I am not typically a morning person. I feel like I need to rewrite that statement. I don't choose to rise early in the morning if there is no pressing need. Typically I like to wake up around 9-10am, do my thing, around 11pm get wired by some mysterious energy force, and then run around until 1 or 2 in the morning before I slowly crash and fade away to dreamland. This lifestyle has hampered my ability to get anything done. If I wake up around 9am and my kids wake up around 9am... and they go to bed at 11pm and I go to bed at 1am, that doesn't give me a lot of time to myself (not to mention any alone time with the hubby). Also, late night time to myself has ended up with me zoning out into internet land and facebook, versus doing something productive. Two mornings ago I needed to complete a project. I was working on it diligently, Aaron woke up and I wrapped him encouraging him to sleep while I finished working. Then Sadie woke up. God had raised the ante. I knew it was time to pull out the big guns in order to have the thirty minutes I needed to finish my work. I turned on the tv, gave the kids food and worked. This was the first time I ever intentionally allowed Aaron to watch tv. He was hooked. Look at the concentration on his face. It's amazing. This morning I rolled out of bed at 6:30am, gave Logan a hug as he prepared to go to work and I sat down at my computer. My book of prayers looked at me demanding attention. "Give me a few minutes," I whispered to the book. I turned on my monitor, checked my email, checked my facebook, felt guilty and started my morning prayers. BAM Aaron woke up. Ooookay. I got up, took my book with me, hugged a smiling Aaron, changed his diapers, finished my prayers, wrapped Aaron and sat down at my desk. I started writing and then Sadie woke up. Morning Plans. Dead. My new life plan of waking up early and seizing the day has been dragged outside, tied to four horses, split apart and made into ashes flying in the wind. On the upside, my kids are going to bed earlier, which has been a blessing. On the downside, I pass out by 11pm now. Tomorrow, a new day. As an optomist I
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Money is a touchy subject. Some people have lots and lots of money, some people don't have that much money and some people are in the middle. I'm one of those middle people. I'm not poor but I'm not rich. I have lots of bills to pay and a little spending money at the end of the month. Okay, confession time, I LOVE to SPEND SPEND SPEND money!!!!! Can you see the enthusiasm? It doesn't even have to be fancy stuff. I easily can spend $200 at Target or Walmart without blinking an eye on crap I don't particularly need. I call those stores impulse buys. Everything seems inexpensive until you get to check out and your credit card gets sucked dry. Amazon prime has been my enabler for years now. It doesn't get easier than sitting at your computer, clicking BUY, check out cart and you're done! The mailman brings you presents on a daily basis - the Jewish Santa! With horrible pregnancies and little kids, going to the store was a dreaded task I avoided. Instead I purchased toothpaste and everything else on Amazon. Recently visiting Target has become a summer activity. All of a sudden I realized I was easily paying 50% to 100% markup on all the toys I was buying the kids online. I feel slightly duped and taken advantage of by dear Amazon and am considering a strong breakup in the near future. Or at least, more comparative shopping. Unfortunately my shopping habits are biting me in the ass. In a bad way. Last month's credit card bill was not helped by a big car maintenance bill and a few other had-to-be-done stuff, but my impulse buys made the situation worse. I may have spent a bit-more-than-I-really-could-afford on a few fancy wraps. But let's not talk about that. Let's discuss happier thoughts! I have decided on a solution. Tracking money is half assed at best and not really my thing. No, instead, I am going to create a LIST. If I could have a running .gif of LIST flashing like a Vegas sign with lots of shiny sparkling lights around it, I would. Unfortunately that's out of my talent. But, I digress. I am going to make a list, a sort of written pinterest where I write down everything I want to buy. Here, let me start creating my list: 1. Range Rover 2. Porsche Cayenne Turbo S 3. UppyMama wrap 4. A bed so we can stop sleeping on mattresses on the floor That was off the top of my head in the first ten seconds of writing. I have a list, it lives in my head. I have come to a phD conclusion, if I continue to spend money on crap I don't need that accumulates in my house and I end up throwing away (giving away) every six months, I will never own anything I actually want on my list. So, that's it. No more impulse shopping. No more wasting money on kids toys that are forgotten within 2 days of purchase. I'm done. I live in a small house and it's filled with clutter. I have bins of toys that sit around taking up space and are never touched. I am making my stand against stuff. Against clutter. Against $200 shopping sprees at Target that are challenges to pay off when there were three visits in one week (and what the hell did I buy???) List here I come. It might be a novel's length, which is a different problem entirely, but it will be so much more satisfying in the long run (like a media console instead of that thing I am using to hold my dvd player.) Finally, with a list I can compare what the item costs versus what we have extra and viola, I can mark the item off the list, which is so ef·fi·cient /iˈfiSHənt/ of me! I am a people pleaser. I want everyone in the room smiling and at ease. It is an unfortunate insecurity I am working on. My sweet three year old daughter is NOT a people pleaser. In fact, she is the exact opposite. She cares little if anyone likes her or not. Coming back from a playdate she let me know that "some kids like her and some kids do not." I was floored.
When I was a kid (and in some days as an adult) I felt like every kid in the room did not like me. It was very difficult making friends. I preferred to read versus making friends. I was painfully shy and would hide under my dad's jacket at parties. I did not make friends easily. Sadie also takes her time making friends but she doesn't take it personally. She watches the room, examines the people around her and lets herself acclimate before associating with anyone. Recently my people-pleasing ways and Sadie's anti-people-pleasing ways have come to a head. I want Sadie to smile and say "hello" and "goodbye" to people we meet. If I am friendly, I want her to be friendly. Instead Sadie looks at most people with a stony expression and if they compliment her she makes a face and turns away her face away. My daughter should wear a shirt that says "DIVA: Do not speak to." It's like she's a member of Madonna's entourage. I hate the way she behaves but I accept it. I sort of laugh nervously, shrug, mumble something about kids and move on. All of this behavior has been acceptable; however, recently, we have come across a bigger problem. People want to touch Sadie. Older women especially want to touch her hair or her arm and she freaks out. Sadie starts to screech in frustration and make faces. Yesterday an older lady was helping me find a pair of glasses. When we were done she tried touching Sadie's face while mentioning how cute she found Sadie. I did not know what to do while Sadie screeched and turned her head other than mumble something about kids and gently prod Sadie along helping her avoid the woman. This has happened on more than one occasion. I don't want to be rude and tell people to not touch my kid. I also want to support Sadie and her desire to not be touched. This is becoming an issue I don't have a real solution to unfortunately. I have a confession to make. My children don't have a sleep schedule. Or a life schedule. Or any kind of schedule at all. Everyday is different.
I used to relish the freedom. I am beginning to see the wisdom in having my kids wake up at the same time every day, nap the same time and go to bed at the same time. I think this is what people call "routine." I am craving routine. Month after month of Sadie deciding to go to sleep somewhere between 9 and 11pm - and then wake up whenever she wants to, is starting to take its toll. I am exhausted mentally and emotionally. There never is any downtime in my life. About three months ago I started taking guitar lessons. Between two kids, cooking, laundry and washing dishes it is almost impossible to find ten minutes a day to practice guitar. There is always someone demanding something from me. I think that's the hardest part about being a parent. Okay, the hardest hurdle is the sleep deprivation torture that occurs for the first year to two years. That is grueling. Sadie didn't sleep for the first two years of her life. My husband and I finally began to sleep through the night once she weaned at 17 months. Well, that's not really true. We started sleeping through the night once she moved out of our bed... when Aaron moved in. Aaron spent the first three months sleeping 4-5 hours in his swing and then the early morning hours in my bed. Typically he would wake up twice for 30-45 minutes and nurse and then he would sleep soundly again. Upon second thought I am realizing my husband started sleeping through the night once ninja Sadie stopped sleeping next to him but I don't think I have had a solid 8 hours of sleep since I became pregnant with my first. That is truly a crazy thought to me. No wonder my face is melting before I have even hit 30. I think with the next kid, I am going to have him or her sleep in the crib at night. I am starting to really resent our current sleeping arrangement. Sadie will only go to sleep at night if someone is in the room with her; otherwise she cries and yells from the room for an hour or so. Her mattress is on the floor right next to our mattress and Aaron's crib is in place of a side-rail on the other side of the bed. There is no space from the kids. I know, we decided to have children. I love my children. But my goals and my dreams are sidelined completely by any lack of structure in my life. I'm feeling a very strong need to develop my writing. I have wanted to write a book since I realized I could be a writer. I think I can love my children and still have them nap and go to bed at a consistent time. I don't know how to do it but I will try. My sanity deserves it. I have become obsessed with baby wearing wraps. This is an obsession bordering on obscene. About two months ago I was hanging out with some mommas after an ICAN meeting when one of the ladies mentioned a babywearing group. I found the idea to be intriguing and asked her to send me an invite on facebook.
I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into. I wore Sadie in my ergo for the first two years of her life. I love my ergo. It is gray and has pretty stars on it. At the time I didn't see a lot of other moms wearing the same design. It was an easy way to carry Sadie around the streets of San Diego. Little did I know that I was a "babywearing" momma. I was actually part of an elite group of women that carried their babies. I certainly had no idea there was a facebook group specially for these women to trade wraps and become friends. Okay, I am getting ahead of myself. Wraps? What are these wraps? When I was pregnant with Sadie I began to research what I needed to buy to survive as a parent. I read the 8th edition of Baby Bargains religiously. In the book they discussed baby carriers, Ergo carriers winning their final approval. Online I began to search for baby carriers and stumbled upon the Maya wrap. It was beautiful. The wrap I swooned over was red with multiple orange lines, it was bright and daring. I decided not to purchase the wrap because I had no idea how to use it. The wrap appeared cumbersome, a monstrosity of fabric that would swallow me whole. Every once in a while I would think longingly back on the wrap and sigh, not realizing there was a whole world of wraps out in the world and people who were willing to teach me how to use them. I purchased my ergo instead, one of the few purchases I made before Sadie entered the world. Around 4 weeks postpartum I placed Sadie carefully into the ergo infant insert and wore her around the house. As they say, the rest was history. Well, until about a month ago. A friend wore a wrap to our playdate. It was pretty with green and yellow patterns. She saw my interest and offered me to try on her wrap. I was hesitant but willing. My friend and another friend who happened to be there encouraged me to use the wrap and wear my son in it. In moments he was asleep. I was intrigued. My other friend offered to add me on facebook to the Babywearing 102 group and TheBabyWearingSwap. I came home, logged on to facebook and spent the next week confused. There were so many wraps. I googled wraps and found blogs listing dozens of wrap companies. I felt like Alice in the rabbit hole. After a week of research I felt less comfortable with my wrap knowledge than when I started. The facebook wrap swap overwhelmed me. Women posted wraps for sale using strange abbreviations and terms to describe pieces of fabric. Did I mention the insane prices? Hundreds of dollars! I thought these women were nuts. Until one day I saw the most beautiful image on my facebook feed. It was a wrap for sale. My obsession began with some hearts, a few trees and two contrasting colors. I wanted this wrap. I lusted for it. (In case you're curious, here's the wrap.) All of a sudden my eyes were open to the constant "churning" (buying and selling wraps on the swap) that these women participated in. It made sense. At anywhere from $150 to $400 a pop it made sense to buy a wrap, see a wrap you wanted more, to sell the previous wrap and buy the new one. Or, as some women were prone to do, to buy multiple wraps and hoard them all like a dragon with her jewels. Soon I understood the photos of multiple wraps beautifully folded and stacked on one another on Stash Saturday. I needed to buy wraps. All of them. I needed 100% cotton wraps, linen wraps, bamboo wraps, hemp wraps and mixtures of all of these materials. I needed to buy pink wraps, green wraps, yellow wraps, starry wraps... I couldn't sleep at night. I spent hours at my computer staring at the swap admiring the many varieties of wraps. Then I stumbled upon Madame GooGoo Conversion wraps. She is a seamstress/artist in Poland who takes your beautiful wraps and converts them into Mei Teis, half buckles or full buckle carriers. After a restless night I brought up the obsession with my husband. He suggested contacting Madame GooGoo and getting a carrier made for me. I wrote the email and pressed send, my heart on my sleeve, my eyes teary with desire. The next morning I sang with joy. I had received an email from Madame GooGoo's assistant. I couldn't believe it. I was actually going to get my own carrier made by none other than Madame GooGoo. I responded immediately and waited for a response. Weeks went by, the flame of my desire slowly dying as I learned more about wraps and carriers. Yesterday morning I received an email from Madame GooGoo's assistant asking if I was still interested in having a wrap conversion made (a carrier made from a wrap of your choosing). I slept on the decision and realized this morning I was going to pass on the opportunity. Although Madame GooGoo makes the most beautiful carriers I have ever seen, there have been several wraps for sale on the swap sold by women disappointed by the size and fit of their new carrier. I can't handle that kind of upset. Also, after purchasing way too many wraps I know I need to cut back. Several attempts to sell my new wraps for what I paid for them and to cover shipping has ended poorly. Alas churning is not for me! On the upside, I have found myself lusting after a Tula wrap conversion. This is good news for me, not such good news for my husband :) Links To Encourage Your Wra The Baby Wearing Swap https://www.facebook.com/groups/thebabywearingswap/ Babywearing 102 https://www.facebook.com/groups/Babywearing102/ Tula Love https://www.facebook.com/groups/100769783399025/ Kokadi Babywearing https://www.facebook.com/groups/637271839623448/ Ocah Carriers https://www.facebook.com/groups/36623659917/ Madame GooGoo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Madame-Googoo-baby-carriers/145687608816099 |
Meet the Blogger!
I'm a mom. A writer. A lover of good fantasy. A proponent of nursing when possible. A birth advocate. I am absolutely horrible at keeping my house clean or the dishes washed or the laundry done. I strongly believe in women having a positive birth. When we start to respect women's rights to birth the way they want, we can start to treat women as equal people in this world. Archives
February 2016
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