Less Than Perfect

You know, there's just some stuff that makes me smile.  And smile.  And then smile some more.  Usually these are little things, moments that happen and move past so quickly in my days that they are almost too quick to notice.  I thought I would share some of them with you. 1.  My fitted sheets for my king sized bed have a label telling me which side is the top/bottom (and therefore avoiding a frequent mistake I've made with previous sheets of attempting to put the sides on the top/bottom).  Life.  Changing. 2.  My five year old daughter skips places.  She is not being ironic.  She wants to go to the kitchen from the living room?  Skipping is a reasonable transportation method.  Love. 3.  My little plastic scraper that gets gunk out of the bottom of my pans before I scrub them.  It's just a one inch by one inch piece of hard plastic, but it is awesome.  I'm telling you people, it's the little things. 4.  My clear hand soap dispensers.  To be clear, I do not u

Dear Munchkin - I cannot believe you are five months old already!  Some moms would have written many posts by now about your growth and development, perhaps with coordinated outfits naming how old you are each month.  I'm sorry, kiddo, I'm not one of those moms.  Which isn't to say that I don't love you with all of my wild and passionate heart, but crafty and organized?  And consistent?  Not me. You, however, I could say so much about.  We have come SO FAR from your early days home when you cried and cried and mommy cried with you.  You are an absolute joy.  You have the most expressive eyes and they light up when you see any of your inner circle.  You are starting, just a little, to have some separation anxiety from us, but overall you are a really outgoing kid who just loves to be smiled at, cooed at or hugged on. You are a pretty good sleeper, though we've had to do some things that have messed with that lately.  Namely, you are currently wearing your secon

Last week our family celebrated our adoption finalization.  The Mister, The Nugget, The Munchkin and I all drove downtown to a very tall building and sat before a friendly judge to answer, once and for all, that we are ready to parent our beautiful four month old daughter.  That we know, without a doubt, that she is ours and that no matter what happens in our marriage, she will be treated as our own. Naturally, we agreed.  We never questioned this move to permanency.  For us, the court date was the final check mark in a series of tasks that needed to be completed, but not a huge event because  this little girl was already ours and we were already hers .  Other adoptions may wait with more focus on that date because of the circumstances, but for us, there was no question.  We have a relationship with The Munchkin's birth mother and knew that she felt confident in her decision. This got me wondering what makes me the mother of this baby in the first place?  What makes The Mister

Side note: if you didn't read that title to the tune of "I'm Ron Burgandy?" then you haven't seen Anchorman .  If you haven't see Anchorman , then you have missed out on some of the most hilarious moments of your life.  Stop reading this now, go watch the movie, then come back.  I'll wait. Okay, so I know I write on here (sometimes), but I do not think of myself as a writer, per say.  Many of you are, well, real writers with real writing jobs and you also just happen to have blogs.  Me?  I'm just  a person who has a blog.  Just an online diary in which I blurt out thoughts and feelings about the world and such.  I enjoy writing, but does enjoying something make you good at it?  Does it buy you a ticket into the show? I still don't know the answer to that, but I can tell you this:  I entered a writing contest.  My favorite magazine in the world, Real Simple (look to the right, they had their own label on my blog long before this post), has

I know a lot of women blame fairy tales for giving them unrealistic expectations of relationships.  Books and movies often portray a woman (admittedly, often helpless) who is swept away by a knight in shining armor and lives, well, happily ever after.  People claim that this doesn't exist, that roles are stereotypical, that happiness is a daily choice and that the whole thing is oversimplified.  Perhaps it is, but I think maybe they are looking with the wrong eyes.  Here is a glimpse into my personal happily ever after: I have been home with the two kids all day by myself while The Mister is at work.  I am tired.  I am overwhelmed.  I am feeling, if I'm honest, pretty helpless and in need of saving.  I hear the garage door opening and know that my knight's steed is approaching. The Mister enter's the castle, our home, and sees his fair maiden wilting under the pressure of motherhood.  He sweeps the baby from her arms and changes her diaper and feeds her a bottle.  D

My beautiful baby girl, who is now my big girl, turned five yesterday.  This is for her: My darling daughter, you are so filled with love and light.  You still look so much like your daddy but you are mommy's girl in so many ways.  You are a deep thinker, and you frequently fret about the fact that you don't want to get old and sick and die.  Daddy shakes his head in bafflement but that is your momma's heart beating inside of you.  I'm sorry - that part of me makes things hard and very heavy to contemplate sometimes. Your fourth year was filled with milestones and growth.  You still get terrible growing pains in the night after days of hard play.  You are quiet and sometimes shy, but I see that shyness fading away and, in your own quiet way, I see leadership developing in you.  You still love my little ponies and I watch your friends, both at home and at school, take pains to play them with you in one way or another.  You are kind, you are, as my mother would say, &

Hello out there!  Unlike my usual, highly unpredictable and totally nonsensical blogging breaks, I have been swallowed by the gaping maw that is parenting a newborn.  If you were to make a movie of my last seven weeks, it would be a totally dichotomous.  The first movie would be a love story: Title: Falling in Love All Over Again Tag line: She never knew a heart could stretch so far, until she met her second child. Trailer: Mother and child in an open field of wild flowers, soft sunlight filtering down around them as they gaze lovingly into one another's eyes while soft music plays and butterflies flit by.  Fade out gently. The second movie, well, it's a bit more of a horror story: Title: It Cries Tag line: You can cover your ears, you can hide your eyes but you cannot escape because…IT CRIES! Trailer: A mother tiptoeing from the side of a crib in a darkened nursery.  Menacing music plays.  Just as she reaches the doorway, a scream erupts from the crib and the mother&

And everything nice, that's what this little girl is made of. The Munchkin, 6 lbs and 9 ozs of tongue sticking joy As it turns out (and let's face, we knew this), due dates means very little. So as we all mourned a longer pregnancy (big sis, birth mama, and mommy and daddy), our new little girl was busy making her own plans.  Last Wednesday evening, as it turns out, we at our last meal together as a family of three.  During that meal, we got THE CALL. The thing about adopting is that there is the strangest feeling of things taking forever and happening surprisingly fast all at once.  So we just looked at one another, going, "What?  We've been working on our second child for over a year, but now she's coming?" And was she ever coming!  Birth mama's labor started around 4pm and we had that baby in our arms before 9pm!  There are many, many words to say.  It was beautiful and hard and overwhelming in every possible way.  Most of all, it was a bless

Text exchange between a friend and I: MONDAY Me: Please save me from the prison that is my home!  Need break from child! Him: Having school cancelled tomorrow really gave me a good understanding of Jack in the last half hour of  "The Shining". Me: Redrum TUESDAY Me: (much cursing) school is cancelled again tomorrow! Him: School cancelled.  Also, can't find razor blades. WEDNESDAY Him:  School cancelled Thursday.  This is the end.  Beautiful friend.  The end. Me: (mercilessly) Guess what sucker?  My kid has school tomorrow! THURSDAY I still haven't heard from said friend.  I can only assume he succumbed to his worst instincts after being trapped in a house with two young children for 5 days.  I am afraid to check. Just so you know, I had multiple text conversations with multiple friends in this same vein.  It's important to vent, folks! We've all been under weather advisories here in Indiana with a foot of snow and temps well below z