My Baby Lady is 4.58

Sary you are 4.58 years old.  I realized how nice it was to pause and think about Piper when she was 18 months so I decided to devote this blog to you.  At this moment you are suffering from your first heartbreak.  Your best friend Nick has relocated with his family for a year to Shanghai.  You are quick to remind me he is not your best friend you are going to marry him.  I remind you daddy is my best friend. 

 

You tackle life with joy and tenacity.  If there is an event you must attend, if there is a party you must go, if there is an extracurricular you want to be enrolled.  You love ballet, soccer, Giggle Bytes, Fit Kids, swimming and gymnastics.  But you get tired and like mommy and daddy you need help choosing which events and activities to participate in.  We will not be doing classes on Sunday anymore because as it should be church trumps everything in your life.  Even a ballet recital which you loved at the time but were upset that you didn't get to go to church.  "It was not my choice to miss church!" It is so hard for mommy now that you know your schedule.  Because even though your choice is church when you missed swimming for choir you cried immediately after coming off the stage.  So loudly that several people thought your friend Donavan had "done something to you." 

Your first lesson in choices was when you had to choose between Giggle Bytes and Fit Kids because the are both year round classes at Horizon.  Horizon Child Development Center is your "school"  you love your teachers and you have so many friends there.  You have gone to Horizon since you were 9 weeks old.  You had babies you liked and babies you didn't like from the very beginning.  It is amazing to me the depth of the friendships you have made.  At the same time the girl you used to talk about all the time Emma moved and you never mentioned her again.  But then again you always had Nick.  Now you have Trisha since Nick is away.

My favorite thing about my 4.58 year old girl is that I am your favorite person.  I am the center of your world.  You get upset when I have to go to work early and I do not wake you up.  I love that we get to snuggle and talk every night at bedtime.  I miss my quiet evenings watching TV with Daddy, but I know that this is only temporary. If I don't listen to all the things that are a big deal to you now you won't come to me with the big things when you grow up.  You are growing up way too fast, already. 

 

Baby girl 18 months today

Piper you are 18 months old.  You have become such a unique little girl.  You have a very expressive face.  I am the expert on what each of your faces mean.  Except your scrunchy face.  One day Sary asked me "What does that face mean?" I couldn't tell her I knew it meant you had strong feelings but were you: frustrated, determined or concentrating?  I am glad Maria captured your scrunchy face in your portrait.

Everyone says you look just like Sary.  You two do look a lot alike but you are such a wild child you are uniquely different from your sister.  I cannot turn my back without you climbing the stairs behind me.  I always thought toilet latches were silly until you came into my life, now all toilet-seats are down and bathroom doors are closed.  As daring as you can be, you still get overwhelmed in crowds.  Like the day in the picture the kids were running in and out of the fountain at Fairfax corner and you were happy to watch from your stroller.

Even though you are not a big fan of crowds, you are Sary's #1 fan.  If she is laughing in another  -you laugh.  If she makes a funny face you think it is hysterical.  If she takes a toy you want from you though you do not take it lying down.  You make your scrunchy face and reach over and grab a handful of her hair.  You don't let go until she screeches if she laughs at you, you pull harder.  But if Sary is throwing a fit and crying you will cry too. 

 Piper you are a strong, determined, little girl and I am so excited to learn more about who you are as you grow and learn to express yourself with words and not just faces and hair pulls.  At the same time I want to hold you forever as my baby girl and smell the back of your little neck and kiss your sweet little feet.

Will the real Domestic Goddess WIP please stand up?!?

I hate poems about writing poems.  I don't mind stories about writters i.e. Misery.  I am writting this blog about writting a blog.  I think mostly because this blog lacks focus.  I had originally envisioned it to be about my transformation from childless wife who hardly ever cooked into a mom that made wonderfully delicious and nutritions meals and kept the house car and kids spic and span.  Then I woke up.  I used this for a while as a personal journal type blog as I was dealing with Piper the pregnancy the NICU etc.  I have occasionally used this to discuss issues improtant to me and my girls: allergies, SPD.  But as I am sitting here at work trying to write my goals for the new year and revise my brand statement I realize that this blog needs a brand it needs a voice.

Here is the brand statement for me as a blogger which I will now use as the about information:

–My name is Missy aka Domestic Goddess (Work in Progress)

–I am a mother of Sary and Piper and wife to Jake, a Christian, an IT consultant, a poet, an artist and a woman. 

–What motivates me is being real; being honest and open.

–You can count on me to/for unvarnished truth about raising a family while working full time and a view into my church life, community service, poetry, and occasionally my fitness.

White Bread and Cheesecake

I have been sick more times this spring/summer that I was all of last year.  I had a stomach bug, a sore throat, and a fever.  Each virus was about two weeks apart from the previous one.  I have been dieting and I have been working out and I am worried that the two are connected.  My mission to be healthier has made me sick. To remedy this I have started to take a multivitamin.  In addition to my Vitamin D and Vitamin C tabs I have been taking.

I am sure part of it is that like a virus laden winter this June/July we are all cooped up insidebecause it has been so hot.

I am not giving up on my diet but I am trying to make sure it is more balanced. I have been eating a ton of fruits and veggies a little bit of carbs and protein at dinner.  I have now added a boiled egg to breakfast and hummus to my afternoon veggie snack and a cheese stick.  I feel like I am not losing as much weight as I should and that very well could be because I was in starvation mode.

There is a fitness challenge at work and I have been the team cheerleader.  This is such a new role for me.  I have never been excited about fitness.  I have realized that I have a negative association with exercise.  This comes from so many places in my childhood that it is no wonder that I have fitness issues.

I think it is interesting to see that there is a fitness trend in our country right now.  We may have actually survived the obesity epidemic and came out on the other side.  “You would never have believed it Sary there was white bread and cheesecake everywhere!”