn season. There’s so much to be grateful for, and I’m excited to jump into all of it.
Today I’m simply giving some updates on me, my new life as Mama, and a bit on how the podcast will change this season. I’m so glad to be back!
Plus, this week's Little Joy is a leap of faith that led me to a beautiful weekend, and I'm sharing a fun and happy album of music I discovered over the summer.
For the complete show notes, click here!
For full transcript, click here!
Site: lifeonthebrink.live
Social: @anna_on_the_keys
Anna, welcome to Life on the brink, a lovely little place filled with inspiration and creativity that is dedicated to enjoying life one day at a time, I'm Anna, and together, we're exploring the beautiful things in this world that fascinate us and often discovering something new. Hello, hello. Welcome to Episode 116, and season five of life on the brink. It has been a while, if I'm talking softly, it's because I have a sleeping baby one room over, and I have very limited time these days to record this podcast, so I'm doing so in a way that will ensure that she doesn't wake up. But I'm so excited to be back. I hope that your summer was lovely. Was nice and warm, and hopefully you had some time to rest. I've been getting my rest in pockets here and there, but my summer was certainly very eventful and sweet for any of you that may perhaps just be joining, I have been on a bit of an extended break since the season four finale back in May, because I had my first child in June, on June 11, to be precise, and the past three months have just been basically just me getting used to that, just Giving myself lots of room, lots of time for that transition, and I'm still giving myself that time and space. But fortunately, now that I've hit this three month mark, or almost when this episode comes out, it should be three months. It seems like we have a bit more of a flow. I have a little bit more predictability in my daily schedule, and so I thought it would be a good time to begin a new season, just as we're beginning a new season of the year as well. With autumn coming, I'm so excited for fall this year, and I've got lots of fun ideas and cool episodes that will be shared this season. But before all that, I just wanted to have an episode where I sort of came back, sort of reintroduced myself, and just sort of updated all of you. I really appreciate the love for those who follow me over on social media, who congratulated me and Josh when our little girl was born. Her name is Zoe, and she is just so sweet. She's like a little peach, and she's smart and, you know, all the things, and I had a really positive, I mean, I was gonna say easygoing, but, you know, positive birth experience is probably as easy as it could go, and I plan to share more about that later on in the season. But we've been doing really, really well. And so thank you to everyone who has sent encouragement and love over there. And I just wanted to highlight a recent iTunes review, which I encountered sometime in the summer. And it really encouraged me as I was just thinking about, you know, this new stage of life. It is from the handle says Caitlin, R Morris, or a R Morris, well, if you're listening, thank you. Her review says five stars. Such a lovely time. I recently found this pod while on the hunt for more content than celebrates the beauty in the everyday, and I've been obsessed ever since. I'm going through the backlog of episodes I missed now and just binging them one by one. I really hope the host continues to put out new episodes for a long time. Thank you. And I am back and making new episodes. I it really just warmed my heart to read that while I was taking a little bit of a break, and I'm glad that there's a catalog of episodes that you were able to enjoy this summer. And yeah, just thank you so much. And to anyone listening, if you would like to leave a review on Apple or star rating or on Spotify, you can just head to your app, whichever one you're listening on and see my page's profile. See if you can leave a star rating or review. I love to share those on the air as well. So thank you so much for that. I said on the air as though this is radio, but you know when I recorded. So now that I have come. Back. I just wanted to use this episode mostly to update you on some life changes and some podcast changes, things that I plan to implement as we go into this new season. And then I just wanted to share a couple of things that I've just really been enjoying. And yeah, as I look forward to fall firstly, of course, I already touched on it, but the biggest update is that I'm a mom now, which is pretty crazy, and I have a little girl named Zoe, and we just spelled it Z, o, e, which means life, and her middle name is Jean, which is a family name, was actually my grandmother's middle name, and several family members on both sides actually have Jean in their name. So, yeah, she was born in June. I was 40 weeks in one day pregnant, and it is crazy to not be pregnant anymore, the fact that I was pregnant, and now I'm not, and now I am a mother, very hard for my brain to grasp, but we're doing it. Fortunately, breastfeeding has been going pretty well for the most part. Had a little bit of a hiccup around the two month mark, but I think we're we're back in a good place for both of us, and Josh was, he was at his job just under a year, so he wasn't able to qualify for parental leave, but he did take, I think it was, yeah, about six weeks where most days he would work from home. Well, he was at home for, I think, like two weeks. He took those for sick leave or something, and then he basically worked from home for the first half of the day or the second half of the day. It kind of the first month or so was a blur. So he was able to be with me. And of course, my mom was over all the time. Is still over all the time helping me with the house, with the baby, as I'm trying to get back into life, as I've returned to cooking and grocery shopping. She, of course, has been there to help me, and I've just had so much family, a lot of friends who brought us meals. Thank you. If any of you are listening, those were so appreciated and helpful and took so much work and decision making off my plate in those first few weeks. Yeah, and we, we were really just inside taking care of baby, Josh and I would venture out on Saturday, so we didn't the first Saturday, which was our first day home from the hospital. But, um, after that, we kind of, we would use that one day to go somewhere for my sanity. Um, one Saturday, we got breakfast to go from Panera Bread, because someone sent us a gift card and we just had a picnic at a nearby park because it wasn't too too hot that day. One weekend, of course, we ventured out to the farmers market, my favorite one in Williamsburg. One Saturday, we just went to a coffee shop where I was able to read and have a waffle and a coffee, and then he pushed the stroller around while I shopped at World Market, which was very nice, just little opportunities for us to go places together, and we were only out for a few hours at a time, but it really did a lot for my mental health, especially since It was entering the hottest time of year where, unless you're going to the beach, which is a big thing, you know, here, obviously, but we weren't really in our beach going season. It's just hard to be outside very much, especially with a little baby. We did enjoy our back deck quite a bit. I still take Zoe out there most every morning, I try to get out there pretty early in her first hour of being awake and just looking at the trees and hearing the birds and the bugs, and now there's a cool breeze, which is a completely new thing for her. But yeah, that was our tradition over the summer. And eventually, well, we had many market days, actually, it's funny. About a week and a half ago, we were back at the farmer's market, and it's so cute walking around with a little baby. It's like a magnet everyone is Oh, How adorable is she. And of course, she's got her little hat on trying to keep her out of the sun, and this very sweet older woman came up to me and saw the baby, and she said, Oh, it's her first market day. And I said, Oh no, no, no, she's been here many times, because it had been, I think it was like her fifth or sixth time at the farmer's market. Because, you know, got to raise them up right from day one. It's about seasonal produce, no, but it was just very sweet, because that's been sort of a staple for us. I'll go out there and get vegetables, and sometimes my mom will be with me or Josh, and we've been meeting up with my uncle at the coffee shop out there, and just it's been really sweet, forming new traditions this summer, because it's been much slower, much more um, low key that being said, Though I did also plan and host a little party, um, because that also fuels my creativity and keeps my brain in a better place to plan a party. I've been keeping you all updated on the house renovations, which are still ongoing, but I've been working more in what is becoming the library, and I'm gonna have an episode all about that, because I think it's finally going to come together in the next month or so, but a big part of it was the painting, and I got really inspired by these pictures on Pinterest of like doodling and really pretty Flowers and organic plant motifs painted directly onto walls, very sort of fairy tale like and so I thought, Well, why don't I just doodle in the margins of all these walls? And then I thought, well, what if I invited others to come and do their part on these walls? And then I thought, well, let's make it a party. So that is something that I was able to plan and host very low key. It was a Saturday Brunchy sort of vibe, and I'll talk more about that in the episode, all about this library transformation, but it was so fun and sweet, and everyone brought their own artistic slant, and it was just perfect. And now the library has all this character. And so as I'm adding photos and lighting and rugs and stuff, it's already such a cozy, really special space. So that's another thing that happened this summer, and it was so joyful on the house update side of things, we now have a functional bathroom upstairs, which has been a huge project for months and months, still working on the decorative side of things, but Josh has been working very hard on the plumbing and the flooring and all that stuff. So fortunately, as we're spending more and more time upstairs in Zoe's room, in the nursery, in the library. There's now a functional bathroom up here. So once I have that space finished, I'll of course share those interiors as well. So yeah, the the baby, the house, the the garden I've just basically been weeding it over the past several weeks with my mom, because I didn't do a single thing all summer in the garden. It was so overgrown, it was pretty jungly. But yeah, we cleaned that up. I'll speak more about the garden in the next episode, which is going to be all about fall planning for the fall garden, and, you know, books, and you know the same autumn episode that we all look forward to every year. And then before I get to the podcast specific side of this episode, I'm just going to sort of rapid fire some things that I loved this summer, some little joys for the whole summer. Josh and I watched house of the Dragon every Monday. We didn't watch it when it aired. We watched it a little bit earlier in the evening the next day, and that was awesome. And I did what the the Summer TV for me was house of the dragon and bridgerton and the bear. And I just recently watched the first half of Emily in Paris because I hate, well, I love to hate. I have a very harsh love hate relationship with that show, but it's exactly what I needed at the time. I've been making this lemon blueberry loaf many times over the summer, I've made it also with gluten free flour, and it's delicious. I'll leave a link to it in the show notes. I made a lot of iced tea in the fridge. I would just steep a strawberry green tea and a jasmine tea and just leave it in the fridge for any time, every time. It was wonderful. I thought, why am I not doing this constantly in the warm weather? And so then I did and cold brew coffee as well. Those little things have just been so like that, much more special this summer to me. Um. Um, oh, Josh and I went to a traveling exhibit. Have you've ever seen? I'll leave a link to it, because I might not be able to explain it very well, but it's called Beyond Monet where you like, there's huge projectors that are projecting Monet's art onto these walls. And the whole exhibit, you feel like you're in the paintings, and Josh in particular, is a huge fan of Monet so we went, kind of as a an anniversary day with Zoe, and we got pizza at our favorite spot close by in Virginia Beach and shave ice at this new place that has been so good, like all of the cold drinks and the smoothies and the shave ice. My love for those has extended beyond my pregnancy. I thought it was just a pregnancy thing, but it's kind of like been ongoing. I'll share that spot in the show notes as well, if you're a Virginia local, or if you're planning to go to Virginia Beach anytime, because it is definitely worth a trip. Also, local is a consignment shop that my mom found, and they only have children's clothes, a lot of baby clothes and like clothes that a mom just like normal clothes, not formal or business attire, just like normal everyday clothes for mom and some books and some toys and things. And they were having a huge sale clearing out things before the school year, and we got Zoe lots of really excellent clothes for like, dollars, pennies. So that was very fun, finding second hand and thrift options for baby stuff like that's just a whole world that I haven't known anything about. And so that's been really fun. And lastly, I did want to mention a book I did read this summer, the newest Emily Henry, funny story. And I have basically just been reading her new book every summer, and it's like a little treat that I know I can just revisit and go back to throughout the season. And even if they're not always I should say some of them, I think, are really good and some are okay, but all of them have a really fun world that I like to revisit and jump back into I thought that this one was really good. I would put it second, right under people we meet on vacation, which is still my favorite of hers, but that was like my ultimate summer read. It has definitely been a lighter reading year for me, for obvious reasons, but I am trying to get back into it to find how I can read a little bit better, a little bit more often in this fall and winter season now with a baby. And feel free to find me over on Goodreads. I'll leave a link to it. That's where I keep track of everything, and I love to connect with people over there. So those are sort of, let's like a brief overview highlight reel of my summer, which was basically just taking care of baby, Bringing Up Baby and doing other things is, you know, during naps. So before I head to this week's little joy, I just wanted to give some updates regarding life on the brink. Welcome to Season Five. Hello. I am planning on continuing the biweekly schedule, so that would mean a new episode released every other Thursday, so two weeks from today, if you're listening, the day it comes out, I think this is going to be workable and to help in that cause and help me be more consistent. I am adjusting the way that I'm posting on the website. For those who don't know, you can go to life on the brink. Dot live L, i, v, e, and that's where you can find the show notes blog pages like the accompanying blog page to every podcast episode and pictures and links and all this stuff, as well as some extra posts in between here and there. I did share an update when Zoe was born over the summer. So if you checked the blog or if you received the newsletter earlier this week, then you would have seen it. But if not, that's where those things are. If you don't know, and I generally, in the past, have been basically creating a blog post version of every podcast episode, so it's kind of readable as a blog post. And I'm going to do away with that for the podcast episodes, so that it streamlines the process, because I think most of the people that are enjoying life on the brink are doing so by listening. So I'll still include photos, if they're relevant, and still include links, but the pros, if you will, is going to be much more streamlined. I'm not going. Include all of the content that would be in each episode. It's going to be more of an actual show notes page, and that is going to help everything come together a little bit quicker. It's going to help this whole podcast release schedule for me not be so stressful or not be stressful, which will enable me to continue it with consistency. But I do want to say that I do have a transcription I pay for a transcription service. So if you go to whichever app you're listening on and like whatever text, you see the actual app show notes at the bottom, where it'll say, Click here for the website or for the full show notes, and there's another link there that says, Click here for full transcript. So if you need the written version, the transcript is available, I'm just not going to be rewriting it with points or with all of the other stuff in the separate blog post, if that makes sense. So for those of you that just listen to the podcast, nothing's really going to change. But if you do still want the photos and the links and stuff, that will also not change. This is just going to help simplify things so that I can continue making this portion of life on the brink, which is the part that I am most passionate about, and I feel that you are probably most passionate about as well. But like I said, I do periodically just share either a recipe page or just a separate blog post, and those will still be, you know, normal, but that is just going to be the change for now. Also, if you're not yet subscribed to the newsletter, I'm picking that back up again. I took a break over the summer, but the monthly newsletter arrives on the first Friday or thereabouts of each month, and that's where you can catch up on all that month's episodes, and I share extra little joys and photos and things like that for inspiration. If there's any sort of link or video or tutorial or something that I've really been enjoying, that's where I share it. And I think that just about does it. I wanted to just use this episode to sort of come back to update and to prepare for what's next. So now we're all on the same page. Hello, welcome, I missed you. And yeah, next episode. I'm just gonna dive right into the new fall season. I've started teaching again, which is another part that comes with the school year. I have just a couple piano students, and then I also teach part time as a chorus teacher. And those little bits of work have been very fulfilling. And even as I'm trying to sort out how to do it with a baby, it's all very part time and is just enough, I think, to help my brain think on other things and to focus and to be creative and to be helpful and useful, and then to come back home and see my baby, because I've missed her. So I hope that you're enjoying this transitional time. September is actually, I think, the best month for farmers market season. I'll say that because you're getting all the end of tomato and zucchini, and, if you're lucky, fig season, but you're also getting the beginning of pumpkins and winter squashes and things like that. So I look forward to this transitional season as we're getting into fall. I have partaken of the pumpkin spice not the pumpkin spice latte as yet, but the cold brew, which I think is the perfect transitional drink. Oh, I didn't even say at the beginning of this episode, I usually, I usually invite you to make a cup of tea, and I just, I'm out of practice, so feel free if you would like a cup of tea now, or perhaps you know my heart and you've already been sipping on one, but I will get back into that routine next time, and I think that's about all I wanted to say. So if you have any ideas for episodes for this season, feel free to either find me on Instagram. I'm at Anna on the keys, Anna with two ends and there's underscores in between every word, Anna on the keys, or you can find me at life on the brink. Dot live, and you can leave a comment on any of the blog posts, or send me a message through the website. I would love to know your thoughts, if there's a particular episode that you would like, or if you have a question that can lead to a sort of episode, please feel free. I love, I love your input, and this back and forth to the community here, so before the baby wakes up from her nap, I will be right back with this week's little joy. Bye. This Week's Little Joy takes the form of an experience and a little bit of a leap of faith. This past weekend, I went away. I was my first weekend away with Zoe. We traveled. We spent one night away from home, because one of my best friends is getting married in a couple weeks, and it was her bachelorette weekend, and it was an ideal scenario for me to be away for the first time, because it was just walking around an art museum, having a picnic, going to lunch, all very slow and low key, and just spending a lot of time at a really beautiful Airbnb on the James River. And I also wasn't the only one there with a baby. There was one other woman who had a four month old, and it was her first time away with her as well. And so we both had our baby monitor set up, and we both had our strollers. And it was really sweet. I didn't know how it was gonna go. I was a little bit anxious leading up to it, but Josh was like, whatever you need, you know, let me know. And fortunately, it wasn't too far away from home, but Zoe did a great job on the ride there and back, and it was just a real trooper. We didn't sleep as good as we would at home, but I kind of expected that, and it was still really sweet, and I know that I'll look back on that weekend with fondness and sweet memories. All right, we didn't quite make it. She's awake, but she's just nursing quietly while I finish this episode. It was a really sweet time, and I'm glad that I took the that I took the chance and made it work so that we could have that, that time together. So that was this week's little joy. I decided to go with something from this actual past week as I'm recording this because, as I shared in this episode, there's been a lot of really, really joyful things, especially as she's been growing. I have heard exactly two moments of actual laughter from her, and just seeing her smile, she's so smiley in the mornings and as she's holding her head up, like it's just so sweet. And even though it's been really, it's been a hard transition for me, it's been there's been a lot of really, really sweet moments. So that's been me, and I do want to leave you with an album of music, one that I discovered over this summer that has been really just fun. It's by a group that I'd never heard of before called the California honey drops, love it, and it's the album called like you mean it. What do you need? What do you need? The album is called like you mean it. And the track on it, called all day, all night, was somehow recommended to me from Spotify. I think I was listening to probably Jack Johnson or something this summer, and that song came up as like recommended after and I really like it. And I really like this group. I don't know much about them. It kind of gives me New Orleans vibes, but not in, not all the way. So it's a really fun, sunshiny album. And I like the lead singers, vocals, there's horns, there's lots of interesting, different stylistic elements. And so I recommend it if you want something fun, especially to drive to I think it's nice. And so that's my album for this week. I think that about sums it up. Thank you so much for joining on this new season, both of autumn and of season five of the podcast. And in my new season of life, I know that the content here, there will still be a lot of seasonal seasons based content of reading, of gardening, of cooking, the things that I still love. But of course, there will probably be a little bit of a shift toward things that are suddenly relevant to my life now, such as motherhood. And so I hope you're excited for this new season. And as always, thank you so much for listening, for sharing, for commenting and rating, and I'll be back in two weeks with a new episode all about celebrating and things to enjoy this autumn. You you. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Life on the brink. If you're enjoying these episodes, please feel free to leave a star rating, or, even better, leave a review on Apple podcasts to help spread the word for podcast show. Notes and extra inspirational posts throughout the week. Head to the blog at life on the brink. Dot live. And if you'd like a little extra dose of inspiration in your life, sign up for the monthly newsletter, which lights up your inbox the first Friday of each month. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, friends, you have a lovely week. Bye. You