So much...

I cant believe it has been so long since I posted anything. No wonder nobody reads my blog! So much has been going on...my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to visit bringing along three kids. We went to the zoo and did a lot of swimming, oh, and stayed up late one night making a Scandinavian Mei Tai. No, its not a drink, it's a baby carrier. My friend Jodean posted the one that she made on her blog and attached the link to the blog of the person who created the pattern, and the pattern itself. I convinced my mother-in-law to help me make one while she was here. My sister-in-law also helped. We stayed up until 3am Tuesday night to finish it (someone had boasted that it took them only 3 hours to make it - it took 3 of us 6 hours to make it!). Mine isnt as cute as Jodean's, but I like it. It keeps the baby nice and close and secure, it even puts her to sleep. I can hardly feel her there. The only down-side is that the straps are really long, so its a bit of an ordeal to take it off and on.
Im posting some pictures of it and of my husband's family's trip to St Louis:

Here is Chuck's mom with the Mei Tai on:


Me and the kids hiking with the mei tai. You can put the baby on your back too!








I tried taking a picture of myself and Gracie in the mei tai. It was too sunny out.


Daddy looks so nice in his father's day sunglasses at the pool. So hot!!


I was able to get the kids to stop and pose for a picture for a second. Why do 7 year olds insist on making funny faces to the camera non-stop???









Here they are at the St Louis Zoo:








Last Saturday I participated in the Race for the Cure in downtown St Louis. I went with the team from Social Security. And of course, I took the kids along since Chuck has a lecture to go to. I pulled them in the wagon - they were so well-behaved. Unfortunately I didnt get a picture of them i the wagon. But here are some pictures of Jonathan and my friends Nakia and Peggy. It was so unbelievable the amount of people that showed up. The picture of the crowd is just the tail end...maybe 1/10th of the whole race!












Other big news of the week: Gracie has become a pro at pulling herself up!!!












And here's a cute picture of Jonathan on a log:

Me and my man

For the first time in a long, long time, Chuck and I are going out alone tonight. Our next-door neighbor agreed to watch the kids. Since this may be the only time that this happens (Im afraid that our neighbor will see her error after spending an evening with our kids) I want to make the best of it. Chuck got tickets to a comedy club. Im hoping to go to a very non-kid-friendly restaurant as well. And hopefully there aren't people there like us who bring their annoying kids with them everywhere because they cant find a sitter!

Does this prove I'm crazy?

So today I took the kids to Circus Flora. It's a circus presented in downtown St Louis that is performed by kids from age 7 to 18. I had a little trouble getting down there, but the show was great! Jonathan really liked the trapeze. He and quite a few other kids started to get a little squirmy near the end...well, maybe a lot squirmy towards the middle actually. I handled pretty well though I think. A mom behing me was screeching about her 3 or 4 year old daughter, "She's having a melt-down, she's having a meltdown, this should have been over a long time ago, she's having a meltdown, we have to go!" To me it sounded like mom was having the meltdown! Altogether, Jonathan and Gracie did really well. Particularly Gracie. She watched more of the show than Jonathan did. At the end the introduced the performers and everyone started leaving. This isnt movie credits people! The performers are in front of you! Jonathan and Gracie and I stayed and clapped for them, I told Jonathan that we were telling them, "Good job!" He started yelling that out!
I didnt go crazy at the circus. It was actually when we were almost home. On the ride home Jonathan cried almost the whole way because he said he needed to go potty. Jonathan never goes potty during the day, so I dont know why it was such a big deal today. That wasnt what made me crazy either. It was the stop at McDonald's.
I have come to discover that McDonald's drive-thru's around here tend to suck at lunchtime. I take Jonathan there for lunch sometimes on Wednesdays and everytime without fail they get it messed up. This time I decided to hold up the line of cars and make sure that they got the right food in the bags. To my surprise, they did. I took off and got close to the highway when I realized that they didnt give us a toy! That's the whole reason I went - it was Kund Fu Panda characters! Jonathan had seen the movie and loved it. So, I turned around and went back. The drive thru line was too long so I had to go in, leaving the kids in the car with it running, I locked it (is that illegal?) Anyway, I went in and stepped up to the counter in front of everyone and asked for my toy. The guy gave me one and I left (seriously the kids were alone in the care for like 20 seconds) I got out to the car and looked at that toy - it was a Pirate skeleton!! Yes, I went back in and demanded a Kung Fu Panda toy. I dont want to give my 3-year-old son a skeleton toy! On the way home, Jonathan was saying, "Mommy's mad!" That wasnt so cool, so instead I accomplished a great feat in getting a 3-year-old to proclaim, "Bad McDonalds!"

So am I officially crazy?

Summer pictures:

Here's our summer so far:
Jonathan: I'unna go swimmin', I'unna go swimmin, I'unna go swimmin'
Me: No
Jonathan: I'unna go shoppin, I'unna go shoppin
Me: No
Jonathan: I'unna go to bed, I'unna go to bed.
Me: Okay
Jonathan: Nooooo!
Gracie: Waaaah!
Me: Here you go Gracie, nummies!
Me (later): Jonathan, stop eating Gracie's food!
Jonathan: I'unna go swimmin'!!!



I got Jonathan's old riding toy out for Gracie to use. He, of course, wanted to use it when he saw her on it. I thought they looked cute "playing together" here:



Gracie asleep at the table. Eating is hard work, but she's good at it. She can already pick up cheerios and get them in her mouth!



Two of a kind! Really, we do feed our kids food!



I know we're breaking some kind of safety rules here with Gracie in the trailer, but she does so well, and big brother takes good care of her...



Swimming is so much fun with Daddy!

Why I love Aldi

I just love shopping at Aldi. For those of you who are not fortunate enough to have an Aldi nearby, I'll explain what it is. It is a grocery store that is able to keep its prices very low by carrying off-brand products from the boxes, saving on stocking and display costs. It also saves by charging for grocery bags (most people bring their own or use empty boxes that they've gathered throughout the stores), and using a chained cart system where you insert a quarter into the cart to pull it away from the others, then when you put it back you get your quarter back. This way they dont have to gather the carts from the parking lots or replace damaged ones. Every time I go to Aldi I am shocked by my total at the cash register. It is always much LOWER than I expected.
Ashamedly, I have to admit that when we moved to St Louis and my husband started receiving a paycheck finally, I snubbed Aldi and opted for the name brand grocery store that is just beside our house - Schnuck's (really, that's a grocery store name, not another word for idiot). Although there are things at that grocery store that you cant get at Aldi, like coke products, good tasting TV dinners (for work), spices, and some fresh fruits, Aldi is about 5 times cheaper. No joke!
So today I went to Aldi when we were out of potatoes and bananas - staples for our family. It was the best experience I have ever had at a grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. I took my seven month old daughter Gracie with me because she is such a good shopper - my shopping buddy :). I did have to park fairly far away and since the shopping carts are all the way up by the store I had to carry her car seat very far. When I went to get a cart though, a man had already gotten one out for me. I offered him my quarter and he refused and said he got the cart for me since I had a baby. This was just a fellow shopper, no way affiliated with the store, so I just figured - "results not typical." I shopped and got two large bags full of groceries which included three tubs of strawberries for 99 cents each. I expected my bill to come to about $60, then I thought to myself that I shouldn't get my hopes up. Much to my surprise, the bill came to only $30!! What a great shopping day! To make things even better, when I went to put my groceries in the car I got another surprise. Just as I was dreading taking the cart back and carrying Gracie's car seat all the way back to the car, another man came and waited for me to get all of my groceries in the car so that he could take my cart. That was very nice, even though I assumed that he didn't have a quarter to get his own. But no! He offered me a quarter for the cart! I, of course, refused it since he was so kind to take the cart for me - not to mention it wasn't even my quarter in the cart to begin with!
Now, would this chain of events ever happened at Schnuck's? No! Are these results typical? I would like to think so. Maybe there are kind people left in the world - they just don't shop at Schnuck's!

WM vs. SAHM

Okay, I know, two posts in one day, Im an addict. But, I was looking at other blogs online today and saw one that brought to mind a topic that I said I would expand on later. Now, I think, is the time (it must be, both kids are unusually sleeping at 5:30 - late nap means late night!). So, I said earlier that I thought that I may have found the solution to the working-outside-the-home mom/stay-at-home mom struggle. That is, working part-time. Maybe I was wrong, Im not sure yet. By the way, I use the term stay-at-home mom instead of full-time mom because no matter where you are during the day you are still a full-time mom, unless you don't have custody I guess. And really, if you want to get technical, full-time is usually considered 40 or more hours per week, and I for one easily surpass that as a mother. I use the term working-outside-the-home-mom because all moms work - the job of a mom is work. Birdwalk, again, I know. So anyway, now is the time that I will explain the WM/SAHM never-ending struggle.
We'll start with the working mom. As a working mom, I feel a lot of pressure from SAHM's to want to be a SAHM. Many people think that I choose to work outside the home. And to be fair, I guess I do have a choice. But that choice is: stay at home and depend on my husband's income as a resident, and collect food stamps and sell a car and get rid of internet and cable and cell phones, OR, work and miss out on seeing my children live the entire first five years of their life without commercials. While I would love to do the latter, I feel that doing the former allows me to give them a more enjoyable first five years because I cherish each moment that I have with them since I dont have as many as I'd like (my mom actually pointed that out to me when I was complaining about working). Whether it is intentional or unintentional, SAHMs make me feel bad for being a WM. I feel like they think that I dont care enough about my children to stay at home with them. I feel like they think that they are better people because they do stay at home with theirs. And, I feel like a bad mom for not being able to stay at home with them - there are so many things that I want to see and do with them before they go to school. And finally, for the most part, the children of the SAHMs I know are more well-behaved than the children of the WMs I know...for the most part.
Now for the SAHMs. I do think that one day I will be one. I may have to have a couple more kids for that to happen, but, I think that I will be one. What I fear is that the view that people seem to have of SAHMs will make me feel bad for being a SAHM. Let me try to explain: when I think or talk about what I want to be when I grow up, I think, I could be a photographer, or a teacher, or a nurse, or a {fill in the blank}... or just a mom. It's that JUST that turns me off of the idea. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I fear that the view that I think that others would have of me as a SAHM would be that I am not a SAHM by choice, that is, that I couldn't be successful enough in the workforce if I wanted to, or that I haven't made anything of myself. And I know that isnt true now, but Im afraid that if I catch that vibe from people later on then I will think poorly of myself, like I know many women have.
The truth is, a great mom is the best thing that we as women can ever be. Even if a woman ends up being president of the United States (thank goodness that didnt happen this time...I mean, with the choice we had...LOL), if she wasn't a great mom, then I'm afraid that her other accomplishments didnt really mean that much. That's not to say, of course, that all women should be moms or that women that are not moms dont have any meaning. But if a woman is a mom, then she should strive to be a great one. If you aren't a great mom to your kids then who will be? My point is, there is no such thing as JUST a mom.
I guess the key is to be the best you can be at whatever you do. Right now, I'm trying to be the best Claims Representative I can be during the day, and in the evening and Wednesdays and weekends, I try to be the best mom that I can be. When Im able to stay home with the kids, I'll be the best SAHM there ever was, and it will be evident to others that it is my choice to be a SAHM. Are my children being short-changed now because Im not a SAHM? I dont think so. I think that for the time-being maybe it's best that Im not a SAHM. I do, however, think I'm being short-changed a little. But that's what happens when you're married and accidently don't use birth control! LOL (I learned recently that I must use "LOL" if I'm trying to be funny because people cant generally tell whether I am or not when I'm writing.)
*Please note that these are just some of my thoughts on the subject. I have thought about it a lot and I just dont know how best to put my thoughts into words, so I hope that I didn't offend anyone by omitting a fact or exposing too many of my thoughts or fears.

Aerobics, and a bird walk

I just love going to my step aerobics class. I really suck at it, but its a lot of fun. When I was little my mom let me take dance classes. I was really into it from the time I was seven until age fifteen. I was pretty bad at that too, actually, but my mom was so great that she let me do it as long as I wanted, despite the cost. I didnt realize when I was little how many sacrifices my mom and my dad made for me and my siblings. Now that I am a mom, though, its all much clearer. My kids mean so much to me that I would do absolutely anything for them. Its hard to not let them walk all over me. I do get upset sometimes when I know that Jonathan is taking advantage of my love for him by doing things that he knows makes me mad. But then I realize that I did it too when I was little...subconsciously I guess. You don't really realize when you're little how much what you say and do affects your parents. If you're anything like me, I think that as parents we are constantly analyzing our child's behavior, trying to figure out what we're doing wrong or right, and worrying that we've ruined our children. I wonder how many times my parents worried that I was going to grow up all wrong. I hope that when they look at me now they come to the conclusion that they did really well as parents. When my children grow up, I just hope that my husband and I will come to that same conclusion.

What do you want at the doctor's office?

Yesterday I was driving my kids home from daycare. We always pass by the doctor's office on our way home and my son Jonathan knows it. He knows where everything is around town actually. As we passed by yesterday Jonathan said, "Mother," that's what he calls me now because my husband tells him not to hit his mother or say no to his mother, etc., "Mother, I want to go to the doctor."
I said, "Jonathan, you dont need to go to the doctor. You only go to the doctor when you are sick or need a check-up."
He thought about it for awhile and spoke up again, "Mother, I want to go the doctor, get ketchup."

Etsy

So I found this website a few months back called www.etsy.com where people sell things handmade. A friend of mine from college sells things that she crochets through this website. Actually, she had sent me one of her handmade items as a baby gift for my daughter. Here's Gracie wearing the hat:



Through this website you can search for things that people have made, or sometimes you can reequest custom-made items. I've been looking on it lately for some baby shower gifts. You're sure to find something unique, so the chances of getting someone something that they already have is near impossible. I found some really cute gift sets of silk-screened onesies and leg warmers at this site through etsy.com -lowlepop.etsy.com , and another gift set at this one: handmadejig.etsy.com

Now, I know that a lot of these things are a little pricey, but, they are handmade and one of a kind. Walmart and Target may have better prices, but I can rest assured that the things aren't made in a sweatshop and the profits are going directly to the makers.

My friend who made the hat, by the way, sells her items at justforbe.etsy.com. I think her items are affordable and very adorable.