on being invited over... with a toddler.

So recently we were invited over by two different families, both have children who are older with their youngest being in middle school, both have known my family and I for a very long time and both invited us over for dinner... toddler and all. In both situations I was dreading the event.

 You see there is a difference between bringing a baby over to someone's home and bringing a toddler. A baby just sits there and can be passed from person to person and is fairly content with whomever is holding them as long as they are being rocked. A baby is fairly containable, you just have to be quick about catching the spit up before it hits the couch and mom is carrying dinner so they are happy.

A toddler is different. A toddler want to run, wants to explore, a toddler knows the difference between their parents and a, albiet well meaning, relative who wants to hold them. Toddlers also get unnerved fairly easily,  for no particular reason and it can take them a while to warm up to new situations and people.  A toddler is fairly impossible to contain and the glass and valueables in the home are in jeopordy of being toppled in the whirlwind that is your child until you leave. It's no longer about being quick enough to catch the spit up but anticipating the launching of every item that you place before them to eat. And speaking of eating they now eat real food, and since toddlers now have an independance that causes them to decide firmly what they will and will not eat and even though they ate a whole plate of pasta last night no amount of prodding or begging will get them to open their mouths today, you cannot possible bring 50 different options of dinner for them to pick and choose from, so you must hope that they will eat something that is provided. Along those same lines is the question of where they will sit and "eat" their dinner. You can't bring a highchair with you, so you imagine trying to balance a child on your lap who is only content when you let him play with the food on your plate while attempting to shove food into a moving target that may or may not be rejected and therefore thrown across the room. Oh and try eating yourself in the midst of all of that.

Like I said... I was not looking forward to it.

At the first dinner, it went pretty much exactly as I had dreaded. There was no place for my little guy to sit so he was perched on my lap as described above, the food was not toddler friendly and he was completely thrown off by a room full of people that he did not know well and who wanted him to hug them. There was nothing for him to play with and so he was bored and felt out of place and therefore crabby. It was a LONG night.

The second place, I was anticipating much of the same. Between the two family's my child had seen the first more often so, in light of the previous experience, that didn't bode well for the next family. Of the two dinners I thought the first would have been much easier to bring my kid to. 

However, the second dinner was quite a different experience than I expected. When we arrives they brought us into their family room which they had completely child proofed, and they had a basket of toys for my little guy. Upon seeing the toys my little guy got very excited and practically leaped from my arms to go and play. He was 100% more comfortable and happy because he had some where that he could be and things that he could play with. He had no trouble warming up to the group. They made sure that there were things at dinner that he could eat and even had a booster seat set up for him. It was so nice.

The difference between the two experience was as simple as a little time and thought. It was as simple as realizing that they had invited a toddler and doing a little extra to accomadate their guest, and for that I was SO grateful. It didn't take much just a basket of toys and a booster seat saved from when their kids were little but it made all the difference to us, and from this experienc I have vowed to remember. Remember what it is like to have a toddler, and to worry about them wrecking someones home. I am going to put away a basket of toys and a booster seat after my kids are grown for just such occasions. So that when a family with little kids comes to my house I can make them feel welcomed too.

on being old...

My husband took me to a Taylor Swift concert last night. This is where I realized that I am old. Gone are the days when screaming at the top of my lungs for 3 hours straight sounds like fun. I was done with the noise level about 5 minutes after we arrived and by the end of the night I just wanted to scream "SHUT UP!" Also the fact that the average age in the room was probably 11. Which just makes you feel like you accidently stepped back into junior high. Although I guess I should have expected as much. My only concelation is that with 7 years seperating us my husband is older!

Another note: I am so tired today from staying out so late that my child is in the other room emptying our entire dvd collection onto the floor and I am trying to care enough to stop him.... Nope too tired, I'm old.

on decorating for spring...

So a month ago we had a girls night and I started to make my Spring blocks and I am finally finished. I had issues putting on the embellishments and I ended up ripping off two of the letters because I didn't like where I had placed them, but they are finally done.

the other side says family but don't be surprised if it takes me another month to finish it.

I also made a modge-podged a bird house to match...

on taking time away...

So I have been saying for months that I would like to go on a vacation, a vacation minus one small child so that it actually feels like a vacation. I said this before we went with my husbands family to Hawaii. I said that we would have a much more relaxing time without him and I was dreading a 5 1/2 hour flight with my EXTREMELY active toddler. My husband said that he would do fine on the flight, besides it was a family vacation and he was afraid that I would have a hard time being away from the kid for that long. So, we ended up taking the kid and having a fun but not so relaxing vacation. On the way home, as our child had an emotional meltdown for all 200 passagers on the airplane to enjoy, my husband turned to me and said those three beautiful words "you were right".

Well a few weeks ago my husband surprised me by planning a trip to Santa Barbara for a night, just the two of us. It was going to be a short trip but I was SO excited. The day came and I put my child down for a nap gave my mother a 6 page list of everything she might possibly need to know in the next 24 hours (ridiculous... yes but it was the first time I left my child overnight and I don't know, I just started writing and the next thing I knew it was 6 pages...I don't know what happened), and I got into my car eagerly anticipating my mini vacation.

However, as I drove further and further away from my baby, my heart started to ache and my throat clenched as I tried to hold back tears and not arrive to pick up my husband from his office sobbing, and I knew that HE was right. I would have never made it through Hawaii. As I drove I tried to make sense of it. I was still so excited to spend time away, I did not want to take him on the trip, and I knew that my mother would smother him with love and attention... so what was my problem.

 This is what I finally came up with. I knew I would miss him, but I could handle that because I knew that I would be back soon. What I couldn't handle was the thought that HE would miss me. That he want me and look for me and I wouldn't be there and that he wouldn't understand. He doesn't have a concept of time or an understanding of leaving and coming back. Which is shown evertime my husband tries to leave for work and our child gets SO upset. He can't quite grasp the concept that although someone leaves they will come back. And that is what was killing me. I was afraid that he would notice that I was gone and not understand why or that I would be back.

We had a great time. We ate out and didn't have to worry about what the kid would eat, we walked around a lot with out having to push a stroller or haul half our house around with us, we went shopping without an impatient child in tow. It was great!

I realized though that we are in FULL baby mode. The whole time I kept catching myself planning out things that the baby would like to do. I saw millions of parks and places that he would have loved to run around. Every time we sat down to eat we seemed to be surrounded by birds (which is one of the only things that my child will watch for hours). And at 8 at night my husband and I were exhausted but we fought the erge to just go to bed since this was a baby free vacation with no bedtimes that we had to follow. We went to bed by 10:30, I still didn't sleep through the night in fact I found myself waking up listening for a cry that would never come, and we still woke up by 8 am. We are parents what can we say.

The next morning I called my mom to see how her night went and she said that the baby had slept through the night. Then she told me a story that she thought I would find cute and funny. She said that he had trouble going to sleep, when she laid him down and he stood right up and said "ma ma". (He doesn't say "ma ma" that often, he prefers saying "da da" and has for the past 10 months.)  I barely got off the phone before I started crying. I had this perfect picture in my head of exactly how that story had played out because that was exactly what I had been worrying would happen. I knew that he had wanted me, had needed me because only that would have prompted him to ask specifically for me. And suddenly I didn't need time away from him any more. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to go home to my little baby to hold him and have him know that I was there.

on motherhood...

So it's 10:30 and I am already home from church. It was one of those Sundays, so I finally just gave up and saved everyone elses eardrums and brought my kid home. And this made me reflective on motherhood.

I will start out by saying it is hard! (the only people who will tell you otherwise are your parent because they want you to give them more grandchildren), and it does not make you a bad mother to admit this, because we are all thinking it. 

This job truely is the hardest but most rewarding one. I was foolish enough to pride myself with being prepared for motherhood. I had been a nanny to two sets of twins so I knew the general ups and downs of raising a child and although I knew it would not be easy I felt prepared, especially since I was only having one. I was not prepared. There is nothing that can prepare you for this.

It is such an emotional rollercoaster. You feel like you are never doing enough, never able to give you child the time and attention that he needs and keep up a house, and make dinner and.... a million other things. You simulaniously feel overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to do and guilty that you cannot physically do more. You feel guilty for the times that you do not handle the pressure well, the times that you snap and are not as patient as you should be.

And you worry... oh how you worry. You worry when they are sick, you worry that they don't eat enough, drink enough, sleep enough. You worry that you don't give then enough time, attention and love. You worry that you will do something wrong, and they won't grow up to be strong and faithful. You worry about the world and how its slow degredation will effect them, and if you will be able to protect them from it. You worry about the time when they are grown and leave and how you will ever be able to let them go.

I should also mention that as a mother you cry... a lot, and thats ok too.

Although I have only been a mother for a short time I have started to compose a list of things that I know now, things that I am trying to be better about doing that make life a little easier...

Don't compare yourself

I do this ALL the time. There is a women in my ward who has 5 kids the youngest of which is 7 months, and she is the relief society president. Every Sunday as I come racing into church with my hair wet pulling my kids shoes on as I go completely frazzled, I look up to her row and there she sits with all of her children dressed, ontime and sitting quietly. She seems to always be calm and collected with every hair in place, as she makes the rounds, chatting and laughing. And I think to myself "what is wrong with me?" I have one kid, she has five and she is the one that has everything together... how does that make sense?

 Then a few weeks ago I saw a stroller in the hallway, and when sunday school started here comes this women into the chapel pushing her youngest in the stroller. As she passed me she turned and said "I told my husband last week that I had to find someway to get this kid to sleep at church. He is driving me crazy!" And suddenly I felt SO much better. No one gets off free and clear from the struggles of parenthood. As you have more children you just are able to accept it and pretend better than the rookies. So don't compare yourself to other mothers because chances are they are just putting on a brave face out in public.

Life may not be perfect but it is full of perfect moments

There are days when I keep a mental list of all of the naughty things that my kid has done that day so when his father gets home I can illustrate just how rotten my day was. However, in my mission to mentally document the bad things I have completely overlooked those great moments. Every day has a perfect moment, a moment that we can look at and think "wow, I have the best life!" Now if you are having a bad day you might think "There was not one good minute of my entire day" but that is because you were not looking for one. A perfect moment could be as simple as watching your child sleep peacefully, or having him smile at you or cuddling with him because he is not feeling well. And sometimes a perfect moment can come from a not so perfect one, for more on that read on...

In life you have two choices you can laugh or you can cry... choose to laugh.

Kids are kids and they will do things that make you crazy, and you can either get upset or you can laugh, and in my experience it always turns out better if you just laugh. Just realize that at some point they are going to unroll an entire roll of toilet paper, they are going to get into something sticky and smear it all over themselves, they will empty multiple boxes of cereal on your newly cleaned kitchen floor, and the day will come when you will peek in on your child who is supposed to be napping and find that he has removed his diaper and is prancing around his crib naked. Yes, these have all happened to me and I laughed. Because how can you not when you ask your child where his diaper went and he proudly points over the edge of the crib. And all of these moments that I could have been annoyed have become fond memories.

Enjoy every stage of life... and if you can't enjoy it accept it
When you have a baby it seems that you are always waiting for the next thing to happen. You think "oh I can't wait until he can... smile, laugh, roll over, sleep better, crawl, walk, talk..." and in the process of looking forward to the next thing you miss out on the things they are doing now. Looking back I miss those nights when I would nurse him and he would fall asleep in my arms. My little guy now refuses to fall asleep while being held and if I could go back I would ignore the fact that it was 2 am and I was exhausted and I would just hold him and enjoy the fact that he wanted me to.
The second part of this one is harder for me. I have been blessed with an extremely active and independent little guy. The fact is that he is not the world's best shopping buddy and he has no intrest in sittting still for  three even one hour at church, and even though I know this about him I get frustrated when he can't handle multiple stores in a row or multiple hours at church. But that is my life, and the other day it hit me as we were once again trying to attempt a shopping trip with Daddy and my little guy was so restless and didn't understand why he couldn't get out and touch all of the breakables. So I took him out of the store and let him run around outside, and at that moment I was the best Mommy in the world. He was SO excited and was running and laughing and babbling about everything he saw. And after all what will I really remember from that day... the stuff that I didn't get to look at that I probably wouldn't have bought anyways or the squeals of my kid as he chased a bird.

Other "accept it" moments come as your child grows and needs to learn things by trail and error ie. self feeding which I am not a fan of. It was so much easier and cleaner to just shovel the food in his mouth. But they want to be independent and so you had over the fork and grimace as he grabs a hand full of peanut butter and uses it to style his hair. Or when you are trying to make dinner and your little one is needy and won't let go of your leg. It's ok to let dinner wait and hold your baby. And who cares if people are coming over and you want everything to be ontime, guess what you have a kid and sometimes things just don't happen but this is the stage of life that you are in.

Don't worry about the things that you cannot change
Kids will get sick but then they get better, sometimes they don't eat or sleep and there is no explanation for it at all. Take life as it comes, realize that although family trips won't be perfect, temper tantrums may happen at embarassing times, and that you cannot possibly plan for every incident that may occur. Worrying never helps and only makes you dread the outing. Also, it does you no good to worry about paying for college while you are still paying for diapers. Things never turn out as you expect them to anyways.

Don't be so hard on yourself
At the end of the day when you go into your baby's room to check on him before you go to bed, take a minute to just watch him sleep. And realize that although you may not feel like you did everything you could have that day, your child feels safe and loved and is able to sleep peacefully knowing that you are there. And although the laundry may be still in the dryer and there are dishes still stacked in the sink, you took care of  what was really important that day. You played with your child, you taught him and showed him that he is loved and cared for. And thats what it means to be a mother.

on what she really means...

I found this on another blog and I had to laugh. No wonder men think women are hard to understand, they take words so literally and we have different definitions...

1.FINE: This is the word women use to end an argument, it does not mean that she agrees with you, or that she is happy with the results of the arguement. It just means that she is just done talking to you.


2.FIVE MINUTES: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3.NOTHING: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4.GO AHEAD: This is a dare, not permission. Don't do it!

5.LOUD SIGH: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh mean that you have just done something stupid and you will soon be arguing about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing)

6.THAT'S OK: This is one of the most dangerous statements a woman can make to a man. That's OK means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7.THANKS: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add in a clause here- This is true, unless she says 'thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome').

8. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, I GOT IT: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'what's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to #3.

on 10 reasons I'm kind of wierd...

I stole this idea from a friend of mine, who I learned really is kind of wierd (j/k ash) and now you can see that I am too!

1. There have been quite a few times, that I wonder why I have a splitting headache at the end of the day and realize that I have had nothing to drink, all day long. Not water, or juice, or soda... nothing... all day.  I know, I know it horrible! and many people have tried to change me. But I honestly just forget, sad as it sounds.

2. My husband is the cleaner and organizational one in our house. Growing up my room was quite literally a disaster area, so the fact that you can come over to my house and actually see the carpet shows how far I have come. I have learned to keep a clean house since being married to him, but a wierd thing about him is that he enjoys cleaning and organizing. And will reclean a clean kitchen just for the fun of it.

3. I hate tomatoes, but I love ketchup and salsa. A fact that confuses my husband.

4. On that note, I LOVE sauce, of any kind. The phrase "would you like some meat with your sauce?" was coined with me in mind.

5. Growing up I hated eggs, popcorn and hot chocolate. Now I like eggs and hot chocolate, but still no popcorn, not even at a movie theater.

6. I am double jointed, this means that (with my palm facing upwards) I can bend my thumb all the way back, to touch my wrist. This makes me a hit with primary kids.

7. I never went to a single highschool football game. That's how anti-sports I was growing up, those of you who know the sports nut I'm married to, know that I am now making up for lost time.

8. ( I warned you that this was a girls only blog) I got my period back exactly 6 weeks after I had my baby, and I was nursing him. Most women are saved from there period if they nurse but not me. This makes me both wierd and angry.

9. I have the oddest nicknames, that my family uses more often then my real name. My dad calls me Boodles, my mom calls me little bird and my brother calls me schwa. Growing up I had many a confused person call me on the phone, ask my brother to talk to me and hear him call "Hey Schwa the phones for you!"

10. I LOVE camping. This is semi-wierd for a girl because most of us do not enjoy sleeping on the floor, being dirty all the time because you just can't help it since dirt is everywhere, and mostly because of community bathrooms and showers which can get pretty nasty. But I love it anyways.

Well, those are 10 reasons I'm kind of wierd. Feel free to add any reasons you think I'm wierd but be nice please.