Happy Mother’s Day!

cameo_pendant.gifI hope everyone had as nice a mother’s day as I did. Denis did most of the toddler chasing for the day, which meant I could sit and chat with my family for a while! He also gave me this lovely pendant – actually, though, he gave it to me two weeks ago so I’d have it for our family portraits.

This year I’m definitely not as reflective about the whole “being a mom thing” as I was last year. Don’t get me wrong, I still love being a mother and wouldn’t trade it for anything…most of the time. But I have to confess, it was all I could do not to crawl under the pew and disavow any relationship with my adorable little toddler when she spoke up in church. There were two baptisms this morning, and the priest had us all renew our baptismal vows. He asked the congregation, “Do you reject Satan, and all his works?” To which Carrie quite loudly and emphatically replied, “NO!”

And that about sums up my mother’s day.

It’s Been A Busy Week

It’s Saturday, right? It’s been such a long week.

Let’s see. I went to spin class on Wednesday. It was my third time in the class, and I’m finally starting to be able to do the parts where you stand up and pedal. Except, I really paid for it – I was in agony going up and down the stairs until today.

Thursday was Jenny’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Jenny!) and I should have also mailed out some Mother’s Day cards, but we decided to wait until we picked up our family pictures and send them out at the same time. Um, I just finally bought the photo mailers today. I guess I should have just sent the cards!

Friday I had to take Carrie to the pediatrician for a terrible rash. Nobody knows what’s causing it and it’s not anything easily identifiable like roseola or fifth disease, but at this point it’s covering her tummy, waist, one thigh, under both her arms, and one little hand. I’m thankful that it doesn’t seem to bother her, but I wish I knew what it was and what caused it.

And today was just a running-around kind of day. We bought a couple of pairs of Gerber training pants for Carrie. I don’t know when we’re actually going to start, but since she’s starting to show a little bit of interest in the potty and the training pants are hard to find I bought them just to have on hand. We were contemplating using them temporarily to see if the diapers were what was causing the rash, but the rash is remarkably everywhere else but under her diaper, so that’s probably not it.

So, it’s been busy. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I owe people cards. I haven’t wrapped up my mom’s gift. I don’t know whether we all have clean dressy-enough-for-church clothes for the morning. I have to make a fruit salad. I’m supposed to go to my grandmother’s house for brunch, except I’m not sure when we’re supposed to be there. But it’s mother’s day, so I’m not going to worry about any of this. So there.

Bad Day

This is how my morning has gone so far:

12:03 AM – Go to bed, realizing that reading a suspenseful book before bed when home alone is a bad idea.
1:22 AM – Must. Fall. Asleep. Soon.
5:42 AM – Wake to baby crying and making her “parched” noise that means she’s thirsty. Too tired to walk downstairs to get water. Offer to nurse instead.
5:57 AM – Encourage baby to go back to sleep despite obvious light outside and loud birds chirping. Damn birds. Baby insists, “Per! Per!”. Change diaper.
5:59 AM – Drop back into bed.
6:30 AM – Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
6:37 AM – Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
6:44 AM – Alarm goes off. Realize that dogs need to be taken out and fed soon. Hit snooze.
6:51 AM – Alarm goes off. Fine. Fine, whatever, I don’t need sleep, I’ll just make coffee.
7:10 AM – Showered, dressed, etc. Go downstairs.
7:25 AM – Dogs are fed, outed, etc. Start unloading dishwasher.
7:26 AM – Break two glasses all over counter, floor, and inside of dishwasher. Shit.
7:35 AM – All visible pieces of glass picked up off floor and out of dishwasher, counters wiped down. Don’t know what else to do about dishwasher. Thinking I should use the wet Swiffer to make sure there are no tiny pieces left on floor.
7:36 AM – Aaaargh! Dog pee all over tile in front of closet Swiffer is in. Shouldn’t have hit the snooze button that last time.
7:37 AM – Out of paper towels to clean dog pee. More in basement. God, I need coffee.
7:38 AM – As long as I’m down here, better move the laundry from last night before I forget and it gets all mildewy in the washer.
7:44 AM – Tile cleaned. Kitchen floor Swiffered. What on earth do I do about the dishwasher?
7:45 AM – Contemplate options: vacuum out dishwasher? Re-run dishwasher? Take out all dishes and rewash by hand?
7:46 AM – Decide to ignore remainder of dishes in dishwasher until it’s a decent hour to call mom and ask what to do. Start coffee.
7:48 AM – Blog.

It can only get better, right? Is the coffee ready yet?

Holy Legos!

I asked Carrie’s Uncle Mike to show her how to build something cooler out of legos than I can come up with – because no matter how much I try I can only build the things that are pictured on the box, or a simple little wall. In response, he sent me this link. All I can say is…wow. There are people out there who have a lot more time on their hands than I do. And a lot more talent when it comes to building with legos. Not to mention, really, a lot more legos in the first place. Did you know there were clear legos? Why didn’t I have clear legos when I was a kid? Maybe if I had I’d be able to build cooler things!

April Showers

On Sunday we all went to a baby shower for Tina’s daughter Lauren. It was a lovely shower, and Lisa and I had fun making the little jungle animal cupcakes for it. I gave Tina a little sweater set I knitted a couple of months ago but never blogged about since I wanted it to be a surprise!

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Oh, and Jenny posted pictures of the shower including a few of Carrie after eating half of a chocolate-frosted cupcake. Amazingly enough, no clothes were harmed in the eating of that cupcake.

Another Sunday Night

I think I’ve literally spent the entire weekend doing laundry. No joke, we did 6 loads in the past two days. And it’s not as though I hadn’t done laundry for weeks or anything – in fact, we were caught up as of this past Wednesday. And somehow, despite having done 6 loads of laundry in 48 hours, I have more to do tomorrow. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

And now it’s Sunday night, and although the laundry is sort of caught up, I don’t feel like I really accomplished much at all this weekend. I suppose I don’t know why I think weekends should be this super-productive period of time. It’s not like when I was working, where weekends meant a break from doing all the things I had to do all week – now I still need to feed, dress, cuddle and play with Carrie, no matter what day of the week it is. And yet I still expect that I’m somehow magically going to find time on a Saturday that I can’t find on a Tuesday to do things like clean out my closet or reorganize my kitchen cabinets. Or vacuum.

I don’t know if I need to become more organized or what, but it’s all I can do to just keep the house relatively dog-hair free (and relatively is a very relative term), stock the fridge with healthy-ish foods, and try to make sure everyone has a clean pair of underwear (or onesie) to wear on a daily basis. That doesn’t really sound like much, does it? Are my expectations too high for myself, as a stay-at-home mom? I’m really committed to making sure that Carrie is my top priority, where most of my energy for the day goes, but I wish I could just get an extra thing or two done around the house occasionally!

Happy Easter!

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It was such a pretty day today! Even though it was a touch chilly we did an egg hunt outdoors for Carrie and her cousin Benjamin. They were so cute, picking up eggs and shaking them, and then putting them in their baskets. Looking at some of the pictures I took I remembered pictures I’ve seen from when my cousins and I were really little, of Easter egg hunts and Christmas trees, and I realized that all but a couple dozen of the pictures I’ve taken of Carrie so far have never even been printed out. I need to make some albums so that Carrie can see these pictures, so that when she’s taking pictures of her baby’s first easter egg hunt she can remember seeing them, and feel as happy and nostalgic as I do today. Although, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure those pictures I saw were still in their envelopes, not in albums!
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We’re Back.

We drove nearly 900 miles in less than 60 hours, got lost on Long Island (or were we still in Queens?), got lost in New Jersey, picked up a dog who was so anxious at the vets that she hasn’t eaten anything in those same 60 hours and is having severe and messy digestive issues, and came home with an over-excited and over-tired toddler who fell and hit her head at least three times before bedtime.

I’m utterly, completely, mind-numblingly exhausted, and if I ever see the inside of my car again it will be too soon. Oh, and quite frankly, if I ever have to stay in New Jersey again (as nice as the hotel was when we finally found it) I will simply have to shoot myself. Seriously, people, what’s up with actually having driveways off of expressways?!? Aren’t they supposed to be limited access roads because people are driving along them at, oh, approximately 9,362 miles per hour?

(But the wedding was beautiful and it was good to see the family!)

Travel Checklist

  • car toys…check
  • knitting…check
  • ipod…check
  • yummy snacks…check
  • slippers…check

I think we’re ready for our weekend away. Just as soon as the binkies and straw cups get run through the dishwasher and the jeans finish drying. And we still have to clean the kitchen, empty the trash, make sure all the phones are on their chargers, collect all the lovies out of the crib…um, I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t keep everything straight anymore!

What time is it? How many hours until we leave? Right, just checking. Sleep is overrated anyway.

Blogging Blahs

I haven’t blogged in a bit because I haven’t really done anything all that exciting lately. I’ve done bits and pieces on some of my craft projects, but nothing worth reporting or taking pictures of. Carrie’s been doing some super cute things lately, but I also haven’t gotten pictures or videos* of those things either. Sigh. I’m feeling stressed about getting things together to go to a wedding this weekend and just keeping up with all the daily activities we have. There’s stuff going on every morning this week and I don’t think either Carrie or I have fully adjusted to the time change yet. Blah.

*Seriously, how do you describe a little kid making funny mouth noises without a video clip? She does that thing, you know, where you take your finger and flick it up and down over your lips while making a “b” sound…aw, shoot, I’ll just have to try and catch it on video.