I played the game, I dropped the ball...

Confession.  This is the first time in a full week that I actually signed into my Blogger account.
If you wrote something beautiful or witty or funny last week - chances are I didn't read it.
Not for lack of wanting.  I just simply have been without the time to do it.
I need to have a tag for my posts in which I talk about not having enough hours in the day, but for now - just know this is one of those kind of posts. 

When I was in school I almost never made excuses.  Mostly because I'm a terrible liar and excuses are usually the things you say so you don't have to tell the truth.  Well, here's a bunch of excuses for why I haven't been around lately.  But, I can assure you of this - it is the God's honest truth.  And while I'm being honest, it's really just another post in order to put off writing the stuff that is usually the meat and potatoes of New Mom on the Blog - snarky, parenting humor.  I have lots and lots of ideas, but haven't the foggiest idea how I will ever put all of those ideas into words.  Which is exactly why this blog is for fun and why I will never make a career as a writer.  (Can you imagine?  We'd starve to death!)

My Top Five Excuses for being a Bad Blogger


1.   Validation

Validation is a wonderful thing.  So wonderful, in fact, that when our administration took special note of the validation training my DBT team did, I volunteered to help put on a training for the entire facility.  Fast forward about a year and a half later and I had to make good on that offer.  These trainings had to be given during all 3 of our shifts, which meant that several times in the past week, I had to get up at 4:30 am.  Being lucid for a training before dawn?  Difficult.  Writing a witty blog after it?  Forget it.  AND, to make matters worse.  The lack of sleep made me lose my voice something terrible and after a night of coughing my poor little head off, I took my first sick day of the year.  No.  Seriously.  OF THE YEAR.

2.  Laundry

Yes.  It is a never ending job.  And to make matters worse, after a seemingly overnight growth spurt, The Incredible Hulk (he's my son, in case you forgot during my extended absence), needed all new clothes.  Seriously.  Nothing fit him.  All of the sudden.  But, this couldn't happen during a time when the weather stayed a consistent temperature.  NO.  It happened when a temperature swing of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit is just about the norm.  Which means I went out and purchased a full wardrobe and washed it all - only to turn around and have to buy another full wardrobe and wash all of that.  I completed all of this around the same time I realized he was already growing out of the size I bought.  Someone.  Make it stop.

3.  The Quilt

A few months ago, I got this great idea to make a quilt out of TIH's old receiving blankets.  It is seriously the best thing I've ever done.  However, it takes a lot of work. And time. And a lot of patience.  Our Cups Runneth Over has expressed interest in doing a blog post about the project - so at least that's something for the future of blogging.  I'm even in the process of picking out a sewing machine.  To buy.  ME.  The most undomesticated person in the whole history of ever.

4.  My Family

Oh, yeah.  Them.  It's probably important that if I'm going to write a blog about the life of being a wife/mom, that I should actually...be a wife/mom sometimes.

5.  These. Stupid. Books.

Like crack.  In book form.

In truth, they are not stupid.  They are wonderful.  I actually have had to physically restrain myself from getting the third book so I can get some freaking stuff done around my house.  I read the last 5 pages of the second book sitting in the church parking lot before Mass.  It's just ridiculous, my friends.  I recommend them to all of you.  I also recommend that you write a formal apology to your family and friends for ignoring them for the next few days.  Because you will ignore them.


So, consider this my formal apology, blog world.   I have dropped the ball of being a blogger in this ever-present juggling act.  I swear, I trying to pick it back up.  I love you all and I am slowly working on reading  your lovely posts, maybe even writing some comments, and getting back to all of your emails and correspondence.  You know I could never be away for too long.

I mean, until I get my hands on a copy of Mockingjay.

Time is on my side...

The job I'm in now was my first career job post-college.  Starting at age 16, I worked a lot of part-time jobs (often more than one at the same time) in order to scrape together enough money for a car payment and gas.  I received my first promotion when I was only 17 years old while working in a little girl's clothing store (in a time where I could actually still fit into some of the clothes.)  From there, I began a long line of successful part-time employments in which I was named "Employee of the Month" (or whatever its variation) at each different job I held.  If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm kind of a big deal.

Kidding.

But, I do take pride in my work.  I am not the kind of employee who receives disciplinary action.  I'm the kind of employee who receives gold stars and my picture on the wall and failing that - I'm the person people like to have work for them.

The first time I ever received any kind of correction from an employer was because I was singing along to Christmas music on the radio while we were closing up shop at a bank I worked at.  No customers were present at the time - everything except for the drive thru was closed.  But, I still got a phone call from my boss and a stern "talking to" about maintaining professional behavior.  A month later, I wrote my very first letter of resignation and told him exactly where he could stick his "professional behavior."

Kidding.

My current job is fabulous.  I am doing a job in which I'm actually using the knowledge I gained in college and I have a true passion for the type of work I'm doing.  Being a working mom, as I've said before, was always a no-brainer for me because I couldn't possibly imagine not coming back to the work place I have come to love so much.

That being said, being a working mom is hard.  I mean, being a mom in general is hard, don't get me wrong.  Being a stay at home mom?  I'd surely die, it's so stressful.  But, getting out the door with you, your husband, and the baby completely ready to go for the day?  Difficult. Getting out the door on time?  Damn near impossible.  I try to get systems in place so that I don't spend the entire morning scrambling to walk out the door with both me and the baby fully clothed, but no one can plan for the chaos that inevitably happens three seconds before we get in the car.  The baby spits up or I suddenly lose my one and only set of keys.  Or, I make it out the door and realize half way to the baby sitter's house that I've completely forgotten The Incredible Hulk's food for the day.  And we all know, TIH does NOT like to go without food.

Even barring any major crisises (crises? crisi?), you can't expect to make it to work on time when a tornado literally makes its path through your commute.




Not kidding.



My facility recently revised policy to deal with a widespread timeliness problem we've been having.  It's hard to make one policy fit for every different discipline and specific job duty for such a large facility.  And it's even harder to write 100 different policies for every individual person or even every individual department - so they're just doing the best they can.  The revised policy states that you cannot be even just one minute late to clock in. 

Before I had a kid, I probably wouldn't have even noticed that they changed this policy.  I was almost always on time, if not early for work.  I am kind of an overachiever in that way.  Not surprisingly, my tardies have become more frequent since I had TIH, but last week, my supervisor alerted to me to just how frequent they had become.

Turns out?  I'm basically late (even if by just one minute) every. damn. day.

I mean, I was late for 8 consecutive days following the tornado due to detours, highway closure, and rubber necking.  But, the days leading up to and following that were really nothing more than just a general difficulty of getting out of the house.

I knew motherhood would change me.  I knew my priorities would realign.  I did not know that it would make me feel like the world's worst employee.  But, there it was - in yellow highlighter on my time sheet.  Day after day after day of changed priorities.  Of poor performance.

You should know, my supervisor at work is awesome.  He's great with positive feedback.  He never micromanages.  And, as someone with a family and a long commute himself, he completely understands that sometimes it's hard to get to work on time.  He was careful to point out that he was only showing me my time sheet to make me aware for when this new policy goes into effect.  He was very validating that never being just one minute late is impossible.  He made sure I knew this wasn't a warning of any kind. 

Not a disciplinary action or even a slap on the wrist.  It was just to help me.  But, you guys - this kind of stuff does not happen to me.  I never get called out on mistakes at work because they just don't happen.  I'm an overachiever in that way and I know it's obnoxious, but it's just how I am.  Staring at my time sheet, long after my supervisor had left my office, I realized a little part of the perfectionist in me died when I became a mom.

And to tell the truth?  I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.



I've been on time every day since I saw the glaring highlighted reality of my tardiness (save the day where there were 3 different major accidents along my commute.)  But, I'm trying to give myself a break.  Moms make mistakes.  And sometimes they're not just the parenting fails this entire blog is devoted to.

Just another lesson in the balancing act that is motherhood.
Some day I'll get it right.

Could you take my picture, 'cause I won't remember...

Combined with my last post y'all are going to think I hate technology and I so do not.  Also, I gave up cursing for Lent.  Let's see how that goes...

After shelling out a sizable portion of money for The Incredible Hulk's six month pictures, I made this goal for myself to buy a nice camera and learn how to use it well enough that I can take our family pictures from there on out.  The camera we have now was my wedding present to my husband and it has been fabulous.  But there are still things I don't understand or like about it.  And while sometimes we get BEAUTIFUL pictures, other times you'd think we were using some cheap point and shoot.

Like, on Sunday morning, TIH woke up in a fabulous mood and was ready to play.  I put him in the bouncer for a little while and noticed that the sun was streaming through the window and shining on him in such a beautiful way.  I tried with every setting to capture that moment on my camera.  I just never wanted to forget it.  The um, normal (?) setting made him show up blurry.  So, I tried the action setting.  Held the shutter button down for 5 seconds?  75 pictures.  You're welcome.

It was so frustrating.  And then, I looked up and TIH was smiling the sweetest smile at me.  One of those "Mommy, just how are you so wonderful?" kind of looks.  And that was when I put the camera down.

You know, my friends joke around with me and call us the paparazzi because we have so many photos of TIH and I delight in sharing them through Facebook and e-mail and the digital picture frame in my office.  But, honestly.  I need to come out from behind the camera sometimes.  Instead of wondering why I suddenly had a mini flip book of TIH jumping up and down in his bouncer - I just needed to sit there and stare at that beautiful baby smiling at me while he played.

And so, I did.

My husband and I were walking out of a restaurant the other day with the baby.  As we passed a group of people we got the requisite chorus of "Awww"s and then one voice called out after us - Don't blink.

I'm afraid I already have.  He's eight months old.  He's closer to his first birthday than he is to the actual date of his birth.  It's going so fast.

I want and need photographs to document these special days.  They're all we're going to have to back up all of our "When you were a baby..." stories.  But, on the days where I can't figure out which setting to use or we can't get his monthly bathtub shot because he's splashing around - I need to just set the dang camera down and splash around with him.  The pictures can wait.

I can't promise I won't blink.  But, I can promise that I won't take this short first year for granted.
I'm putting the camera down for now.  It's time to play.

I'm missing the moments as they pass...

Can I start by saying, where the HELL did this year go?

Today is our annual Christmas luncheon at work.  The food is actually pretty awesome usually.  And every December when it comes around, I am a little sad when the luncheon is over.  I don't know why.  I just am.  And yet, this year it seems like it was only yesterday that I was sitting around a table with my closest co-workers, sipping decaf since I had just come out of the mommy closet and announced to everyone that I was pregnant.

When did it all start going so fast?

When did I begin to so expertly change a diaper that I almost don't even know I'm doing it anymore?  Such a far cry from the first diaper change which involved 4 diapers, an entire package of wipes, and several wet wash cloths as well as a full sized bath towel.  (I'm not even kidding.)

When did my little man go from being that helpless little thing we strapped into that huge car seat to being a kid who rolls over like he's been doing it all his life?

When did preparing food and feeding it with a spoon become so foreign to me and when did breastfeeding became like second nature? (I, for one, NEVER thought that would happen.)

When did I start hoisting a basket of laundry in one arm and the baby in the other and managing both instead of the way I used to clutch him to me with both hands as if he would break?  (And when did I start being able to actually do laundry again?)

When did my entire neighborhood get together and decide that they were ALL going to have Christmas decorations on their houses before the first week in December?  (I haven't even put up a wreath.  Hell, I don't even know where our Christmas decorations are.  Last year at this time, I spent a large portion of my day dry heaving into the toilet.)

When did I stop making lists and lists of things I want for Christmas and instead begin to really relish the thought of just sitting by a fire with my family?

When did it get so damn cold?  Did fall even happen?

When did I stop planning my night around getting stupid drunk on New Years Eve?

And for that matter, when did I start falling asleep before midnight EVERY year?

When did I turn twenty-seven?  (Monday, for those that don't know.  But, yeah.  27.  It's so...grown up.)

When did I become a grown-up?



No wonder I always feel like there aren't enough hours in the day.  Look at how fast those hours fly.