This Minivan Life

Often I hear stay at home moms criticized of being lazy, and I am going to just throw it out there, not too long ago (okay maybe a decade) I may or may not have said similar things. It could be argued that today I am being lazy, seeing as how it is 9:30 and I am writing this blog post while my son feeds bath toys play kitchen food at my feet, but let’s ignore that. Some people say stay at home moms are lazy, I have heard some say things like “why cant she take a shower”, “why cant she still look put together””, “ohh… some of her dinner are from a box, shouldn’t they be homemade, she has the time”. First off I would like to politely tell those people to shove it, okay that wasn’t polite, but I would like to say it in a niceish voice. And then I would kindly like to invite them to be me for a day. I will say that as far as stay at home parenting goes I probably have it pretty easy- I have 1 kid, and he is a good kid, he can entertain himself sometimes and he is so funn

As mentioned in previous posts we got Michael a play kitchen for christmas and some food to go with it. Most of the food looks realistic but fake enough that even an 18 month old can tell the difference (usually the item is just smaller than the real version), but there are a couple of things that are tricky- namely the chips. First off, not sure why the fake food company included chips, come on teach kids  healthy eating habits (okay I could have bought the significantly more expensive wooden healthy version), and even more than that I am not sure why I didnt remove the chips and throw them in the trash where they belong before giving the set to him but whatever I didnt. Anyway so there are three chips (maybe just 2 now) that look almost exactly like Pringles. Mikey has never had Pringles so he doesnt know that but he does know they are chips (I told him). Because these chips are just the right size for someone his age and just the right thickness that one might think they could actua

 I realized that I forgot to post about our Christmas in Texas on this blog. Not that the world is going to end, but if and when I get my act together and print the blog out I might be sad that we missed Christmas. As I posted earlier we spent Christmas in California with my family. If I was a kind mom I might have hauled all the presents there and then hauled them back. I am not that kind, and some of the gifts were big, so I ggot some presents for California, most of which stayed there for later vists, and the presents for home. We got home late on New Year’s Eve and celebrated on New Years. Because we had no food (being gone 2 weeks tends to do that) someone had to venture to the store early in the morning and buy some. I got up and was there by 6am. Let me tell you, if you ever wonder if Walmart is empty, try going at 6:30am on New Year’s Day, you will be alone. I think there were 6 cars in the parking lot. If you wonder if the shelves will be well stocked

I love to read, I really do, but when I read I like to read the whole book at once. This is okay since I read fast, but kinda bad if it turns out that I pick up a book I really really cant put down. I have read two of these books this week. One was good, but one I could sorta put down. The second... well I couldnt put it down as easily. The first book was "The Secret Lives and Sorrows of Josephine B." It was good, it is a fictional account of the life of Josephine Bonaparte from approximately age 15 until she marries Napoleon around age 31. IT was good, interesting, humnaized her. Taught me a lot I didnt know, like that she was married to an important figure during the French Revolution prior to her marriage to Napoleon. It was a bit depressing I must say. The fictional element was good, but she had a rough life and I think it is hard to disguise that. Anyway it is the first in a series, I might read the other 2, but I might not- though I would recommend this first book.

Brian has been working a LOT lately. This is his busy season, so sadly he isnt around much. Poor Bri, he does an awesome job but we do miss his tons around here. He doesnt get to see Mikey much, or really at all in person, during the week, but this being Friday he came home before Mikey went to bed. I should have filmed Michael's reaction when he walked through the door, he was thrilled, really that doesnt even begin to describe it. Mikey loves his daddy to put it mildly and misses him so much when he is at work, so he was so excited. See that smile, and he is looking at the camera/computer, oh man. So glad they could spend a little bit of time together today!

 My sister-in-law wrote a darling post about staying in the picture the other day, inspired by this article  and it got me thinking, well first looking. First off the premise of both her post and the article is that moms need to be in the family pictures too. They need to step out from behind the camera even if they feel they are a bit soft around the middle, have been too busy to shower, and generally think they look yucky. So I started looking through our photos, there are a TON of photos of Mikey by himself, lots of Mikey and Brian, but just a few of me and Mikey. So this week I have tried to make and effort that when I pull out the camera to try and get in the picture too. This hasnt been super successful, most of the pictures have ended with Mikey crying because we are trying to stop him from doing something dangerous to take a picture (those will be posted later), and some have just had the tops of our heads (not so good at the photography thing in general let alone holding a

So I have this idea, I think it is brilliant, and I am really hoping someone reads this and 1. tells me someone has already done it and where I can access it, or 2. someone steals my idea and does it close enough to me that again I can access it. Ok so here is the idea, first let me describe the situation. You are a parent with small children and it is a cold/hot/rainy/snowy/windy day/, someone is contagious/your kid fell asleep in the car/your kids are having a meltdown and taking them out of the car and struggling with the 5 point harness might kill both of you and you need milk from the grocery store. Normally you would try and get it at a better time, send a spouse, live without, etc, but you can't because you need milk (or bread or eggs, pick an essential item), so you have an internal debate... am I going to risk it, am I going to pull them out of the car, run in, find the item, wait in line, and come back and struggle to get everyone back in or are we going to live without

As a parent, one of my great hopes is that my son will end up smarter and more successful than his parents, and daily I think that is going to happen... and soon. I know every parent thinks their kid is a genius, and I am not saying that Michael is going to cure cancer at age 5, but I am pretty sure I have one smart cookie on my hands. Daily I find myself thinking something like this “ok friend how did you make that connection?”   He is a tiny (well not so tiny) sponge, just soaking up information and making connections. For example, we spend a bit of time video chatting with my family, they are good to just chat with mikey or wait for him to come back into view and we appreciate it greatly. The other day he picked up a phone (that wasn’t on) and had the following pretend conversation “Hello!, O Muggle, chat? Ok, bye bye”. Most conversations with my family go like this “Hey, do you want to video chat? 5 minutes, ok. Bye”. He has been listening, picking up words,

Today I had one of those moments, you know those moments when you just flip out for no reason. In fairness, I do think I had a bit of a reason to be angry, but even as I was angry the rational side of me was saying something like "seriously, you are getting upset at this". Let me elaborate. The internet at our house is... well sub par at best, if you have ever been here you know exactly what I am talking about. So we have lived with this internet (expensive and awful) for 3 years because there was only one service provider, but recently... well recently another option became available. So we planned to switch, and finally they were able to come out and install the equipment necessary to have different internet. Here is where I need to first mention that it snowed yesterday and they were supposed to come but we politely asked for no one to be on the roof in the snow, and I should also mention they gave me a window of time when they would show up. Ok the guy did come during the

Over the past 18 months a few things have changed around here. I have traded in my business suits and dress up clothes for jeans, sweatshirts, and yes even shorts in the summer. I have traded in my long meeting and class filled days for days filled with playdough, stories, and songs. And yes even the subject of my blog posts has changed considerably over that time. I wouldn’t change it. I can 100% say that this, all this craziness, all the mess, the carrying cars and cheese sticks in my purse, having conversations about going potty, driving a minivan, and changing diapers- this is what I want to be doing. I had my moment to do something else, it was great, liked it a ton, but this, hanging out with my sweet son, is what I am supposed to do now. Why talk about this today? Well today we went to music class. 18 months ago I wouldn’t have been able to picture myself in a music class- singing, marching, puppets? Not so much. If you know me, you know that this is agai