The Photographer's Wife Working Mom, Family, Disney, Travel, Reviews

I have been waiting for months to see a dermatologist (and finally saw one the other day!). Why months? Well, two reasons actually. The first is that I have a mole that I want removed. I’ve had it since I was born, but I wanted to wait until after I was done having babies to get it removed since it is in a spot that gets stretched during pregnancy. Plus, I didn’t want to do any type of procedure while I was pregnant.

The second reason is because this 2^nd pregnancy blessed me with a rash-like redness around my nose and mouth. It’s dry and flaky and not pretty. Brett says he barely notices it, but he’s just being a nice husband. Either way, I had to wait until after the pregnancy to do anything about it.

Since I know that the rash (we’ll call it a rash, it’s just easier that way) will be cleared up soon, I was excited to get my skin in tip-top shape now.

Step one was getting some great products…and I was so fortunate to have the wonderful folks at Skin Authority contact me to see if I would be interested in reviewing their products. Yes, please!

I really do love trying beauty products out…you just never know what could become a permanent part of your routine because you love it so much. I also love sharing my adventures with you, because you might love it too!

What really impressed me was that I got a skin coach that worked with me to determine which products would be a good match for me (Thank you Ashley!). Even better? The fact that I wasn’t really able to schedule a phone call since I had just left the hospital with Aubrey and had no clue what my schedule was going to be like in the coming weeks…so they offered to consult with me through email. From the beginning they were already delivering top-notch customer service.

My skin coach asked me a series of questions…what my skin was like, if I had any specific concerns, whether I would want a simplified or complex routine, if I preferred gel or cream cleansers, etc. When I told her about my rash, she even asked follow-up questions to see if I really needed the product she had in mind for me. This wasn’t a pushy sales interaction at all, I felt like she was really trying to determine what I needed/what I didn’t need.

After we finalized the products I would get, they arrived at my door within a few days. Yippee!

Here are the products I received:

Essential Skin Kit

Everyone needs to protect their skin from the harmful and harsh effects of sun, aging, lifestyle, and the environment. But there’s not enough time each day for time-consuming skin care regimens. This simple routine can produce healthier skin and protect from future damage in just two steps, day and night. Now it’s easy to include skin care into the busiest lifestyle!

includes:

Daily Cleanser. Lightweight, fragrance free wash gently removes dirt and oil from the face and body, and loosens dead skin cells, leaving the skin refreshed, soft, and primed for daily regimen. 3% glycolic acid, pH 3.95.

Night Revitalizer. Exfoliates and moisturizes while you sleep to help smooth the appearance of fine lines, brighten skin, and stimulate cellular turnover. 8% glycolic acid, pH 3.90.

Sunscreen Moisturizer SPF 30. This lightweight, daily multi-action moisturizer protects from the sun up to 30 times longer than without sunscreen. Protects against damaging UVA & UVB ultraviolet rays to help slow down the signs of aging and help control hyperpigmentation and skin cancer development. Abovenzone 2%, Octinoxate 7.5%, Octisalate 5%, Oxybenzone 5%, pH 3.75.

 

Redness Relief

• Helps calm irritated, inflamed, or chapped skin.
• Helps calm over exfoliated skin or “hot spots” caused by resurfacing treatments.
• Helps treat Eczema or Dermatitis.
• Helps soothe mild sunburn or windburn.
• Helps soothe post cosmetic laser or waxing irritations.
• Replenishes fatty acids to bolster cell strength and moisture.
• Improves regenerative and restructuring qualitys of cells.
• Helps fortify and protect cell membrance to inhibit cell degeneration.
• Helps increase wound healing properties of skin.
• Helps to soften skin.

 

Deep Detox Ritual Mask

• Helps combat harsh environmental damage and stress to promote healthy, radiant skin all over the body.
• Helps hydrate and restore dry, cracked skin for softer, smoother texture.
• Helps reduce redness and inflammation.
• Incorporates a blend of Moroccan Rhassoul Clay, kaolin, and montmorillonite clays that have been clinically shown to reduce dryness and flakiness without adding oil or stimulating oil production.
• Exotic essential oils help relieve stress and promote a sense of well-being.
• Helps create a restoring home spa experience.

 

Here is the routine recommended for me:

AM:

1. Daily Cleanser. (pea sized amount applied to dry skin for surface anti-bacterial effect, add water/manipulate, remove)

*Redness Relief if needed. (pea sized amount for entire face)

2. Sunscreen Moisturizer. (pea sized amount for entire face)

PM:

1. Daily Cleanser. (same as above)

2. Night Revitalizer. (pea sized amount for entire face)

*Redness Relief if needed. (pea sized amount for entire face)

To use the Deep Detox Ritual Mask; apply to clean skin, damp or dry. Let sit for a minimum of 10 minutes. Remove either in shower, or with a warm, damp washcloth (gently).

 

So, as you can see, I chose a fairly simple routine. Just 2-3 products day and night, with a fun specialized product for once a week or so. I would have loved to try more products out, but I wanted to stay on the basic side so I wouldn’t overwhelm myself…I did have a newborn at home to take care of, so to be perfectly honest, I was taking a gamble that I would even have time to wash my face to begin with. :-/

I was very impressed with the products. I loved the gel cleanser. It lathered up really well, removed all my makeup with one application and actually left my skin soft. Sometimes, gel cleansers can overdo it, leaving you with dry skin in desperate need of moisturizer, but this one didn’t do that at all.

The Redness Relief was amazing at removing the redness of my rash. It didn’t get rid of the rash itself (I’m waiting for the dermatologist prescription for that), but it did make it less noticeable in the meantime, which made me a happy gal. I really wish I would have taken a before and after photo!

The Deep Detox Ritual Mask was a nice treat (I’d say once a week or so). I liked that even though it is brown out of the bottle, it goes on kinda clear-ish and not full-on mud mask brown like other masks. This is great if you don’t want to scare your kids before their bedtime!

Overall, I am extremely pleased with Skin Authority. I had never heard of them before, but now I will be adding their website to my list for when I need skin care products. I highly recommend them if you want to try new skin care products but don’t know where to start or what would work best for you. Let their skin coaches help you find the best products for you without leaving the comfort of your couch.

 

To learn more and buy, visit the Skin Authority website.

Connect with Skin Authority:

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I received these products in order to facilitate my review. All opinions are my own and honest. Thanks for reading!

As huge Disney fans, we have been witness to the Frozen phenomenon…from watching the movie itself, to witnessing the changes in the Disney parks. However, our daughter is a bit too young to have fully immersed our household in all things Frozen, but I have been witnessing it with my two nieces. One is a teenager (proving no one is too old for Disney fun) and the other is almost 8 and plans on dressing up as Elsa for Halloween.

Given our Disney-loving status, I am excited to share with you the new cd, Frozen: The Songs, which is being released today!

Here is the track listing for Frozen: The Songs

1. Frozen Heart

Performed by Cast

2. Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

Performed by Kristen Bell, Agatha Lee Monnand and Katie Lopez

3. For the First Time in Forever

Performed by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel

4. Love Is an Open Door

Performed by Kristen Bell and Santino Fontana

5. Let It Go

Performed by Idina Menzel

6. Reindeer(s) Are Better Than People

Performed by Jonathan Groff

7. In Summer

Performed by Josh Gad

8. For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)

Performed by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel

9. Fixer Upper

Performed by Maia Wilson and Cast

10. Let It Go (Demi Lovato Version)


Performed by Demi Lovato

 

You must get this cd if you have a Frozen fanatic in your house! It would be a great birthday or Christmas present…just think of all the sing-a-long fun they’ll have!

To buy the cd, head over to Amazon!

 

Great news! I have TWO Frozen: The Songs cds to give away! This one has a quicker turnaround than my usual giveaways, so be sure to get your entries in asap!

***GIVEAWAY!***

Prize: Frozen: The Songs cd (2 winners!)

Eligibility: US & Canada

Ends: October 2, 2025 at 11:59 pm EST

How to enter: Use the Rafflecopter form below.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

To learn more about Disney Music, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

If it come to this bloggers attention that the winner of my giveaway has won on a additional blog, this blog reserves the right to choose another winner.

I received a copy of the soundtrack as a member of Entertainment New Media Network. All opinions are my own. Thanks for reading!

One thing I have enjoyed since starting maternity leave is how empty some of our favorite destinations are during the day when kids are in school! During the summer, we typically wouldn’t venture to Cascades Park during the day knowing how busy it would probably be, so we took the opportunity to head there the other day and we pretty much had the entire place to ourselves!

Our new method of traveling…the Baby Jogger City Select Double Stroller!

I do wish they had a little more of an actual playground there; there is just this one slide and some sand for kids to play in.

Trent went down the slide a couple of times and then was over it and wanted to move on lol

Just as we started to walk away, a train came by…I don’t think Trent was expecting it to be as loud as it was! The horn blew and Trent jumped, but was still captivated.

This new park is so beautiful. This area had been in a perpetual state of construction since I moved here in 2001 and I had always wondered if anything would ever come of it.

Now, it was time for the main reason we ventured here…the splash area! Trent saw it and took off running!

He did stop long enough to let us change him into his swim outfit, though, and then he continued towards the water.

He must have run around the entire area 100 times, going from one fountain to the next. It was pretty hot this day, so while Aubrey was sleeping, I walked around it too, just to get my feet wet, but I totally would have run through the entire thing if Brett wouldn’t have had an objection to me getting into his car soaking wet!

Although this town is a wonderful place to live, sometimes I get sad that there isn’t as much for Trent to do and wish we could move to a town where there are more fun activities, so times like this really make me happy, especially since this park is fairly new and I know they will be adding more to it over time. Plus, it just makes us look forward to our next big vacation adventure anyway!

 

Some families like to have the tradition of “pizza night” - typically on a Friday as a way of celebrating making it through the week. But since I’m on maternity leave, I don’t really have a “Friday” or a work week, but I guess any day is worth celebrating, right? Not like we need an excuse to eat pizza anyway…all it takes is one of us to mention it and we already have the website pulled up (in other news, don’t ask me about my weight loss progress for a bit, m’kay?).

Maternity leave has brought on some television time for me to catch up on shows on Netflix before the season premiers during this month. One thing I like about Netflix is the ability to watch in more than one location. After all, with 3 tvs and 3 tablets in the house, we all could be watching or doing something different in each room!

So when we had pizza night recently, I was in the midst of a “Once Upon a Time” marathon and wanted to continue watching….and Trent wanted to watch cartoons, so to make it more fun for him, we took one of our many boxes from the garage and created a house for him! But first, it was time for pizza…which may or may not have been bigger than Trent!

We equipped his box with a drink holder, a window, and a stand to hold his iPad. He has his own little “flat screen” tv!

He even has doors…ya know, in case we get too loud! Or for Peek-a-boo, of course!

He can watch Netflix in style while we watch Netflix on the big screen….everyone’s happy! Even when he’s not watching the iPad in there, he still likes to play and put his toys in there….it’s like his own little space that we can’t get into. We may need to upgrade to something more luxurious, but we’ll require a down payment first!

How do you make family night more fun for your little ones?

Need some suggestions on what to watch on family night? Here are some titles available on Netflix for each age range:

To be honest, I really didn’t know how Aubrey’s birth was going to play out - do we ever? From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I was scared. Scared that I was going to have a bad laceration like I did with Trent. Scared I wouldn’t have my doctor for the delivery again. Scared I would have blood pressure issues after the birth and pass out with the nurse screaming for Brett to push the red emergency button. Scared of having a newborn AND a toddler at home.

But being scared is part of most pregnancies I suppose…there’s just so many unknowns. I toyed with the idea of an elective c-section because of all the things I was scared of. My doctor wasn’t a big fan when I mentioned it very early on, but he was willing to discuss all options with me and I think he knew that deep down, I didn’t really want a c-section either. I love my doctor. But so does half the city and that’s why I wait in the waiting room for an hour every time I go for an appointment.

This pregnancy, I had high blood pressure from the beginning and was on medication for that, and I also had diet-controlled gestational diabetes. Those two things combined put me into a high-risk category. When I went in for my 39 week appointment on a Monday morning, they took my blood pressure 3 times…including my doctor once just to be certain. Seeing my doctor fumble with the blood pressure cuff - and even having one of the springs pop out - made me really want to joke about when the last time he had to actually use one of those things was, but I figured now wasn’t the time for jokes. It was high, so my doctor wanted to schedule an induction. After the first BP check, he gave me some options: either come back for a recheck in a few days or schedule an induction. At that point, I opted to wait it out and hoped that it would go down or Aubrey would come on her own by then. But after the 2nd and 3rd high BP checks, he felt I shouldn’t wait and should be induced.

I hadn’t really given that option much thought, but I found myself disappointed and sad. We’ve had two friends in the past couple of years get induced and they were in the hospital for a few days just waiting for something to happen and then ended up with c-sections anyway. I certainly did not want to be sitting in a hospital for longer than necessary, especially with a toddler at home to coordinate babysitters for.

I won’t go into explaining the ridiculous process for scheduling an induction at the hospital, but we were scheduled to go in the following night. The hospital would be calling us between 10pm-12midnight on Tuesday to let us know when they were ready for us to come in. We had Nana & Papa come over around 8pm to stay the night and watch Trent…his first overnight experience without us (FYI - he did AMAZING!).

The hospital ended up calling a little early, at 9:15 while I was giving Trent a bath. It was weird how even though I knew the call was coming, the fact that the call came early while I was with Trent kind of threw me off-guard. Having to stop doing what I was doing with Trent to go do something else made me sad and wondered if that’s what life was going to be like now with 2 kids. Silly pregnancy hormones!

We arrived at the hospital around 9:45 to an empty lobby, which was nice. I filled out some paperwork and then we waited just a few minutes before being brought right back to the delivery room. Thank goodness I got to skip Triage.

I changed, put away my belongings, got hooked up to everything and prepared to be there for a while.

After I was hooked up to everything, they wanted to monitor me for about 30 minutes to get a baseline for how everything was going.

Thank goodness for hospital wifi.

Then, around midnight, I received Cervidil, which is a tampon-looking string with medicine at the end that is put in the cervix to help with dilation. This is given before Pitocin. I was only 1cm, so the Cervidil was supposed to be a better start for the process. Then, I had to pick a side to lay on and not move for 2 hours so the medicine could do it’s job. I chose to lay on my right side and then immediately regretted it once I as there and couldn’t move. The funny thing is that I almost always lay on my right side, but when you are told you can’t move, that’s all you want to do!

Wow - that was a very long 2 hours. I was so uncomfortable and could not sleep. I kept looking at the clock, which I know is not a good thing to do, but I was counting down the minutes to when I could move.

Once the 2 hours were up, I got up because I felt like I needed to use the restroom. In fact, I felt that way every 20-30 minutes for the next several hours. So uncomfortable, in pain, restless. I even asked the nurse if I could lay in the whirlpool tub they have there just so I wouldn’t have to lay back down on the hospital bed. I wasn’t allowed to because that would mess with the Cervidil, but she did offer pain medication. The first medicine she gave me didnt do anything, so she gave me a pill to take…I don’t even remember what it was. It helped a little, but it was such a long and uncomfortable night.

Since it was nighttime, I don’t have many photos. There wasn’t much to take photos of anyway.

Early in the morning, I happily received my Epidural and felt so much better afterward. I wish I could have gotten it sooner, but they aren’t typically given until you are around 4-6 cm dilated.

I don’t really remember the timing of everything exactly, but not long after the Epidural, the nurse came in and gave me an oxygen mask to wear because she said that the Cervidil was causing constant contractions and not giving Aubrey a break, causing her heart rate to change. Not long after that, my doctor came in and took out the Cervidil and ordered that they give me a shot to STOP contractions (what they give moms in preterm labor).

I’m not sure how much time passed, but it wasn’t long before I started feeling sever pain and pressure down there. My first reaction was “WTF! I have an Epidural for a reason!” So I paged the nurse and just said “Can I have a nurse please?”

Then, I felt the weirdest thing…I felt like I peed myself…which to me, must have meant my catheter came out since I had one because you aren’t allowed to get up and move around with the Epidural. My main nurse was with another patient, so her assistant came in. While she was in there, I felt even more like I peed myself and then Brett told me my water must have broken! I would have laughed at myself if I wasn’t in so much pain. That nurse ended up calling in the main nurse asap, and in that short time period, I was holding onto the bed rails and almost screaming. The nurse said “It’s time - tell the Doctor to hurry!”

They actually told me to STOP pushing…but I had never started to begin with. Aubrey was coming and there was nothing I could do. In fact, the doctor was rushing to put his gloves and everything on as quickly as he could and nurses were rushing with tables and equipment. The nurse even had to put her hand down there to make sure Aubrey didn’t come out before the doctor was ready. Once he was ready and after barely a push, Aubrey made her arrival at 9:40am.

After all that worry of how long it would take, she came faster than I could have ever imagined. Surely that meant I had a bad tear right? NOPE! No tear…hallelujah!

With Trent, I started the skin to skin time immediately, but had to have him taken by someone because I started to get dizzy with blurred vision because of the blood pressure issues. This time, I had her for so long, I started to wonder when they were going to bathe her! But I wasn’t complaining. I was so happy with everything. I was able to have MY doctor. It happened quickly with no lacerations. And of course, she was beautiful.

Almost a pound bigger than Trent when he was born!

After her bath and some follow-up necessities, I was able to stand up, so they could get me in the wheelchair and transfer us to my recovery room. We pushed the button to play a lullaby and let everyone know that she was born!

She looks so cute with her little bow hat.

After a couple of hours, Nana & Poppa brought Trent to see us. It was a moment I was looking forward to for so long. First, I got a hug from my little man in his big brother shirt.

Then he met his sister.

He just looked at her and even though he didn’t say much, you could tell he was trying to process what it all meant.

We gave him a present from Aubrey, which was something I read was a good idea to get him excited.

Of course, the toy (which Brett picked out), was the loudest toy ever. But he loved it and played with it the entire rest of the time he was there.

Everyone took turns loving on Aubrey.

We even had a beautiful rainbow outside of our window!

Brett couldn’t resist taking a photo of our princess…he did this right on the hospital bed. He can make a studio anywhere!

That night, Brett went home around 9pm. Since I didn’t have a tear, I was able to get up and walk around without any pain, so I was ok with being alone with Aubrey. Plus, I know the nurses there would help if I needed anything. Brett brought Trent by the next day, but didn’t stay for long since Trent wanted to press every button and pull every wire in the room…that place is like Chuck E Cheese for a toddler!

Brett came back a few hours that night and then slept at home with Trent.

I was able to leave the next day, so Brett brought Trent to the hospital for when I would be able to leave, then we left the hospital as a family of 4.

This was us waiting in the parking lot while Daddy picked up lunch at Jersey Mike’s, so her straps were loosened a bit for comfort, so please don’t leave comments about how I’m a bad mother for not having the straps tight enough. :-/

It definitely was a much different experience than with Trent, but I am so glad to have been able to have two normal deliveries and two happy, healthy babies.

You can also read Trent’s birth story here and watch his arrival video here.