My Random Sundays

My life in a sentence: The other night, me and the BD were getting reading to go to bed. As we pulled down the blanket and arranged our pillows, he goes to me, "I just found a toy block and a baby sock underneath my pillow." Yup, that pretty much sums it up. =)

Favorite memory from this weekend: I wore a lightweight scarf (simply for decoration, of course, I do live in Florida) around my neck as I got ready for my girly night out. My son tore off a string of toilet paper and wore it around his neck like I did my scarf. He even tore of some pieces to make sure it was the perfect length.

Why I no longer own anything that is mine: I got up this morning from our dining room table to grab something for the baby. Out of the corner of my eye I see our son make a bee line towards my chair. He climbs up and grabs my last bite of turkey sausage. Um, I guess I was done? Or take for instance, my poor little bookmark. A Christmas stocking stuffer, it read my name and its meaning. Until Mush got to it. She gummed it to oblivion, the laminate peeling away to reveal the soft, soggy paper inside. And then comes Little Man. Rolling, folding, crushing...I now use our electric bill to keep place in my book.

Things you will always find in our freezer: some sort of bite size candy as a reward for peeing on the potty! grapes: a delicious, nutritious, refreshing snack. ice cream (I really don't know I haven't lost all the baby weight yet). coffee: without it I'm useless. Some sort of frozen meal. Beer mugs, as if to constantly remind us of the life we no longer have.

Hmmm.....this blog has been fun to write, perhaps I will make this a regular Sunday thing. Or, more likely, I will forget all about this by the next Sunday rolls around.

It's been a rocky weekend. The BD and I are not as perfect as we probably appear to everyone. It's one of the main reasons I decided to begin to blog, the number one reason that I am making myself anonymous. I'm still not ready to talk about us. There's always next week, right?

Things that I am grateful for today: having no hangover! buying my new book to read, Stori Telling. Finding a new pier on the trail that we always walk.

Happy Blogging!

Cake Time!

BD and myself are a bit of Ace of Cakes fanatics. He loves to cook and bake, although I must complain, I don't feel I have seen enough of this passion for my personal liking =), and we have recently been dabbling in our own little cake adventures. My mother's birthday was last week, and with it came our first collaboration in the world of dessert. She loves chinease food, so we made a play on that and created a cake to look like a take out container from a chinease restaurant. We were a little pressed on time (what with the crazy kids to put down, BD getting home late, and my need to watch the Sex and the City dvd), so I don't think we did nearly as good as we could have, but this is it. My first cake, his second. And check out the 'fortune cookie' in the back...that was my little baby!

Things that I am grateful for today: Fall weather slowly coming in, sleeping in until almost nine this morning, mush mush (that's our chubby lil' girl) laying here sleeping next to me

Me, drinking

One of the reasons that we moved back down to Florida was to be near my parents. Preganant with our first child, and desperately missing my single life already, I envisioned a wonderful life as a stay at home mom during the week and dropping of Bundle of Joy #1 at Grandmas for the weekend. See? I thought to myself. Having a baby wouldn't change my life completly...
Oh, to be so blissfully ignorant again.
Little did I know that once said baby was born, that I would never want to part with him. Even for a day. (Of course now with baby #2 here, I'd pretty much let a stranger watch them at this point!)
Or that I would decide to breastfeed for year...and that he would start refusing a bottle all together at around four months. And once he started using a sippy cup, that a night out with gals would turn into a math session..."alright so I had four cocktails, so that means I can't breastfeed for .....hours."
Hangovers suck when you are young and single.
But they almost seem like a vacation compared to one with children.
No sleeping until two in the afternoon. Try 7am, to the wake up call of "UP MOMMY!"
You think throwing up sucked back in the day? Try having to alternate that with 'pumping and dumping'. This reason alone is enough to make me stay at home. Well, almost.
Drinking and driving was scary then because you worried about a DUI. Now you worry that you wouldn't be there for your kids.
This weekend I am leav'n the kids here with the BD (that in itself tickles me pink. I'd really love to see how he feels after a day or two all by himself with the kids. Nonstop. No mommy) and heading out for a girly weekend.
Never have I had a job that was so tiring, so demanding, so rewarding, yet so freak'n aggravating....never had I deserved a cocktail so much....
and yet it's just not the same.
It's harder...but better.

Things that I am grateful for today: the kids taking a two hour nap, the beautiful weather, reading a good book

Dear God, the kids are finally asleep so I can watch The Hills

Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a Hills fan. Hello, my name is Rachel and I watch The Hills religiously. Like, it's programmed on my DVR to automatically record. As if I have to rely on a recording device when I KNOW that barring any crazy kid antics, I will be watching the show 'live.' I have been following the show since the kids were in highschool. I was in college. Hell, by then I might have even graduated. I'm not gonna lie. But a secret I might have was hidden is now embraced by a community that thrives on 'reality' tv. So no longer do I hide. I have fought by its side as it battled rumors of being a scripted show, battled it out with the BD ("My show is NOT fake"). Come on now guys, really. You're making it really hard for me. Does anyone else miss the days when the show at least pretended not to be so freak'n fake? It may not be scripted, but it's not real. Umm, last time I checked, all my friends were not found via producer or land an AWESOME job after awesome job b/c I'm on a show. And when old friends show up in your life, it's not called 'making a cameo'. And if I hear Spencer say Lauren is his 'arch enemy' one more time I might throw up in my hand bag. Alright, who am I kidding, I don't carry hand bags, it would be my diaper bag. But seriously. Real people do not say that or as often.
But I'm addicted. So of course I watch. In my rebellion, though, I type this while it airs.
Which leads me to this: whatever happened to REALITY tv? I'm an admitted junkie. I grew up watching the Real World, and watched in fascination as The Newlyweds came out. But really, is today's 'reality' fooling anyone? I can't even watch the shows that come out now without shaking my head or in some cases, wanting to chuck my shoe at the tv. How stupid do these tv people think that we are? Do not even get me started on Tila Tiquila. Why would I want to follow a show that is so obviously full of (as I say in front of the lil' ones) doggy do do? You people are not a show to fall in love. The only love that you are following is your own love of fame.
And shame on you people for watching. And I include myself in that. Shame on us for allowing Hollywood to be banking off of the fact that we are willing to sacrifice our (very hard-earned) time to watch this bull honkey (no, really, I never talked like this before I had kids), and they can't even give us the decency to make it LOOK real. Because, in the end, that's all I want from my Hills. I don't expect you to actually become REAL reality tv. But good god, at least pretend a little better.

Things that I am grateful for today: going on a walk with my BD (kids in tow of course) and seeing all sorts of crazy wild life...practically in our backyard! The fact that we had beer in the fridge. um, can I say mint chocolate chip icecream again?

Ummm, where do all the binkies go??

No, but seriously. Like socks in a dryer, they always seem to magically disappear. I don't even want to think of the obscene amount of money that has probably been spent in this household on these small little plastic (rubber???) contraptions. Not that I'm saying I don't love them. Hell, sometimes I think they rule my world just as much as the kids. 'Did you bring the binky?' 'where's the binky?' 'PLEASE, DEAR GOD, JUST TAKE THE BINKY AND BE HAPPY.' Such a small little thing, and so much power. I once had a playdate (if you can call it that when your child is only three months old and the only playing action going on was gossiping in between mouthfuls of salsa. Oh, okay, and brownies) ruined by a binky. Or rather, lack there of.

Our son has amazingly been off the binky (that's right 'been off of it' like it's some kind of drug. Because I think he was addicted. And I'm not gonna lie, so were we. Who doesn't love something that shuts your kid up? I mean, comforts him) for a few months now. I still have to pinch myself at the fact that they are gone. Well, sort of. Although we could never seem to find them when we needed one, one by one they are all coming out of their hiding spaces. Oh sweet little boy of mine, I don't give you nearly enough credit. Like a little chipmunk with its nuts, he's got these things hoarded all over the place. And the more the suckers show up, the more I realize WE were the suckers, shelling out more and more money on these things believing they were lost. Not to mention, he just so happens to "find" an old one at the most convenient times. Like the meltdown at Publix today. Oh, and lookie what we have found here buried inside of mommy's bag. A bag, mind you, I go in everyday and never come across said binky. So taking away the binky, of course only angers more. How convenient, little buddy of mine. I'm on to your tricks.

And just when you think you have finally rid yourself of the ball and chain that is a pacifier, along comes baby number two. So cute. So clever. Really princess, your crib is what? 2x5 ft? How in the heck to you manage to completely hide the damn thing from me every time I go in there to answer your insistent cries of "help, I have lost my binky and refuse to go back to sleep until you give it back to me". Of course as I stumble around in the dark, desperately feeling around for her binky. Time with a screaming child is like reading the time during a football game. While the clock may only read ten minutes have passed, in the real world you have already ordered your pizza, had it delivered, and are now about halfway through a box. In other words, it stretches on. I search, underneath her, on the floor, between the bumpers and mattress....you get the point. I give up and head into the living room, grab a pacifier I know is there and give her that one. Beginning the day with four binkies, I am now down to our last one. I'm not worried though, because I know that where there is a binky lost, another will be found.


Things I am grateful for today: Seeing the inside of a hospital helicopter during a show, and realizing we have been fortunate enough to never have had to see the inside of one before. The guy driving a truck finally realizing he was driving over the curb towards us and our stroller, and steering back onto the road to avoid hitting us. My BD getting up early and getting creamer for us. Oh yeah, and for making us vegan banana pancakes. And dealing with my cranky ass all day. =)

*And FYI, if you wanted to know how we finally got our son off the big B, we took his binky and slowly cut a little piece off at a time (well, one time happened to be a big chunk, so about three times), until he was left this little pathetic stub of a pacifier that he couldn't even keep in his mouth. It did the trick.

Yes, I speak another language: it's called toddler

I write to you tonight amid the sounds of crashing waves. No, my friends, I do not write to you from some exotic beach, but instead am curled up on our sofa next to the humming of our baby monitor, listing to the soothing sound of our daughter's sound machine filter through our living room. Listing, of course, while praying that she stays asleep.

But on to the subject at hand.

There are some days I feel like I deserve a medal for interpreting what it is that my two year old is trying to tell me. And I sure as hell better figure it out quick, because he has got no patience for people that don't speak his language. He stands there, looking at me, demanding my attention (demanding, of course, by stomping up to me, tilting his head so we make eye contact and yelling, "MaMAAAAA!" until I look at him), repeating whatever new foreign word of the day he has chosen. If you take too long guessing, you can actually see him lose his patience as he sighs at me or begins to use hand gestures to try to explain himself (like this weekend at the hotel where he wanted to push the elevator button. "BUH. BUH. ME" while frantically poking at the wall with his index finger. I get the boy's frustration...how could you not understand something so obvious BD?). Once you get it right he gives you a nod of the head and a little laugh, like 'good job, idiot, you finally got it.' But among everyone, I am by far the person that understands him the best. Many a time of I have received a call from my mom while he's with her, saying, "what the heck is he saying?" and putting him on the line. Because the kid doesn't give up, I'll give him that much. He will just keep saying the word over and over again until you have finally gotten it correct. And now, as a newly added twist to his sick little game of 'let's see how much power I have over mommy and daddy', we can no longer simply repeat the word back to him, we must use it in a sentence.

BD has a hard time understanding him sometimes, too. I'll listen to the two of them out in the living rooms on the days I get to "sleep in" (I use quotes, b/c how much sleep can a person really get with a toddler yelling in the next room?)

"Daw"
"Dog?"
"Daw"
"Dog."
"Daw"
"Dog."
"DAW."
"DOG."
"DAAAAW!"
"DOOOOG!"
"DOOR! HE IS SAYING DOOR!" (I'm telling you, mommy just wants a little sleep here)

Poor BD, it's not his fault really. I spend all day with the little monster trying to descramble his coded messages. Hanging out with the little guy for only a few minutes, you've got no chance.

Of course, there are the times that he uses this language to my amusement, like the time BD got up to use the restroom at a local restaurant, and when he returned to our table our son starting yelling "DADDY POOP! DADDY POOP!". Gotta love those sentences he's putting together. The beauty of it is, BD trying to ignore what he was saying, hoping it would go away, only to have the little man start screaming it louder and louder. People must love sitting next to us at restaurants.

And then there are the times that WE know what our son is saying, but to the world it's a different story. Like the time he walked up to a 'larger' women waiting in line at the store and starting pointing and, oh yes, snorting. I watch it unfold in front of me in horror, only to realize the women is holding a piggy bank. Ahhhh yes, pig. I quickly say out loud, "Oh yes, that women has a piggy, huh?". Or my personal favorite. "Floor." such a safe word, seemingly. Unless your son pronounces his f's as h's. Go ahead, say it out loud with me. Hoor. Or, as you might now it better, Whore. As in when we are at play areas with OTHER parents, he yells "Jump on the Whore!" (cue our "oh yes, jump on the Floor!" with a smile towards the other parents. I promise folks, he has not learned that dirty word from us. Just the S word...still working on the one.) Or when he pats his baby sister, who is laying on the ground on her belly, "baby, whore." Oh yes, dear son of mine. Baby is on the floor.


Things that I am grateful for today: when I heard that bang from the dining room and the gasp from BD? just some spilled water, not a dropped baby like it sounded like. silence on our walk to the park today. It's Friday!

Mommy needs to excercise!

After the birth of my son I randomly checked out this book called Mom's Town. It was a guide on getting your life back as a sahm. The book itself was incredibly inspiring, and although I have never fully completed it's 'course', I am constantly taking bits and pieces of it and incorporating it in my life. The one factor that I was never really good at was the journal keeping. Although all throughout my life I have kept a journal, lovingly pouring my heart onto thier empty pages, I have found I no longer have.....the time? the desire? the need? to write anymore. All of those excuses lame. So, in part, that is what this blog is to me. Aside from my random ramblings, every week or so I will be writing an entry based on a subject from the book.

That said, this week's topic is pretty focused on my body image and excercising. So bear with me....
What areas of my body would I improve? Right now, I'm almost tempted to say all of it =). I think, even six months after having our second child, I am still in disbelief about what has happened to my body. Both pregnancies I got really large. (enter stretchmarks...in places I didn't even know were possible!). Although I lost the weight from the second pregnancy really quickly, I had never really lost the weight from the first go-round. Oh yeah, and I nursed our son for a year, and am well on my way to doing that with our daughter. What part would I improve, you ask? Take your pick. I have an ongoing joke (I suppose you could call it my passive-aggressive plea for help) with my baby-daddy (BD for short) about getting a tummy tuck/boob job combo after we are all done making babies. For the sake of argument, though, I will just list my stomach as my most hated body part. I'm secretly terrified that even if I do lose all the weight, I will just be left with a gross tummy.

List excuses why I don't look and feel the way I want.
I am too tired (fuck, yeah I am lol)
We can't afford the gym
And even with my gym membership (which I guilty have) I feel out of place there.
Too get out of the house with kids is a chore in itself.
I can always start my diet tomorrow =)
Let's go out to eat tonight-we deserve it/want to get out of the house.
The kids were crazy today, it would be really nice to just relax with some ice cream.

List five activities I enjoy:
Walking downtown (alright, or through a mall)
Tennis
Bike riding
Skating (I'm a child of the 80's, my friend, so I totally mean old school skating, none of this inline skating stuff. If that's even cool anymore. It could be something completely different by now).
Softball

All of this works perfectly with what is going on with me now...tomorrow I begin my new workout regime. The hard part: waking up at 7am. (I have embraced the fact that I will never work out at night or during the day..minus taking the kids on walks and stuff). The best part: after a hard workout, coming home, taking a shower (um I get to shower everyday like a normal person? yay!), and having my bd make me some coffee and breakfast. I'm hoping that working out in the morning, combined with taking a shower will wake me up quicker than usual and kickstart my day. I also plan on taking my children on two walks a day (a big commitment in this extreme hottness that is the Sunshine State), maybe incorporating a yoga dvd into my day, and just over all being more proactive about moving around and being productive. Wish me luck....7am comes rather quickly.

Things that I am grateful for today: baby girl falling asleep in my arms while we slow danced, actually having her sleep in her crib tonight (what a novel concept!), our little man yelling AWESOME for the first time today and hearing him sing along to the theme song we have made up for the baby, having the baby fall asleep on the walk to the park (which means I can actually read my book while little man plays)

Mommy needs a nap

I've only just entered the blogging world just a few short days ago, so perhaps this blog and I are still in our honeymoon phase, but I have found that I really enjoy it. Throughout the day in my frenzy of changing diapers and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (whose theme song echoes in my head long after the show has ended and the children have gone to bed), I think of things that I want to write. I wait in anticipation as the clocks speeds (alright, it usually crawls) toward the time that brings my boyfriend home, and we put our children to sleep and then it is "me" time. By the time all this is done though, I sit in front of this computer, so desperate to get some of the muddle of thoughts in my head down on this blog. I watch the blinking of the little vertical line on this page, seemingly yelling at me to type something. Something brilliant, something witty. Something, period. Gone are the funny stories that unfold in front of me on an hourly basis. I am left with just an empty mind.....except of course for that damn theme song. These adorable children of mine are sucking the energy right out of me. I can barely even form sentences when I'm here these days. That's all I've got tonight. I think I need to go to bed. Perhaps tomorrow will bring some great inspiration.

Things that I am grateful for today: having a mother who is awesome with my children and willing to watch them every Wednesday so my cousin and I can scrapbook (what the bf call's my 'happy place'), being able to go grocery shopping with no kids, becoming closer to my cousin this year, mint chocolate chip ice cream

LIsts

In my ongoing quest to figure out how to do this whole sahm thing I am constantly coming up with lists; Sheets of paper I fill out with things that I want to accomplish (whether that be to clean the bathroom more often than twice a year or to lose weight). Lists on how I want the typical day in our house to go. Lists of things I need to organize in our house, lists of things I need to get done that day, lists on things I need to get done PERIOD. I feel like there are always so many things that I tell myself I want to do, that I should do, but just never get around to do because I'm too busy, too tired, too impatient. So I've been trying out a list of things that I need to get done every day, every week, month, etc. I find peace in organizing my life within the white leather walls of my planner. Perhaps it's the false illusion that I in some way have some control over my life. Every morning is a clean slate, a new opportunity to become the person I so want to be.

Things that I am grateful for today: the time that I had today to read my book, coffee, watching my adorable daughter sleep next to me in her bouncy seat (not grateful for the fact that she is six months old now and still refuses to sleep anywhere I'm not lol)

I think I'm more tired now than I was before our vacation

I am so happy to be home. Vacation, I tell you, was once an extremely fun word for me. Now it almost seems like more work than anything. Two small children make everything difficult....or should I say, "more exciting." So much packing just get there (can't forget the walker, we need swimmers as well as diapers, blah blah), coupled with tons of unpacking and laundry when you come home. Not to mention, when are you supposed to relax if you're sharing a room (and bed) with the two little people that you so desperatly can't wait to put to sleep just so you can have some 'no children' time? Plus, it was the oddest thing, our hotel room. It was actually humid INSIDE. And we stayed at a Radisson, not a motel or something cheap (although we did get it for pretty cheap.....Priceline-LOVE it). But everything was just moist, for lack of a better word. Including our sheets on the bed, so it was just gross feeling. Definitly loving our nice, dry bed tonight. Hard to imagine my college years, spent going from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, sometimes sleeping in cars on vacations. Of course back then it didn't matter where you stayed, because a hotel was a place that you dropped your bag at, only returning in the wee hours of the morning. You didn't care about getting the king size bed; you'd be content to sleep on the floor (hey, the more people there, the more money you can save for beer). Remember actually sleeping in? A wake up call being the phone ringing, not hearing your two year old jingle the room phone (oh I said jingle), and realizing that he has amazingly found a small slit large enough to insert all your left over change that you left on the table. Uh, stupid mommy, here I thought unplugging the phone was all the baby proofing that I needed to do. :)

things that I am grateful for today: getting home safely, kids going to sleep easily tonight, my bed (did I mention it was dry????), being able to watch my recorded shows on the dvr, my son asking me to cuddle with him at bedtime

My boyfriend and I felt bad when we cashed in the change from our son's little blue piggy bank to go towards our weekend getaway instead of putting into his savings. "Well," I so naively said, "technically this money is still going towards him, because this vacation is definitely for him and not for us." The getaway was to Orlando, a short drive for us, and the niave part was me not knowing just how much this was NOT going to be a vacation for us. It was hot, hot, hot, and that is coming out of the mouth of a native Floridian. Our son is not good when he is off his routine, even if we are in 'the funnest place on earth.' He desperately needed a nap the majority of our time at the park. What he wanted to do, we had to do. "More water. More play. More Tigger. More Pooh." you get the picture. There is no reasoning with a two year old. After all, we told ourselves, this vaca is more for them than us. We ran that kid ragged. (our six month old followed). We played in the sun, we played in the pool. We played with pooh, we played in Lego land.......and that son of ours STILL skipped on up to our hotel room with no intentions of ever crashing. Even though he woke us up today with a five am wake up call of bouncing on our ever-so-close bed, "daddy up!" Even though we, ourselves, were about to pass out standing up. I brought this computer, brought board games, planned on watching tv....all stuff to entertain us while we were stuck in a hotel room with two sleeping children.......um, sure don't need any of that when you both pass out at 9:30, a whole ten minutes after your kids do!

I first began this blog thinking of it almost as an extension of my 'myspace' page. Excitedly, I began thinking of clever titles, imagining the beautiful pictures of my children I would post on here, and contemplated what clever things I would write. "I can write about all the humorous things that go on in my days of being a sahm," I thought to myself. And I still will. But I began to think about what I really want to get out of this. Without even thinking, the words from my first post seemed to lay it out for me. This beautiful life of mine is great. But it isn't always as easy or as great as I painstakingly make it out to be. Being a mother is something that I had always wanted to be, and something that I truly love. Hell, I loved it so much I chose to do it for the second time! But there are still moments that I miss my old life so bad that I can't breath. I want this blog to represent what I'm really thinking and feeling as I struggle to get my mind clear of all this noise that is always cluttering it (and I'm not talking about the kids, unfortunately I don't think they have an off button!). To do this, to be completely truthful, I would have to be, in a sense, anonymous. So no pictures, no names, no walls, just honesty.

Me, entering the blogging world

My world turned upside down about three years ago when, through my hangover haze, I took a pregnancy test that read positive. Literally over night, life as I had lovingly grown accustomed to changed. I've traded in my job as a designer only to be bossed around by a tenacious (although adorable) two year old and beautiful six month old little girl. With that trade came many others: living in Chicago to moving back to my home town state to be closer to family (a change that was only supposed to be a year...two at most. We're on our third year now); playing beer pong on the table of Streeter's Tavern to playing beer pong on the Wii with my "baby daddy" at home, hoping the kids actually stay asleep; my prebaby body that I never fully appreciated, but of course would kill for now, compared to the post-baby one that I traded for (definitely traded down with that one!lol), and many, many others. Three years later and I still don't quite know how I got here...my life is amazing, crazy, exhausting,fun,stressful,hysterical, have I mentioned exhausting?, but never boring! It's been a bit of a struggle for me to adjust to this new life of mine, but I feel like I'm almost getting this whole sahm thing down. Almost. So this blog is going to be me, trying to get my sh*t together because in six months we are *cross-your-fingers =)* moving back to the Chitown and I really want to move with a settled mind.