Megan's daughter, Caitlin's, shoes. She is a senior and wore these to the JROTC Military Ball. But with beauty comes pain. They gave her a really bad blister.
I have reached internet apple dorkdom and there is no turning back.
Do you know what I did at work today? Watched the liveblog of the launch of the iPad. (Is that not the worst name ever?) And tweeted about it. With hashtags. And gchatted my husband, who could care less, but indulged me. And gchatted back with articles, that I then tweeted. To other people. Who cared about this.
I must go play Dungeons and Dragons now or something.
Also, I really, really need a vacation.
I'm not even going to BlogHer and I can't even talk about it. Doug has a conference and someone has to watch the child and WAH. I want to go to BlogHer. So much so that I want to throw myself on the ground and throw a temper tantrum. And Sparklecorn '10 is going to be awesome. And I'm not going. WAH.
So the moral of this story is, I need a vacation. Bad. When the most exciting thing in your life is the launch of iPad, you need a vacation.
Michael has always been a really good sleeper. He slept through the night at 5 months and before that he only got up once to eat. And before you start throwing things at me remember a few things. 1. The kid never napped. 2. He took a year to potty train. 3. I HAVE TO HAVE SOMETHING.
Anyway, lately he gets up at 0 dark 30 because he hears Doug leave for work and he is obsessed with his father and he has to say goodbye to his father. This was cute for a minute. Until he started timing his wake ups to make sure he said goodbye to Daddy. And now he wakes up before Doug leaves and starts screaming "DADDY" so Doug won't forgot to say goodbye. Which, wakes me up. At 5 am.
And then, the last couple of nights he has gotten up in the middle of the night screaming "DADDY DON'T LEAVE." At 2 am. It is fun.
HELP. We have tried taking away privileges, putting him to bed earlier, telling him Daddy will make sure he says goodbye, everything I can think of. It has to stop. I'm tired. I don't want middle of the night wake ups. I don't have a baby. Plus it has started to affect his behavior, and my new favorite book talks about how lack of sleep can look like ADHD symptoms.
I never ask the internet for assvice, but did anyone else's kid do this? I know Michael is really attached to Doug but this is insane. He really believes that if he doesn't say goodbye to him he isn't going to see him later, or something.
AND THIS JUST STARTED. Is it a phase? Because I do not enjoy getting up at 5 am, at all.
I don't do serious often on jodifur. I also don't do parenting advice a lot. But seriously, just watch this. I have been reading A LOT of parenting books lately. And I hate parenting books. My theory on parenting books is that every kid is different and you can't tell me how to parent my kid. But Doug sent me this video and we loved it so much we ordered the book.
It's long, but seriously, just watch it. And no the author did not send me the book and ask me to review it, nor did she ask me to post this video. In fact, she has no idea who I am. But I did just follow her on twitter. Her, and the girl from Glee, which is my ultimate sign of love.
I've written before that Michael does not try things well. If he can't do things on his first try, he just doesn't do them. Bike riding, swimming, even soccer class were all disasters because he was not perfect enough at it on the first try for his liking.
He was given a scooter over the holidays, a scooter he begged for, and the scooter he really didn't get to try out until yesterday. He was being punished for an infraction and my favorite punishment is "no screens," no wii, no tv, no computer. Go play like you live in the 1600s. You only have 18 gazillion toys. But it was so nice out yesterday I took him to our neighborhood playground and he wanted to ride his scooter there. I knew going wouldn't be a problem, it was all downhill. But I was bracing myself for the constant whining on the way back.
And he shocked me because there was none. Yes, he asked me once to carry the scooter, and I told him he could either scoot or push it, but it was his scooter and he was responsible. So he scooted, or he pushed, or a couple of times he carried, but I was simply amazed by the like of whining and complaining. Who was this mature boy who handled the situation with such dignity and grace?
When we got back to the house he told me he was hungry and asked, politely, for a snack. I expressed how proud I was of him and told him he had earned TV back. Not wii, not computer, but tv. And he was shocked, because "no screens" is normally an all day thing. But I was so impressed by his "can do" attitude I thought it should be rewarded.
The changes we have seen in Michael in the past month are remarkable. I don't know if it is the new school, the OT, he is simply growing up, or some combination of it all. But I see the boy, the man he is turning into. And I no longer have to hope it is all going to be ok. Because I simply know it is.
On Saturday I took the rare opportunity to go shopping. By myself. My need for pants was reaching epic proportions as most of my pants were too big on me. And I'm not saying this to be all braggy, braggy, I'm saying it as a fact.
I have been overweight most of my life. I was always a fat kid. I actively cannot remember a point in my life that I was not on a diet. Doug fell in love with me at my heaviest, so at least I know he loves me for me. Right before our wedding I took off over 30 pounds and became the thinnest I ever was with a combination of Weight Watchers, exercise, and crazy OCD. Weight Watchers points brought out this crazy OCD calorie counting side in me that was probably a borderline eating disorder. But after the wedding my weight stabilized. And then I had Michael, gained the requisite amount of weight and took it off in a reasonable period of time with the crazy OCD WW me again and exercise. Gym daycare is a fabulous thing when you have five months of maternity leave.
And then I just became this person I stopped recognizing. I always wanted to lose the last 10 pounds, to get back to my "wedding weight" but I worked out because I enjoyed it and it kept me sane and I ate reasonably well, mostly organic and non processed foods. I learned to enjoy cooking. But I also enjoyed wine regularly and an occasional treat and my weight was what it was. I just stopped caring about it so much. I learned to be happy.
The past six months or so weight has just been falling off of me. I don't know if it was house stress or Michael stress or the fact that all my lupus meds say "may cause extreme weight loss" but, I no longer really pay attention or care. I signed up for the mamapop losers because it is fun and Doug said "I'm not sure this is such a good idea." I work out on the wii everyday and now, none of my clothes fit.
So I escaped to the mall on Saturday for the torture that is jeans shopping. And after two hours (!) and discovering that it doesn't matter if you are a size smaller all jeans still look terrible on you, I sucked it up and hit the really expensive jeans department at Nordstrom. And I tried on those brands that would never, ever, have fit me a short lifetime ago. Those really expensive brands that only certain girls could fit into. And they fit, and not even the biggest sizes. But I looked at the price tag and decided it no longer mattered that I could fit into $200 jeans and walked across the hall into another department. And I said to the salesclerk, "those jeans over there are too young for me, and these jeans are too old for me. Don't you have any 30 year old jeans in this store?" And she laughed and told me to go downstairs.
And I did. And bought two pair for the price of the truly expensive jeans I could have bought upstairs. And some cords that were seriously on sale, 2 sizes smaller than I normally wear.
And then I came home and got dressed up for a date night with my husband, where we shared a bottle of wine and I had a fantastic espresso creme brulee for dessert. Because while I like my new size, I like my life even more.
And then I worked out extra hard on Sunday to maintain it.
I miss dating. Specifically, I miss dating
my husband. I miss the anticipation of him picking me up and wondering
what we were doing and maybe he would bring flowers. I miss endless
primping and endless goodnight kisses.
Yes, we still have "date nights" but they involve a multitude of
planning, mostly by me. Arranging a sitter and arranging dinner
reservations and making sure we have enough cash to pay the sitter. I
want romance. I want intrigue. And you know what, I don't want to
plan it.
We
are lucky in that we have a few trusted sitters that we can rotate
through, and we are lucky that we can still afford to go out in this
economy. We are also lucky that my four year old is good for
babysitters and they like babysitting for us.
But I miss the old
days. I miss spending the day at the mall shopping for a new outfit
before a big date. I miss not knowing where we are going. I miss not
planning my own date. I miss not calling to check in at 8:30 to make
sure my son is in bed. I miss staying out until all hours because you
know you can sleep in the next day. (Who sleeps in with a four year
old?)
I love my life. And I love my husband and my son and my
family. But sometimes, I really miss the me I was before all the
responsibility. When I could spend hours lingering over a nice bottle
of wine and a good meal and good conversation. When there was nothing
to do but fall in love and envision the future.
The ironic thing is that the future we were envisioning is the future we have now.
I always miss Delurker day But the lovely Chris emailed a bunch of people this year, so I could not miss it. So hey, please, leave me a comment. Delurk. I know more people read this blog then my regular commenters because hey, I have stats.
So, to make it easy for you, I will ask a question, an easy question. Besides me, what other blogs do you read? I need to expand my blog reading repertoire. And hey, you can even tell me I should be reading you. Because if you lurk here and don't comment, I won't be reading you. But my regular commenters I read. So if that is not motivation, I don't know what it is.
