Last Saturday Jellybean turned one year old! We officially no longer have a little baby...hello toddlerhood! I'm a little sad, but at the same time feel like fist-bumpin' my husband in celebration of surviving another year of parenthood. The kids are both still in one piece (each) and we don't appear to be messing them up too badly.
We celebrated Jelly's bday with a family party complete with frito chili pies (hey, Jelly's favorite foods are beef, beans, and cheese, so why not?) and cupcakes/ice cream. She was very concerned about the frosting on her cupcake and made a yucky face whenever it came near her mouth. And forget about the ice cream! Finally she decided the best course of action would be to turn it upside down and eat it from the bottom so as to avoid the strange fluffy stuff on top (which, by the way, was delicious. My kid is crazy.). After seeing the mess in and under her highchair, though, I'm not sure she actually ingested any of it. She had lots of fun playing with new toys and her cousins, though!
Life has been pretty crazy lately (thus my neglect of the blog). If you thought some of my other posts were a little chaotic, imagine what things must be like if I can't even catch a minute to write about what my wild girls are up to. I have tried, though, so I thought I'd give you the titles of all the half-finished posts I've started along with a brief summary of what I was writing about:
Sleepless Nights and Busy Days
This was me wondering if I'll ever know what it feels like to be well-rested again. Jellybean still doesn't sleep through the night, and we've converted Cbear's crib to a toddler bed so she can wander around at all hours of the night now. Thank goodness we're past the phase where I would find her in the living room with all the lights on at 4 a.m. playing with her toys! Maybe someday I'll sleep again...I hope...I mean, I do remember about five minutes of wonderful restfulness between the time Cbear started sleeping through the night and getting pregnant with Ellie. I don't remember life before I had kids.
Body Image Confessions
Something about how I should stop using the excuse "I just had a baby" to justify the elastic-waisted pants and lack of exercise (although I'd like to see someone else carry/chase two 20+ pound kiddos and all their crap around every day and then tell me that's not exercise/weight training). Between when I started writing this post several months ago and now I actually did start exercising several times a week doing pilates, tabata and walking/running, and was feeling great, but then I hurt my knee running and have had a little setback. But I've also come to accept that my body will never look the same as it did pre-babies, and that's okay. I'm a little more mom-ish now...at least I'm a soft place for kiddies to snuggle!
Let's Play Pretend!
Oh, this was a fun one I wish I'd finished! Cbear has entered a really fun stage of playing pretend and I love it. One day she had two pet mice named Skippyjonjones and Crocodile, and they kept hiding in the cabinet and we had to get them out to play. And now there are crocodiles in the living room and hallway we have to battle sometimes to get by. Recently she's been into playing "doctor" and we have to take care of owies, check out eyes and ears, and give shots and band-aids. It's so much fun, and I can't wait to see what she'll come up with next!
Look out, kids, Mama's smashing garlic again!
A mini-rant about how Cbear has decided she doesn't need to nap any more (I disagree...although I may need her nap time more than she does) and the majority of our weekdays we have a 2 hour or so battle to get her to sleep. It's making me slightly cranky, and I kind of felt like the worst mom ever when I was speaking a little harshly and she stuck her hand out at me "Stop, in the name of love" style and said, "Hey. Stop being mean at me." My patience is wearing paper-thin, but I'm trying to do better. I've found smashing fresh garlic cloves helps me cope in some odd way. So, yes, you do smell garlic, and it's me.
Wal-Mart is the devil.
Do I really need to explain this one? I try to avoid that store like the plague, but I needed several things there the other day, among them party supplies for Jelly's birthday. All I wanted were some fall, pumpkin-themed items, which I figured would be easy because it is October, after all. Nope. The "holiday shop" is full of Christmas stuff, so I was all over the store looking for fall party supplies, with two whiny, tired kids because it was nearing lunch time and for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy-it-wasn't-supposed-to-take-this-long! I still didn't find what I wanted, but grabbed some plates, napkins, and cups in "fall colors". Oh, and we had to make two trips to the bathroom (gross!) because Claire announced (loudly) in the dairy aisle "I gotta potty!" (which was true) and then in the Halloween aisle "I gotta poop!" (which was false). Nobody wants to gamble on the latter one, though, so I took her anyway.
So, there you have it, a snapshot of the things I've wanted to write about the last couple of months. The trenches of parenting aren't always fun (though it is sometimes!) or glamorous (ever!), but is challenging and making me grow and stretch...and try to see the humor in the ridiculousness.
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