Gimmes

I am not a content sort of person.

I have ideas. I have lists of things I want to do. I am not happy with the status quo. I want things. Mostly things like home improvements and fun vacations, but still. Want. A friend of mine says she found a handyman who works for cheap. I am wrangling to get a phone number because I have ideas/needs but no skill or really time. Another friend says she knows someone who cleans houses. Boy, I could use a reasonably priced someone to do that as well. I sat on the kitchen floor nursing Scooter this morning (don't ask) and was none too pleased at their state.

And yet...all these things cost money. A finite resource. Just like everyone, we have to pick and choose what we are going to spend our money on. And Christmas is coming up in just a few short months.

I think I have a case of the gimmes. I need to chill myself out a bit and focus on buying just a little bit here and there. Like paint. I want basically the whole house painted. So I need to pick out colors and every paycheck, go and get a color. That way the task gets done and I don't drop $200 on paint in one sitting. I have taken this approach with vacations and Christmas. I decided how much money I thought I would want to spend on vacations/holiday gifts this year and then set up an autodebit into my savings account for each pay period. I guess it is kind of like my personal escrow.

What do you save for? How do you help yourself be patient?

Baby Pictures

My baby... *sniff*

Scooter says: WTF?

Melancholy Sweetness

Hellloooooo Down there!

My absolute favorite. Isn't it really special?

Doesn't he just look naughty? Because he is.

My boys.

Tickle fight! In the middle of a photoshoot!

Tootsie Toes

Deadline

Today is the Fall Equinox. Yesterday was the last day of summer. I wonder now how I let it pass so disregarded. Today is also my 31st birthday, wherein I pass from the summer of my life into the autumn, moving from the time of planting and sowing into the time of harvest.

What the heck am I talking about, right?

My mother had me when she was 16 years old. Being but children, my biological parents didn't stay together for even a year. When I was 6 months old, my mother met the man who has been my father for my whole life. They were young parents, and pretty great parents. Unfortunately, they were unable to have any more children. (This fact actually affected how many children I ended up having... to kind of make up for the fact that my mom couldn't have as many as she wanted.)

I have said in the past how close I am to my folks. I was always the kind of kid who listened to what they said and took it to heart (excepting a few teenage, religion-addled years where I thought they were stupid and going to hell.) My folks always said, "People should have children when they are young and poor! So they have the energy to deal with them and are less likely to spoil them." Now, my parents aren't particularly judgmental and that is a pretty judgmental statement. Even sitting here keying it out, I can see a lot of flaws in that line of thinking. However, there are some truths to it too. I can see that from watching a few grandparents in my family having to raise their children's children. It doesn't work out so well sometimes. The grandparents get sick and the children have to leave their homes to live elsewhere. Uprooted. Broken. Sad. Some of my parents accepting this line of thinking as a basically good idea might have been to simply justify the life path they had chosen, as well.

Anyway, growing up with this philosophy, I wanted to be done having kids by the time I was 30. This is a personal, and frankly arbitrary choice. I have known for a while that Honey doesn't want any more babies because he is ready to move on from the diapers-and-no-sleep stage of our lives. And I am ready for vacations and no scheduled naps wrecking weekend plans and 8 hours of solid sleep a night, too. But it is just this morning, sitting and drinking my coffee that I realize that if I am going to stick to my goal of being done before my 30th year ends, the deadline has come and my childbearing years have ended - by my choice, but still. Ended. Today.

And I am a bit sad because change makes me sad. In some ways I don't want to move on, and my heart is still a bit bruised knowing there will be no more floppy newborn moments or first smiles from my own sweet babies. But I can feel time marching forward, regardless of how I feel about it. I can see Brother going to his first school dance tonight and Jelly playing soccer like a big kid in the local league and Scooter starting to stand for 10-15 seconds at a time unaided. Time marches on. I think Devan once said that it was time to move from making a family to growing a family.

So, summer fades into fall in more ways than one. I feel like there should have been a celebration and a mourning. A note of the decisions made that leave other options opted out of. The fork in the road. One path chosen leaving the other path and all the possibilities associated with it behind. The only thing left for me to do is remember the past, embrace now, and plan for the future.

Weee-ner & Randomness

And the winner is, courtesy of the Random Number Generator......

Ms. Doing My Best of amdoingmybest.blogspot.com

*Insert Happy Dance*

I am very pleased to send back a bit of kindness her way, since she has done much for the mamas of the blogosphere.

~~~

Sometimes I wish I didn't have a desk job. I am getting so freaking stiff sitting here all day long.

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Brother got a filling this morning. On his way to school, he kept poking his face and saying, "My face is fat." And then I would argue with him that his face is no fatter than it was this morning and then relaying my epidural experiences where it feels like your legs are someone else's legs. And how you touch them and wonder, is this what my legs feel like to other people who touch them? And then are less than pleased with that idea seeing as you haven't shaved for 6 months due to not being able to bend at the waist. Ok, I didn't tell him all of that.

~~~

This weekend is my birthday weekend. I don't have any great hopes for it. When I asked Honey if I should be expecting anything, I got your basic "deer in the headlights" crossed with "kicked puppy." Which I don't quite understand his distress because it is not like I do anything really huge for his birthday, other than buy him whatever expensive gizmo he is coveting at the time, make a special dessert of his choice, organize a sitter so we can go out to dinner at the restaurant of his choice, and basically cater to his every whim for a minimum of 2-3 days. That's not much, right? Right.

I am just kidding, really. I don't even want all that. Know what I have been trying to get him to get me for mortal years? I would love it if he would take the boys to one of those "build your own bead jewelry" places and let them pick out random pieces to make a hodgepodge bracelet for me. I can see Brother picking out black crystals and Honey picking out green jade and Jelly picking beads shaped like rubber ducks. My whole family on my wrist. Wouldn't that be so special? Alas... Maybe when Scooter is old enough to make a choice, then I will get one.

~~~

I am having a hard time sticking with my diet on the weekends. There is always something going on. A birthday. A wedding. Going out to eat. Hard, Hard, Hard. I have been hovering around the same weight for *most* of September not because I have hit a plateau, but because my determination is wavering. Yesterday, I put on the smallest jeans I own and felt GREAT about it. It is hard to imagine that I am supposed to be 30 lbs lighter than this. I don't even know how I will look. I haven't been that small for a decade...

Anyway, my dance class is fun, but I think sometime in the next month or so I need to get more serious about exercise. I keep thinking I want to be a runner because all the cool kids are doing it, but my knees are old maw-maw knees and can't hack it. Any knee protection secrets out there?

~~~

We were going to go camping around Thanksgiving and now can't because Honey is unlikely to get off of work. I want to go on a trip, but didn't want to pull Brother out of school. Maybe when it warms up in the spring. You know, like February.

Birthday Boy

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Pete & Pickles Giveaway

Late one night last week, while Honey was gone on his trip, I ventured into the library with the children after Brother's piano lessons. I picked out the D and E Sound Box books for Jelly to take to the sitter as they were doing those letters this week and we love the Sound Box books.

I am a huge fan of librarians. Big shocker, I know, seeing as I am one myself. I am a firm believer that librarians are just the nicest, most interesting people on the planet. They. Know. Everything. Which is why I became a librarian...to be as close as possible to knowing everything seeing as it is not really possible to know everything...but I digress. Having huge respect for the Children's Librarian at my local library branch, I always check out what she has selected to display on top of the bookshelves. These are the books she wants to be sure you see... the best, the newest, the most awesome. So I pick up two. One by Kathryn Otoshi (which is really wonderful) and Pete & Pickles by Berkley Breathed.

Do you know this? It was done in 2008 and I hadn't come across it before. But oh, it is lovely. I think I enjoyed it far more than Jelly Bean did. The illustrations are done so well. They tell a more in depth version of the texted story. I say "Dare to dream of a different life" a lot. That is partially what this book is about... along with love, doing the right thing, remembrance, fear, imagination. And it has dandelions. *Happy Sigh*

Anyway, I want to give one of these books away to you. So you can read it and love it, too. Leave a comment telling me about your all-time favorite illustrated book, whether it be children's lit or graphic novel and you will be entered into this Fabulous! Giveaway!

And tell your friends. It is more fun that way and we can all get good book recommendations from the comments.

Mom-a-thon

This past week, Honey has been on a business trip in the East with pretty trees and no 3 AM feedings and dinner out every night.

Not that I am bitter.

This means I have been working a nonstop Mom-a-thon for the past week and boy, am I tired. I have had the following experiences:

• Giving Scooter a bit of banana to come back and not only finding him mashing it into the flooring, but also rolling in it. And mashing. And rolling. I am not at a place where I can laugh about this yet. Where did he learn this?
• I have fantasized about sending Jelly to boarding school for Kindergarten.
• I have banned a feral neighbor child from my yard as 10 minutes before needing to leave for soccer practice and 2 nano seconds after I explicitly said, "Jelly do NOT get wet and, NeighborChild, do not encourage him to get wet when I specifically said not to!" Jelly walks in the house, dripping.
• I have tried to Skype with said absentee husband while children are running and screaming in the background and I am bellowing at them to Please! Be! Quiet! And then I laid my head down on the desk because I was losing the battle.
• Felt like I was doing fine. Fine! Honey didn't even need to come home. Everything was going swimmingly.
• Felt dried up and prune-ish. Like there was absolutely nothing left to give and I wasn't sure I was cut out for this "motherhood" thing.

I feel a lot of pressure to do a lot of things. And I feel like I am the only one with vision and goals. And I am also freaking tired of explaining how I feel and breaking down and asking for help and still not getting any.

And I also wonder if I am an ungrateful PITA.

I need a break, I think, but I don't even know what that would look like. Vacations are no vacation with the kids. I feel like going and sitting on a beach somewhere by myself, but then who would take care of the kids? They wouldn't understand. No one would, really. But I am starting to feel like, if I have to take care of everyone else, shouldn't someone be taking care of me? Or do I have to do that, too.

I am just ready for a pause in the Mom-a-thon.

So long

I have worked at my organization for 8 years alongside two other people (although many other have come and gone). My boss and Martha. I have written about Martha before and how she was kind of a caretaker of sorts. Whenever we would go to lunch, she would drive. She had mad backing-in skills. Once we were driving through an intersection and on the cross street, a car ran the red light and she slammed on the brakes. Saved our lives, practically.

Whenever I was pregnant, she would lend me a few of her loose tops and tell me to bring them back when I was done. They always smelled so good, like Gain. I worried that when I brought them back after wearing them weekly for 9+ months if they would be too worn or smell unGain-ish. We all went to her son's wedding last October. She looked like a fashion model in a floor length, champagne-colored satin gown. Her grandchildren called her Nana.

She and I didn't always get along. There were occasional tense moments and frankly, her communication style used to drive me bonkers. But she was steady, capable. She rarely had anything negative to say. She always found a solution or at least the bright side. She loved salads and always ordered extra dressing. Man, I wish I could go out to lunch with her one more time.

She called in sick last week, complaining of a headache and chills. She never calls in sick. I thought she had the flu. Her husband came home and found her. She had a heart attack and died in her sleep. She and I were conspiring to have a cheesecake dessert bar at our co-worker's bridal shower next week. I guess I will have to try my hand at her recipe.

So long, my friend. I will miss you.

Grab Bag

My laundry room was smelling seriously funky. Like moldy funky. Was the dryer vent thingy loose, letting in air from under the house? Was it the mountains of dirty boy laundry? Was it my worm composting system? So, we took the worms outside and sifted through the bedding. It didn't smell moldy or yucky, more like dirt. I washed mountains of laundry with lots and lots of fabric softener. I ran a empty cycle through my washer with practically a whole bottle of vinegar. No luck.

Then I wanted to bleach some white items that weren't so white anymore and I dumped far too much bleach into the machine and ran the cycle. This morning, the laundry room smells fresh and clean. Was my washer dirty? Weird.

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I have been planning a beach vacation for literal months. Months! And it looks like it is going to freaking rain the entire time. My heart is broken. I was so set on seeing that beautiful green water. But it isn't green unless the sun is shining.

So I have spent some time seeing about indoor attractions. But it is just not the same, you know?

~~~

My wacky husband has been trying to cheer me with ridiculous jokes from the internet. Like:

He is so strange.