Sunday night

I am sitting on my favorite spot on the couch right now looking around my living room.  There are veggies from Lilly's dinner in odd places, naked babies strewn about, pull-ups that were taken off by Lilly because she wanted to be naked, 2 baskets of laundry to be folded (and there is more in both the washer and the dryer), play food and dishes scattered around, and I cannot see them but I know that there are dirty dishes in the sink and cat litter to be changed.

My hubby is out at a Mets game and I was home by myself with Lilly tonight.  She was having a really hard day.  I think she was still recovering from our chaotic, crazy weekend as well as 2 vaccines this past week.  I felt like I was cleaning all day.  I mopped the kitchen floor, did a little food shopping, ran the dishwasher, put in several loads of laundry, gathered some of the garbage (hubby did 95% of that) and cleaned out my car.

So I guess I am wondering what I did all day that I still have so much to do at 11pm.  I spent a lot of time putting out fires a.k.a. helping Lilly calm down after tantrums and part of this evening catching up on Parenthood on my dvr.  But I did a lot even so.  Oh well.  I guess it is just the life of a mom.

Definition: Snuggle

The definition of snuggle is varied depending on who is using it and at what time.

1. A substitute for late night or nap time nursing.  i.e. used by me: No, it is not time to nurse but we can snuggle. Used by Lilly: Snuggle Mommy, snuggle! said in screaming voice at 4am or nap time.

2. The act of laying down next to your child until either s/he falls asleep.

3. The act of laying down next to your child and not waking until your husband comes to find you 2 hours later or better yet your child uses a bike horn in your ear and/or pours her water all over you.

It's official...I have graduated!

At the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ.  

My friend Nicole, my rock, maybe the best thing I gained from grad school.

Lilly tried on my cap.  She loved the tassel.

Vinnie, Lilly and I in front of the Izod Center.

Back in the proverbial saddle again

So, (imagine a long, drawn out version) I have not been to the gym in goodness knows how long.  My diet off the wagon big time the last weeks and I was losing motivation to restart it all.  I weighed myself today and I have gained a couple pounds.  boo.  I decided to re-commit myself to my eating plan.  I stayed on track today.  It would be so simple to not count/write down little treats here and there.  Doughnuts call my name all freakin' day long!!!  I would like to know how they even learned my name.  heehee...

I worked out with my Wii Sports active and started a 30-day challenge today.  I also really, really want to get back to the gym.  I miss it.  Hubby wants to see if we can cancel it but I want to see how I can rearrange my schedule so that I can get there.  Oh and I drank tons of water today.  More than my usual, that is.

I just have to stop lying to myself.  I cannot eat candy and sweet treats like some other people can.  I can and will do it this time!  But I will eat some cake on my graduation day!!!!

As an aside, this is the scale I have.  It is kind of annoying me because sometimes when I step on it I have drastically different weights from one minute to the next.  For instance this morning my weight was the series:
1. x (x=weight)
2. x-4
3. x+.4
4. x-6
5. x
6. x
I know I should just let it go, but if I know it is that different I want to make sure I get the closest number possible.  Today I picked the one that made the most sense and also came up the most.  And it is a new scale.  grrr.

tiredness

I am really tired.  Like bone-tired, can't think of how I will survive without good, solid sleep tired.  I am not sure what happened.  I think part of it, a good part, is that I am emotionally tired.  Another large part is that I think the last time I got several consecutive nights of good, solid sleep was about, um, 2.5 years ago.  Basically from the beginning of pregnancy onward it has been a struggle to get great sleep.  Now, I survive pretty well on less sleep than most people.  However I believe my limit has been reached.  I need Lilly to sleep tonight and I need to go to bed NOW!

My Four Monkeys giveaways

1.  On My Four Monkeys blog she is having a Gazillion bubbles giveaway.  I love Gazillion bubbles and Lilly loves them too!

2.  I always love new books and I have a particular fondness for children's picture books.  My four Monkeys is giving away a book by Mark Teague called Firehouse.  It looks adorable and is perfect for all your fire truck loving toddlers and preschoolers!

truth in blogging

Okay fellow bloggers.  Here is the deal.  Sometimes I really want to write about a situation.  But I know if I do there is a big chance that someone close to me will read it and most likely be hurt by it.  Not that I would be writing anything very negative.  I am sure that these are situations that happen in everybody's life.  But it probably would feel different to be reading about yourself on someone's blog than just experiencing it in real life.  I would imagine that it would mostly be because everything would be from my point of view.

Anyway, I just wonder what other people do.  I am guessing most people just don't write about it.  Which is what I do (or don't) even if sometimes I really, really want to.

Kanzashi hair clip giveaway

My Four Monkeys has another giveaway that is pretty cool.  It is to kick off her new Etsy shop.  They are really beautiful hair clips that are home made.  This one ends a week from today on 5/24 so enter now!

Melissa & Doug giveaway through My Four Monkeys

My Four Monkeys is one of my favorite blogs.  She is hosting a cool giveaway that ends tonight.  I know, I know, I am so behind on my giveaways.  This one is for a  Melissa & Doug ice cream play set.
  As a teacher and a mom I love Melissa & Doug.  Lilly has loved everything made by them as well.  Enter away! 

The SodaStream Review

I had won a SodaStream machine and several sample flavors through a giveaway on Savvy Coupon Mommy's blog.  I have had it about 2 weeks and thought I would give a little review.

First of all, I thought it was so cool to have won something.  I never win anything and this was something I really wanted.  Okay, my husband is the one who really wanted it but I thought it was a cool concept.  In fact, I did not get to make a soda for about a week.  Vinnie loves to make it!  The first time I made one I did so while Vinnie was out at school.  I remembered how to do it, kind of, but was missing one crucial step.  You are supposed to twist the bottle to the machine before you start the carbonation process.  I did not.  The first hit of carbonation sent the water spraying all across the kitchen and me.  Oh and this was the morning of Lilly's birthday party!

Here are a few things I really love about it.  The regular flavors do not use high fructose corn syrup.  The diet flavors do not use aspartame.  The downfall is that they do taste rather diet-y.  The machine is very streamlined and does not take up much space.  It also does not need to be plugged in!!  I do not have many outlets in my kitchen so this was a huge plus.  It uses regular water.  What is easier than that?

So besides the diet-y taste there are no negatives that I can see for now.  We have made a lot of bottles and have not needed a cartridge change yet.  There is a store in South Orange called Kitchen a la Mode that I understand sells the cartridges and the flavors.  This will be convenient and shopping local is a plus.  I don't know yet how often we will need to change it.  It might be a good idea to keep an extra on hand.

The verdict?  We love it and will continue to use it.  We had a party last weekend and Vinnie did a little tasting for some people.  It was fun and people were awed by the fact that you can make your own soda.

Do you have one?  What is your favorite flavor?

It feels as if I am propping my eyes open with toothpicks

Lordy am I tired.  This week was so emotional.  It started out with Mother's Day and my birthday on Sunday, being let go on Monday, having an interview on Thursday and finding out on the way home that another co-worker was let go, some other in-between crap and tomorrow is my Convocation.  I am about to go upstairs, read my book U is for Undertow Kinsey Milhone Mystery and listen to some Enya:  A Day Without Rain.  Reading helps my mind empty itself of any crap floating around.  The music calms my soul.  I know that playing Enya to relax is played out.  I get it.  But it still works for me.  And at this juncture, whatever works will be utilized to its fullest extent.

Last night I did not go into Lilly's room when she started crying at 10pm.  She fell back asleep.  She did not come into our room until 5am-ish.  Tonight I let her cry again for about 5 minutes.  So far she went back to sleep.  It is so hard as a parent to stay out of the room.  We had gotten pretty good at letting her cry and recognizing her different cries.  After she was sick and had the last few seizures I did not leave anything to chance and went in if she cried for more than a few minutes.  It is difficult for me to let go of that need to check on every little whimper.  However I am doing her an injustice by not letting her fall asleep on her own.  She became accustomed (very quickly I might add) to getting up around 10pm and hanging out with us.  But 2 y.o. girls need their sleep and so do their parents!!

So what the heck am I still doing awake???  Blogging and finishing the dishes and feeding the cats.

Happy weekend!!

Hopeful day

Today I had an interview.  I think it was a great interview.  I may or may not have be what they are looking for, but either way I think it was successful.  I was confident and knowledgeable and I don't think I said "um" too many times.  I am really trying to be open about this whole situation.  If the job is meant to be mine that it will be.  If it is not, then something else will come along.

And you know, even though I detest the Hoboken traffic, it was good to be back!

updating my blog

So I decided to "monetize" my blog.  I am not sure what that really means at this point.  If it gets annoying for readers please let me know.  My intention is not to turn people away.  I want more people to read my blog, not less!  One of the ways I am doing this is by linking to Amazon if I am discussing something.

For example, instead of linking to the Radio Flyer site when discussing the cool trike that my brother got my daughter for her birthday, I would link it to the Amazon Radio flyer site.

I am going to have to try it out a bit and see what I think of it.  My thought was that if I am writing this blog anyway and I no longer have a job as of June 30th, then I will try to make some money from it.

Comment and let me know your thoughts!

New Day, New Perspective

Just a quick note before I leave for work this morning.  I had a great night of sleep (thank you Lilly!) and was able to wake up refreshed with a new perspective on this whole job situation.  Well, maybe not a brand new perspective, but there are some new thoughts.

I am going to do the best job I can for the remainder of my time there.  My job is to support the teachers, and in that I support the children.  I am going to get the most out of this job - experience wise - as I can in the next 7 weeks.  I am not going to stress over the team dynamics, which are pretty terrible and stress me out many days.  I am going to get great references from my co-workers and my directors for that job that I know is waiting for me.  I am going to be grateful for my experience this year as a working mom because it has changed how I work with parents and has given me more empathy in that area.  I am going to look forward to being a SAHM again for the summer (and perhaps beyond).  I am going to be open to any and all possibilities of being a work-at-home mom, consultant, anything!

And right now I am going to go clean up cat puke before I step in it on my way out the door!

Colliding emotions

Singing Happy Birthday to Lilly with my hubby

Pops throws Lilly "Up, Pop, Up"

Traditionally, May is an extremely busy month for me.  Vinnie's birthday starts off the festivities on April 26th.  Lilly comes next on May 7th followed by my birthday on May 9th.  This year my birthday happened to be on Mother's Day.  Lilly's birthday party was the 8th and then we celebrated Mother's Day and my birthday at my parents' house on the 9th.  I was a little bummed because Vinnie was in immense pain on Mother's Day and was not really able to do for me what he had planned (breakfast in bed and letting me sleep in).  He ended up needing an emergency root canal today - poor guy!  

Watching Lilly grow up is just amazing for me.  I am loving it, even if some moments are more stressful than others.  I really want another baby but I am also making sure I enjoy this time with her.  It is a wonderful journey.  But it is bittersweet, isn't it, to watch our babies grow up before our very eyes?

Coming off the high of a celebratory weekend I was not feeling well this morning and took 1/2 a sick day.  I went into work for noon and remembered that I had a staff meeting.  The atmosphere at work has been so tense as people wait to hear if they will have a job next year or not.  Staff meetings tend to bring out the worst in people during these times.  At the end of today's meeting my director asked me to stay after and that I would be called down when it was time.  It was just myself and one other co-worker who started with me.  We knew what that meant.  I could write on about how the letting go was approached and the insensitivity of the director of HR, but really that does not matter.

What matters is that I will not have this job in this district next year.  Relationships I have carefully cultivated with the preschool center directors, teachers and other staff will no longer be.  My little office space will be cleaned out in June and someone else's pictures will be put up next September.  Or maybe not.  The people I work with tend to keep their personal lives separate from work.  I have never been great with that.  I have pictures of Lilly and Vinnie posted on my bulletin board at eye level.  Because the truth is that my family comes first before anything else.

I knew that this was the most likely scenario for me because of the budget cuts in NJ and the fact that I am a leave replacement.  But you know what?  It really is not helpful when people say, "Oh you knew it was coming."  Yes, I was not taken by complete surprise but it is still sad and still puts me in the position of looking for a job for next year in a very unstable economic climate in education.

I do have an interview later this week and I am SOOO excited about it.  I am also going to look into teaching online college classes.  Vinnie suggested I try to blog more and see what I can do with it.  I know I will be okay and I am grateful for the experience.

My sadness has collided with my excitement and happiness over Lilly's birthday.  I will not let it take away from it, but it will take a bit to recover.

Thanks for all the support...