Mothership Confessional

I feel it is my duty as a preschool teacher and a mother to share about Love and Logic. This book is a game changer . As a preschool teacher, this was the training that gave me confident control of my classroom. The kids knew the rules, they knew the responses they would get from me, and they began to repeat my motto: "Friends who make good choices get to do fun things!!"  (They would say it so proudly; it always made my day!) All was good in preschool land. (Of course, there were still some days I was really, really  ready for 6:00!) So what is this Love and Logic, you ask? I will gladly summarize it, but the book will do a much  better job. It takes some time to get where it just rolls off your tongue and becomes second nature, but once it does...you will be astounded at how much less frustrated you will feel as the adult, and you will be amazed at how much easier it is to hand the control back to your child. And the kids will love it to...

Well, here we are, 11 months of Ava! It's been kind of a tough month as Ava has been sickly for most of it. She's been congested most of the time so she's a constant mouth breather and has a cough, a runny nose, and yucky sneezes that make us run for a wipe. Whatever it is, it needs to leave her alone! We are all tired of it! Her symptoms are gradually going away, it is just taking forrrevvvverrrr. She seems to be a lot better over this last week.  She is still our smiley, giggly girl, but with major attitude!  She has many preferences now and has learned how to communicate what she wants more and more! She gets upset when something doesn't work out the way she wants it to. Yelling, throwing herself back, and even biting her hand sometimes. Something tells me that we are going to have to help this child deal with frustration in the future! There are times when Chris and I will stop and look at each other because it sounds like she is saying phrases to us! L...

I've wanted to say something about Mother's Day today. But I just can't put the words together very well. First and foremost, I am filled with joy  and thankfulness  that I am getting to celebrate Mother's Day for the first time. Ava baby is such a blessing to us and I am so happy we have her in our lives. We waited and tried for her for a long time. It got harder and harder as each Mother's Day passed and I was still not pregnant. I have thought a lot today about the journey we went on to get our hearts' deepest wish. That brings me to my second point: today I am also filled with sadness  and grief for those friends who are still hoping for their turn to celebrate Mother's Day as well. In fact, that's what has mostly been on my mind today. I know the pain of infertility and I don't take this day for granted at all. There are so, so many women who want nothing more than to earn those stretch marks and to become a mother themselves. I am...

I can't believe it. I just can't!! Ava is 10 months old! And she's acting like such  a big girl! We thought it would take forever of her to crawl and pull up and sidestep. And then one week, it was like an explosion of milestones! She can do it all now, and she's so fast! She doesn't like her jumper as much, mainly because she can't get around! I have to stick her in there for dinner prep some nights before Chris gets home.  She's not happy in there for very long anymore! Her favorite thing is to walk around the house with help. She seeks out our hands and grabs them and starts smiling and squealing, pulls to standing, demanding for us to help her walk! She can now pull to stand, and then stand for a bit without holding onto anything. She's getting so brave! Last week she surprised me and crawled up a few steps! It gave me a heart attack because I didn't think she could do it! She has really become an adventurous little girl...

So, awhile back, I made a post about our first raised flower bed . We were first-timers. My vision came to life, and we were pretty proud of ourselves. For the sake of keeping this blog honest and about how life really  is, I'd like to update you on said flower bed. All the plants died. I was very sad. All my little bushes died off, slowly. One by one. In my defense, I got pregnant and I cared about nothing else in the world. Gardening was just not my priority, plus we had spent $200+ on this flower bed and we were not prepared to invest any more on it while trying to stock a baby room. So it sat. All dead and lonely. I pulled the bushes out and left the bed barren. Here's what happened: we had to dig out so much of this red Tennessee clay and backfill it, and we didn't account for the settling that would happen. I didn't pack down the dirt (mainly because we were tired of buying and hauling the insane amount of bags of dirt it ...

I started this blog after an important shift in my life. Many of my friends know of this shift, but I realized today that I have not ever written about it. A dear, dear friend of mine is walking the path that I was on many years ago. I pray everyday that hers does not end where mine did. I wrote her a letter today, and then I decided to share a little of my story with you. My mom had cancer. Had. My mom is free from cancer because now she walks with Jesus. My mom's battle with cancer was so random and unexpected. She was diagnosed in the summer of 2005. She had a canker sore that wouldn't go away. She feared she would lose her tongue, but she didn't. They found cancer in her neck so she had multiple lymph nodes removed and some surrounding tissue. She did radiation treatments and lost some hair at the top of her neck. After that, things were fine for awhile. Her doctor said this type of cancer was slow growing and would only appear in her neck and head areas. A ...

So I've been thinking a lot lately. About "swim suit season". And this new "mom body" that I have. Has anybody else been thinking about this?! Grab your 2nd cup of coffee, surround your kid(s) with all the toys they have, and attempt to sneak away to reflect with me for a few minutes. I delivered Ava 9 months ago. On paper, 9 months seems like such  a long time! But the reality is, is that it has flown by faster than I ever thought it would! I had planned on getting into a workout routine once I was feeling normal (hahaha normal... what is that?!) so that I could lose all my gained weight during pregnancy and get some muscle tone back. Well, that didn't pan out like I had hoped. Most of my weight simply fell off. I think I sweated and peed half of the weight off in the first week! But now I still have this extra 10 pounds on me with my muscles buried somewhere underneath. Boo. And it really frustrates and annoys me. B...