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| Where's the baby? |
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| Love my squish! |
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| Goodnight 2010! |
Love to all out in bloggy land! Happy New Year!
xoxo
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Twists and Turns (revised after I realized the original was much too dramatic)
Before my husband and I got married, I went and bought a Nissan 350Z Roadster with the money I had been saving up--that in my head I had earmarked for our possible wedding. Yeah.
My sister and I lived in a townhouse with a two car garage where we parked both of our cars. On a usual morning, I would leave for work before her. However about two weeks after I bought the car, my sister backed out of the garage by swinging her car around right where my car usually wasn't--right into my beautiful, new, expensive convertible. The one I had just bought. The one that didn't even have a license plate yet. She forgot that the car was there and I was asleep upstairs. She was running late to work so she called me to tell me the news on her way. I hung up the phone and ran down the three flights of stairs to see my shiny black door with a small dent in it. Looking at it, I felt ill. I just felt sick about it.
Well this morning, without going into details, I had an accident happen. This time it was my fault. It wasn't a car.
Let me say that everybody and everything is absolutely okay. As a mom though I'm allowed to blow everything out of proportion. That being said--I've never felt the terror I felt this morning! I think I aged a year in the time it took for us to check everything over and realize that everything was okay. My husband was AWESOME though and managed to refrain from teasing me until hours later.
The thing is that while no one wants any accidents to happen, I am probably the hardest on myself about it because it was my fault. Let's fact it, I'm just one to feel guilt over even small things. Eventually, just like I got over it with my car, I will get over this. With my car, it was hardest with the first dent. When it got nicked and scratched by life, it got easier to deal with. I hope this is just the first of the many twists and turns that will define motherhood. I hope the first one is the hardest, but I'm not holding my breath!
Sigh.
xoxo
My sister and I lived in a townhouse with a two car garage where we parked both of our cars. On a usual morning, I would leave for work before her. However about two weeks after I bought the car, my sister backed out of the garage by swinging her car around right where my car usually wasn't--right into my beautiful, new, expensive convertible. The one I had just bought. The one that didn't even have a license plate yet. She forgot that the car was there and I was asleep upstairs. She was running late to work so she called me to tell me the news on her way. I hung up the phone and ran down the three flights of stairs to see my shiny black door with a small dent in it. Looking at it, I felt ill. I just felt sick about it.
Well this morning, without going into details, I had an accident happen. This time it was my fault. It wasn't a car.
Let me say that everybody and everything is absolutely okay. As a mom though I'm allowed to blow everything out of proportion. That being said--I've never felt the terror I felt this morning! I think I aged a year in the time it took for us to check everything over and realize that everything was okay. My husband was AWESOME though and managed to refrain from teasing me until hours later.
The thing is that while no one wants any accidents to happen, I am probably the hardest on myself about it because it was my fault. Let's fact it, I'm just one to feel guilt over even small things. Eventually, just like I got over it with my car, I will get over this. With my car, it was hardest with the first dent. When it got nicked and scratched by life, it got easier to deal with. I hope this is just the first of the many twists and turns that will define motherhood. I hope the first one is the hardest, but I'm not holding my breath!
Sigh.
xoxo
Friday, December 24, 2010
Merry Christmas
Dear Bloggy friends,
Thanks for sharing this amazing journey with me. Thanks for being here to cry and laugh with me. Thanks for showing up and reading.
For those of you still waiting, don't give up hope.
For those of you with your little one, enjoy every moment.
Thanks for sharing this amazing journey with me. Thanks for being here to cry and laugh with me. Thanks for showing up and reading.
For those of you still waiting, don't give up hope.
For those of you with your little one, enjoy every moment.
Merry Christmas!
xoxo
The Bird
Compared to most people, I feel driven to follow rules, guidelines, and occasionally speed limits. This probably comes from the fact that when I break said rules or guidelines, I get the big smackdown. Smackdowns are not so much fun, so I usually carefully consider the consequences to determine if I can live with them before I choose to color outside of the lines.
So imagine my surprise when I find myself flipping child rearing books the bird. Repeatedly. And it feels great.
After going through everything we did to get baby E, I found I had little desire to read what would come after we safely brought him into this world. I didn't want to jinx anything so I limited preparation to basic things such as bathing, diapering, and breast-feeding. Yep, the girl who obsessively played doctor google with every aspect of hormone levels, aspiration techniques, and drug side effects while conceiving, didn't read jack about sleep training, attachment parenting, or some dude named Ferber.
Of course over the years I have observed the granola, don't shave my legs, sling mamas as well as the starched, life runs from my blackberry, and my child naps at exactly one o'clock types. What's great is that each one makes it work for them. What works for me is not being held hostage by some book that tells me that picking up my child when he is crying is going to scar him for life or conversely that by allowing him to sleep in a crib will create devastating attachment issues.
Another aspect that plays into this for me is that I have the luxury of not working full time and instead work part time teaching online university classes from home. So because of this, I don't have the need to create the most rigid schedule because it doesn't matter if I'm up from 10 pm to 2 am because I can sleep in shifts from 2 to 10 am. Then, I can fit in my work whenever time allows. Likewise, if I want to let my son sleep in my bed when he's wanting to be with me and sleep in his bassinet when he doesn't care either way - SO BE IT!
I'm not silly enough to figure that I won't be turning to advice from the experts at some point in my future, but the point is that I don't have to. I don't have to lock myself into some prevailing philosophy just for the sake of it. I get to be a mom and decide what is best for my beautiful kiddo.
Love it.
xoxo
So imagine my surprise when I find myself flipping child rearing books the bird. Repeatedly. And it feels great.
After going through everything we did to get baby E, I found I had little desire to read what would come after we safely brought him into this world. I didn't want to jinx anything so I limited preparation to basic things such as bathing, diapering, and breast-feeding. Yep, the girl who obsessively played doctor google with every aspect of hormone levels, aspiration techniques, and drug side effects while conceiving, didn't read jack about sleep training, attachment parenting, or some dude named Ferber.
Of course over the years I have observed the granola, don't shave my legs, sling mamas as well as the starched, life runs from my blackberry, and my child naps at exactly one o'clock types. What's great is that each one makes it work for them. What works for me is not being held hostage by some book that tells me that picking up my child when he is crying is going to scar him for life or conversely that by allowing him to sleep in a crib will create devastating attachment issues.
Another aspect that plays into this for me is that I have the luxury of not working full time and instead work part time teaching online university classes from home. So because of this, I don't have the need to create the most rigid schedule because it doesn't matter if I'm up from 10 pm to 2 am because I can sleep in shifts from 2 to 10 am. Then, I can fit in my work whenever time allows. Likewise, if I want to let my son sleep in my bed when he's wanting to be with me and sleep in his bassinet when he doesn't care either way - SO BE IT!
I'm not silly enough to figure that I won't be turning to advice from the experts at some point in my future, but the point is that I don't have to. I don't have to lock myself into some prevailing philosophy just for the sake of it. I get to be a mom and decide what is best for my beautiful kiddo.
Love it.
xoxo
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sweetpea
Some of you know of my absolute looooooove of my American Bulldog, Sweetpea. Here she is with my other sweetpea!
How could you not love that sweet face?
Other posts to come soon. I started back to teaching online classes this week so time has been very short. I'm getting into the swing of it though!
Huge congrats to ASP who brought home her dear baby O! Give her some love. We are so happy for her!
xoxo
Other posts to come soon. I started back to teaching online classes this week so time has been very short. I'm getting into the swing of it though!
Huge congrats to ASP who brought home her dear baby O! Give her some love. We are so happy for her!
xoxo
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Letting Go
I'm not officially participating in Reverb10 since I just finished my Nablopomo month, but I've been reading a few blogs who are participating. One of the prompts last week asked about what we have let go of this year. Wow, this is a big one for me.
One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I came across this quote in the wee hours of a morning last month. Since then, these words bounced around as I pondered why on earth the idea of letting go makes me feel so sad, so emotional, so ready to burst into tears. Then I realized what I let go of, and I understood.
I let go of the life I thought I would have.
Life isn't suppose to take you through three IVF cycles or require a gift of eggs from your best friend. It's not suppose to leave you devastated in some crappy hotel as you receive a phone call from an embryologist. Life isn't suppose to require cold sterile rooms and thousands of dollars of drugs to create a family. In all of this, I ended up yielding to the sadness of it all. I surrendered to my despair.
After I lived those moments, I found that I stopped expecting so much. I no longer felt entitled. That made it stop hurting so much. As much as that sounds sad, it's not because what came next gave me a life better than I imagined.
Because next? Next, I got really lucky.
My best friend donated her eggs.
A doctor donated his services.
And it worked.
The events of the last eighteen months have taken me from the depths of despair to the most beautiful moment of joy. Does that change a person? Of course. Now I a mother who has a unique appreciation for her son and a stronger bond with her husband. I wouldn't change that.
xoxo
One's suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields - even to sadness. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I came across this quote in the wee hours of a morning last month. Since then, these words bounced around as I pondered why on earth the idea of letting go makes me feel so sad, so emotional, so ready to burst into tears. Then I realized what I let go of, and I understood.
I let go of the life I thought I would have.
Life isn't suppose to take you through three IVF cycles or require a gift of eggs from your best friend. It's not suppose to leave you devastated in some crappy hotel as you receive a phone call from an embryologist. Life isn't suppose to require cold sterile rooms and thousands of dollars of drugs to create a family. In all of this, I ended up yielding to the sadness of it all. I surrendered to my despair.
After I lived those moments, I found that I stopped expecting so much. I no longer felt entitled. That made it stop hurting so much. As much as that sounds sad, it's not because what came next gave me a life better than I imagined.
Because next? Next, I got really lucky.
My best friend donated her eggs.
A doctor donated his services.
And it worked.
The events of the last eighteen months have taken me from the depths of despair to the most beautiful moment of joy. Does that change a person? Of course. Now I a mother who has a unique appreciation for her son and a stronger bond with her husband. I wouldn't change that.
xoxo
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