To Blog, Or Not To Blog; That Is the Question

Today's Working Mommy Wednesday prompt was to explain when I started blogging and why, and if I still blog the same way/for the same reasons.

I have always loved reading. I would devour books as a child, just like my mom. I would re-read my favorites over and over again, hiding under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime eagerly anticipating phrases and scenes. Words have always been fascinating to me - I love to say "Lolita Davidovich" just because it sounds cool. (And I like her as an actress, too.) Spelling and grammar came naturally to me, though I must credit my teachers and phonic reading techniques, too.

Once I was of an age to begin to write stories myself, I dove in with glee. Writing became an integral part of me. So much so that when I became eligible for the advanced honors English class, I declined to enroll in it because there was almost no creative writing element to the curriculum. I ended up minoring in creative writing in college.

After I graduated, I started working full-time and didn't really have a reason to write. I kept a journal, and occasionally jotted down ideas or paragraphs for stories for "someday", but that was it. I found creative outlets in other areas: scrapbooking, card-making, graphic design.

Then I got pregnant with S.

I wanted to chronicle my maternity for posterity, and a friend had found a website where you could upload photos and stats and make diary entries. Cool! So for the next nine months, I did just that. And after S was born, I continued to update it for the first year. At that point, I decided it wasn't really the most appropriate place for us anymore considering it was called "Babysites.com". What was I going to do - keep it running until she was out of high school?

I didn't write anything in cyberspace for a few months, just keeping handwritten notes around. As a New Year's resolution the first of the following year, I decided to open a private account on Blogger, still using it simply to post updates about our lives for ourselves and our family. Over the next few months, I began incorporating more emotion and voice to my posts instead of just updates on daily life. I became more familiar with blogs and joined Mamapedia. I saw that they were accepting submissions for articles and sent in a post. They accepted it!

I hurriedly started a new blog that was open to the public and had pseudonyms to resolve my privacy concerns. At this point I still concentrated on family stuff because I didn't have any followers which was fine with me. I just needed to have a public blog to link to for when I submitted posts. Which I started to do more often.

That fall, I found Kludgy Mom's Back to School/Back to Blogging tutorial and really got into blogging and working at developing a blog others would be interested in. I was kind of fumbling for focus at that point. I still wanted the blog to be about my family, but I wanted to do more with it than just make it a diary. And at the start of the next new year, I found The Red Dress Club. And I felt I'd come full circle. A reason to write other than just to chronicle our lives and occasionally get up on my soapbox.

So that's where I'm at now. Still blogging for the same reason, but letting it encompass all of who I am as a woman, not just a mother.

Ten Things I Believe

Today's Working Mommy Wednesday prompt was to list 10 Things I Believe. After getting the "I believe in Crystal Light, 'cause I believe in me!" jingle out of my head, I was surprised how quickly these flowed. I usually hem and haw over a list because I want to make sure I haven't forgotten anything. But I'm going with my gut on this one, and leaving it as is. Curious to see what others chose!

1. I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, was crucified for my sins, died and rose on the third day and sits at the right hand of God.
2. I believe I am more than the sum of my parts.
3. I believe that even though my mother is losing her memory and may even someday forget me entirely, she loves me with all her heart, the way only a mother could.
4. I believe that if I were put in a position where I needed super-human strength to save my children, I could complete the task as if it was a simple as snapping my fingers.
5. I believe some wounds never entirely heal, but the scars can help define your character for the better.
6. I believe in the power of love, chosen love, to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
7. I believe that school's main function is to teach you how to learn, and once you know that, the world is your classroom; it's up to you to take advantage of it.
8. I believe children keep you young, whether they are yours or someone else's, through their innocence and curiosity.
9. I believe laughter is the best medicine, especially when joined by your babies, your husband, your siblings, your parents, or your best girlfriends.
10. I believe I am blessed beyond measure and will never fully appreciate my good fortune.

Peek-A-Boo

 
It's funny how people in the same family remember the same events differently. Or in my case, how my sister, J, just doesn't remember them at all. It's really hard to enjoying reminiscing when 90% of our conversations go something like this:

M:  "Oh my gosh, J, you'll never guess who I ran into yesterday! So-and-so! Remember her? We both had a crush on you-know-who! Wasn't that hysterical? That time we took you to such-and-such a place was so much fun. We were so dorky! "

J: Pauses. "Um, no, I don't remember going there."

M: "Oh. Well, you remember her, though, right? The one with the really long blonde, curly hair and huge bangs?"

J: "That pretty much describes every one of the girls at school."

M: True. "Yeah, but so-and-so was tall and had that jean jacket?" Wait that doesn't really help. "She had a sister who was in cheerleading with you... what was her name...."

J: "You know I don't remember anything from our childhood."

J: Sigh. "I know."

 So on Christmas Eve when we were filling the stockings and eating Santa's cookies, we started talking about one Christmas in particular that stuck with both of us. I was excited to relive those memories with her. It's rare for that kind of thing to happen, and I was shocked at the details she could conjure up. But I also understood why. That Christmas was different. It was the one year we peeked.

Our mom is from Manitoba, so we never took vacation per se; any traveling we did was to visit family. The trip to Mom's hometown is a 14-hour car ride, and we usually went in the summer to escape the sticky midwest heat, but occasionally made the trek twice a year and braved the bitter cold around Christmastime as well. Since dad was a mailman, he didn't get time off at Christmas, so when we started talking about this specific trip, he insisted we were mistaken. I imagine there were years we went before or after the holiday, but one year, my sister and I both agreed, we were definitely there on Christmas Eve.

We stayed at Grandma's house like we did with every visit until her stroke when I was in high school. The aunt and uncle who had cousins closest to our age were there, too. All nine of us kids slept in the basement. We, of course, stayed up as long as we could to try to catch Santa. I think I was 10 or so, and J would have been about 8, so we were of an age to be in on the secret that he wasn't real, but we played along knowing he wouldn't bring presents to those who thought he didn't exist. And we were sensitive to the presence of our younger cousins.

Inevitably, we all fell asleep. My sister remembered that one of our cousins set the alarm clock for 2 or 3am. Everyone got up and stealthily crept up the old stairs that had chips in the brown paint. We leaned against the worn railing and paneled walls to avoid the creaky spots. I remember it feeling like it took forever for all nine of us to get to the top. Whenever someone made a noise, we all froze and held our breath, afraid we'd get caught.

Finally, our anticipation having reached a fervor, we arrived at the kitchen and silently made our way across the linoleum floor, past the counter laden with Grandma's delicious baked goods and the curio containing tchotchkes. Our feet found the soft carpet of the living room that had yet to obtain updated furniture so it was like a time warp to the late '60's, early 70's. There were so many of us that the presents almost filled the room. Though it was dark, there was reflection from the snow to send enough moonlight through the big front window that we could see which presents belonged to each of us.

Oddly enough, though I'm the one with the better memory in general, I don't remember what presents we got that year. I think our cousins got Cabbage Patch kids, but maybe that was the year we got them. (That would have made it 1984 since '83 was the year of the craze, and our parents refused to succumb to the insanity.) Anyway, the specifics of that part of the night are lost on me. I had thought we just checked the stockings and big, unwrapped presents. J, though, distinctly remembers carefully unwrapping her gifts, a locket in particular.

We were all giddy with the adrenaline of doing something forbidden and the joy of discovering which of our wishes had come true.  Shushing each other and prodding everyone to finish re-wrapping gifts, we snuck back to the basement. It was tough to settle down and get back to sleep, but we eventually did.

Christmas morning we got up and joined our parents. I don't know how our cousins felt, but J and I were incredibly disappointed. It was such a let down to already know what we'd gotten. We all put on a fake smile and tried to be excited, but J remembers being unable to convince our parents that she was as thrilled with the locket as she should have been and giving us away. I don't think we were in trouble really, but even if we had been punished, it wouldn't have mattered. That disappointment was the best instrument in teaching us not to peek. We never did it again.

This post was inspired by the Julia's Working Mommy Wednesday prompt to write about a Christmas memory.

Goals for the New Year

I was planning to do a post on New Year's, so Julia's WMW theme works out perfectly!

I don't make resolutions either. They've rarely stayed resolved. The only one I can think of that I've actually stuck with is reading a literary classic and a self-improvement/educational book for each trashy novel which I decided to do about 4 or 5 years ago. But I do make goals. Usually I wait to make them until the spring. Everyone gets tipsy and nostalgic around this time of year and thinks, man, another year's gone, and what do I have to show for it? Next year I'll do better. Next year, I'll lose 50 lbs. Yeah! And I'll go to church every week. Amen! And I'll stop being an aggressive driver. You know it! And I won't yell at my kids once! Uh-uh. And I'll write a blog piece that gets picked up by the media and turns me into superstar/millionaire! Woo hoo!!

But by the end of January, that new gym membership that made you miss a Sunday at church has lost it's luster, and you've only written about how you cut off the driver behind you while screaming at your children to stop fighting. And instead of trying again, you give up completely because you've already failed, and it hasn't even been a month yet.

My sister-in-law and I had a long talk about motivation and goals with respect to dieting and weight loss into the wee hours Monday night/Tuesday morning. She's a dietician and works for Skinny Gene, a non-profit dedicated to helping fight diabetes. The things we discussed really apply to all "resolutions" or goals. So I thought I'd share some tips in addition to my own dreams for 2011.

First, know thyself.
No matter what the experts say or the advertisements show, working out in the morning or buying a fitness video will not work for me. I am not a morning person. Even before I had kids and could work out in the morning (and did for awhile - 5:45am Jazzercise class), I just didn't get as good a workout. My body simply does not function at that time of day. And buying a video is a waste of money for me. I need external motivation. A workout partner, a class time, some kind of accountability.

Unfortunately for me, while evening is my optimum exercise window, since I don't get home from work until 6pm, by the time I feed the munchkins and put them to bed, do dishes and laundry and prep work for the next day, I have maybe 15 minutes to myself before bedtime. On a good day. Usually I miss my bedtime goal of 10:30pm by at least 30 minutes to an hour. Which sucks even more because at this stage in my childrens' lives, I'm usually awakened a minimum of once for about 15 minutes to a maximum of 3-4 times for up to 3 hours.

Last year I hit upon a brilliant solution - working out at the gym next door to my office over my lunch break. Perfect!!! But then I had Baby R, so when I went back to work, I pumped at lunch and/or took a short nap for the first 6 months. Then it was time for S to start preschool. Yay! Except her preschool is only half-days. So I use my lunch hour to pick her up and take her to daycare. Sigh.

So knowing all these things about myself, I have to avoid using them as excuses, and instead use them as a starting place. And I have to remember not to let other people tell me things like, "If you really wanted to, you could make time." Because everybody is different and no one can tell you what will work for you. They can make suggestions about things that worked for them, but only you know what will really, truly work for you.



Second, expect to get derailed.
A couple of months ago, I started Julia's pushup challenge, and I was so excited. It wasn't a major thing, but it was a little change, and I felt better about myself. And then at the end of October, we lost our daycare. And then the first week of November, I totaled our car. Life spiraled out of control. I couldn't focus on even that small of a task to do 20 pushups a day because I was consumed with bigger issues. November wrapped up and so did most of the drama. But suddenly, it was Christmastime, and I was completely unprepared and feeling behind the 8-ball. So I put the pushups aside for a little longer.  I got really frustrated because I felt like I couldn't workout at all. But I didn't give up. I decided to accept the derailment. It wasn't a stopping point. It was a pause. Most people look at "dieting" as a stage in life. "When I was 25 I did the Atkins diet." "When I was 28 I did the cabbage-soup diet." It has a starting point and an ending point. But monitoring diet and exercise are an ongoing thing. You make choices every day with respect to them. I'm not ready to say, "When I was 35, I did the pushup challenge." It's not over. It's just on hiatus. And don't wait for a special day to start up again - birthday, New Year's, the first day of of the new "Psych" season. Look at your day and see if you can get back on track. And if you can, great. If not, try again tomorrow. Just don't give up.



Third, make a realistic plan.
What I want my New Year's Resolution to be: Workout for an hour 3-4 times a week. If I make that goal, I will fail. I know this even before I start. Most people who set that kind of goal really know deep down that even though it looks good on paper, there's no way to make it match up with reality. But they do it because they think that's what they need to do. Actually, you need to decide what you really can see yourself doing if you're truly honest with yourself. When Julia started the pushup challenge, I realized that I don't need to do a full-blown workout right now. As much as I would like to, I just can't make it a priority. But I can find 5 minutes here and there throughout the day to do things. So I decided that's my first goal for this year. To get 5-minutes of exercise a day and build on it incrementally as I can. This is not a big discovery - trainers say it all the time. But sometimes it sounds hopeless. Five minutes a day won't make a difference, so why bother? You have to start somewhere. And by accomplishing a little goal, you'll give yourself more confidence and motivation to continue making small changes. And it really will make a difference. Think about how much environmentalists say a one degree increase in the average world temperature can change things.

That said, some goals need to be somewhat lofty. And that's great. But even lofty goals need steps to be taken to achieve them. So break it down into specifics. What exactly am I going to do "be a better mother"? Not lose my temper as often. Ok, great. How do I do that? Look at what are my triggers, and address them individually. 1. Sleep-deprivation (ok, not a lot I can do about that one, but I'll certainly try!). 2. Feeling unhealthy. When I can tell I'm getting impatient, I need to take those 5 minutes to get that mini-workout in. Make smarter food choices. If I'm grouchy because I'm hungry, eating a candy bar will just make it worse. Grab a fruit and some nuts instead. 3. Study my arsenal of child-rearing resources (I only have a dozen books on the subject) and select a tried-and-true method to use consistently. Or if that's failing, find a new one to utilize. 4. Take a moment to remove myself from the situation (when possible).  Basically, just break it down so it's a concrete goal with tangible steps to take.



Fourth, set up an accountability system.
Whether you get a workout partner, ask your spouse to check in on you, track your progress on a program online, involve your kids or blog about it, do something you know will help keep you going when the going gets tough.



Fifth, make some easy, fun goals! If you are a list person like I am, you like nothing better than to see items checked off that list. I will put my list of goals on the refrigerator and mark them off as I accomplish them. One year, "Get pregnant" was on the list. There's a fun one to shoot for. :) And it was also fun to cross it off.


Sixth, keep the goals fluid. Some goals need a time frame or they'll never be accomplished. But some are kind of "bucket list" goals that can be shifted from one year's list to the next. Like we want to get a new master bedroom set. We were saving up for it. And then I totaled the car. So I'm not eliminating it, just moving it to this year's list. And keep adding to the list throughout the year. Just because it's the middle of August, doesn't mean you can't decide you want to learn to crochet before Christmas. Put it on the list. And don't be afraid to re-evaluate the list. If you get through November and you've tried to start to read "Gone with the Wind" once every month, but just can't get past the first 50 pages, maybe it's just something you don't really need to do.



With those parameters in mind, here are my goals for my life at this time:

• Find 5 minutes a day to exercise in some way.
• Find a new church home.
• Be a better mother: not lose my temper as often.
• Complete the blog improvements I haven't gotten to yet from Kludgy Mom's Back 2 School/Back 2 Blogging workshop.
• Create a new email account that is just for my blogging world.
• Find a support group for people with loved ones who have dementia.
• Take the girls on a train ride to St. Louis.
• Get a master bedroom set.
• Find a philanthropy the whole family can participate in.
• Clean the ceiling fans in our house.
• Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.
• Make a concerted effort not to use the desk in the kitchen as a dumping grounds for crap because it makes DH crazy.

I Am Not A Baby!

I think when we were watching S grow, we noticed the nuances because all our attention was focused on her. With Baby R, our time and attention are divided, and so while I noted that she's started shaking her head "no", fully walking, saying new words like "sock" and "kitty", and freaking out when she saw Santa, I silently checked those off in my head without relishing each moment. And in the last week, it's as if she's been trying to get my attention to say, "I am not a baby anymore! I'm a toddler, dang it!" She's hit the independent stage where she wants to do it all herself. She wants to purely self-feed - "I don't need or want your help, Mommy." She fights being buckled into her car seat; she asserts herself when playing with toys instead of letting Sissy take them away without a fight. I am proud of her and excited to see this shift, but I'm also sad to see the baby-stage end.

At Bunko last night, a friend brought her 3.5 week old baby girl. So precious. So tiny. So... quiet. It was nice snuggling with her and soaking in her baby-ness, but I was surprised that I didn't feel the usual urge to have another that tends to happen when I'm around newborns. We are still debating having a third baby. I was really thinking we would in a year or two. But after last night, I felt content with having two. And I don't want a third to feel even more neglected - I struggle with splitting my attention between two as it is. The possibility of three is still on the table, but I would be happy if things stayed as they are, too.

Especially when I think about how our nights have been the last week. Ugh! Baby R is having a growth spurt. Sunday she ate every hour. And not just a tiny snack. An entire banana. A whole serving of yogurt. A full string cheese. Every hour! She would toddle over to the refrigerator and pull on the handles. She inevitably woke up in the middle of the night. She pointed to her door. I knew she was hungry. I also knew she wanted yogurt. I took her downstairs to the kitchen, put her in her highchair, and got a container out of the fridge. I even gave her her own spoon and some Cheerios on the tray to distract her while I fed her. I loaded the baby spoon, and directed it toward her mouth, hopeful that she was tired enough to not fight it. Nope. She wanted to feed herself. She squealed, turned her head and flapped her little arms in frustration. I retracted the spoon. Spoke to her soothingly, and tried again. Same reaction.

I'm all for letting toddlers learn to self-feed. The sooner, the better. But we just started when she turned 1 a month ago. She's at the point that she can dip the spoon in yogurt and lick it off. But she doesn't get much, so she usually puts her whole hand in and sucks the yogurt off. Inevitably, it drips down to her shirt (the bib went by the wayside a long time ago). Then at some point she manages to get it in her hair. So my approach is to strip her down and let her feed herself half-naked before bath time.  It works great for dinner. Not so much in the middle of the night.

So I tried one more time. Then I told her she could either let me feed her, or she could go back to bed. So back to bed she went, screaming. I told DH what had happened and if he wanted to try in a few minutes, he could. After about 10 minutes of her not settling down, he took her back downstairs. I heard the screams and smiled wryly to myself. So back to her crib she went. I knew it was for her own good, and she would be fine, but it still breaks my heart to hear my babies cry. So here's my Motherhood Confession for WMW: I had to head downstairs and turn on the TV for an hour til she was sound asleep. I wussed out. I left my DH upstairs to listen to her scream and make sure she didn't really need our help (like getting an appendage stuck in the crib bars). I am a wimpy mean mommy; I enforce the rule, then run away.  But I say, whatever it takes to make it happen. Last night. No middle of the night feeding. First night I can remember when I slept UNINTERRUPTED ALL NIGHT. If only I hadn't had a cough that woke me half a dozen times. Sigh.

Reminiscing

Today, Julia was kind enough to give us run of the roost to write about anything for WMW due to technical difficulties. (Poor thing - I hope your computer woes are resolved soon!) And my post yesterday got me to thinking about the great dates DH and I had when we were courting. (Yeah, I know it wasn't courting in the official sense of the word, but it sounds cool, and clearly I'm old, so this is an appropriate turn of phrase.) And I realized another place we went has gone the way of the dodo bird, so I thought I'd tell a few of our date stories.

First, what I consider to be our most romantic date. DH and I met through a mutual friend, and at the time, she and DH's friend were kind of interested in each other. So the boys planned a double date. First, we went to a neighborhood ice skating rink. This is where my sister and I took lessons as children. My sister even performed in a recital. It's where we went for birthday parties in winter. Many fond memories from there. And a few years ago, it closed down. But I digress....

At one point during our skate time, the boys went to get hot chocolate for us, and we girls continued around the rink, chatting, of course, about the boys. Then they came back and my friend went to sit down while I kept going. DH sidled up to me (as well as sidling can be done on ice skates), and said he saw a pretty girl out on the ice so he wanted to come say hello. Charming! Unfortunately, I don't do well with compliments. "Oh, really?" I replied. "Where is she?" Can you just hear the brakes screeching on the romanticism of the moment?

Not to be discouraged, when we left the ice rink, we stopped at the store on the way back to DH's parents' house. (Oh yeah, that's right. His parents' house. It was a LONG time ago.) When the boys came back to the car, DH presented me with a rose, and they'd rented "The Cutting Edge". Yes, a THEMED date night, people. Do I have a sweet hubby or what? (For those of you scrambling to get to IMDB for a synopsis, "The Cutting Edge" is about a hockey player who gets injured so becomes a figure skating partner to a spoiled girl, and of course, their fiery personalities are all wrong for each other, until they realize they are really just right. Hmm, sounds familiar...sigh...)

Working Mommy Wednesday: You Know You're Stressed When...

One of this week's prompts is "You know your stressed when..."

Ha! Perfect timing. I am stressed right now about....a lot of things. My parents, my kids, my work, my house, my body. How do I know? My shoulders are so tight they almost reach my ears, my stomach is crampy, my jaw hurts from clenching it, I'm cranky and short-tempered with everyone, I just want to eat crappy food, and Monday night after I had a fight with our 3-year-old because she informed me that SHE was in charge, I was so angry that I cleaned the kitchen, did the dishes, a load of laundry and tidied the living room instead of going to bed like I had planned since I was so exhausted. On the upside, I was happy to see a clean kitchen Tuesday morning.

What do I do when I'm stressed? Well, some things that are better than others. Usually, have a pity party and eat chocolate and watch TV. What helps my stress? Exercising, talking it out, going to church, eating healthy foods, getting a good night's sleep. I felt a little better yesterday after typing up my rant and doing my push ups. Still have a long way to go, but I'll get there! Need to focus on the positive.

Little things I love

Hugs from my babies
Hugs from my hubby
Hugs from my family/friends
When DH unexpectedly does something around the house for me, like putting the dishes away, or doing a load of laundry
Date night with my hubby
When S tells me she loves me or thanks me for something
Playing with the girls
Watching the girls play with Daddy
Watching the sunset
Watching the sunrise
Watching a movie with my honey
Looking for shooting stars
Hiking in the mountains
Playing volleyball
Playing softball
Scrapbooking
Writing
Designing
Traveling
Being barefoot
Being pregnant
Soft sheets
My husband's caress
Sweating from a good work out
Hearing the girls laughing
Hearing my favorite song on the radio
Hearing the cicadas signal the start of summer
Hearing raindrops thump against the window on a lazy day
Snuggling in bed with the family on Saturday morning
When strangers hold the door open for each other
When the person in front of me in line has a cart full of groceries and they let me go ahead of them because I only have a couple of things
Smelling dessert baking in the oven
The smell of fresh cut grass
The smell of DH making barbecue in the smoker
The sweet baby scent of our girls after bathtime
Catching snowflakes on my tongue
Chocolate
Steak and potatoes and corn on the cob
Mom's spaghetti
Vegetables fresh from our garden
Beau Jo's pizza
Pomegranates and mangoes in season

Thanks, Julia, for this prompt! I'm in a great mood now!

Working Mommy Wednesday

I have been reading Julia at Work, Wife, Mom... Life! for awhile now, and thought the Working Mommy Wednesdays were a great idea, but with Gigi's B2S/B2B assignments, I've not gotten around to partaking until today!

 Julia gave two prompts for today's topic, and this is the one I chose (I may have to do a top 10 list as well later if I get a chance!)

Best Afternoon Pick Me Up
A nap followed by a snack of Mr. Pibb and some combination of chocolate and nuts (peanut M&Ms, Snickers, etc.). The first one is good for you, but entirely unattainable (at least for me except on the rare occasions I can wrangle one on the weekend). I know the second is not, but that's what works for me in my little office. Which is partly why my little tush is not so little anymore. I keep telling myself, I'll start to get more sleep, then I'll have the energy to exercise over lunch, and then I won't have the afternoon crash. If I ever get to that point, it will be true. Just...not...there...yet....