Moving. This is the last Blogger blog entry for me - they will no longer support FTP here in a few weeks, and I don't want to mess with their new system. You can find my new blog (inlcuding all of this content!) at http://lydaalexander.com/wordpress/.
WFMW: Lent. So today is Ash Wednesday. Thus the start of Lent.
Picking something for Lent was hard this year. I don't always do it, especially now that I go to the Church of Christ - they aren't big on liturgical stuff, so it gets lost sometimes. And I don't always go the traditional route, something I give up something by way of an attitude or feeling or somethign else abstract, or use the time to cultivate a good habit or whatever. But I digress.
So this year was hard.
Back, before... before I found out I was pregnant, when i was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do about having another child, to try for VBAC or go with the c-section or whatever... back then, I decided that if/when we did this again, I would cut out most of my refined starches - white sugar, white potatoes, white flour, the whole bit - in an attempt to have a normal sized baby (and thus avoid another c-section - most docs won't VBAC with 9+ pounders, so I was trying to tip the scales a bit).
Fast forward to yesterday... I am still weighing the options of VBAC, but given the short time frame since my last, my amount of anxiety over having another labor/birth experience as traumatic as the last, an a huge number of other factors... it's looking more like a c-section. Which has actually given me a fair bit of peace, which is somehting I didn't expect. So yeah. I'm all good with it. But my "avoid refined starches to avoid an OMG big baby" plans... went right out the window, because 1) I figured out early on it probably won't matter so much and 2) ummm.... life. So refined starches are easy, whole foods are hard and take time and can't be bought through a drive-through window.
Add all this to the fact that I'll be on a cruise the beginning of next month... yes, this year is hard.
So I decided that refined starches is too much to give up, given my life craziness, sanity level, and travel plans. But... White Potatoes. I can totally give that up for 40 days, right? No hash browns, no french fries, no baked potatoes, no potato soup.... And maybe, it will have the effect of reducing my overall refined start intake (how could it not?), thus possibly helping me to not grow a giant baby, lol.
Either way, I can probably eat healthier without them (especially the fries).
“You get used to it. Or you suffer a psychotic episode.” This. Actually, that sums up just about exactly where I am. Except maybe - just maybe, I'm a little closer to the psychotic episode than I would care to admit.
I'm joking. A little.
So this week. This week has been hard. Chad's working nights, flight-following for his crew, I've been sick, plus I'm still exhausted from being pregnant (um. Consider this a blog announcement, I guess. I'm too tired to do it up right. we're due August 17th.), plus Brianna's going through her second (third?) section of separation anxiety... and yeah. Crazy stuff abounds. I send a fiery email to my MMO group about having no life and them wanting every second of what I have. True story. I felt a little bad afterward.
But... we are surviving. And. We are making progress.
So. I'm going to play "Not Me! Monday." Here goes:
I did not let Brianna sleep in the swing in my room pretty much all night several nights in a row because it was easier than fighting with her to stay asleep in her room by herself. Also, on Saturday night when I decided she needed to stay in her room to sleep - all night, it was not because the swing batteries were dead, and I couldn't find a screwdriver. I did not sleep in her room on the floor for over an hour, to make sure she was really asleep. And last night, I most certainly did not give in and take cold medicine, which I knew would cause me to be too drugged up to find my way out of the bed when she woke up, and I did not let her cry it out in the middle of the night because of the aforementioned lack of direction out of the bed.
In unrelated news, I had an awesome Valentine's yesterday, in spite of the fact that we had no babysitter, and Chad had to work all night (and the night before). If you have (a ton) of money to spend on dinner at some point, I highly recommend Killen's in Pearland. Don't be fooled by the outside - it's a really nice steakhouse, not a honky tonk, lol. And it was good. And Brianna behaved, so all was well.
Today you are a year old. Even as I write that, it is hard for me to understand. An entire year. Of you. It doesn't seem like it could have possibly been that long.
And yet, there you are. You've grown so much from the little tiny thing we brought home from the hospital... You're independent and smart and stubborn and all of the great things I could have hoped for you when you were born. You constantly amaze me with the things you learn and understand - you pick up so much, even when we're not really sure we're teaching you. You have an amazingly sweet spirit - you love people, and animals, and seem to make friends wherever we go.
You are walking - running, and want to be on your own feet everywhere we go. Even though you only have two teeth, you love grown-up food and would eat chicken at every meal if we let you. You love to give hugs and kisses, and this morning, for the first time, you responded to my request to "give mommy kisses" by planting a big slobbery toddler kiss on my cheek. You understand so much more of the world that I would have thought possible for a one-year-old.
I hope your next year is as special and amazing as your first - and that you every bit as much this year as you did last year. I am starting to miss my baby - but I am loving the girl you are turning into, and looking forward to seeing you grow even more as a person day by day.
Better late than never... So. Let me see if I can sum up.
I did NaNo this year... and only fell short by about 7000 words (I'm going to blame sickness and travel for not winning this year. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it). It was awesome, and I will probably participate again in 2010. 'Nuff said.
Had a very awesome (but completely crazy and also full of drama on pretty much every front) trip home for Christmas and New Years. Did not visit half the people we intended to, but visited a few we weren't planning to, so I guess it worked out. Brianna had a great time and now has way too many toys that make noise.
I got to hold my first ever nephew! When he was only a few hours old! And it was awesome. I am an Aunt. A *real* aunt, no matter what other people might tell you about. And that's all I have to say about that, as well.
I made a ton of New Years resolutions. Sadly, most of them aren't blog appropriate quite yet. Suffice it to say, not much has changed (resolution-wise) since this time last year. Except I've given up on the losing weight thing - my goal is to not gain a ridiculous amount of weight this year. I figure that one's more attainable, lol.
Brianna will be a year old in a couple of weeks. Blows my mind. She's walking (running), chattering up a storm (there's words in there, but we don't understand them yet), and generally finding every bit of trouble she can to get into. She is very good at getting into trouble :-)
And that's really all I have to say for the moment. I will really try to get online and update a little more frequently, but I got a half-dozen Lego video games for Christmas, so I'm not sure how well that will actually go ;-)
Would you forgive me love / If I danced in your shower So I suck at updating. Welcome to my life, dears.
Brianna is walking. And has a tooth. Both of these things are awesome and also scary. The good news? we mostly weaned before the appearance of said tooth.
Also, she has given up on formula. She weaned her own sweet self onto cows milk, which is early, earlier than I had intended, but I'm rolling with it. I'm just trying to make sure she gets enough iron - and we'll all be good.
And she's eating table food like it's going out of style. She took down an entire happy meal Sunday night, while we were killing time waiting to see if Chad was going to get admitted to the hospital overnight - long story. The point is, she's only 10-months old, and ate 4 chicken nuggets and all her fries. And drank 8 oz of milk. There is no way a child that small should be able to hold that much, lol.
I did NaNoWriMo this year. I didn't win, but i came really close - 43000 words or so. I blame my being sick, and out of town for the last weekend in Nov for not winning. But it was a pretty good experience overall, at any rate.
Getting ready for the Great Christmas Tour - with an added complication of a 10-month-old added to the already crazy 12+-hour drive with dog and cat and presents. If you want to get together whilst we are back home - let me know, and we'll see what we can do.
Also, Brianna will have a new little cousin (on her Daddy's side) sometime this month. Probably sooner rather than later. We're looking forward to meeting him!
There are other things, but my mind is mushy. Being sick (all the time) sucks, and I'm hopping to be done with it soon. (Probably just in time to create another germ carrier to make us sick all the time, lol).
to write... or not to write. So it's September. Which means it's almost October. which means (you guessed it) November is fast approaching. And November is NaNoWriMo. Which means that this year - like every year before it - I'm going to spend the next couple of months lamenting the fact that I'm not a writer.
By a writer, I don't neccessarily mean published or publishable (although that would be awesome). Nor do I mean that I would want to do it fulltime. I just mean having the ability to put words on paper so that it tells a story in a way that someone else can appreciate it.
I aspire to write, don't get me wrong. I even, occasionally, attempt to write. And then I go back and read what I attempted to write... and it sucks, y'all. I mean, it is really cringeworthy. REALLY. Not being modest, here. All of my stories devolve into plotless meandering nothings, populated by ridiculous characters that have think and act like middle schoolers, whatever their age is supposed to be. And that makes me sad.
And so my fear of being bad at writing keeps me from writing - writing, in my mind, is a hobby that isn't much fun if you're not good at it... unlike, say, RockBand, which is arguably more fun if you are not good at it (as long as you turn on No Fail).
But then I think about some of the books I've read - truely horrible works that somehow managed to get published, juvenile one-dimensional characters and all. And I think... surely, my writing isn't that bad, is it? Couldn't I write a story that would be good enough, at least, for me to allow someone else to look at it? Or maybe just good enough for me to go back and look at, without wanting to destroy it?
So this year. I will write. And I probably won't finish. But I will not let my fear of being bad at it stop me from trying, this time. At the end, I probably still won't consider myself a "writer"... but who knows. Maybe I'll learn something in the process.
posted by Deedee 2:56 PM
(2) comments
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
