A little woolgathering

• Baby bed-head is so cute. (Much more fun than my crazy morning hair.)
• I can't decide if I am glad that summer is hanging on so long or not. But if this means fall is non existent I will be very upset.
• I'm aware of a lack of anything deep on my blog. I would like that to change, but in some ways it is a reflection of my life right now.
  
• I finally got around to doing those dishes that I planned to do on Tuesday. Can I be proud of myself for that?
• Little girl's pajamas are way to expensive. I think I need to go yard-saling soon.
  
• I have not been a good girl when it comes to eating this week. But so far I have lost seven pounds! I really need to go grocery shopping so I can actually cook a meal sometime.
  
• I've been enjoying some much needed time with friends this week. Girl's night on Tuesday, lunch today, breakfast tomorrow. Sometimes it's encouraging just to have some girl talk.
• Excited to find out next week if I'll be getting a niece or nephew. (One of each works for me too.)
• Confession - I used the thesauras because "thoughts" seemed like too boring of a title. However, the definition of woolgathering is "indulging in wandering fancies and purposeless thinking". The second part is right on.
• Week of TV premier's. Wish I didn't love it so much, but I'm most excited about NCIS (and LA) and Survivor.
• We had gotten way to comfortable just mostly unpacked. I am soooo not motivated to finish painting, organizing, and emptying boxes. But one day it will happen.

This whole post is pretty pointless (aka purposeless). But I don't want you to feel like it was a waste of time or anything. So I am sandwiching the randomness between two cute pictures of Sophi. See? That's better.

Makes me wanna ...

This blog makes me wanna buy a t-shirt.

This pattern makes me wanna sew.

This blog makes me wanna be a photographer.

This post makes me wanna glaze our kitchen cabinets.

Just thought I'd share! :)

Wordless Wednesday

Won the war?

Just thought I would share some pictures of our wonderful (and large) living room now that it is mostly set up. (FYI - the window treatments are not correct yet.)



Love this clock I found (on clearance!) at Target. And note how baby equipment has totally taken over our home. lol

There are still two boxes in the corner that I need to unpack, but for now I'm excited about how it is coming together.


Oh, and this? This is Josh's doing. I definitely lost that battle. It doesn't look bad exactly, but I'm not ready to say it looks good either. We're thinking of calling him Ralph. But I won the war - because there's still one more of these that Josh left at his parents house.

Reunion of sorts

It's been a couple of weeks ago now, but we were so excited to get a visit from our friend Ebert!

Josh and Ebert have been friends since before I was even in the picture (or at Campbellsville for that matter). Then she and I got to be house buddies during my senior year at CU.

It didn't feel like so much time had passed, but we hadn't gotten to see each other since before I was pregnant. Sophi enjoyed meeting Ebie. :)


We went to Steak & Shake to get lunch with Emily, who also shared the house on Duffy Street, and her hubby Dusty. I fully intended to get pictures of us girls, but became distracted by the cuteness of my girl. (Sorry!)

She looks so mischievous here. :)

This was her first time in the high chair at a restaurant. She seemed to enjoy it. And the car that Dusty put together for her.

Her little wrinkled nose is so funny!

Wordless Wednesday

I love long weekends!

We are having an amazing weekend. And I am so glad that I do not have to go to work tomorrow. :) Josh went with his dad to Indy on Saturday to see some drag racing while Sophi and I stayed to do some house cleaning and grocery shopping. I know exciting right? But I am so proud of the progress we made (And to give credit where credit is due, Josh did help before he left at noon.)

Late that night my brother Matthew and his wife, Whitney arrived with their baby girl Emery. Emery is almost exactly six months older than Sophi. And of course, Sophi thinks that Emery is the greatest new toy ever. Emery seems a bit put off by Sophia's enthusiasm though. lol I am taking loads of pictures and will try to get some up when I get a chance to upload them to the computer.

Right now, I am sitting beside Sophi's crib as she tries her hardest not to fall asleep. :) Last night at bedtime, I was putting Sophi's clean clothes away in the dresser during this time and I turned around to see her standing up in her crib! (and grinning at me like she knew she had done something special.) Well, after just about having a heart attack, I decided the crib needed lowered - and now. She slept in the pack-and-play that was waiting for Emery to arrive and I tackled the crib. It got done, but I think next time that will be Daddy's job.

Mommy Guilt

So Josh and I were having a discussion about Mommy guilt. He didn't really know what I was talking about so I was trying to describe it to him. But there are just so many aspects that I didn't do a very good job. So, I decided to google it for a definition and found this blog post that explained perfectly. Not to mention it is hilarious. :)


The Laws of Guilt

Guilt (from Wikipedia): a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes - whether justified or not - that he or she has violated a moral standard and is responsible for that violation.

Parenting Guilt, also known as mommy guilt or daddy guilt (my definition): feeling like crap because you think you're not doing well enough as a parent.

After much scientific observation and research, after drawing from my own extensive experience with guilt, here are Three Universal Laws that I have developed to help parents understand and cope with this complex emotion:

I. Murphy's Law of Guilt: If there is anything out there that a parent can feel remotely guilty about, he/she will. Funny or sad, trivial or serious, there is always something. Here are some of mine:

* Eating my child's Halloween candy and telling her it all melted together.
* Throwing away her kindergarten drawings.
* Missing that crucial slamming of the door that broke my son's finger because I was in another room.
* Ignoring my daughter's complaints of a stomachache, only to find out the next day that she had food poisoning.
* Putting the telly on so that I could have an hour (or two) of uninterrupted blogging time.
* Telling myself that a McDonald's Happy Meal isn't so bad..... 3 days in a row.
* Buying my child candy at the grocery store to calm a temper tantrum.
* Wishing I could could spend time away from my kids.
* Wishing I could spend more time with my kids.

The list is endless. Those last two, by the way, are a perfect example of my next Law....

II. Law of Conservation of Guilt: The total amount of guilt in the parenting world remains constant. Guilt cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. For example....

* For every mom that feels guilty about buying her daughter too many American Girl doll clothes, there's another mom that feels guilty about not buying her daughter any AG doll clothes like all her friends have.

* For every mom that feels guilty about abandoning her kids to a nanny or daycare, there's another mom that feels guilty about yelling at them because they've been annoying her all day.

* For every dad that feels guilty about stepping in to resolve an argument between his son and another boy, there's a dad that feels guilty about leaving his son resolve the conflict on his own.

Actually, all those examples are personal ones. I've been on both sides of these situations and felt guilty both times.

III. Third Law of Guilt: For every feeling of guilt there is an equal and opposite way to absolve that guilt.

Sorry, here is where my theories break down. I have absolutely no idea how to get rid of that guilty feeling.

I think we all want to be the best parents we can be to our kids, and that guilt is a normal emotion we experience when we examine the parenting choices we make (or have made). We wonder if an alternate choice would have been better -- and sometimes we know it would, and admit we settled for second-best for various reasons -- and voila, here comes the guilt. Rather than getting rid of the guilty feeling, maybe we should just accept it for a while for the human emotion that it is. Then we should either resolve to do better or resolve to be more confident in our choices, and move on.