Mistakes in Motherhood

I asked God for a daughter. And he gave me a son.
And I praised Him. And I loved my boy.

I asked God for a daughter. And he gave me a son.
He grew in my heart, and not in my womb.
And I praised Him. And I loved my boy.

I asked God for a baby. And he made me wait.
I loved on my sons. And I praised Him.
I accepted His plan, for just two sons, and he filled my womb.

I asked God for a daughter. And he gave me a son.
And I cried. But I praised him. And I loved my boy.

I asked God for a baby. And he made me wait.
I loved on my sons. And I praised Him.
I accepted His plan, for just three sons, and he filled my womb.

I asked God to give me whatever he wanted, I just wanted him/her healthy.
And he gave me a daughter. And I praised Him.
He made her three times as girly. Three times as sassy. Three times as sweet.
And I praised him. I loved my girl. He completed my family.

He filled my womb, which came as a shock. But I praised him.
And I said “PLEASE GOD, MAKE HIM A SON!”
And he did. For God does not give you more than you can handle.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Family, Parenting. | #

What a joyful day! While our nation collectively celebrated, I had a ton of mini triumphs. I met a woman on Craig’s List last week who was buying diapers, I had some I had bought, picked out a few and decided to pay them forward along with a couple dozen other cloth diapers I either decided not to use or that Liam outgrew. I refused payment for them, so she thanked me by making these really amazing carrot cupcakes. They were fantastic!

After her visit, my MacBook died mid sentence again. The battery was almost fully charged, and it wasn’t just sleeping, it just shut off for no reason at all. One call to AppleCare and it was decided I would drive to the closest Apple Store, 40 minutes away, and they would take a look at it. My battery was swapped out, the inside was cleaned and I was sent home. I am letting it drain the battery after a full charge and it is down to 85%, dipped into sleep a few times, and seems to be working better than ever.

My third victory is that my maintenance guy stopped by this evening to install my new water heater. I had been having a leaking issue for months now and a couple weeks ago I decided to get to the bottom of it. A quick release of the pressure release valve convinced me the water was from the tank. Maintenance replaced the PRV, and my back patio was still suffering from Chinese water torture. He suggested that maybe my 23 year old water heater was dying, but we would need to wait for approval for it to get fixed, etc. New one is in and I have hot water. However I didn’t know that when you replaced the water tank, the pipes would drain, and water would need to be pushed out. If you want to simultaneously convince the toddler, baby, and cats that the Apocalypses is here, run air through pipes. My daughter ran to her room screaming, the cats had to be peeled off the ceiling, and the baby’s eyes about popped out of his head and he screamed bloody murder.

Cherry on top was Skyping with my husband. I love him.

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Nothing says “I have too many leftovers, no imagination, and a chunk of ground beef” like meatloaf. What other meal allows you to simultaneously clean out your fridge, hide produce, and feel good about giving your kids a hot meal with just some easy prep and patience. I found that after just a few times, I no longer needed a cook book, or as just meat. I do have a couple shortcuts to share though:

1. Use a good food processor. I like the Euro-Pro Ninja Master Prep Blender and Food Processor, it makes me feel like a real ninja with all the rogue veggies I can puree and hide into what the kids think is a pure hunk of meat.
   The problem with the Ninja though, is it attracts my 6 year old like a moth to a flame, or as I say a cat to an electric can opener. With an audience, you have to be even more of a ninja to toss in the green beans from last night, a couple raw carrots, an onion, a tomato, or whatever you have on hand that is raw or requires a good blending. You may have to threaten your kids with certain death, amputation of fingers, or starvation if they are picky and you don’t want them to see how you make your ‘secret sauce’.
2. Once you have your paste resembling a bowl of baby crap, scrape it into the Kitchenaid mixing bowl. You can also toss in more leftovers, some examples include: rice from when you had Chinese takeout, whatever that was in the Tupperware container that vaguely smells like potatoes, actual mashed potatoes, etc. Get creative here, this is where your leftovers get eaten up and not composted.
3. Toss in a couple eggs, and now raid your condiments. You can add ketchup, or BBQ sauce, mustard if you like, worshesher-whatever sauce, etc. Throw in some random spices that smell good, some milk, and a dry ingredient like crackers, bread crumbs, or oatmeal. Mix all these in your stand mixer, and let it sit for a couple minutes to turn into a gross looking, gelatinous mess.
   I read somewhere that the key factors to the perfect fluffy meatloaf are to let the dry ingredients sit and get soggy. Also, to not molest the meat… err, in other words, you don’t over-mix the ground beef, so pre-mixing the other ingredients well is really important.
4. This is where my love affair with my Kitchenaid mixer was born. Use the dough hook that comes with it, add your meat and then mix. No longer do I have to relish in the joy of cold, raw, ground meat between my fingers, the booger-eating cousin to the much cooler sand between my toes, illegitimate son of the promiscuous between my legs and the ever brilliant between my ears.
   But I digress. Once your meat and mush have gently been mixed together, plop the whole thing into a baking dish on 350 and cook for an hour. You now have time to watch a show on the DVR, play a Facebook game, or kick the kids outside and hide in the bathroom with a book.
5. When you hour of bliss is over, slather more condiments over the top, bake another 5 minutes, then serve. You can serve with a vegetable, or a starch or both. If I include enough veggies, I will let my kids believe they are getting off veggie-free and just serve with potato wedges or something. My boys are pretty good about eating their meatloaf, but my daughter isn’t as wonderful. Then again, for the child who hates vegetables, she would pick a salad and plain white rice for dinner over meatloaf any day of the week.

Tonight the princess thought she would be slick. After all the kids had eaten, including the baby who happily nursed while I dislocated my shoulder to eat cold meatloaf, the ones who ate got fresh chocolate chip cookies. The princess decided she could skip her meal and go right to the cookie. When that didn’t work, and screaming didn’t make me give in, she resorted to climbing onto the counter, grabbing the Tupperware and running as fast as her stubby little legs would take her. She ended up going to bed without finishing her meatloaf, or a cookie, but she did end up going to bed with tons of tears. I think tonight mommy is going to drink a nice glass of wine for dessert, because mommy drinks when you cry.

*This is not a sponsored post, but Kitchenaid or Euro-Pro is welcome to send me a free gift for this post if they would like. I really want the mixing blade with the rubber spatula built in for my mixer or extra bowls for my ninja. *wink wink*

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Confessions, Domestic Diva, Family, Humor, Me, Silliness. | #

This one is going to be link heavy, watch out. So today I chose to make a station around a song I have had stuck in my head for weeks: M.I.A. – Paper Planes, and it seems almost none of the songs it played had to do with the original artist, or song, but instead were plucked straight from my memories or heart. The first song it played was a favorite from my teen years I have been hearing a lot on XM Radio, Lithium. The song is White Town – Your Woman, a few other songs played, but when Bob Marley – Three Little Birds came on, I *knew* that Pandora had a direct connection to my soul. See, two and a half years ago, when Bobby was in Iraq and we were waiting to hear where we were moving to, and it seemed like no one knew anything, and the news kept being delayed and canceled, I rediscovered this song and it has since been an obsession. I have a whimsical painting of three birds hanging in my hallway to remind me. I also picked my skin for Firefox to remind me, it says “Don’t worry about a thing… Cause every little thing is gonna be alright….” My husband called me around this point and I got a little choked up and sentimental.

I song I have googled numerous times to find the name of played, Regina Spektor – Fidelity, but when the only lyrics you know is “and it breaks my heart” and “break my fall”, you don’t get very far. Same with Citizen Cope – Let The Drummer Kick, a song I thought was called “The Drama Kid” and could not understand why I could never find it via Google. Another song that I loved, and had to lyric search for a while back was Modest Mouse – Float On. Mad World – Gary Jules came on, a song that Bobby and I both love, but got a kick out of when they used it in a commercial for Gears of War 2, a game Bobby plays.

While I was ironing Bobby’s shirts, and a funny thing happens to clean shirts when you apply hot steam. The scent of the person who wears them comes out and I found myself not just missing my husband today, but really missing him. I miss him every hour of every day, but thankfully I only get that hole in my heart deep loneliness every once in a while. The song that came on just then was Geto Boys – Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta, a song I have not heard since middle school, and there I was, ironing, missing my husband, kicking it Gangsta style. I got a good chuckle and it lifted my spirits. Another throw back from a little further back in ’88 was Pixies – Where Is My Mind.

The Postal Service – Such Great Heights played, which I love, and put on my Facebook about 6 months back, along with the Iron & Wine- Such Great Heights version because I had never realized that The Postal Service song was the same as the Iron & Wine version.

The kids and I had a great sweaty dance to Michael Franti & Spearhead – Say Hey (I Love You) and OutKast – Hey Ya!, two songs the kids have always loved. And several songs that Bobby used to sing by The White Stripes, OK Go, The Killers, and Cage The Elephant – Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked, a song he was singing along with on the radio that I had never heard, which is unusual for us, usually I am the one to discover new artists. Of course there were a lot of other songs mixed in, these were just the main ones that really spoke to me, were songs I had been searching for in the past, or played when I needed them the most. However the Over the Rainbow song, by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole came on twice; this is a song I can no longer listen to because it reminds me of a schoolmate’s tragic loss.

So I am not sure what all these songs and artists have in common, Pandora claims that it because I like “repetitive melodic phrasing” and “mild rhythmic syncopation”, so I guess we will go with that. Whatever the reason, they complimented each other nicely, and made for a very happy day.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: A lot about nothing, Domestic Diva, Me, Ramblings, Sleep Deprivation, Something Worth Mentioning, Technology. | #

Isn’t it incredible when you can walk into a business, which is nearly empty, and then moments later it looks like a tour bus was unloaded? This was how it was at the Post Office today. Not only have I always joked that there are several portals to hell, to include the DMV, the bank, the post office, the mechanic, and the emergency room. This statement could not have rang more true today. I mentioned earlier today that we would be mailing off a storage locker to Afghanistan, well we loaded it up with clothes, books, and computer equipment, weighed it, then hauled it out to the van. After a long wait in the line that went from no one, to a line out the door in the time it took us to fill out a customs form and wrap the box in tape we get to the front and pull the box onto the scale. 74 lbs. Crap. The limit is 70 lbs.

We had to get out of the line, unwrap all the tape, remove jeans, and then wait for the person in front of us to finish so we could pop back to the postal worker we were with. He weighed us again, 68 lbs, rings up the total, $125, gets to the point where we are supposed to swipe the card, and he realizes his coworker is logged into his computer… we have to go to the terminal 2 windows down. While waiting for him to weigh and put in the address and such again, some guy comes storming in. By his body language, I know he’s not a happy camper. He goes up to the worker in the window next to us and says “Did a woman just mail a package to Thailand with you?” I am assuming something got mailed that shouldn’t have or something.

So he gets up in the guys face and says “Listen *bleep*, you need to watch how you talk to people. You don’t have to be such a *bleep*. You better watch your *bleep* back. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME [Name on name tag]?? That is somebodies daughter. *beep* *beep* *beep*!” At young woman in line starts yelling “HEY! You need to knock it off! Show some respect!” She looks like she’s about to charge him. She’s all of maybe 100 lbs, but she ended up getting him to leave. Now I don’t know what was said or done, but I did notice she came completely unprepared. Her items had cardboard just wrapped around them, with two ends open and he had to help her make them into boxes by cutting and taping the cardboard. She occupied a lot of his time and was there for the time it took about 3 or 4 patrons to mail their stuff with other postal workers. The line was backing up, and the worker continued to help her prepare her package instead of just telling her to either come back with a box that would hold the contents securely, or get a priority mail box and pay more. There was no way her box would hold for international travel. This is the only post office in our city, so I have had stuff mailed with all four of the gentleman that were working that day, and they were always kind. He took his tongue lashing and never said more than “Calm down sir”.

By the time we left the post office, it was nearly 5pm, we had been there about 90 minutes! We needed to get a power of attorney notarized and the first bank we went to had closed 2 minutes earlier. The next place was open, but Bobby ended up in line 45 minutes before he got to the front of the line for the notary. He said he was not supposed to notarize POAs, but he would make an exception because he waited so long, and refused to charge us for it, even though we are not members. Sounds like Mr. Notary could teach Mr. My-girl-can’t-figure-out-how-the-mail-works-so-I-blow-up-to-defend-her-honor a lesson in manners.

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing | tags: A lot about nothing, Bobby, Family, Lame-o, Ramblings, Ranting. | #

I am one of those odd moms who LOVE snow days, I look forward to them, I can’t wait for summer vacation, and I dread back to school. I would homeschool my kids in an instant, if I had a masters degree in education. I support homeschooling, but personally, I made a choice a long time ago that it was not for our family, because I don’t have the bag of tricks teachers do to keep kids interested. I cannot get my children to make their beds without being told, how am I going to get them interested in pushing themselves to advance? I also do not have the patience for busy work.

I do hate snow though, especially when I have errands to run. The kids need haircuts and new shoes, I needed pet food, milk and creamer and I could not get out to get any of those. My husband ended up getting the food items, the rest will have to wait. It took him 2 hours to travel 2 miles this morning. I am really hoping tomorrow’s weather will be more kind, we have so many things to do before he leaves for the middle east next week.

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Hand me my scarlet letter now, I am cheating on my beloved. I would like to be polyamorous, I love them both, but since my first love found about my new love, she’s been pushing me away. I think we have changed, and grown apart a bit…. but what I hate to admit, is that my first love actually pushed me into the arms of my new love. I don’t think I could give either up, but I would gladly cut back on my new love if my first love would take me back.

Oh sleep, why do you reject me so? I miss you. I want to fly back into your arms and feel your warm embrace. Coffee is just a fling, a mistress, she doesn’t make me feel as good as you do. She’s only meeting a need you have been denying me lately. Please take me back. I will try to be faithful. You are my one true love.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Humor, Me, Silliness, Sleep Deprivation. | #

When I was a kid, my dad used to frequently take me cross-country skiing, and then when I was older on cross-country motorcycle trips. We also did a lot of canoeing, camping, and other outdoor activities. I often remember having cold hands and feet, especially in the early morning hours until it got warmer outside, or through activity. I would have loved to have hot hands Hand Warmers to slip into my gloves, or toe warmers to slip into my socks. Pair those with some funky synthetic socks (not cotton!) from Old Navy, put some quality wool socks over those, and in no time, I could have been comfortable and warm and ready to go, instead of sitting around the fire waiting to thaw out. Now that I a older, I don’t camp much, just because I don’t tolerate the cold anymore. My fingers easily turn sheet white, or sometimes blue, because of something called Raynaud’s phenomenon, which is just a fancy term for restricted blood flow to the finger tips. I would love some hand warmers to toss in my car until it is heated up and my fingers are awake again.

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I taught myself to knit about three years ago, but follow through has not been a strong point of mine. Neither has been following a pattern.

My husband teases me for my ADD, I still have a cross stitch I made for my son who is 5 now that just needs cleaned and framed, I started it when I was pregnant with him. A blanket I started knitting for my daughter who is 2 1/2 now is only about half done. I just threw out a baby sweater I started when I was pregnant with her and never finished.

So to be this close to completion is HUGE. My husband asked me point blank today “will this be the first project you finished?” and I sheepishly had to reply that it was. Thankfully while I was cleaning out my craft tote filled with half-finished projects, I found the yarn needles I need, so I have no excuse not to finish today. Hopefully in a couple hours I can post a picture of a completed project!

No Comments | In: A lot about nothing, This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Confessions, Domestic Diva, Insanity, Lame-o, Me, Pregnancy. | #

When the baby gets here we will need to do a transition of sorts. The seven of us will be living together in a four bedroom home and that means the baby will need to bunk up with someone when he/she is around 4-6 months old, before then, we have a co-sleeper in our room. By then we are hoping to have transitioned Sophia to a toddler bed, and then I can get the baby a lovely set of crib bedding to coordinate well enough in her room. However, I have never had a toddler sharing a room with a baby, so I am not sure if that will go over well. When we got Matthew’s bunk beds, which is kinda like a loft bed with a rolling shorter bed on wheels that can be moved, we toyed with the idea that they may eventually share the bed, with the “bottom bunk” in her room, and his loft bed in his room with a “play fort” of sorts underneath.

However, we may have to have Sophia and Matthew sharing a room for a year or so until the little one sleeps through a noisy sister in the room. I can imagine using so many different kinds of cute feminine kids beddingadorning the twin bed if she uses it, instead of transitioning to her toddler bed she inherited from Matthew. Excuse me while I hop up on this soap box, because I am about to sound like my mother.

Nothing grosses me out more than sleeping on a bed without a mattress pad. If you spend money on a mattress, get a quality mattress pad. Mattress pads are an inexpensive way to protect the bed from sweat, drool, and any other body fluids you encounter when you have kids (urine, vomit, etc). I don’t care how good you cleaned after Junior peed the bed, don’t expect that the next person is sleeping on a nasty mattress covered with only a thin layer of fabric, ewww. I will judge you if your beds lack mattress pads. And for kids, have several on hand. Matthew has three for his bunk beds, Sophia has two for her crib… both theirs are waterproof. I have one that I spent a fortune on, because it is waterproof and does not crinkle. We often have kids climbing into our bed at night, and that pad has paid for itself 20x over with how many times it has saved our bed. Austin and Christopher have one each, they were just cheapies, but they will tell you, I will get mad if I see a naked bed.

No Comments | In: This is how I roll | tags: A lot about nothing, Confessions, Domestic Diva, Family, House Stuff, Humor, Parenting, Silliness, Sponsored. | #