Monday, May 23, 2011

Woe is Me...No


I was going to write this huge woe is me post tonight. I was going to tell you how much having to put your kid in daycare sucks. How it makes you feel inadequate as a mom. How a piece of you dies inside each day when you drop him off and he wails because there are unfamiliar faces, spaces and routines. How much your heart literally breaks when three days in, he wakes up with a 103 fever and you know that the bubble that you have carefully built around him to protect his health is punctured and he is sick because of other kids. How much the fussing in the car can literally send me over the edge and reduce me to tears and it was only three days last week? Or how much Brady is flat out refusing to nap and struggling to go to sleep each night even though it is obvious he is exhausted.

Your proof….

We were going to ride our bikes to get lunch but three blocks in we found this.

Who wants to hear about the gritty details of how much life has changed for us in one week? No one. So, instead, I am going to tell you how much I am completely in love with my life right now. Even though we are struggling, I am feeling content with our life. Glenn and I headed out for a date Saturday night and as we were driving I asked him what we used to do on a Saturday night before kids as we watched young 20 something year olds head in to bars on Clybourn Avenue? Before he could respond, I told him I didn’t care because of now I was in love with our life.

I can’t tell you how many times I stop what I am doing , look at Glenn and say, “He’s the best. Our kid is the best”. And then I go back to doing the mundane task I am immersed in. Emulating is constant, tantrums are existent and the independence is scary.

Dad mows so I will too.

Mom waters flowers so will I.

Mom and Dad eat ice cream I will too.

I was so stressed about missing two days of work this week, but you know what happened, I got to fall in love all over again with my kid. The schedules, routines, daily tasks were out the window. We snuggled over Elmo, we watched buses, trains and trucks on Belmont, we picked rocks on our block, we swung with Starbucks and in our backyard and I just got to be a mama to a sick little boy.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

My Latest Obsession....Pinterest


"Hey Grandpa Witherow...look at the cool neat trick you taught me. When I push the remote the car actually beeps. If only the neighbors appreciated it as much as you do at 7am"

My husband will tell you that I spend hours, countless hours on the web reading, researching, discovering and getting crazy ideas in my head about what meals we will cook and eat next week, how I am going to organize my closet for the summer or what I am going to do in Brady’s new big boy room.

He calls it mind numbing and a waste of time. I call it idea explosions. I see all of these great ideas, recipes and designs and think “I could totally do that”. My problem is time. So, there are a lot of instances where I have the best intentions but they don’ t get put in to action for a bit. What’s even more unfortunate, a month or year later, when I am ready to do it, I frantically search in my bookmarks, my history, and on the desktop of my computer to find what inspired my idea to cook adult macaroni and cheese, how I "have" to reorganize my closet or the bedding I just couldn't live without a month ago. Usually it ends in failure and I end up retracing my steps, calling my ma starting the conversation with “Do you remember when I told you about…” and then starting from scratch.

Enter from stage left (aka Twitter) Pinterest. I started hearing about it from people on twitter, listened to someone in my office at school talk about it, started reading about it and instantly wanted in on the action.

What is it? It’s an online bookmarking extravaganza. So, you want more details? This is what I know...

  • You must get an invitation. (Leave me a comment or shoot me an email and I will send an invitation)
  • Find people to follow, real-life friends, twitter friends, whoever!
  • You create boards. Think cork board meets inspiration board.
  • You pin images to the cork boards, categorizing and giving brief statements about them. (Think of the wedding planning you could do on this site… I am looking at some of you!)
  • You click on the images you pin or repin and it links you back to where the image is originally from.
  • Your main page streams and updates with people you are following and things that they have recently pinned. You can repin or you can comment.
  • You can follow single boards of people. Let’s say you love someone’s toddler inspiration board but hate their board about Shakespeare. You simply follow the boards you want to follow of each person you follow.
  • You can search something random, say kitchen organization, and you will be bombarded with images of things people have pinned and then can pin them for yourself.

Sure, you could bookmark websites, but the best part is that I have a place/space on the web where I can house all of my “stuff” and it won’t get lost. And, it goes back to the original information. I have so many new ideas and I love to see how other people think. So, hop on to pinterest. Remember, you need an invite so holler and I will send you one!

A lot of bloggers I read have written about pinterest. Here is a great post on the do's and don'ts from Suzanne who manages to have tons of her own blog items pinned by others! (She's pretty darn crafty!) If you don't believe me I think she will convince you that pinterest rocks!

And of course a blog post wouldn't be a post without a deliciously cute picture of my toddler...


Friday, May 6, 2011

My Ma

Mother’s Day

My ma.

Sure, I think about the fact that I am a mom but mostly get lost in the thoughts of what my ma means to me.

A lot of people will tell you we look alike, which is not a bad thing.

Truth be told, I am my mother in more ways than just looks. I have never wanted to be anything but my mother. I have wanted to love like her, laugh like her, think like her, live like her, have a marriage like her and ultimately be her.

We think alike. Decisions tend to take weeks to make if ever made. We second guess the decision. We analyze the decision. We change the decision once it is made.

And we like the same things: Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes, Havianas, basil, real onion rings, pretty pedicures, a good book, slippers in the winter, country music and Steak and Shake Diet Cherry Coke.

My drive each morning starts with a phone call to her. The days we don’t talk I feel like I have forgotten a critical piece to my day.

My drive each afternoon ends with a phone call to her. Some days the phone call is rushed but as long as I hear her voice, the day can end and I can handle anything.

In between the conversations, the visits, the vacations, and the packages, there are moments that hit me like a ton of bricks where I wish she was here. I wish she lived closer. I wish I saw her more. I wish our lives were threaded like a tightly weaved basket on a daily basis. And then I stop and remember they are. It’s not the miles between us, the difference in our days or the years that separate us. She is my ma, my best friend and I find myself smiling knowing that she is what makes me me.

And for that, I say thank you. I love you. Happy Mother's Day!