Oh Halloween...you are...

I'm hooking up with Northwest Mommy for Monday Listicles again. This week's theme: Halloween is....

1. Spooky
2. Little ones in adorable costumes
3. Not so little ones in slutty (fill-in-the-blank) costumes
4. Sugar highs
5. Candy corn and mellow cream pumpkins
6. Pumpkin shaped Reeses
7. A night full of giggles floating through the neighborhood
8. An excuse to decorate the front door
9. The only night people don't stare if I wear my devil horn barrettes
10. My darling girl beyond excited to dress up as a dinosaur

Pictures to come...promise.

22 Things Done

Today I'm going to join up with Mama Kat for the first time. The prompt is 22 things you HAVE done...

1. Fallen in love
2. Fallen out of love
3. Found out what love really is
4. Got married
5. Adopted the world's most amazing girl
6. Finally finished my undergraduate degree
7. Started my graduate degree
8. Saw Rocky Horror (with live actors in front of the screen) in London
9. Saw Rent at the Fox in Atlanta
10. Made lots of stupid choices
11. Made a few good ones
12. Screamed myself stupid at concerts
13. Woken up to the sound of waves crashing mingled with the breathing of my girl
14. Napped on the beach
15. Been to 5 other countries and lots of other states
16. Moved. A lot.
17. Lived in a haunted house. For reals, yo
18. Worked in a homeless shelter for women with minor children
19. Baked a cake from scratch
20. Baked a cake from a box and said it was from scratch
21. Found joy in the smallest things
22. Felt my heart swell almost to bursting the first time I held my daughter

Wordless Wednesday {Is it too early to wax?}

I don't mean to embarrass you love...but you have a little issue with your upper lip. Maybe they make baby wax and we can take care of it. Or maybe I just need to find you some mustard...

Top Ten Tips for New Mommies

I'm hooking up with Northwest Mommy for Monday Listicles again. This week's theme is Top Ten Tips for New Mommies.

 

1. Sleep when the baby sleeps. Seriously. Whatever you think you need to get accomplished while they nap can wait. You need sleep.
2. No one cares how clean your house is. If people are coming to visit I guarantee they don't care about the state of your house. Or the state of you for that matter. They're coming to see the baby anyway, so don't stress about being a good hostess.
3. Take any help offered. And don't be afraid to ask for it. People who are offering, genuinely want to help and won't judge you for taking it.
4. Save money on expensive clothes. If you want one or two special outfits, fine, but overall those first weeks and months will be covered in all manner of ickiness, and you stress a lot less if said ickiness is on a $3 onesie. You'll be holed up and exhausted anyway, so there's no need to have a fashion plate baby.
5. Never feel bad about asking your pediatrician questions. That's what they're there for...to answer your questions and ease your fears. I used to go in with my special notebook full of things to ask (okay who am I kidding...I still do that).
6. Talk to other moms. People who have gone before may be able to save you a lot of heartache trying to find products and solutions that work.
7. If you're feeling like there might even be the slightest chance you're dealing with PPD, TELL YOUR DOCTOR. It is nothing to be ashamed of...and nothing to play around with. Your doctor can help. And if that help involves medication, take it. It does not make you a bad mom or a bad person.
8. Document as much as you can. In the exhausted stupor that follows a new baby's arrival, you don't realize how precious all of the coos and quirks will be later. Take lots of pictures, videos and notes.
9. Snuggle. Snuggle to your heart's content. There is nothing better in the entire world than snuggling your new little love.
10. Take a minute. Remember to take a minute and a deep breath and soak in all the wonder of a new baby. It is a joy beyond words and you need to stop and bask in that occasionally. Even if it's just for the second it takes you to throw away a stinky diaper.

PYHO {Putting it Out There}

All the cool kids are doing it...you should too. Pour Your Heart Out with Shell at Things I Can't Say.

There's a lot I carry with me. An ever shifting mosaic of worries and wants. So I've decided to put it out there and let it go. Of course that's easier said than done. But you never know what will come your way when you share with others.

Here goes, in no particular order:

1. More kids. We really want any other children we adopt to be mixed like Pie. My ultimate dream would be mixed twins as our next kiddies. I have no gender preference at all. Boys and girls equally welcome :)
2. A job I love.
3. Financial stability for my family.
4. Husband's business to take off.
5. To actually sell the things I make. Not necessarily for the money, though that part is nice, but to share the things I love making with others.
6. To have more time with Pie. Between work and school it seems like I never see her.
7. To be comfortable in my own skin.

There's maybe a million other things I worry/think/stress about on a daily basis, but those take up the most space. So now I've shared, now I've put these things into the universe, and I can kick them out of my head. Good luck with that, right?

The joy of a list...

I'm hooking up with Northwest Mommy for Monday Listicles. This week's theme is guilty pleasures...and I have plenty of those...

1) Target Black and White trail mix. This stuff is the devil.

2) Food Network. I can't cook to save my life, but can spend all day watching FN.

3) Any number of reality shows...most embarrassingly Teen Mom/16 and Pregnant and America's Next Top Model.

4) Cake. In any form. Cup, pop, slice, sheet...you name it and I love it.

5) Cracking my knuckles. It's a terrible habit and one that really grosses some people out, but I can't stop. I've done it forever and can pop just about anything from my ankles to my nose. It gives me that quick relaxing fix when I need it. (I seriously had to stop typing that to crack all of the joints in my hands and my neck. Hehehe)

6) Blistex Complete Moisture. I call this a guilty pleasure because it's a bit of a problem. I have tubes of it everywhere. I typically have no less than 7 tubes open and in use at any given time. I told you. A problem.

7) Office Supplies. I buy an absurd amount of them. I have little sprees and then figure out what to do with them, instead of having a need and buying them to fill it. What can I say...Staples is my happy place.

8) Pinterest. I spend more time pinning than just about any other thing I do. I am seriously going to have to cut myself off. But if you want to follow and support my habit, you can here... 


9) Craft projects as a result of number 8. I pin, I buy the supplies, I fake clean them into the closet when people are coming over, I forget all about it. Rinse. Repeat.

10) Flip flops. Cheap ones. I buy crappy, cheap flip flops and wear them every day for about 8 months of the year. The ones I have on now were about $6.00, 3 years ago. They have absolutely no sole left and I almost busted ass in the rain last week, but I've got them on again. Sigh.

So that's it. There are many (many) others, but those are the top 10. What are your guilty pleasures?

PYHO {Never Enough}

Another Pour Your Heart Out with Shell at Things I Can't Say.

There is never enough. Never enough money, energy, sleep, time with Pie, hours in the day...you name it and it is likey in short supply at my house. Well, as long as you don't name bum size. That we have plenty of...

I'm still trying to figure out this whole mom/working full-time/school full-time thing. So far I'm not doing a great job. I'm stretched to the breaking point, exhausted beyond reason and feeling more and more guilty every day for the time it's taking away from my family.

I haven't found that place where I feel balanced. I'm not totally confident that place exists. Lots of things are falling by the wayside, namely my connection to the blog world. I haven't been able to post as often as I used to, I haven't been around commenting on other's blogs, I haven't been around for some friends who have big exciting things going on. And I have no idea how I'm going to resolve that.

I love my blog. I love having this space, and the community of bloggers I have found. I love the friends, yes real friends, I've made through this place. And I am feeling the lack of connection to them lately. I'm hoping that I can find a way to be present in my real life and my internet life. And while I struggle to figure that out, while I'm not around as much...I hope you all know I'm thinking of you and hope you'll stick with me until I get my Wonder Woman powers back and can do it all.

xoxo

Apple picking is a lot more fun...

...when you aren't terrified of the trees. Not sure what that's about, but Pie managed to rally for the petting zoo. Nothing like a pen full of bunnies or piggies to help get over your fears.

Flashback Friday {College Part 2}

Okay...so two weeks ago I showed you my scary eyebrows, big hair and beloved overalls. This week we're revisiting college, because after all it is a wealth of embarrassment.

Today we have my student ID, taken maybe a year after the other photo. But just so people didn't get confused about who I was, I was still rocking the big hair, the bigger eyebrows, and what's that? Yup, the overalls.

1. I'd like to point out a few of the greater tragedies here though: My hair is straight, yet still giant. I decided I was tired of fighting the crazy curls all the time and set out on a mission to destroy them. This picture is after I had it chemically straightened. It was essentially a reverse perm. And yes my hair was straight. What they failed to tell me was that it would maintain the same size and texture as my curly hair. So I spent quite awhile with triangle hair. Flat, triangle shaped hair. Bad news.
2. The necklace. Oh the necklace. It was actually a really uncomfortable anklet that I turned into a necklace. Big, chunky, and a couple of inches of random twine I found. There I go again with my cutting edge fashion choices.
3. I really can't say anything about the sunglasses on the head. I still do that. Or the no make-up. I still do that too. But I vividly remember having this picture taken and thinking I was so cool and alternative. What a total dork. Actually I can't say much about that either...I'm still a dork too.

Hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to do a little apple picking. I think the overalls will be perfect...

No...But Really...

Yesterday I gave you the funny side of my anniversary. At least part of it...there's so much more madness. I could seriously do another 10 posts.

But today I wanted to tell you some of the great and wonderful. I am married to the man of my dreams (barring Ryan Reynolds deciding he's desperate for me of course). He is my best friend, my first love, and the only place I want to turn whether I'm happy or sad.

He's amazing. Seriously...I'm married to:

• my first official boyfriend. I dated, but no boyfriends before.
• the only man I've ever said I love you to who isn't a relative.
• a man who told his mom after our first date that he would marry me.
• a man who used to drive 3 hours each way on work days just to see me. He'd get to me about 8:00pm and would have to leave no later than 4:00am to get back to work.
• a man who showed up at my door with roses, movies and mashed potatoes when I was sick
• a man who left the only home he'd ever known to live with me (after just 3 months).
• a man who followed me to Atlanta after I left school. We had been apart only a few weeks and there was a knock at the door. He had quit his job, packed his life into the back of the truck and come to Atlanta because he couldn't stand being apart any longer. He didn't even have a place to stay.
• a man who put aside his terrible shyness to propose in front of my entire family because he knew how happy it would make me to have them there.
• a man who couldn't let our anniversary pass without doing something, despite being completely broke, so he came home with this.

I couldn't love him more.

George Clooney's Got Nothing On Me

Today is my anniversary. 14 years ago today, Husband and I decided we'd be together. That we were in it for the long haul. And 10 years ago today, we made it official.

I can't say those 14 years have all been sunshine and unicorns, but through it all I've had my best friend holding my hand. Here's to the next 14. I love you Pants.

***The rest of this post originally appeared in July 2010 on {Not} The Very Best Housewife. But the entertainment value is too great not to share again. So please enjoy the disaster that was my wedding.***

George Clooney's Got Nothing On Me

My wedding was a perfect storm of things gone wrong (not even counting the facts that it was two weeks after 9/11 and none of my extended family wanted to fly and didn't come or that my sister and co- maid of honor had only been out of the hospital after giving birth to her first child for about 3 days). It was a mess, but I was married at the end of the day so the rest was just material for stories later.

There is more crazy about that day, and the months leading up to it, than I could put in a hundred posts...so I'm just going to hit the highlights for you.

1) Months before the wedding, maybe even before the engagement, I found the dress. THE DRESS. I cut it out of magazines, made a folder exclusively for it, and hunted it down within a 3 hour radius of where I lived. I got the dress. The only hitch was that the dress had been discontinued by that point and the store only had one left. It was a size or two too small. I fit into it, but only if I didn't breathe. I bought the dress certain that before any alterations had to be done I would really fit into it. A month before the wedding we went for alterations. I had a small panic attack when the dress still didn't fit. I had not lost the weight. They could not alter it so that circulation would continue in the lower half of my body. I had to buy a new dress. I bought a second dress that day. It fit. Looking back it was not me at all. This pic is the second dress...

So new dress in hand I start the alteration process again. We went through the first round, I went back to try it, a few more tweaks were needed. I went back after the second alterations, the day before the wedding, and the sleeves had been altered to the point that I could not raise my arms more than about 15 degrees away from my body. We had so much to do that day...rehearsals, rehearsal dinner, gathering out-of-town guests...that I could not address it.

This is my mother cutting said sleeves off my dress the day of the wedding. You read that right. The DAY OF THE WEDDING. I was headed out the door to get my hair and make-up done when this picture was snapped. That's my uncle sitting with her. He was an industrial engineer so he felt certain between the two of them they could fashion some sort of new sleeves out of the random yard of fabric they found in my parent's laundry room. Surprisingly they did.

2) As I left my mom, my uncle and my dismantled dress behind, mere hours before the wedding, and headed to my beautifying it started to rain. Really rain. We were getting married outside. Good times.

3) Once we got to the wedding site...still in the rain...we found that the man who was marrying us was not there. He was late. And I don't just mean that he was later than we expected. I mean we started the wedding half an hour later than intended because he was not there. I never did find out what his hold-up was...

4) While we were waiting, I decided to go to the bathroom one more time. Anyone who has tried to do this in a wedding dress knows it's no easy feat. It took awhile. Apparently everyone arrived during this time and they decided to start the wedding. I came out of the bathroom to find that all of the families and half of the wedding party had already gone down the aisle. Guess they didn't think the bride was worth waiting for...

5) The rain did eventually stop, a few minutes before the ceremony. Something in the aisle runner when mixed with water became extremely sticky. I ended up walking out of my shoes completely, having to stop, back up and peel them off the runner.

6) The ceremony itself went along with no major issues. Once we started taking pictures afterward though I noticed something on Husband's face. I reached for it and he jerked away. He had cut himself shaving that morning. Pretty badly. So he had put a piece of toilet paper on his face to stop the bleeding. It was stuck there. We got married while he had toilet paper stuck to his face.

Seriously people...I could do this all day.

7) I'll just do one more though. My soon to be father-in law, who almost didn't come to the wedding because it was during hunting season...awesome, apparently lost his regular glasses the day before they left for the wedding. In a crafty move he grabbed the only other glasses he had that were prescription. They were safety goggles. My FIL wore safety goggles to our wedding. Don't believe me? Here's photographic evidence...note the plastic side walls to protect from any stray wedding shrapnel.

As many things as went crazy wrong, I still ended up Mrs. Husband at the end of the day. That's all I wanted. And along the way there were some beyond fantastic moments...lots of laughing and lots of love. There are so many things that are forever imprinted in the memories of our family. So many things that we still laugh about.

Especially great was dancing with my dad to James Taylor's Mexico. It's a fast song, an unexpected father-daughter dance song, but one with lots of history. My dad and I used to dance to it when I was little, with my small feet on top of his grown-up ones. Then we took dance lessons and choreographed something for the wedding, we were hysterical through the whole thing. By the time the song was over my side ached from laughing. And then last week, on my vacation, my dad danced to it with my daughter...talk about full circle.


So all of that boils down to my advice for anyone who is getting married...the wedding is just that...a wedding. It's a very expensive party. The important part is what comes after. If you take the things that will inevitably go wrong on that day with a grain of salt, it will help put you in the right frame of mind to start your marriage. No matter what, if you're married to your best friend at the end of the day, then it was a success.

The Baby Whisperer

My little Pie has been doing speech therapy for awhile now and I can't begin to tell you the difference it has made. Her therapist is seriously the baby whisperer. There just aren't enough good words to describe her and the progress she has made with Pie.

Going in, Pie could say: Dada, Mama, occasionally outside and a handful of animal noises.

Now she says: Poppy, in, on, shoe, outside, school, uh-oh, ouch, stuck, one, two, three, a, b, c, o, q, z, jump, go, bubble, din-din (dinner), nie-nie (night-night), bye bye, and a bunch more I can't think of right now.

She can also sign: more, please, milk, eat, and sometimes thank you.

And can make the animal noises for: horse, cow, kitten, puppy, pig, chicken, cuckoo bird, owl, giraffe, whale, dinosaur, and I think I'm forgetting a few here too.

After every session she comes home with new skills and it never fails to amaze me. It was absolutely the right decision for her. Plus she practices the mouth positions for different words and that by itself is cute enough for it all to be worthwhile!

Hey, I Put Some New Shoes On...

...and suddenly everything is right.

Pie has decided to go through a crazy growth spurt and now officially has nothing that fits. I've been running into the store on the way home to get pjs and socks and whatever else I can grab to get her through the next day. I'm going to have to do a massive shop for all the basics.

This weekend though we took care of the most important thing...new shoes!