I Still CAN Believe It

"Where did my baby go?"

"Oh, they grow up so fast! Sniff sniff."

"He's xx months today, and I'm NOT okay with it!"

I have lots of friends who are also mothers, and phrases like these are about half their social media statuses.

But not mine. I wrote a post back when Cora was 7 months old about how time wasn't going fast or slow and how I was totally okay with that.

I just read it again, and it's still true. I don't wonder where my baby went. Yes, we want ANOTHER baby, but I don't want it to be Cora. Cora is 2 (26 months, if you're the technical type) and gets more hilarious and interesting every single day. I don't find motherhood some huge enduring challenge that warrants wishing we could just go back to sitting on a couch nursing all day. Or lamenting that it goes by "so fast." I don't think it happens slowly, but I don't think like, "I blinked, and then she was grown up." I've always been the practical one. (Seriously, our priest even said how practical we both were during our wedding.)

Maybe I just lucked out with Cora. We rarely have discipline problems, to the point where she's still not completely clear on the concept of time-out. She whines for stuff until I remind her to use her manners, then her whole demeanor changes. (The word "please" pretty much forces you to smile, no?) She listens to authority. She poops in the potty. She has an amazingly consistent routine that she thrives on. She says "bless you" after someone sneezes and does a pretty good sign of the cross. Perhaps this is just the calm before the storm (a.k.a. "the terrible 3's" that I've heard ALL about).

You know what you can't do with a 3-month-old?
Put her to work, that's what!

Or maybe I'm like this because we're letting God plan our family. (We have never used any contraception, ever.) I know we're not confining ourselves to "2 and done" or whatever, and we'll be listening to God on how big our family will be. I have about 10 years of fertility left (possibly more, possibly less--who knows but God himself?), and I have no idea what God has in store for us. But I sure am excited! Maybe any type of "sniff sniff, I miss him as a baby" feelings are in actuality a prodding from God to TTC? Just a thought. Perhaps when I'm 45ish and God lets us know for sure that we're done, I will feel the twinge of missing my kids as babies. However, for now I'm happy with my child getting older, even if she turns out to be our only one.

Yes, I've heard the saying, "The days are long, but the years are short." My response to that? Days are 24 hours long, and years are 365.25 days. And that's exactly what they feel like to me.

You know what else you can't do with a 3-month-old?
Listen to her squeals of delight as you sled really fast down a big hill, that's what.

Food For Thought, Literally

I sorta asked this question in another post, but I don't think anyone actually answered it. So now I will answer it myself.

If you could only eat 3 meals for the rest of your life, but you never had to worry about nutrition what would you eat??

So basically your 3 meals would meet all of your nutritional needs perfectly. No weight-loss diets, no wacky GI issues, no lactose-intolerance, etc. You could eat all of the same meal in one day or 3 different meals a day. But each meal, you only have 3 options. Each meal can contain up to 5 different foods/beverages.

I would eat these meals:

1. Pizza. Extra cheese. Rising crust. With a hard cider. Add a form of cheesy bread. Cookies & Cream ice cream with hardening fudge and sprinkles for dessert. And some Twix bars on the side.

2. A box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Retrieved from when the 'HOT' sign was on. Yeah, a whole box. Some scrambled eggs, bacon, and a strawberry orange smoothie.

3. Ground beef chimichangas.  On the side, chips and white queso dip (specifically the one from Frontera back in my hometown). McDonald's fries (had to sneak them in somewhere). Chocolate milk.

Now the real question is would you prefer this to the way we eat now?

Personally, I think I would. I know I never eat enough vegetables. I've heard of people who eat the same thing every day, and, honestly, it intrigues me. If I could just eat my favorites and never have to worry, I totally would! I'm not the world's most inspired chef, anyway. I don't think I'd ever get bored of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. However, I changed my 3rd meal a few times before I settled on the chimichangas, so maybe I am just better off as it is now.

What would you eat? And would your rather do 3 meals all the time or actually have to meal plan?

My One Word, Revisited

Instead of resolutions this year, I picked one word to focus on.

My word for 2013 was . . .

strength

I had 4 categories, along with just a general focus.

Let's take a look-see:

Physical Strength: I started the year lifting actual barbell weights (squats, bench press, etc.) with B. We lasted until March or April. I didn't really love it, never felt like I got my form correct, and I didn't feel like I was making much progress. Then the weather got decent, and I started running and didn't look back. My endurance definitely got stronger, but since I completely abandoned lifting, I was only working those running muscles.

After the nice weather ended, my running slowed. I have started Zumba and Zumba Toning, and I am back at the weights. However, this time I'm using more machine-based stuff instead of free barbells. It's still hard, but it's more my style. I also do assisted pull-ups now, and I'm starting to add more of my own weight on that. I'm currently running indoors and doing the elliptical when I feel like it.

Strength in Family Life: This one has been a doozy. Parenting a toddler is HARD. Dealing with a husband who worked 7 days a week was HARD. (He's thankfully back to 5 days for now.) However, I have said "I'm sorry" A LOT, and I know when I'm in over my head. This area still needs a lot of work.

Strengthening My Faith Life: This has been up and down. I do think I pray more, mostly because I'm in a Facebook group where people ask for prayers a lot. Other families need a lot more prayers than I do, so I try in earnest to at least offer a "Hail Mary" for these intentions. As for intentional devotions and family prayer time, this is a nope. We have sadly abandoned our weekly family meetings and haven't had one all year. We need something like it, though.

Strength In Numbers: It was my goal to make 2 good, local friends by the end of the year. Well, I made one early in the year, but then she moved away. :-(  (I did visit her and her kid when I was driving through where she moved, though.) I have some "library friends"--gals who bring their kids to the library on Friday mornings--but nothing major. I think if the budget permits I will be joining MOPS this year. I was really bummed about not being invited to many Christmas things. What was a busy time for a lot of folks was really low-key around here, and this extrovert had a big frown through most of it.


As for the year 2014, I haven't picked a word yet, and I'm not completely sure that I will. The word "JOY" refuses to leave my head right now, though.

I didn't mean for this post to be so depressing. 2013 was actually a good year. Here are my best memories from it:

• Cora's First Birthday
• Our Trip Down to Georgia and Cora's First Plane Ride
• Winning My Division in a 5K
• Road Trip to Hampton Roads, VA (I like trips!)
• We Bought Our First House!
• I Ran My Longest Race to Date (4 miles) and went to my first Notre Dame game
• A Trip to D.C. and Our 4-year Anniversary
• My Family's Thanksgiving Visit

Kangaroos, Sex, and Prudishness

This post will have a story, a diatribe, and a cute video of a baby kangaroo being born. I may be a little long-winded, but oh well. Just hear me out.

The Story: We have a membership to the zoo here, so one morning I took Cora in the stroller for an hour or so. My favorite part is the Kangaroo Walkabout exhibit, where you get to walk through the kangaroo habitat, and sometimes they even hop on the path right in front of you! It is seriously cool, and it's one of my favorite parts of the zoo. It was a quiet morning that day, and it was just Cora and me and one other little family in the exhibit. And it was that same morning that we all bore witness to two kangaroos mating. All the kangaroos hang out near each other (there are about 12 total), so the mating kangaroos were sorta in the middle of the whole mob* and you couldn't not see it. Cora is still small (16 months), so she obviously doesn't question stuff yet. I just said, "Oh look, they're mating." The 3-year-old girl there with her dad didn't  really question it either.

I didn't have a camera that day, but it happened in this general vicinity.

(*Actual name for a group of kangaroos--aren't I fancy?)

There was a (volunteer?) docent talking about the mommy-joey relationship at another part of the exhibit. It's a children's zoo, so she was holding a kangaroo stuffed animal and mostly talking to the 3-year-old girl about the baby in the pouch. The girl went back to go see if she could find the joey in a momma's pouch among the kangaroos. As she left, I saw that the two from before were still mating, so I said, "Looks like you'll be getting a new joey soon!" Then the docent stammered, "Oh, uh, sorry about that." I said back to her, "Don't apologize; it's just nature."

The diatribe: It's Just Nature.
Boy, did the puritanical prudishness of our culture rear its head right there through the mouth of that docent. Why is she apologizing for something that the kangaroos are instinctively doing? And she's even talking to us about the fruit of that act! How have we gotten to a point where we can be so happy about a baby but so ashamed of the act that created it?

Sex is not inherently dirty. It is only dirty because our culture has made it so. Sex is dirty when it's premarital, extramarital, one-night stand, rape, etc. Sex in a committed marriage with two consenting adults is not dirty one bit and is not something anyone should be apologizing about. Also, from my trivia knowledge, only humans and dolphins have sex for pleasure, so a kangaroo is just doing what his instincts tell him to do. He's not rationalizing it, and he obviously doesn't care who sees it. The kangaroos are naked, unashamed, and it's not an intimate act in the way it is for humans. Even though we are rational beings (unlike animals), and the intimacy of the act is what keeps us from having sex in public, we do conceive our young in the same way as almost all mammals.

So, my point?  Don't apologize for animals doing what they do to propagate their species. And don't be ashamed of sex within your marriage.

The video:
In all of this thinking and huffing and diatribing, I remembered seeing a sign at the zoo that said mommy kangaroos are only pregnant for a month before the joey is born. This kinda blew my mind, so I read up more about it. Basically, kangaroos are born the size of jelly beans and then do all of their development in the pouch. It is seriously fascinating. So here is a kangaroo giving birth and then the little joey making its way to the pouch, where it will develop for the next several months (just like we did in the womb!).


The other thing I love about kangaroos? They are classified as "macropods" --literally meaning "large foot"--and I think that is an awesome name to call any sister/husband/child of yours who wears a big shoe size.

One Little Word

Instead of actual resolutions, many people (read: bloggers) are just choosing one word to focus on in the new year. I picked a word in my 12 in '12 post, but as the night went on after that, I ended up changing it.

My word for 2013?

s t r e n g t h

It starts with physical strength. B and I have been lifting weights at the gym, and I am verrrrrrry slowly adding more weight to the bar. I have some number goals in mind for that, and hopefully by the end of the year, I will just feel strong and confident about lifting.

Beyond the physical, there are other areas that need strengthening:

• Strength in family life. Admitting wrongs, fixing problems peacefully, and embracing my vocation of motherhood. I also realize that I will need to be learning how to discipline a toddler and be a consistently good role model. I have always thought that babies are physically exhausting while older children are mentally exhausting; the thought of a toddler who requires both types of attention is a scary thought for me.
• Strength for my faith life. More devotions, Bible-reading, and learning what it really means to be a Catholic woman today. We also should probably commit to and join a new church already. We keep going to the same one anyway, so I guess we should become members.
• Strength in numbers. I need friends here. Good ones. My goal is to have two trustworthy women nearby that I can call my friend by year's end.

I'm sure there are other areas that I will find as the year progresses, but this is a good start.

(Also, for the word nerds, STRENGTH is fascinating. Only one vowel, one syllable, but eight letters long!)

Do you have a "word" for the year?

Yes, I CAN Believe It

I'm starting to get annoyed with people who say things to me like, "She's 7 months already!  Where has the time gone?!"  Or, "Can you believe how big she is now?"

You know what?  I can believe it.  Unlike you, I see my child every single day.  I feel each day of those 7 months in my back, my boobs, my shoulders, and my hips.  I make sure I have at least one picture of her per week (and I've only missed one week since she was born).  I can remember her as a squishy newborn, a tummy-time hating 3-month-old, and when she cut those bottom two teeth simultaneously.  And what I can't remember? I probably have a video or picture that might jog my memory.

Maybe I'm just too practical for the sentimental mom set.  Or maybe it's because I didn't really start enjoying motherhood until three months into it. I know that babies grow. And they do it quickly.  I don't wish her smaller, saying things like "I'm not ready for my baby to grow up!" when she hits a new milestone.  I also don't (usually) wish her older.  I treat her much like I do myself. I've always been content at the age and stage that I'm at, never striving to look older or younger, so why should I treat my baby any differently?

Saying that certain events "feel like just yesterday" doesn't give full respect to everything that has happened since that event.  Sometimes I feel like I'm still 23, but then I remember all the cool stuff I've done in the past 5 years.  There's no way I could still be 23 with all those wonderful adventures underfoot.  The same goes for my baby--if "just yesterday" she was a marathon-nursing 6-week-old, then what about all those "boring" days we've had just reading together, taking her to the pool, singing her new (usually made-up) songs, and listening to her laugh?  That's where our bond has happened in our own unique way, and it would be very regretful to just gloss over those days in favor of milestones that almost every baby hits.

Maybe I'll change my tune in a few years, but I sort of doubt it.  I can believe that my nephew is 8 years old, even though I also remember very clearly the day he was born.  I recall dancing with him to The Wiggles videos in his toddler years, playing in the yard with him as a preschooler, and I remember the phone call I made to him to tell him that B would soon be his uncle.  The time of year has come again for him to solicit his Cub Scout popcorn to me, and that is when nobody can deny that he truly is a third-grader.

 I enjoy each day as it comes.  You may have noticed that on this blog I never say "I can't believe the week/month/year is over!"  That's because I can believe it.

A picture from yesterday, her first Grandparents Day.
She's getting bigger, but it's happening at the perfect pace.

10 Years

10 years ago today, I graduated high school.  I officially feel OLD.  Yet I also still feel like I'm 22 and freshly out of college.  Then I hear that Mark Zuckerburg turned another year older; he was born 3 weeks before me and is also a 2002 high school grad.  Well, I'm no billionaire.  But I had a kid first, actually finished college, and didn't have to trick people into coming to my wedding.  Take that, Zuckerburg!

Even though it wasn't my "peak," high school was good to me.  I won various awards and scholarships, got good grades, had good friends and made good memories.  I was the quirky smart girl who purposely mismatched all her outfits and pulled it off.  I got to dabble in everything that interested me--soccer, debate, quiz bowl, choir, cross country, Spanish club, the list goes on and on.  But if I look back on the highlights of my life, very few of them happened in those four years.

My high school has the longest name EVER.  (But we just called it "Central")

I've done a lot in the past 10 years.  Graduated college with two degrees, joined and finished AmeriCorps, moved a few times, gotten and quit a big-girl job, traveled both domestically and internationally, learned a lot of new skills (cooking included), volunteered for a wide range of nonprofits, gotten married, had a beautiful baby.  I'm sure there are a ton of great things I've left out as well, but those are the biggies.

I posted on Facebook about today being our 10-year date, and one of my best high school friends said it made her feel sad because it reminds her how close we are to turning 30!  I'm not scared of my thirties at all; I actually know plenty of people who LOVE their thirties.  Instead of fearing it, I just wonder what fun adventures the next 10 years will bring!

Can't believe my cheapo high school actually gave us our diplomas in this thing!

So I may not have a bazillion dollars like Mark Zuckerburg, but I do have the love of my family and friends, and that's pretty awesome.  I also haven't burned too many bridges, and no one has even tried to sue me.  Heck, I haven't even gotten a speeding ticket.  I guess I can't complain--here's to the next 10 years!

from the 101 list: my first graphic novel

Successfully crossed another one off!

✔ 52. Read a graphic novel

A graphic novel is kinda like a comic book, but longer and possibly with better writing.  As I perused the shelf of them at the library, I learned a few things:

• Almost all of them are geared toward teenagers.
• Some of them from Japan read right-to-left (and "back" to "front")
• There are even classics like Romeo and Juliet that have been made into graphic novels.

I thought about picking up one of the classics, but I had read them all already, and this mission was to read something entirely new.  I settled on a book by an American woman called Page by Paige, written and illustrated by Laura Lee Gulledge.

The book is about a teenage girl named Paige who moves from Charlottesville, VA, to New York City.  Her parents are writers, but she's more of an artist.  She picks up a sketchbook upon moving there and basically documents her new life in the city and her exploration of herself as an artist with sketches and panels.  Even though it's in grayscale, there are some really beautiful full-page sketches.  The book turns sorta "meta" as she shows her sketches to others, and it's basically the same book you're reading.

I actually liked this book more than I thought I would.  It was a super-quick read, since it was mostly drawings.  But it took me back to my 16-year-old self, who was full of quirky ideas and had the friends to help execute them.  There were even instructions on how to play what they called "drawing telephone"--I blogged about this game last year, calling it "Picta-phone."

This book was also a very recent publication (2011), so there were references to certain internet sites and bands that helped me feel connected to the characters.  (Maybe it's because I get most books at the library that I expect them to be dated so much??)  The book also had a subplot about Paige's relationship with her mother, and toward the end there was this really great page/panel about it.  Being pregnant with my own daughter, it really struck me:

I suppose all moms have an idea who they HOPE their daughters will be.  Like a connect-the-dots picture where you think you know what shape it will become.  But then it's the daughter who draws the lines, and she might connect dots you didn't intend, making a whole different picture.  So I've gotta trust the dots she's given me, and she's gotta trust me to draw the picture myself.

So have you ever read a graphic novel?  Do you have any recommendations anyone new to the genre?

 

i fancy this verb

In these modern times, it seems that any noun can become a verb.  In their infinitive forms, to facebook, to google, to DVR have all worked their way into our current lexicon.  Sometimes our new words are wonderful for providing specificity, sometimes they're wildly unnecessary.    Why do some people need to say "friended" when the perfectly fine "befriended" already exists?  And to DVR something is really just to record it.  Less syllables and less bewildering to those lacking the pricier aspects of modern technology.  (Plus, the Navy has enough darn acronyms to keep up with; I don't need any more in my life!)

But what about perfectly good verbs used in other English-speaking lands?  Why can't we "borrow" some great terms from across the pond, as a way of avoiding confusion?  Case in point: the wordy "fancy" used as a verb.  I'm sure we all remember conversations from our youth that included the following question:  "Do you like him, or do you LIKE like him?"  Or even the rather juvenile, "If you LOVE chicken nuggets so much, then why don't you marry them?"

Both situations could be remedied with the use of "fancy" or even "infatuated with."  Not nearly as serious as love, but a step above like.  And then when you're in your 20's, and it's become just a tad embarrassing to have "a crush on" someone, affirming that you "fancy" this "chap" is probably a "bloody brilliant" idea. 

All that being said, I love my husband, but I fancy some homemade waffles.

weeding out your life

In my volunteering stint with the Norfolk Botanical Garden, all I've been doing lately is weeding.  It's just that time, I guess.  I'm in the Butterfly Garden, which comes into its own on July 3 when we get all the butterflies into the house.  But outside the house in the garden grounds, many plant species are planted to attract butterflies and support their life cycle, and this needs continual weeding throughout the summer.

During my three-hour gardening assignment this morning, among the 90 degree heat and equivalent humidity, I started thinking about how weeding is a good metaphor for how we move on and overcome the bad forces in our lives.  As time goes on, certain habits, people, and even possessions crop up and start choking us.  They hold us back, sucking our energy and resources and  preventing us to truly thrive and flourish and enjoy the full life intended for us.  And come to think of it, most weeds are just plain ugly and don't mesh with the surrounding plant.

Now one thing is interesting though - our gardener sometimes tells us to leave certain weeds in the ground.  There is one in particular called milkweed, that does indeed flower, and its leaves are food for Monarch caterpillars.  We generally leave these in the beds.  It's a very interesting one because of the sap that pours out--true to its name, it really does look like milk.  I started comparing this surprisingly good weed to those things that come up suddenly in our life that we don't immediately recognize are good for us.  For some people, being laid off can feel binding at first, but then can give them the inspiration to do great things that may not have happened if they were still punching the clock.  For some stories about a few of those people whose names you'll probably recognize, check out this mental_floss article.

But for the most part, weeds are unhealthy.  They obstruct beauty and they burden support systems.  Both in nature and in life, weeds are best caught early on when they are less noticeable, their roots are shallow, and they are easy to uproot.  When I pull weeds, I generally shake off the soil at the root to return it to the garden.  That being said, we do learn from every experience, and we take those lessons and mix them with our fertile soil that lets us grow and perhaps even abound.

What weeds do you need to pull from your life right now?