BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT THE END OF THE POST!

When we were getting our Airbnb off the ground, speed was the name of the game. Well, sort of. It still took about six months from the time we closed until the time we actually started hosting, but we were moving as fast as we could with two full-time jobs and a toddler in tow!

After purchasing the house, we didn’t have a lot of money left over to work with for renovations, so the plan was to do what was absolutely necessary to start bringing in income ASAP and make more improvements down the road once we’d started making money. 

Our upstairs bathroom is the perfect example of this.

(I apologize for the horrible photo quality. The only ones I have are stills pulled from the video I took during our walk through–yes, all this stuff was in the house when we took possession of it!)

It needed help. A gut renovation would’ve been the ideal scenario, but that definitely wasn’t in the budget. We’re about ten months into hosting now and we’ve only just started to save for that. 

So, in the meantime, I started making some minor cosmetic improvements that would make the bathroom a little more appealing. 

I painted the walls. I tore down the gross old plastic tub surround and installed a fresh new one. And I put down peel and stick floor tiles. 

Choosing Peel And Stick Floor Tiles

When you Google ‘peel and stick floor tiles,’ there are a few options that dominate the big-box stores. 

After comparing the designs, I decided to go with these ones from FloorPops. 

Side note–I’m surprised by how few designs there are and how there aren’t more basic ones, like plain colors. I probably would have ordered something less busy if it were available, but I thought this was the best one from the selection available online.

They come in boxes of ten tiles. I ordered eight boxes at ~$12 each. 

This was a little more than I needed, but between having to cut some odd size end pieces and making a few mistakes, I wound up using all of the boxes. If you order them on Amazon like I did, you can always return any extra. 

Installing FloorPops Peel And Stick Tiles

When you first start sticking the tiles down, your first instinct will be to stick the corner of one of the tiles in the corner of the room and build outward from there. Don’t do this. 

Why? Because there’s a good chance that you’ll get to the other side of the room and be left with an awkwardly small strip for the last row of tiles, which looks weird.

Or, the more likely situation is that the walls of your room are not perfectly square, and as you move down the wall, your tiles will start to slant. 

So, instead of starting with one full tile in the corner of the room, you want to start in the middle and work your way toward the corners. 

I saw a mathematical equation somewhere for how to determine exactly where to start based on the size of your tiles, but it was so confusing. Since we’re using peel and stick tiles and not the real thing, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to just lay them out and eyeball how it will look best. 

Ideally, you want to have the pieces on the edges of the room be somewhere between ¼ to ¾  the width of a full tile, like this:

I hope that makes sense. 

Listen, if you get to an edge and it’s an awkwardly small strip, it’s not the end of the world. It’s much easier to cut these FloorPops tiles into thin pieces than it is to cut real tile. Believe me, I tried to cut thin tile pieces during this project. It was next to impossible and almost caused me to have a mental breakdown  

Once you have the layout decided, you literally just peel off the back of the tiles like a sticker and stick them into place. I stuck mine down right over the existing vinyl flooring. 

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND adding some additional sticking power using a product like this Gorilla Glue spray adhesive. While the tiles stuck pretty well on their own, I did have a few that started peeling up at the corners that I had to re-glue. 

I used the Gorilla Glue linked above on a peel and stick backsplash in my kitchen and have had no peeling!

As for cutting the edge pieces, the instructions recommend scoring the tile with a utility knife and breaking them. This works, but I think it’s a lot of effort for this kind of project. 

I used a piece of paper as a template, drew a line on the tile and used these heavy duty scissors to cut them. You can kind of get an idea of what I mean in the video that accompanies this post, in the part where I’m stenciling around the toilet. 

Again, I am plugging these scissors. Buy them. You will not regret it. 

I bought them at the start of the pandemic and they continue to be the most useful purchase I’ve made since. I whip them out for everything: DIY projects galore, cutting open that crazy annoying clamshell packaging on products, breaking down cardboard boxes, you name it. Using them brings a smile to my face.

The Verdict

Are these peel and stick tiles going to fool anybody into thinking they’re real tile? No. It’s very clear they’re vinyl.

But for the price–under $100 for a bathroom–they’re pretty darn good. For a cheap bathroom makeover, I don’t think you can find a better option, and you can do the whole room in a day.

If this were going to be a long-term update, I might have taken the time to use tile spacers and grout in between the tiles, which really takes the look up a notch. But at that point, you probably just want to go for actual tiles, which aren’t that much more difficult to install. 

I love that they were so inexpensive, so I won’t feel bad if we do end up gutting the bathroom within a year. And they made a dramatic improvement in the look of the room for minimal effort. 

While I don’t love the status quo of this bathroom, it works for the time being. So far no guests have complained about it, so it’s a win in my book!

Find the FloorPops tiles I used on Amazon here.

The post FloorPops Peel and Stick Tile Bathroom Update appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Should you accept a booking from an Airbnb guest with no reviews? We did, and here’s what happened.

When we first launched our listing, we knew we’d have to set the bar a little lower to get our first bookings. For example, we set our prices lower than other listings in the area and offered a super flexible cancellation policy. 

After all, we were brand new and had zero reviews. We couldn’t expect guests to pay the same amount as they would for an established listing with hundreds of five-star reviews. 

We also set the bar low for our guest requirements. 

Airbnb allows you to set certain parameters for the guests you’ll host, like how many prior reviews they have and their star rating. If I remember correctly, we didn’t put any restrictions on these at all. We wanted to get our first few guests under our belt and start earning positive reviews! So, we had to be flexible. 

Within a few days of publishing our listing, we got our first booking request for an upcoming weekend. The guest had a brand new Airbnb profile and no prior reviews. Should we go for it?

What if they were a scam artist? What if they had a party and trashed our place?

On the other hand, they were taking a chance on us by booking our listing when it had no reviews from other guests. 

We decided to accept the booking. 

Airbnb Guests With No Reviews – During The Stay

Since these were our first-ever guests, I was on high alert. 

The day they were scheduled to check in I was glued to my phone, making sure to be available in case they had any issues. 

By around 10 that night I hadn’t heard from them. No news is good news, right? I turned my phone’s volume up as loud as it would go just in case any alerts came in overnight and went to sleep feeling pretty good.

Around 12:30 AM, I woke up to the ding! of a text. It was a short message from our guests.

“The heat isn’t working upstairs.”

Fuck. 

The heat has to be working, I thought. We just stayed there for a week!

My stomach turned. We lived an hour away and it was after midnight. If there actually was a problem with the heat, there was pretty much nothing I could do until the next day. I wanted our first guests to have a great experience, not run into issues on their very first night.

Sitting there in bed in the dark, I tapped out a response.

“Sorry about that! Have you tried turning up the thermostat on the living room wall?”

I had turned the heat down when we left earlier in the week. I was almost certain they just hadn’t turned it back up, but I couldn’t be sure. 

I sat there waiting for a response, unable to go back to sleep.

After about an hour, I messaged again.

“Has it warmed up yet?”

No response. 

At some point in the early morning hours, I finally drifted back off to sleep. 

The next morning, still no word from the guests. I weighed our options. Should I call them? Drive up to the house? Let it go until I heard back? 

I didn’t want to be annoying–after all, if the heat came on once they turned up the thermostat, they probably put their phones away and went on with their night. But I also didn’t want to leave them high and dry. 

I ended up calling around and finding a hardware store in the area that would deliver space heaters to the house. I put them on standby and messaged the guests again in the early afternoon.

“Let me know if the heat kicked in! I can set you up with some space heaters if it’s still not warm enough.”

Finally, they messaged back. 

“Sorry, just seeing this! Everything’s good, the heat is working!”

Phew. Crisis averted. 

We didn’t hear from them the rest of their trip.

The Turnover

As far as I could tell, our first guests had a smooth stay and hadn’t done anything crazy like robbed us or burned the house down, but I’d have a better idea once I got to the house to clean it. 

It was my first turnover and I was nervous about what I would find. 

I walked in the front door to find… things looking totally normal.

I was worried about nothing, I thought, relieved. 

I moved from the living room into the kitchen, where things looked a little messier. Clearly they’d been doing some cooking and hadn’t done a very good job of cleaning up. There was grease splattered on the stovetop and some unwashed pots and pans with caked-on food. Yucky, but nothing terrible. 

Then I went into the downstairs bathroom.

I was washing my hands in the sink when it came spurting up from the drain. 

Vomit. 

I’ll spare you too many details, but someone had puked in the bathroom sink.

Grossgrossgrossgrossgross!

Why?! Why not the toilet, which was less than two feet away? Drunk people know no reason. 

The sink was totally clogged, so in addition to turning over the entire house, I also had to make a trip to the hardware store for commercial strength drain opener and do three rounds of it before the sink was clear. 

I shot a little video to document the fun. 

What I Learned From Hosting Airbnb Guests With No Prior Reviews

1. Guests don’t read. 

They don’t read the messages you send and they don’t read the guest binder (where we had instructions/an explainer about the thermostat). After this stay, I taped instructions on the wall near the thermostat and other areas, like by the side of the roller shades and various light fixtures. 

2. Turnovers take longer than you think. 

Right after this stay, I started purchasing doubles of all our bedding so I can come in with a clean set of linens instead of doing laundry on site. 

3. Guests with no reviews are a wild card. 

These guests weren’t necessarily bad. They didn’t damage anything (aside from temporarily stopping up the sink) or break any rules. They left the house a little messy and finding a barf surprise was gnarly, but I guess that’s the whole point of having a cleaning fee.

After this, we turned on stricter settings for which guests could book our place. 

While I wouldn’t totally rule out Airbnb guests with no reviews in the future, I would definitely do a little bit more chatting back and forth to ask questions about what brings them to the area, who’s coming to the house, and set expectations for how Airbnb works.

Usually I prefer to be hands-off with guests, not bothering them with a bunch of messages while they’re on vacation, but being in closer contact with unreviewed guests might make them treat the property with a little more care. 

So, tell me: do you or would you accept guests with no reviews at your property?

Read more about the process of getting our short-term rental off the ground here!

The post Airbnb Guest With No Reviews – Our Hosting Experience appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Six long months after closing on our Catskills investment property, we welcomed our first guests in mid-October. Part of me still can’t believe people are actually paying money to stay at our house. I really, really hope they like it!

It was a marathon to get to this point, taking one small step after another after another to clean out decades worth of stuff and get the house in guest-ready condition. Now that we can finally take a step back and breathe a little, I was able to reflect on three of the biggest takeaways from this experience. 

1. Renovating With A Toddler Dramatically Extends The Timeline

My daughter Zara was 15 months old when we closed on the property. She’s curious, independent and wants to be part of everything we do. 

This is great (and completely adorable), and we incorporated her into the mix as much as we could. But it meant the big stuff had to be confined to nap time and days when one or both of us could drive up to the property and squeeze in a few hours of work while she was at daycare. 

When I laid out the timeline for when the house would be ready to list, I thought it would take about four months to get ready. This would’ve meant listing it sometime in August. 

This timeline was generous already, but it still took us two additional months to have it ready for guests. And that’s after scrapping some of the projects we wanted to do!

We even took an entire week off work over the summer and stayed at the house, thinking we’d knock out a ton of stuff. We tag-teamed toddler duty; I’d work in the morning while Johnny hung out with Zara, then we’d switch for the afternoon.

While this worked alright, we found it just wasn’t all that much fun. We really love spending time together as a family, especially when we’re up in the Catskills, and divvying up our time made it feel more like work. 

I’m not sure if there’s really anything we could have done differently, other than hiring people to complete more of the work, which wasn’t in the budget for us. Just something to be mindful of if you’re also in the position of fixing up a house with a toddler running around. 

2. Cost Increases Threw A Wrench In Our Budget

After the price of the house and closing costs, we had juuuust a little left in our house fund for improvements. I thought it would be plenty for what we needed, but the costs added up a lot faster than I expected. 

Some of this was due to things we just hadn’t considered, like new pillows for five beds and a living room couch. Pillows are freaking expensive! 

But a lot of it was also due to everything being more expensive right now, including gas to drive back and forth. It wasn’t a cheap summer. 

Because of this, we ended up putting aside a lot of the interior decorating items we would have liked to add or change. For example, I only switched out a single light fixture, and that was to a super basic one from Home Depot.

We only painted one of the upstairs bedrooms, and that was to get rid of a bubblegum pink hue that absolutely had to go. The rest of the rooms, while not what I’d choose, are colors we can live with for the time being. 

3. Done Is Better Than Perfect

Even though I know the house is totally comfortable and equipped for guests as it is, I still look at it and see the outdated kitchen appliances and the basement we need to clean out. I also see the other listings in town that are absolutely gorgeous, with amenities like hot tubs and pool tables and fire pits. 

I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a long-term project and it doesn’t have to be perfect right this minute. It’s a practical, functioning rental property and making more upgrades over time will be part of the fun of owning it. 

Want to stay with us in the Catskills or just check out our listing? You can find it here!

The post 3 Things I Learned From Renovating Our First Short-Term Rental Property appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

It’s easy to turn any cabinet into a DIY pull-out shelf. 

I recently did this with an unused space under my kitchen counter to create a slide-out shelf for my recycling bin.

Here’s what you need:

• Rev-A-Shelf pull-out shelf (multiple styles and sizes are available)
• Rev-A-Shelf door mount kit (this is how you’ll attach the cabinet door)
• Cordless drill
• Screwdriver

DIY Pull-Out Shelf Instructions

1. Measure

To start, measure the width of your cabinet. 

You’ll want to order a shelf that’s at least ½ inch narrower than your cabinet to allow for easy installation. For example, my cabinet was 12 inches wide, so I ordered the 12-inch Rev-A-Shelf (which is actually 11.5 inches wide–confusing, I know).

The door mount kit works with any size shelf. 

2. Mount the Cabinet Door

When you take the shelf out of the box, your first instinct is going to be to place it in your cabinet and start screwing it in place. Do not do this! 

You need to attach the cabinet door to it first using the door mount kit before sliding the whole thing into the cabinet. This will save you a lot of hassle. 

Attach the door mount to the shelf following the provided instructions. Then, attach the cabinet door to the front of it.

Attaching the door mount to the shelf

Now attaching the door to the mount

THIS PART IS IMPORTANT: As you attach the cabinet door, you need to make sure the top and bottom of the door line up with the cabinets on either side of it. Otherwise you will have a wonky-looking cabinet and have to go back and reposition your screws (which is what happened to me).

You can do this by resting the shelf on the bottom of your cabinet and holding the door in place as you make marks for where the screws should go. This will all make more sense as you’re actually doing it.

3. Install The Shelf

NOW you can slide the whole shelf—with the cabinet door attached to it– into the cabinet and screw it into place. 

Use a pencil to mark where the screws will go, then drill pilot holes into the base of your cabinet. Screw the shelf into place. 

This is all a bit hard to explain through text, so I made a video to help show the steps. You can see where I went wrong (twice!) by putting in the shelf too soon and then by misaligning the cabinet door. 

Hopefully this will help you avoid some of my mistakes!

The post DIY Pull-Out Shelf How-To appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Lately life feels like it has been moving at warp speed but also in slow motion. How is that possible? 

We’ve been so busy this summer and I’ve loved every moment of it, but there are also so many things in the near future that I’m looking forward to and want time to pass quickly for. 

My to-do list is never even remotely close to being finished and everything takes three times as long as I’d like it to, yet I just keep adding things to the list. 

The biggest item on it right now: a new fixer-upper project. 

In April, Johnny and I closed on a 100-year-old house in the Catskill Mountains. Buying a vacation property in the Catskills has been a goal of mine for years, and now it’s finally a reality.

Getting to this point was no small feat. We’ve been searching and saving for years. We made offers on four or five different places, but we just kept getting beat by people going way over the asking price, paying cash, waving the inspection and so on in this crazy market.

Finally, about a year ago, we went under contract on a house we loved. This was it! we thought. We dreamed of how we’d decorate and started making plans to rent it out during ski season. 

We completed the necessary inspections, finished the mountains of mortgage paperwork and were a few weeks out from closing. And then, with no warning, the seller backed out of the deal. It was heartbreaking. We never even found out the reason.

By this spring, we were ready to throw in the towel on our search and revisit it again in a couple years, but I convinced Johnny to try one more time, one more house. Somehow, this time everything came together. Now we’re the very proud owners of our own little place in the mountains. 

Projects! 

The house we bought is a bit of a diamond in the rough. That’s the nice way of saying it needs some work. And of course, we’re doing it all on a budget.

The house has a great layout for vacation renters, but the prior owners weren’t so great about upkeep. The kitchen and bathrooms are from the 70s, maybe earlier, and the house is outfitted top to bottom in varying shades of beige, brown and green.

Consider these the ‘before’ shots:

Living room

Dining room

Kitchen, complete with missing cabinet doors and light switch signs labeled ‘flip twice for ON’

Drafty old windows

Let’s head upstairs!

The previous owners’ kids room, and a fraction of the 1,269 DVDs that came with the house

The dogs have claimed this as their room

This room gets great natural light. I think it will be “our” bedroom when we stay here

The mattress room

Upstairs bath

There are about a hundred projects we’d like to do, but right now our main goal is getting the major, can’t-live-without-it things done so it’s rentable in time for this year’s busy season.

A few of those things are:

Clutter cleanup. When we got the keys to the house, it wasn’t quite a Hoarders situation, but it was close. It was filled with decades worth of the previous owners’ possessions–some hidden gems, but mostly a lot of junk. There were stacks of ratty linens, mattresses shoved into closets, furniture with legs falling off. Our first step was to sort through it all and either salvage, donate or trash it. 

Window replacement. The area gets below-freezing temperatures for weeks at a time, and when I first toured the place there was an icy draft coming in around every one of the wooden, single-pane windows. Replacing them is a necessity to make it comfortable during the depths of the busy ski season. This is where the bulk of our repair budget is going. 

Paint. I know beige is back in home decor, but not like this. A fresh coat of paint on the walls and some of the floors will give the space new life. 

Bathroom facelift. I can live with dated fixtures if they’re still functional, but the upstairs bathroom is particularly depressing in terms of just feeling “icky”. While we don’t have the budget for a total remodel, we’re doing a few cosmetic updates to make it more cheerful.

And that’s the bulk of it. Someday down the road I would love to gut renovate the kitchen and bathrooms, and the deck outside could use some TLC before next summer. 

My dream project is to finish the [currently very creepy] basement and turn it into an awesome hangout space. We’ll get there one day, hopefully.

For now we’re doing what we can, when we can, as fast as we can, which is basically a theme for the rest of my life right now, as well. 

I can’t wait to share some progress pics soon!

The post Buying Our First Investment Property appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Nothing like ending Zara’s first year with a bang. One week before her birthday, we tested positive for Covid. 

We spent the next ten days isolating at home in sub-freezing temperatures with a baby who was sick and fussy but still wanted to get her hands on everything. After that experience, I’m confident we can make it through whatever else 2022 throws at us.

Zara’s first year also ended with a bang in a more literal way. An hour after getting our positive Covid results, in a maneuver that could put Harry and Marv’s Home Alone stunts to shame, I did a full-body wipeout on our icy front steps. 

For a few seconds I just laid there on the snowy ground, unable to move. I was sure I’d broken my tailbone, which was so rich that I couldn’t stop laughing even though I could hardly breathe.

My tailbone, thankfully, wasn’t actually broken, which is proof there is a God and he is merciful. Getting Covid and breaking a major bone in the same day would be some fresh kind of hell. 

Anyway. Before we were struck down with the plague, I started putting together this list of…lessons? Thoughts? Musings on the year that’s behind us.

Now that I’m reading it back it seems like I’m mostly just complaining, but I feel like that’s fair. Making it through the first year of parenthood is hard enough on its own, let alone in a pandemic that just won’t quit.

So complaint-filled as they may be, here are my thoughts. 

5 a.m. is prime party time!

The lack of sleep is the hardest part

I knew becoming a parent would be challenging, but I had no idea how badly I’d struggle with the lack of sleep. I’ve always been someone who needs a solid eight hours to function well, and having that cut in half and broken up into fragments and then trying to get through the day was, to put it plainly, awful. 

Even now that Zara is sleeping better most nights, I still have a ton of anxiety around how much sleep I’m (not) getting. So many nights I just lie there in the dark, waiting to hear her stir.

I know one day we’ll all be sleeping much more soundly and this will be a distant, groggy memory, but right now it’s a phase I wouldn’t mind leaving behind. 

Nothing lasts

In the same breath as lamenting my sleep woes, I remind myself that this too shall pass, just like every other rough patch we’ve had so far. 

There was a stretch around the four-month mark (hi, sleep regression) where I was certain Zara would never sleep more than an hour at a time again and a point at eight months where I was so sick with some nasty respiratory bug that I’d wake up in the morning unsure how I was going to make it through the day. 

Those were tough times, but they only lasted a week or two. I’m trying to get better at remembering this when we’re having a less-than-perfect day or week.

Newborns can’t get bad habits

There is too much stupid information out there on the internet, and I read all of it. 

When Zara was still tiny, she wanted to breastfeed all the time. She would’ve nursed every hour if I let her, and many days that’s exactly what we did. 

But because of what I’d read online, mostly from “experts” on Instagram, I was constantly worried I was creating the bad habit of my baby needing to be nursed to be soothed or fall asleep. Ugh, I cringe just thinking back on it because of how wrong it feels. 

I now know that nursing your baby a lot is A) not a bad thing and B) not some unbreakable habit you’re doomed to live with forever if you decide you’d like to stop doing it. Color me enlightened, and damn those Instagram experts. 

We’re not planning on having another baby, but if we did, I feel like I’d be so much more relaxed about a lot of things during the newborn phase. 

Drink water. So much water. 

I’ve already talked about pregnancy dehydration in this post and being thirsty all the time in this post, so you’d think I would have this topic covered, but no, I’m not done talking about how much water I need to drink to not feel like complete garbage. 

I’m on the verge of becoming one of those wife-beater-wearing dudes with trunk-sized arms at the gym who carry around a gallon jug of water wherever they go. I understand your struggle, wife-beater dudes. The thirst is real. 

Fancy diaper pails are useless

We got the Dekor one that’s on all the ‘best baby gear’ lists, and wow. Hats off to the marketing team that convinced the world it’s a winner, because this thing is flimsier than a Times Square umbrella on a rainy day. 

It’s also SO COMPLICATED for no reason. It uses special garbage bags that have to be–no joke–sliced apart from one another with a blade that’s built into the side of the can, which is a genius and very safe feature for exhausted parents in the wee hours of the morning.

I’m filled with rage every time I have to use it. 

If you’re expecting, do yourself a favor and just get a nice, normal garbage can with a tight lid.

Secondhand is where it’s at

You go through clothes and other baby stuff at lightning speed in the first few months. It hurts to think of all the money we could have saved if we’d bought more of Zara’s gear secondhand. 

Some of the pricier items we purchased new, like her swing, only lasted a couple months before she was too big for them, while one of our most-used items, the glider in her nursery, was rescued from the curb in front of a neighbor’s house and has worked out beautifully. 

Facebook Marketplace is a treasure trove of baby items in great condition, and Once Upon A Child has become our go-to for clothing basics like onesies and stuff that we’ll only use for one season, like winter coats. 

I’m proud of what this body has accomplished

My body will never be the same

I had heard a lot of new moms say “my body doesn’t feel like mine” after giving birth, and it’s so accurate, but it’s hard to understand until you go through it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just…different. 

Clothes are different. I haven’t worn 90% of my pre-baby clothes and it’s not just because we’re all cooped up at home. They don’t fit right.

Though I was narcissistically delighted to see my weight return to nearly where it was before having Zara (thanks, breastfeeding), trying to put on my old jeans was a riot. I can’t get them up past my thighs. 

Things are squishy where they were once firm. Things are loose where they were once, ahem, not loose. Climbing the stairs too quickly makes me winded, but I can easily hoist a 25-pound baby over my head and carry her long distances. I can no longer contort my upper body in the proper way to scratch an itch on my own back. 

It’s trippy to feel like the skin you’re living in belongs to someone else, especially in those very vulnerable early days, but I’ve come to love this 2.0 version of my body. More than anything else, I’m in awe of what it has accomplished.

Don’t do anything you can do while the baby is awake while the baby is asleep

I like this one so much better than ‘sleep when the baby sleeps,’ which is ridiculous advice when you haven’t showered in three days, the dogs need a walk and the volume of dirty laundry is no longer even close to being able to fit in the hamper. 

Yes, napping while the baby naps is awesome and has gotten me through many a rough day, but sometimes what you really need is an episode of Real Housewives or a mindless Instagram scroll or, if you’re really feeling like an overachiever, a workout. When the baby’s sleeping, it’s mom time–time for all those things you simply can’t do when you’re monitoring a tiny human (also, I hate the phrase tiny human). 

Each dog counts for ½ a baby

So for the nosy Nellies asking why we’re not having another, it’s because this math means we already have two. 

I have so many more thoughts after one year of parenthood–how we were never meant to do it without a village, how the mental load disparity between men and women gets exponentially bigger after a baby, how Pinterest-perfect moms make my blood boil–but a post covering all that would take me at least another year to write. 

For now, I’ll wrap it up with a few final thoughts. 

This past year with Zara has been the most challenging of my life, but also the most joyful. It’s been like reuniting with someone I’ve known my whole life and simultaneously meeting them for the first time. It’s been full of contradictions, surprises, and moments of pure awe. 

I’m not sad this first year is over. It was full and complete and I’ll treasure it. Instead, I can’t wait for all the things we’ll experience together as a family in the years ahead. 

Happy birthday, my sweet girl!

The post One Year appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

My husband’s job doesn’t come with a whole lot of leeway for time off, so he has to use his vacation days sparingly. That meant I’d be going it alone for this trip.

I went back and forth quite a bit over when to book it—sooner, when Zara was smaller and easier to tote around? Or later, when she was a little older and could sit on her own and stay awake for longer stretches?

In the end, I wound up booking the trip for the most convenient dates, which fell a few days after Zara turned four months old.

Traveling alone with a baby isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a highly physical endeavor filled with lifting and lugging and schlepping. Aching back aside, our trip was largely a success and I’m so glad we went! I’m already looking at dates for our next trip.

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re considering traveling or about to travel with a baby and trying, like I was, to avoid it being a total nightmare. Disclaimer: there will inevitably be some hiccups, and that’s okay. The key is setting a low bar, taking lots of deep breaths and doing your best to loosen that death grip you have on being in control (hi, I’m talking to myself).

Setup for Flying Alone with a Baby

Before I get to the tips, I thought it would be helpful to share our setup for flying. Before our trip, I was totally clueless about how to fly with a baby and the logistics involved.

A couple important things I learned: children under two can sit in your lap for free. If you want them to have their own seat, most airlines require you to buy a separate ticket. A few allow kids to fly free or at a discounted fare.

A baby’s travel necessities, like their stroller, car seat and diaper bag, don’t count toward your baggage allowance. So, in addition to all your baby gear, you can bring a personal item on board without an extra fee. Obviously double check with your airline before you show up for your flight, but this was the policy for Allegiant and JetBlue, which I flew with on this trip.

When I first booked the trip, I thought, babies fly free? Great, she’ll sit in my lap. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized what a disaster this could potentially turn into with my daughter, who hates to be held while sitting down. At the last minute, I called both airlines and booked her her own seat. I’m so glad I did.

So, here’s what my traveling-with-a-baby setup ended up looking like:

• I packed one bag (from Away, which I adore) for both of us and checked it
• I rolled to the gate with her stroller + car seat. They make you take the baby out of the car seat at security, so I had our Baby Bjorn handy and popped her into that
• I gate-checked the stroller and the base for her car seat. Gate checking is super convenient for baby gear and doesn’t cost extra. You leave your items just before you get onboard and pick them up right when you deplane, instead of having to go to baggage claim
• I boarded with her in the Baby Bjorn, carrying the car seat for her to sit in

I have to give major props to the crew at Allegiant, who went above and beyond to help me get boarded and settled during our NY-to-FL flight.

It’s very easy to feel like you’re one big inconvenience when traveling with a baby, but they made me feel like it was totally normal and they wanted to make it as easy as possible. I will definitely be flying Allegiant again for our future Florida trips.

Now for what I learned from traveling solo with a baby.

1. Fly Early in the Day

If your baby is like mine, her mood has an inverse relationship with the hour of the day. The longer she’s been awake, the fussier she gets. Conveniently, airports operate on a similar clock. The later it gets in the day, the greater your chance for delays, crowds and other travel snafus.

Fly early. Our flights were between 10 a.m. and noon both ways and it worked out really well for the timing of her meals and naps. Next time I’d go even earlier—a 9 a.m. flight would be perfect.

2. Arrive Early

Before I had a baby, I would roll up to the airport 30 minutes before the doors of my plane were set to close. I’ve run to the gate more than once.

The thought of doing this with a baby and all the ancillary gear is laughable. While you’re probably worried about getting there too early and being trapped in the terminal with a baby, that’s highly preferable to rushing to your gate in a panic or worse, missing your flight.

Get there early, feed your baby, get yourself a snack. Lay out a blanket and let her kick around and get some tummy time since she’ll be confined to a seat for the next few hours. Get friendly with the gate agents, who can hopefully help you get onboard smoothly.

Getting some floor time before our flight

3. Sit at the Front and Board Last

Most airlines call for families traveling with children to board early, which is nice, but that just means you’ll be cooped up on the plane that much longer. With a small baby, I think it’s easier to wait and board last, especially if you can get a seat up front.

For our first flight, I was able to get us seats in the third row. We waited until everyone else had boarded and then breezed into our seats, taking off just a few minutes later.

On our second flight we were near the back and boarded early. We had to wait almost half an hour for everyone else to board and to finally take off, and Zara got pretty fussy during that wait. In the future I will definitely pay extra to be at the front.

4. Unpopular Advice: Get Your Baby Their Own Seat

I’ve heard a lot of moms rave about taking advantage of the kids-under-two-fly-free policy, but I’m so glad I went with my gut and coughed up the cash for another seat. I guess some babies love to be held, but Zara would’ve had a fit if I attempted to keep her on my lap for the entire 2.5 hour flight.

I followed popular advice and nursed her while we took off (the swallowing helps their ears with the change in air pressure), then transferred her to her car seat next to me. She complained a little but fell asleep after a few minutes and slept for the majority of both flights.

Just boarded. So far so good!

Napping the flight away

5. Book the Window and the Aisle

Babies sitting in a car seat are required to be placed in the window seat. When you’re selecting your seats, book the window seat for baby and the aisle seat for yourself.

Other people booking their flights will avoid choosing a single middle seat, making it more likely it’ll stay empty and you’ll have the entire row to yourselves. If it’s a full flight and you do wind up with a third person in your row, you can always switch with them for the middle seat.

6. Bring a Pillow

I wished I had brought one to prop Zara on while I fed her instead of having just the arm rest. The round neck pillows that snap together at the bottom would have been perfect to tack onto her diaper bag and carry onboard.

7. Wear a Watch

We take for granted that we’ll always have our phone to check the time, but when you’re traveling solo with a baby, your hands will pretty much always be full. This makes digging out your phone difficult. The last thing you want is to absentmindedly set it down somewhere, like I did on our first flight (bless the TSA agents who came running after me with it!).

Make your life a little easier by wearing a watch.

I was pretty stressed about flying with a baby on my own, but we made it from New York to Florida and back without any major disasters. I now feel a lot more confident about taking her places by myself and know that when Johnny and I travel with her together, it will be a piece of cake in comparison.

Have you traveled with your baby or do you plan to soon? Leave me a comment and let me know how you’re feeling about it/what other questions you have!

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The post 7 Things I Learned From Flying Alone With A 4-Month Old Baby appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Beautiful.

Scary.

Challenging.

Joyful.

Frustrating.

Demanding.

Exhausting.

Awe-inspiring.

Also, thirsty. I have never been so parched in my entire life, and finding the time to fill and drink a glass of water is a struggle. A glass of water with ice feels like a luxury, and no, I’m not being dramatic.

Before I had a baby, I found it hard to understand (or frankly, even believe) when moms would talk about how time-consuming being a parent is, but now I get it. Oh, does my thirsty self get it.

Johnny has been going into the office one day—ONE—each week, and on those days I have Zara either in my arms or within arm’s reach for 12 hours straight.

“Surely you’re not just holding the baby all day!” pre-child me would exclaim.

Listen. You’d be surprised.

If she’s having a fussy day, putting her down provokes a fit of screaming, so I either endure what sounds like a wild banshee shrieking or stick to tasks that can be completed with one hand. A lot of the time this means I get done, well, not much.

I don’t mean to complain. The good days are something else entirely.

On those days we dance (I dance, she wiggles) to our favorite songs—Lady Gaga and Britney are on repeat—and go on walks exploring the neighborhood.

And nothing compares to walking into her nursery first thing in the morning or after a nap and seeing her face break into one of her gummy little smiles. Ugh. They’re simply the best, and thinking about how much this tiny, growing human needs me makes my stomach do somersaults and my heart feel like it’s going to burst.

Motherhood involves a constant weighing of risk versus reward.

Let the baby sleep on your chest and remain trapped on the couch underneath her with no snack, drink, or remote control in sight, or get up and risk waking her from the nap she so desperately needs?

Sleep when the baby sleeps and get a little slice of the shut-eye you so desperately need, or power through and get a shower?

It’s never-ending mental gymnastics.

More than anything, I’ve been blindsided by how much everything else in my life has taken a backseat.

Things that used to seem important—that are important!—simply don’t get done, and I’m not talking about the obvious things like leisurely weekends of sleeping in and brunching. I’m talking basic life maintenance.

I read text messages hours or sometimes days after they arrive. I’ve stopped returning phone calls entirely. Dusting, mopping and deep cleaning of any kind are pretty much nonexistent, and personal hygiene is questionable at best.

I know in the grand scheme of things this phase is just a tiny sliver of our lives and the piles of laundry can wait. I know this. But there’s still a piece of me that can’t help but feel like I’m dropping the ball left, right and center.

I’ll end on a high note with one of the best things about motherhood, one that I was totally unprepared for: how much the people in my life have rallied around me to provide support.

From close friends to old acquaintances, unexpected gifts to words of advice and encouragement, I’ve had no shortage of cheerleaders telling me “this is hard, but you’ve got this.”

It is hard, and whether I’ve in fact got it remains to be seen, but the cheerleaders make me feel like I’m at least giving it my best shot. Getting to spend every day with this chunky little peanut makes it all worth it.

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The post Motherhood appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

Case in point: The days are long but the years are short.

Though some of our days certainly seem endless, the last two months have passed in the blink of an eye. Zara Jeanette Dzenitis graced us with her presence on January 15, four days shy of her due date, and our lives will never be the same.

It’s hard to know where to begin writing about the life-altering addition that is a new baby. Should I share the story of her birth? Do people want to read that?

Before I was pregnant, bloggers’ birth stories never interested me. Other people seem to love them, though, and ours was kind of a doozy, so I guess that’s where I’ll start.

It was a Wednesday. With my due date approaching, I had become hyper-vigilant about every little pain and twinge. Was that stomachache the residual effect of last night’s tacos, or the start of labor?

That day, I woke up early in the morning with cramps that I quickly began to suspect were actually contractions. They were coming in waves, but weren’t regular or particularly painful just yet.

“Today might be the day!” I told Johnny excitedly when he woke up.

Ready to pop!

Not sure how quickly things might progress, Johnny called in to work and began (finally!) packing a bag for the hospital. I threw a few last-minute things in my hospital bag and checked in with the dog sitter we’d lined up. Then Johnny started cleaning the house like a madman.

“We want to have a clean house to come home to!” he explained.

It wasn’t the first thing that was on my mind, but when my husband decides to clean the house of his own volition, I don’t ask questions.

Then, we waited. And waited. My contractions weren’t getting longer or closer together. They were painful, but not so bad that I couldn’t still take the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood.

By that evening, things hadn’t progressed any further. We were both getting antsy and a little anxious. I called my doctor’s after-hours line and they said if I was unsure, to go ahead and go to the hospital.

Roger that, I thought. This was it!

We hopped in the car and began the half hour drive to the hospital. About halfway there I decided I was thirsty, so we stopped at a gas station to get something to drink. In retrospect, this is pretty funny to me. If you’ve given birth before, you can probably see where this is going.

We arrived at the hospital. I was examined by a nurse, who promptly announced I was barely dilated. She turned us around and sent us right back home.

“Do you want my honest advice?” the nurse asked.

I nodded. Obvi.

“Don’t come back until you’re screaming in pain.”

Noted.

Disappointed but relieved that nothing was wrong, we headed home and went to bed.

The next day started out similar to the one before, with palpable but bearable contractions. Here we go again, I thought.

I had read that it was possible to experience contractions for days before you actually begin active labor, so I was mentally preparing for that possibility. At the same time, I was ready to get things moving, so I started trying every old wives’ tale I’d heard of to kickstart labor.

I curb walked. I climbed up and down the stairs. I mopped the floor. Slowly but surely, my contractions got stronger as the day went on.

Finally, around 4 p.m., I stood up from bouncing on my exercise ball and it happened: I heard a pop and felt a gush (if you’re squeamish about bodily details, head elsewhere now). My water broke!

Contrary to what the movies would have you believe, most women don’t experience their water breaking spontaneously. Instead, it’s broken by a doctor when they’re in labor. The great thing about it breaking at home, though, is that it’s a guaranteed ticket to be admitted to the hospital. Score! It also kicks your contractions into high gear, so things got intense really quickly.

Remember the nurse’s recommendation for when to come back? Within about half an hour I was at that point, so we scrambled back into the car and made the drive to the hospital for the second time in 24 hours.

This time, the thought of stopping at a gas station was laughable—I was laying down in the back seat screaming into a pillow and pleading with Johnny to run red lights so we could get there faster.

Once we got to the hospital, things moved fast. With my water visibly broken (i.e. a puddle forming at my feet) I was admitted right away. An older nurse introduced herself and began coaching me through my contractions. She had clearly done this a time or two, and she was amazing.

“Focus on your breath,” she told me in a soothing mama-bear voice. “Count slowly from one to ten.”

She showed Johnny how to take the weight off my hips and apply counterpressure to my lower back. He encouraged me and reminded me to breathe.

My goal was to go unmedicated for as long as I could, delivering the baby without pain medication if possible, but I was definitely open to the option of drugs if the pain got to be too much. Spoiler alert: it did.

After about three hours of excruciating contractions, the nurse checked my progress. Based on the pain level and how long we’d been at it, I was sure we had to be close to meeting our girl.

I was wrong. The nurse told me I was only three centimeters dilated. I was crushed. Pushing doesn’t happen until ten centimeters. There was no way I could keep this up for another three hours, let alone into the next morning.

“Okay,” I said to the nurse. “Let’s talk about drugs.”

Rather than going straight for an epidural, which would confine me to the bed, we first opted to try an IV medication that would dull the pain of contractions but would be tapered off before I delivered.

It dulled the pain alright, but it also made me feel totally high. I remember laughing as I held Johnny’s hand, finding the feeling of his fingers in mine hilarious.

It felt good to have some relief from the pain, but I also felt like I was in outer space. That was not how I wanted to experience the birth of our daughter. I asked for the IV to be turned off.

As the pain started to ratchet up again, I made the call.

“I want the epidural.”

“Oh sweetheart,” the nurse said soothingly. “You’ve made a wonderful choice.”

I think she was as relieved as I was as the anesthesiologist administered the drugs.

Epidural = heaven

It was almost midnight at this point, and the next six hours passed in a blissful haze. I dozed in and out of sleep while CNN played on the hospital room TV. The nurse came in every hour or two to check my progress.

Though I had progressed to about seven centimeters overnight, by the early morning things had slowed to a crawl. The nurses changed shifts. While the night nurse had been gentle and low-key, the morning crew was all business. They started tossing around what I considered a dirty word in the context of my birth plan: Pitocin.

Pitocin is a drug that speeds up labor. Great! Except it also comes with an unpleasant side effect: it makes contractions a lot more intense. For several women I know, receiving Pitocin ended in a C-section.

There’s nothing wrong with having a C-section. I know many women voluntarily choose to have one, and I of course wanted to do whatever was best for the baby.

However, I wanted to be able to move around right after delivery without the additional recovery a C-section requires. I wanted to be able to walk my dogs and go up and down the stairs in our house. And I really wanted to experience a vaginal delivery. It was one of the few things in my pregnancy I had strong wishes about, so a recommendation for Pitocin was not what I wanted to hear.

I asked if we could wait a little longer, so that’s what we did. After another couple hours, though, my progress was still stalled. The longer you go after your water breaks without delivering, the more danger there is for infection, so Pitocin it was.

By around 10 a.m. the Pitocin had done its job and I was ten centimeters dilated. It was time to push!

As the nurses helped me get into position, they coached me to push when I felt a contraction. Except there was one problem: I couldn’t feel a thing because of the epidural.

I guess you’re supposed to be able to tell when a contraction is happening and feel the urge to push even with an epidural, but that wasn’t the case for me. I was totally numb below the waist, and my attempts at “pushing” were drawing concerned looks from the nurses. It wasn’t getting us anywhere. They opted to turn the epidural off.

Another important detail is that Zara was in what’s known as occiput posterior position, AKA “sunny side up.” This means that instead of facing my spine like most babies are when they’re born, she was facing my stomach with her head positioned against my tailbone. This explained why my contractions were so painful early on—it’s called back labor, and it feels like an axe is splitting you down your spine.

Now that I was trying to push, this position meant that Zara’s head was essentially running into part of my body instead of pointing where it needed to for her to make her way out. This was adding to the difficulty I was having.

The pain became more intense with each passing contraction as the epidural wore off. Sometimes I would push and the nurses would look excited—she’d moved! Other times they would glance at each other without saying a word—she hadn’t budged.

After three hours of pushing, multiple position changes and a significant amount of pain, I was completely gassed. Zara was stuck, and her sunny side up position was making it nearly impossible to progress those last few inches. On top of that, her blood pressure was dipping with each contraction.

A doctor I’d never met before entered the room. As the nurses filled the doctor in on what was happening, I heard her say the words I’d been dreading: C-section. She tossed it out so casually, like she was recommending I take some Tylenol.

Crying and trying to catch my breath, I looked helplessly at Johnny. He calmly explained to the doctor we wanted to avoid a C-section and asked her to lay out all of our options. I remember hearing scary words like vacuum and forceps and hemorrhage. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

At this point I had been in labor for around 24 hours. I hadn’t come this far to give up on the birth experience I’d envisioned. At the same time, I wanted what was best for the baby and the pain was becoming unbearable. Scratch that, it had been unbearable for a while.

“Just get her out!” I remember crying.

Johnny, bless that man, kept his cool.

“A C-section isn’t what you wanted,” he reminded me gently. “It’s a major surgery.”

The nurses—suddenly there were a ton of them in the room—plead my case to the doctor.

“She’s so close,” they told her. “We think she can get there.”

Between Johnny and the nurses, they managed to convince the doctor to let me keep pushing.

“You can do this,” they told me.

A new doctor rushed into the room, one who had experience turning babies. As I pushed, she used her hand to rotate Zara’s body to the proper position one tiny centimeter at a time.

The nurses surrounded the table as each contraction approached. Johnny supported my back while a nurse held each of my legs. Everyone counted to ten as I pushed. Johnny cheered me on in my ear.

“HARDER!” the head nurse yelled from the foot of the bed. “AGAIN!”

If the first part of labor was nothing like what pop culture would have you believe, this part felt straight out of a movie. I pushed like my life depended on it. My eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head from the pressure. I remember thinking, I may die from this and being strangely okay with it.

Then, all at once, people started moving all around the room. Nurses pulled out instruments and laid out plastic sheets and barked instructions at each other.

“What’s going on?” I asked, panicked.

“She’s about to be here!” Johnny told me.

I couldn’t believe it. It was happening after all.

I don’t know how many more pushes it took from there—three or four, maybe—but I’ve never put all of myself into anything so completely in my life.

In an instant she was out and a nurse was handing me her squirmy little body. I cried and gasped and held her to my chest. As I looked in awe at her little features, it was as if I had always known them. Of course that’s what you look like, I thought.

We took turns holding her and I fed her for the first time. She looked up at us with her big eyes, blue like Johnny’s. I was smitten. Another cliché that turned out to be accurate: you forget about the pain almost instantly.

That night in the hospital passed in a blur of nurse visits, blood pressure readings, uncomfortable trips to the bathroom and bad food. Because of Covid we weren’t allowed to set foot outside the room, not even to visit the vending machine, so we both began to feel claustrophobic. We also wanted to get back to our other children, Bo and Tiki. I thought I’d be afraid to leave the hospital with our new baby, but by Saturday afternoon we were more than ready to go home.

Exhausted but oh so happy

We were discharged early Saturday evening. Johnny carefully checked the car seat while an attendant wheeled me out. I rode next to her in the backseat on the way home and at long last we pulled into our driveway. Nothing has ever felt as good as walking in the door of our own house, greeted by our two excited pups, to start our lives as a family of five. Home sweet home.

So that’s the story of how Zara joined our family. I’m eager to share more about life with a newborn, which is a challenging, fun, scary, frustrating and joy-filled rollercoaster, but that will have to wait for another day.

For now I’ll leave you with a current picture of our little sunshine, who’s two months old and has already grown so much! I’m off to change my one-thousandth diaper, fill my camera roll with more chunky cheeks and bask in all the snuggles while I can.

The post Hello, Baby! appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.

We moved! In mid-December we closed on our new house in Beacon, New York.

While Johnny and I are both thrilled about our new town and a house with more space, moving at eight months pregnant was rough. I need to write an entire post about it at some point, because I definitely Googled things like ‘am I insane for moving a month before giving birth?’ beforehand. That said, I’m really glad we went ahead and did it rather than waiting, because we’ve had a few weeks to at least get settled before our lives are turned completely sideways by a baby.

Everyone has been telling me to get as much rest as possible while I can (genius advice, thanks), but between the challenges of sleeping in the third trimester and all of the things I want to accomplish before she arrives, that’s proving to be difficult.

Honestly, I don’t feel much like resting when I have downtime. Aside from straight up laying down with two pillows between my legs, most positions are uncomfortable right now and most days I’d rather cross something off the to-do list than try to force myself to nap. This is funny, because I’m typically a champion napper, but getting things done in preparation for the baby has done more to put my mind at ease than a few extra minutes of sleep will at this point.

The nesting instinct is real

By the way, did you know babies don’t sleep much and I’ll be tired when she gets here? Thank goodness for all of the reminders from everyone I’ve ever met, otherwise I might not have known. The pandemic may have shut down awkward social interactions like unwanted belly touching, but unsolicited advice has been in no short supply.

Physically, I finally understand what expecting women mean when they say “I’m ready to not be pregnant anymore.” It’s a polite way of saying it feels like you’re carrying a bowling ball between your legs, with all of the heaving and stretching and grunting that goes with it. Throw in a heavy dose of acid reflux and peeing every ten minutes and you’ve pretty much got the picture of where I’m at.

Speaking of being ready to no longer be pregnant: booze. I haven’t had much of a craving for alcohol during this pregnancy, but within the last week a margarita alongside some salty tortilla chips and chunky guac suddenly sounds like the best thing on the planet. So, that can go ahead and get here sooner than later.

Mentally, I’m in good shape. While of course I’m anxious about labor and nervous about life with a new baby, the excitement of her impending arrival far outweighs any negative emotions I’m feeling at this point, and I’m so grateful for that.

Friday will be my last day of work before I take a few months off for maternity leave, and it can’t come soon enough. On my to-do list between now and when baby arrives:

• Finish preparing her room. It will be in our tiny third bedroom, which is the perfect size and layout for a nursery. It probably won’t be fully “done” when she gets here because I still need to figure out how I’m going to tackle storage in the small space (wall shelves? Some kind of cubbies? Just keep all her stuff in our room?), but at least the crib is put together. I still need to get the glider and some decorative stuff set up.
• Stock up a few freezer meals. This is one piece of advice I’ve received that’s actually useful. Hello, lasagna, casseroles and crockpot meals!
• This house was in desperate need of a deep cleaning when we moved in, and some rooms we’ve gotten to, others we haven’t. I know that will be the farthest thing from our mind once she gets here, so I’d like to finish most of it in the next couple weeks.

There are a million other smaller things I can think of, but those are the big ones. I’d say we’re in pretty good shape. Now we’re just waiting on you, sweet girl!

The post The Final Countdown appeared first on Cabana State Of Mind.