The City Mouse and the Country Mouse

We've all heard the story of the city mouse and the country mouse, right? You know, mouse that lives in the country goes to visit his cousin in the city, decides to stay until a cat appears in the city house. I used to think "Wow, that country mouse is sure stupid- how could you go back to the country after being in the hip, cool city?"

All my life, my parents crowed about how much they loved the "small-town" life. I, in turn, would roll my eyes and tell them how someday I was going to move to New York City. I loved the hustle, the bustle, the crowded streets, the feeling that you're "where it's at". Or, I THOUGHT I did anyway. (I should mention that, at this point in time, I had never actually been to New York City.)

And then I went to NYC. I saw the smelly, garbage-ridden streets, the claustrophobic crowds on the sidewalks, the ugliness and unfriendliness of the people. Then I became a parent. I pictured trying to navigate my stroller through mobs of pretentious, self-absorbed New Yorkers with attitudes the size of New York itself and no mercy for anyone having a hard time.

No way in the world. Over my dead body. I don't mean to pick on New York here, I could be talking about any city. Especially since becoming a mom, I find myself turning more and more away from the city, away from the hustle and bustle. I want wide open spaces, I want to see the stars, I want to not have to worry about traffic noises waking up my baby. I now want that "small town" life.

I guess everything comes full-circle, huh?

Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage

Sing with me now! "... go together like a horse and carriage..."

Now that I've brought the show Married...with Children into your mind, it's time to get down to business. I have a radical idea in this here post. I'm going to share it with you. Here goes.

I think that in life, we so often forget HOW lucky we are to have our spouse. I think we forget what made us fall in love with him or her, we forget how it felt on those head-spinning excited first dates.

I know I do. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day "He didn't do X" or "I wish he was like so and so's husband, who does Y" that I sometimes forget how incredibly lucky I am to have the husband that I do. Does he irritate me sometimes? Yes. Do we bicker? Absolutely.

But you know what? Past all that, I have a man who LOVES me! A man who works his fingers to the bone to provide for me and our baby. A man who is an AMAZING father and loves our son with all of his heart. A man who, at the end of a long day, can look me in the eyes and say something that takes all that stress away.

I think so many divorces happen nowadays because people get caught up in the crap, day to day, mundane, bickering details of life. They forget all of that LOVE, that infatuation, that amazing time in the beginning of a relationship where everything seems so right with the world.

Kind of an out-there way to look at it, but there you go. That's my opinion. :)

What No One Told Me About Motherhood... (Oh, and I'm back)

After an extended hiatus, I'm back! No real reason for the hiatus, I just felt like I had nothing interesting to say. However, today, as I was unloading the dishwasher during the baby's nap, it hit me.

I needed to blog. There was something that came bubbling to the surface that I NEEDED to express. So without further ado, I bring you- What No One Told Me About Motherhood.

During your first pregnancy, (if you're like me anyway) you DEVOUR books about pregnancy and motherhood. You read what's happening to your body every week, what is developing on the baby every week, and then as the due date nears, you start reading about how to deal with your little bundle when it arrives. How to breastfeed, how to calm them down, how to get them to sleep (and also, if you're like me, you CONTINUE reading those books until they just. go. to. sleep. and. stay. that. way. already.).

Anyway, you also talk, a lot. You talk to your parents, your friends with kids, your relatives with kids, anyone who has some experience in the matter, trying to glean whatever wisdom you can get from anyone who will talk about it with you. So for me, by the time the baby was about to come, I felt like I had pretty much gotten the low down on everything. I didn't feel CONFIDENT, mind you, because I knew I was the one who had to put those ideas and techniques into practice, on very little sleep and with large amounts of hormones running through my system, making me feel crazy.

I thought I knew most of what I was going to be dealing with. 9 months later though? I realize that I knew NOTHING. Sure, I figured out the logistics, when to put them in the crib, when to start solid food, et cetera et cetera. There were lots of things no one told me!

1. That bringing that baby home was going to be just the start of your life completely and totally being turned upside down on a daily, if not hourly, basis. You will NEVER be able to think about yourself first ever again.

2. That depending on the person you are and the type of metabolism you have (thanks a lot mom) it's a LOT harder to lose the baby weight than you could ever imagine. Books make it sound like "oh, breastfeeding burns so many calories, it really is a good way to lose that extra weight" A big Phbbbtt to all of that. Breastfeeding also makes you hungry. REALLY freaking hungry. All. The. Time.

3. No matter how hard you try, at a certain point, your house will NOT be as clean as it used to be, nor as orderly. We have maids that come in and clean... MAIDS, people- and still- the next day? You can't even tell they've been here. And now that B's favorite activity is taking things out of the toy box as Mommy tries to put them in, and generally causing destruction and mayhem wherever he goes (and he goes a LOT of places- that little bugger is FAST)... it's incredibly hard.

4. How hard it is to get dressed, shower, get out of the house, and go somewhere. Seriously- I was a "Give me 5 minutes, I'll be ready" type of gal before I had a baby- Now it's turned into, "Please just sit here and play for 2 seconds while I take this clean shirt out of the closet, take off the one that has sweet potatoes down the front from you spitting your lunch all over me, and put the clean one on so people at the grocery store don't think I've completely lost my marbles, although it feels like I have." I get in the car, drive away, and don't realize until I'm halfway to wherever I'm going that I forgot to brush my teeth, or brush my hair, or cover up that gigantic red pimple that has suddenly appeared on my chin.

5. The Mommy Guilt. There is guilt over everything! Am I playing with him too much, and not letting him foster his independence, am I not playing with him enough and making him feel neglected, should I let him cry in his crib, should I not, is he eating enough, is he eating too much, is he eating something that's not good for him????? And on and on it goes.

6. That one little smile makes it all worth it, no matter how hard it is. All the nap failures, all the crying and hard days are negated by that one little look, that one little smile or giggle, and you know that you want to do it all over again tomorrow. Being a parent is by far the hardest thing I have ever done, but it makes me feel more fulfilled on a daily basis than any other job I've ever had.

A Bad Day at Home...

is better than a good day anywhere else! Office-wise, that is. Days like today, I get frustrated when B won't nap, or the day doesn't go how I planned it. Then, I remember.

I'm at home! I don't have boring meetings to sit in, I don't have to get dressed up, I don't have deadlines or a boss breathing down my neck, I don't have crazy coworkers who try to sabotage me, I don't have piles of paperwork to file... because I'm at home!

I'm wonderfully, amazingly, thankfully, magnificently, miraculously, remarkably, extraordinarily, able to be at home with my beautiful baby boy (and apparently quite sesquipedalian today)!

I am so thankful to be home, even on the bad days. This is the first job I've ever had where I've felt that way! :)

People...

You know, I try my best to like everyone. I feel like life is too short to walk around being critical of everyone and everything. I try VERY hard to see past people's faults, as I hope they are able to see past mine (and there are MANY)...

Every now and then, though- someone does something that steams me enough that I really want to say something about it. This happened today. The whole story is this:

I am friends with someone on Facebook. Let's call her Mrs. T. (Side note: I check Facebook at least 14 times a day- It's interesting to me, and I have a good variety of people that I keep up with- old high school friends, new mom friends, in-laws, etc.) Mrs T. is a friend of my in-laws, and consequently, my husband. Her children grew up with my husband. She sent me a friend request a month or two ago, and I thought, "Hmm. She seems like a nice person, even though I've only met her a handful of times, but she's friends with my in-laws, so I'll accept". Now, the hubs has always said a few things about this particular lady, things like, she's a little bit of a busybody. I always shrugged him off, thinking he was just saying this because he's not a fan of people, in general.

Mrs. T started a blog. Since she posts updates with links to her newest blog post, I'll read it from time to time. Sometimes I agree with her, sometimes not as much. Her blog post today happened to be about Facebook. Thinking "well, she's on it, I wonder what she has to say", I followed the link.

The post that appeared certainly took me by surprise. In it, she basically was wagging her finger at everyone she's "friends" with on Facebook, telling us all how it's crazy that we all post stupid, inconsequential, trivial things on status updates. She actually said that it's okay to post if say, you were a grandmother talking about her grandchildren, or if you got a new job and wanted your friends to know. Apparently those types of things are big enough news to broadcast to your friends, whereas something about your child's nap does not fall into that category.

I post things about B's naps all the time- so as you can imagine, this kind of needled me. Newsflash, dollface... I post those things so that my mom friends can read and comment- not you. They care, and guess what- if you don't? Facebook has a little thing called the "hide" button. You can hide anyone's updates you want. It just struck me as very petty and well, busybodyish (if that's even a word). The hubs was right- I guess I should listen to him more often!!

"Just Keep Swimming"

Lately I've been doing some thinking about life in general. What do I want out of my time on this Earth?

Simple- I want to be the best person that I can be, run my family the best that I can, and leave the world a little better than I found it.

Yeah. That sounds about right. Too bad it is ridiculously vague and the epitome of a cliche... What do I really want out of life, day to day? Let's try this again, more specifically this time.

1. I want to be happy. When I die, I want my family to remember me as someone who was happy- someone who made lemonade out of the lemons she'd been handed. (I guess I can't get away from the cliches entirely...) I want to be thought of as the eternal optimist, someone who made you feel better when you were around her. I want to live my life that way, as well.

2. I want to be responsible. Growing up, my family didn't really place a lot of emphasis on this. I think that responsiblity is necessary for true happiness, though. That genuine-deep-down-your-soul-is-smiling type of happiness.

3. (Warning- this is kind of shallow) I want to be thin. Maybe not even thin, but slender, healthy. I want to break the cycle of obesity in my bloodlines. I want to laugh as I'm saying to the salesgirl at Ann Taylor, "No, this size 8 is too big... Could you bring me the 6?" Scratch that- you know what? The size doesn't really matter- I may never be a size 6. But I want to be healthy. I want to be in a healthy weight range. I want clothes to look good on me. I want to feel good in my skin!

4. I want to raise children who are all of the above. Happy, responsible, healthy children, who love their lives and have a lot of fun.

Well, that about sums it up. Some days I feel like all of that is at the end of my fingertips, easily achievable if only I would just take that one step forward. Other times it feels as if I have to keep trudging 14 more miles, barefoot and through 29 inches of snow to get there.

That's life, I suppose. As Dory in Finding Nemo says, "Just keep swimming!"

7 months...

To my little guy:

7 months. Wow. Just 7 months ago, a day came that changed my life forever. I am so thankful to have you. Every single day, you make my life better- you make me smile, you make me laugh, you make me cry (happy tears). Those little(big and blue) eyes looking at me, those smiles during and after nursing, the squeals of happiness with the smiles that are so big when you wake up from a nap and I come into your room. All of it makes Mommy melt into one huge pile of goo. I love you, my little monkey. I love every inch of you, I love your personality, I love the way you hug my neck and hold my finger. You make me a better person. I never knew that I could love something this deeply, this... primally. (Is that even a word?) Thank you for being my little boy- I promise to love you, cherish you, and raise you to be the best person you can be. Forever. I love you, B.