Month: October 2011

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Week in My Life – Day 3: Wednesday

This Week in My Life with Adventuroo is rolling right along, so let’s see how Wednesday played out, shall we? In case you need a recap, you can check out Monday and Tuesday here and here.


Just as a reminder, I’m focusing on documenting the “after work” hours of my days here, since those are what’s most important to me. However, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek as to what my desk looks like during all those hours I’m hiding from you, so I compiled this little gem today. I sit in front of 4 monitors all day, so I tried to capture that. This pic doesn’t really do my setup justice, but here is what each of my monitors looks like, in their real-life order from left to right.


Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

As we creep closer and closer to the end of our prolonged nice weather here, we decided to take advantage today and go out into the woods on the Ice Age Trail after work. Each year we like to hike up to a big lookout tower near Sheboygan called Parnell Tower, which is roughly an hour from our house. So I left work earlier than usual today to go pick up D and head north before the rush hour traffic ensued.


We left home just before 4:30 and started our hour-long hike just before 5:30. I carried D in the backpack carrier on the way up, R carried her on the way down, and she squealed with delight as she touched many trees along the way. There was even a puppy at the tower with his owners when we got up there. She was thrilled!

You’ll have to forgive the blurriness of the actions shots, because they’re, well, action shots. And taken on a phone camera. Ahem.

By the time we got back to the car, dark was settling in and we were starving, so we decided to hit up KFC on the way home. I can’t remember the last time I ate this since I’m not really a fan of fried chicken, but R got it in his head on the way there and I was so hungry I would’ve agreed to eat just about anything by then. I gave D her dish of Cheerios and a bottle of milk when we got in the car, and she was lulled to sleep by the highway rhythm within half an hour. We tuned into the start of the Brewers game, and what a dismal one it was, with Gallardo giving up 4 runs in the first inning. Eesh. Too bad it never got much better for the Crew tonight.

This next picture is beyond terrible, as it was taken on my iPhone like all the others and zoomed in as far as possible to aim at something in our orbit, but I couldn’t not take a shot of the amazingly gorgeous harvest moon we saw on the drive home. It was huge, orange, and simply beautiful, shining brightly down on the hills and fields of the countryside. It was very Halloween-y as it peered out between leafless tree branches, and it was even surrounded by a light haze of clouds. I half expected to see the silhouette of a witch on her broomstick flying past it.

The coolest part of all, though, was the shooting star I saw on the way home. I couldn’t believe it! I haven’t seen one in ages, and it wasn’t even totally dark outside. In fact, no other stars were out yet, but this was definitely a shooting one. So I made a wish, wished again on the first real star I saw in the night sky, and hoped they both come true.

We pulled into the driveway at 7:40, and I was hoping I could just get D inside, changed, and quickly back to sleep with the aid of another bottle of milk. I was planning on giving her some green beans and mashed potatoes from KFC, but she’d been asleep so long at that point and it was past her bedtime anyway, I just preferred she go to bed as quickly as possible. Too bad my nice smooth bedtime transition didn’t turn out to be so nice and smooth. D became inconsolable as I was changing her and only took a few drinks of her bottle. She screamed harder when I tried to put her down, so I just cradled her in my arms in the glider next to her crib and patted her back while rocking. This seemed to work, and she snuggled in so hard while slowly calming down. After a few minutes she clamored up onto my shoulder in a big bear hug and fell asleep. Poor little girl. I was afraid she’d wake up at some point in the night since she had so little to eat for dinner, and I was right. Not 5 minutes after I left her room she awoke crying. R went in there and got her back to sleep with some more rocking and a little bit of milk, and fortunately we didn’t hear a squeak after that.

Now here it is, 9:20, and I need to get in the shower before uploading all the photos for this post. I’m a total greaseball after getting all sweaty carrying my 25 lb. baby rucksack on the first half of our hike. These Week in My Life posts are keeping me up past my bedtime, but I think it will certainly be worth it in the end. Stay tuned for Thursday’s antics. You know the best part about Thursday, don’t you? It’s 1 day closer to Friday, wahoo!

 

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Week in My Life – Day 2: Tuesday

We’re underway in Week in My Life, and this is pretty fun. In case you need a refresher of what this week’s all about, you can read yesterday’s recap here or check out the full guidelines over at Adventuroo. Now let’s continue…


R picked D up from daycare today on her bike taxi and took her to the park since it was another beautiful afternoon, but she was ready to be done over there before I was able to meet them after work, shortly after 4:30 again. So once I got home, D and I had some silly time together and I relaxed for a minute while Daddy watched his afternoon sports shows and she had some snacks. Then I had to make up for missing the park with some outside play time of our own. She even got to pet a puppy as it walked by – her favorite!

Dinner time for D came at 5:00 tonight and consisted of a delicious menu of mac and cheese, banana, and some fresh tomato from our garden that was leftover from Daddy’s dinner sandwich. Once sufficiently messy (and full), it was definitely time for a bath.

After her long night at the ball park last night, D started acting pretty sleepy shortly after 6:00, which didn’t surprise me at all. So I filled up a bottle, let her play a little while longer while I cleaned up the kitchen and bathroom and got changed out of my work clothes, then she got up on the couch with Daddy for the bedtime wind-down.

That didn’t last long, however, and she was soon back up and cruising around the living room – “helping” me write this post, checking out what shows we were catching up on from the DVR, and reading books.

Finally at 7:30 it was time to try for bed again, so back up on the couch with Daddy she went. She drank her milk for about 5 minutes before she started coughing again, so R just put her in bed awake (which, *fingers crossed*, has been working ok lately). We heard one small cry as he left her room, then all was silent in baby dream land. Ahh… Time for Mommy’s dinner (leftover R’s homemade sweet and sour pork – yum!) and a glass of her favorite, Hallowine.

R went to watch baseball in the bedroom at 8:00, which meant I then had the tv all to myself for the rest of the night! So I promptly turned on E! to watch Kim Kardashian’s wedding special. As you may remember, I NEVER get to control the tv in our house. So when I do, I go big. Now that’s the perfect way to end this Tuesday. Cheers!

(yes, that’s the same pj t-shirt from last night to go with the shine on my forehead. don’t hate.)
 
 

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Week in My Life – Day 1: Monday

I’m excited to be joining a pretty rad-sounding week-long series over at Adventuroo – Week in My Life. My mission? Document a week of my life pictorially, with as many or as few supporting words as I’d like. Sounds pretty cool, eh? And since this blog is all about “Life as I know it…”, well that seems just fitting, wouldn’t you say?

Now I’m definitely not a pro at this like Melissa is, so I’m going to try to capture just a portion of each day of the week this week, as opposed to all day every day. My time at home after work each day is what I really want to remember here, so that’s where I’ll focus my Week in My Life efforts this time around. Plus I’m not so sure my workplace would appreciate me running around snapping pictures of me and everyone else at their desks for all those hours anyway.

Here we go…

Tonight we were fortunate enough to have tickets to Game 2 of the NLCS at Miller Park, so I left work at 4:00 to go pick up D and head home to get her fed, changed, and have some supper before heading to the stadium. We were so excited to see if the Brewers could pull off another win against the Cardinals to take a 2-0 series lead!

I forgot to take a shot of the clock when I left my desk, so the car radio will have to suffice. And please excuse the less-than-professional quality of my pictures tonight – they were all taken on my iPhone.

D actually came willingly and excitedly to me today at daycare, which was great. Touchdown!

We got home just after 4:30, and I fed her right away while R ran to the store to get fixins for our subs for dinner. While D was eating I also unloaded the dishwasher from the previous night’s load. Multi-tasking. Key.

She loved drinking her water out of a different cup with dinner, then happily watched Daddy make sandwiches.

That happiness soon turned to squirminess, however, and it was time to get D out of the chair and cleaned up. We finally got everyone fed and ready to go, and headed to the ball park around 5:45.

The Good Year blimp hovered over the stadium all game tonight, which was pretty cool to see.

Once inside we took up post in our usual standing room only spot behind section 118 and cheered on the good guys. Go Brewers! Or touchdown! as D likes to call it.

This vantage point was great and all, provided a nice view of the field and had plenty of room for us and the stroller, but since this was our 2nd game in as many nights we were ready to actually sit in our seats and give the legs a rest. So up to the nosebleed section we climbed. Fortunately Guest Services was outstanding and let us “check” our stroller into their room so we didn’t have to mess with trying to cram it into the jam-packed row of seats in our section. Bonus points, Brewers.

While sitting up there, also, I was reminded of our wedding while watching the Jumbo-tron. R’s cousin plays for the Brewers and did that year, too, and the day after our wedding they surprised us with a huge congratulatory sign for us and our wedding party up on the big screen during the game. Too bad I was climbing the stairs when they showed it and missed it completely. Ah well, it’s the thought that counts, and that was an incredible gesture.

After an inning or 2 the close quarters and vertigo-inducing grade of the rows made us a little antsy, so we decided to give up resting our feet and headed back down a few levels. We had to make a pit-stop on the way to change D into her 2nd pair of jammies, since she peed through her original outfit while sitting on R’s lap up there. Oops. Our good friends A & S were also at the game, so we hung out behind their section for a bit to chat and commiserate over how poorly our team was doing. Ugh. Della loved S’s Brewers beads, though.

Finally after 7 and 1/2 innings we decided to head home. The Brewers were down 9-2 at that point, and went on to lose 12-3 unfortunately, so we didn’t miss anything by skipping out ahead of the crowd. We were all so tired and D really needed to get to bed. She fell asleep in the car on the way home so this was my last shot for the day.

She did do another gagging coughing spell on the way home in her sleep and got a little puke on herself, but it turned out to be mainly on the car seat straps and not her, so fortunately we didn’t have to change her into yet another set of pjs once inside a little before 10:30. Gheesh.

Now here I am, up waaay past my bedtime, putting together my 1st day of Week in My Life for you. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned – 6 more to go!

 **sorry, i don’t know why my pics are all screwed up and jammed to the left. they look centered when i’m editing the post, promise. i’ll try to make sure they look better for tomorrow.

 

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Be Enough Me: A Letter

Today I’m linking up to the fantastic Just.Be.Enough and trying on a little writing prompt. Writing prompt?? Geez, I haven’t even thought of those since school. Eesh. Let’s see if I can still flex any pen-to-paper muscle here, shall we? This week’s prompt was “Write a letter to your future self or your child.” 

I chose to do a combo…

***

Dear D and years-from-now-but-still-Mom-Sexy SM,

D, I’ve said it so many times before, but the day you were born changed our lives forever, and all for the better. I never pictured myself as being a good mom, let alone a mom at all, but you have helped me prove that notion wrong. You are an amazingly beautiful, wonderful girl, and your spirit is incredible. I look at you every day and marvel that your dad and I created such an awesome little person, and I can’t help but be extraordinarily proud to be able to take some credit for that. Yes, I know that sounds sappy and totally mom-ish, but that’s me now. A mom. Your mom. And I couldn’t be happier.

I am so full of hope for you (and future SM, too), and I wanted to let you know just how much in this letter…

 

Hope for D:

I hope you have a very very long, happy, healthy, wonderful life.

I hope no harm ever befalls you.

I hope you enjoy a fun, stress-free childhood.

I hope your dad and I help you create memories that you will cherish forever.

I hope you never have to endure bullying or become a bully yourself.

I hope nothing ever happens to you so that you would feel the need to become a bully.

I hope nothing ever happens to you to make you grow up before any child should. (there are too many horrific ways to end this thought and i just can’t let my mind go there to type them all out)

I hope you never feel worthless, ashamed, abused, neglected, or unimportant. (that list could continue forever, but i have to stop before i start crying uncontrollably)

I hope you always feel alive, inspired, appreciated, and loved.

I hope you always know how much your dad and I (and the rest of our family) love you. You are our treasure.

I hope you know that you can always come to us; always tell us anything; and always know that we will never stop loving you.

I hope you are never judged unfairly at school, on the playground, or eventually in adult life.

I hope you grow into the ridiculously talented, smart, beautiful, confident, charming woman I see twinkling behind those eyes already every day.

I hope you always love me as much as I will always love you. (ok, i’ll even settle for a partial here, since my love for you is and always will be never-ending)

 

Hope for SM:

I hope you and R create the family of which you now dream.

I hope you are one day able to spend the time with that family that you now so longingly crave.

I hope you and R grow stronger in your love and marriage every single day and enjoy a very long, happy, healthy, wonderful lifetime together as husband and wife.

I hope you and R have the strength to be good parents to your children and raise them to be good people.

I hope nothing ever happens to make you question yourself as a parent.

I hope, more than anything in this world, you never have to know the pain of losing a child.

I hope you and R instill trust and security in your children and foster a sense of unconditional love for them in your home.

I hope you can protect D and any brothers/sisters she may have from the evils among us as long as is humanly possible.

I hope you can raise your children to love their family as much as you love yours.

I hope the bonds that have been broken in your extended family can one day be repaired, or at least patched.

I hope your dad finally finds the right path and becomes happy. He’s not a bad man; he deserves that.

I hope you never know the pain of losing a parent far too soon.

I hope you and R can always provide a stable and secure home for your children and encourage them to thrive.

I hope you and R can someday travel the world together, seeing everything this planet has to offer.

I hope you and R can raise your children to stand up for what they believe, even if it isn’t the “cool” thing.

I hope you and R can always comfort and console your children when they need it, making everything better the way parents should.

I hope you and R teach your children how to protect themselves when you no longer can.

I hope you never stop having fun.

 

Love,

Mommy (& 2011 SM)

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I’m beginning to feel seriously disliked

By my own 14 month old.

Has anyone else with a toddler experienced this, or am I just lucky to suddenly seemingly be the object of my daughter’s disaffection?

The first signs came weeks ago, when diaper and clothes changes on her changing dresser became all-out battles. As soon as I pick her up to lay her up there she begins writhing and kicking in the air, doing anything she can to avoid landing on her changing mat.

This is so crazy to me, because she used to absolutely love it up there. I mean L-O-V-E it. When she was really little she’d get all excited and wiggle around when placed on it for changes. We called it doing her “mat jigs”. And even up until recently she was perfectly content to look at one of her books or play with a lotion bottle while being changed.

But now it’s like her changing mat is on fire or a bed of nails when we put her on it. It usually takes all my might these days to keep her in place so as not to get poop smeared all over her, me, the wall, and the dresser when it’s dirty diaper time.

And I’m kind of ashamed to admit this, but the other night I even resorted to leaning my full weight onto her to push her down so I could get her diaper changed before putting on her pajamas. I mean come on. A grown adult using full-body strength to flatten down her kicking and flailing toddler all for the sake of 1 f’ng diaper? Seems ridiculous, but that is to what I’ve been reduced.

I’ve also been getting “that look” from her a lot lately. That look where she raises her eyebrows and opens her eyes real big, then kind of crinkles up her upper lip and gives a squeaky grunt like no! I don’t want to do that!

Really? You’re ONE. I don’t remember there being a clause in the rule book of life that says ONE year olds get to call the shots. I’m the mom, just trust me right now.

I know I’ve mentioned this one before, but she already exhibits some terrible 2-ish behavior, too. Like the throw-herself-down-on-the-floor-and-cry when she either doesn’t get something she wants or gets something taken away from her that she’s not supposed to have. Very mature.

And if she’s in her high chair and decides she’s totally over eating or sees something on her tray that displeases her, she smashes all her food then swipes her hands across her tray real fast to fling everything onto the floor. Rude.

And the most recent display in this category is the crying meltdown that ensues when she reaches her arms up to you to be picked up but you’re doing something or your hands are full so you can’t get her THAT VERY SECOND. Awesome. Because we’re so heartless that it takes us longer than 1.5 nanoseconds to pick up our child when she thinks she needs to be held.

But this next one is the real winner.

I swear to you, D would rather camp out at daycare round-the-clock than come home with me in the afternoons now. I’m not gonna lie, either. It kinda breaks my heart a little each time and is what has most made me feel like a mommy unloved.

I’m so used to her plowing over any toy and child in her path to get to my arms when she sees me in the door to her room when I arrive for pick-up, that now when she doesn’t even want me to hold her I can’t help but feel totally rejected.

2 perfect examples…

Monday this week her class was on the playground when I picked her up because the weather has been so gorgeous these past couple days. She and another little girl were being pushed in a double-seater swing by the teacher, and when she saw me she lit up with outstretched arms to come get me. Awesome, that’s what I love.

We went inside so I could sign her out on the attendance sheet, and she made an immediate bee-line for the wooden rocking boat in their room, climbed in, and started rocking like crazy. Oh that’s so cute, I thought. I’ve never seen her play in one of those before. Ok, time to go, so I reached for her to pick her out of the boat and carry her back out the door.

You’d think I was coming at her with a hot poker the way she recoiled and grabbed onto the handles of the boat for dear life, wanting nothing to do with me and the nice home to which I was taking her. Hmm, all right.

I finally was able to pry her out of the boat and set her down on the classroom floor since she was trying to flop away from me. Mistake. For then all she wanted to do was run around and play in her empty classroom. The flopping and squealing immediately resumed when I gathered her up to take her out to the car to head home.

Then Tuesday this week I experienced a similar get-away-from-me-Mom episode, again when I picked her up from daycare.

Their class was out on the playground enjoying more sunshine, and this time D was going down the slide when I arrived. She spotted me mid-slide, and I shit you not, she splayed out on the slide when she got to the bottom like she usually does when I try to pick her up even though I was nowhere near her, then sat up and tried to shove a whole handful of wood chips in her mouth with that defiant look on her face again.

What? Like eating wood chips is going to get you out of coming home with me? Puh-lease.

There was no greeting me with outstretched arms this time. No. The teacher had to carry her squirming body and hand her over the fence to me. At least this time I knew better than to put her down when we went into her room to sign out. I may still be there trying to remove her from the premises if I had.

So what gives? What has happened to cause this fall from grace of mine? I used to be the one she wanted all the time. Now it seems like I’m the last one she wants. I guess I more expected this assertion of independence around oh, say age 15, not 1. Is this normal? Or have I really done something wrong to make my little girl not like her mommy anymore?

 

 

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Finding a little Mom Sexy of my own

I recently discovered a great blog, the Mommyologist (i know, i’m sorry, i’m way late on that one. but better late than never, eh?). It’s hysterical. Mary is the Mommyologist – a career woman turned stay-at-home-mom, and she takes us on her journey through this craziness that is motherhood.

She’s funny, she swears, and she lets us know that it’s ok when we feel like total parenting failures and are ready to pluck our eyelashes out one-by-one – this job called parent isn’t always all puppies and rainbows. Or eating chocolates and drinking wine during nap time, if that ideal is more your style.

She also started the Mom Sexy Revolution over a year and a half ago. SM, what the hell is Mom Sexy? Yeah I had no idea either, but it’s really simple…

Just because we’re moms doesn’t mean we have to be relegated to the frumpy-jeans, bad hair cut, stuck-in-a-rut, no time for “me” brigade. We can still be cute, we can still be fun, we can still rock it. Mom + Sexy = Mom Sexy. Voila!

So anyway, I did a little super-sleuthing, went back through her archives to learn myself a thing or two about her Mom Sexy crusade, and believe or not, it’s stuck with me. And it comes to me at the most random times.

Now if you know me very well, you know I’ve never been one to “flaunt it” or really even consider myself sexy at all. So I’m more surprised than anyone to hear myself saying I’ve found a little Mom Sexy. But I totally did…

I’ve started working out as part of a group of 4 women with my trainer instead of just one-on-one sessions each week, and Monday night was my second group session.

Now for a little background, after the first week I came home and told R I didn’t think I was going to like this because there’s a girl in the group who was a track runner at UW-Madison, graduated 4 years after me, is tiny and petite and rock solid, and just had a baby 6 months ago and bears no signs of pregnancy whatsoever.

So yeah, I was jealous and felt like I was competing against her. Which I totally am not, we’re all just there for the workout, but I couldn’t shake that twinge of envy. I felt like a huge clod next to her. So that didn’t exactly get me off to the greatest start attitude-wise for this little workout group, and was pretty much the opposite of Mom Sexy.

Well this Monday I decided to try to kick it up a mini-notch. I wore a cute workout tank to the gym that night to show off my guns instead of a baggy t-shirt, and tried to feel confident going into the session. I’m in decent shape right now, but I still feel like an Amazon compared to the runner.

And of course, what did she wear that night? A cute little workout tank too and skin-tight running shorts to boot! Ugh. (i feel kinda bad talking shit about her, because she’s actually quite nice and i’m sure they would all think i’m an idiot for feeling this way. but whatever, i just do.)

All right, forget the outfit, you’re here for a good workout. And man, did we ever get our money’s worth that night! Our trainer must have majored in ass-kicking in college, and now she’s going back for her Masters in making-sure-your-clients-can’t-walk-or-raise-their-arms-the-next-day.

But at one point I was doing chest flys with a band stretched around a pole, and my Mom Sexy suddenly came to me. I was looking down toward the floor and thought hey, my abs look nice and flat right now. My arms look really strong. My legs look even stronger as they’re supporting me in this stance. And you know what? F runner girl, I’m the hot one here tonight!

Granted, all those thoughts took place in about a 7 second span, but still. It was a glimpse of my Mom Sexy and it felt great.

So thank you, Mommyologist, for awakening something I never even knew I had – my Mom Sexy. I may not yet be grabbing my butt and boobs in admiration like she does (seriously, go check out her site and videos. she’s got some awesome ‘tude goin’ on.), but I am feeling pretty good about this mommy body of mine.

And for all you other moms out there, try rockin’ a little of your own Mom Sexy. You just might surprise yourself.