The Not-So-Divine Secrets of -Motherhood-

Deal of the Day

My mother in law and I have this little thing between us, we call it "deal of the day". I vaguely remember posting about this before, maybe I have and maybe I haven't so I'll run back through it. We always try to find the very best deal out there and are always looking for ways to outdo each other on picking up bargains.

Over the years I suppose it means that we have both picked up some extra junk since it was such a good deal we had to buy it just to tell the other about our great deal.

Today however I really did get a deal of the day. My neighbor is a Griswold for every single holiday. His house is by far the most decorated house on the block and sometimes I think we shouldn't even bother as it will look like a clumsy attempt in comparison to his strategically decorated home.

That being said, he also has the latest and greatest every season. This year he had this set of trees (three in all) that have cool oversized bulbs and a supersize speaker to blast Christmas music that appears to be synchronized with the blinking lights. I coveted those trees all season but the set was like two hundred bucks even at a warehouse discount store. The trees are just like this:

Then I was at the craft store on the day before Christmas Eve and they had a single tree priced at sixty two bucks, marked down from a hundred something. I actually stood there and debated whether I should buy it.

I would have bought it if I thought I could have hidden the box from my husband for another whole season but it was pretty bulky. Sadly, I moved on.

But tonight I was at the grocery store and I saw a fantastic sign. There was a set of three of these trees on display and it had a sign that it was marked down from 169.00 to, get this, 20.00. I thought they were talking about the big tree only. Nope, it was the whole set. So I bought it, not knowing if it works or not, because it is the deal of the day.

And next year I don't care if I look like a copy cat, I'm going to get these trees out and display them front and center.

Not So Divine Secret Number One

Ready for this? The first secret is the overused cliche, life as you know it is gone forever. Maybe you are the first in your group of friends to become a Mommy so you have to blaze the trail for everyone else. Maybe you have friends that are already Mommies that can help you through the rough patches.

Either way, your life is or will be irrevokably changed by having children. (And I don't just mean the ample caboose and floppy, deflated tatas that are the physical reminder that you are now a mother)

I won't go into the sleep deprivation thing because you will hear it from everyone, including those that are not already parents. Sleep deprivation is legendary and needs no further explanation.

The truth is that when you become a Mommy you will likely have time to take a shower and either a) shave your legs or b) shampoo your hair. But you won't have time for both. Some days for me it is a real toss up over which is worse but as of yet I have not had one day where I have had enough time to do both. I usually forewarn my husband on the days I haven't shaved so he can stick to his side of the bed.

Romance? HA! It isn't as if you don't want to be romantic. It's that your kid has this inner sensor built in and as soon as your husband drops his shorts the baby knows. I mean KNOWS. So the toss up then becomes do you a) finish the job you started because it's been so long or b) get dressed and go to calm down your near hysterical child, leaving your now hysterical husband. I haven't even gotten to the stage where I will need to start locking my door yet, but I have heard tales from other Mommies that their children will stand outside the door and push their little fingers under the door. What I want to know about that is, what the? Is it broad daylight out?

Don't get me wrong. I mean, there are perks to this new lifestyle. For example, now I have a personal assistant to pull me off a loop of toilet paper and flush for me after I have gone to the bathroom. She's fourteen months for heaven's sake, I can't just leave her to play for a few minutes outside the bathroom when we are home alone.

You also don't really have to worry about hunting down those Cheerios that have fallen out of their snack cups. Those Cheerios will fall in strategic hiding places and your child will find them when they are really hungry, thereby saving you a trip to the kitchen.

If your child is like mine you will never ever have to own an alarm clock again. Just think of the electricity you can save! Without fail my child wakes at six am every single day. And usually at five am on weekends, since our time together is so short she wants to make the most of it.

So yeah, not so divine secret number one is that it's the end of the world as you know it. (sing along with me) And for me personally, I just know I wouldn't have it any other way.

My definition of blogging success

I am by no means a blogging expert. I like to believe I am a brilliant writer, until I read through any of the blogs listed on my blogroll (plus some). And then I know that I am but one small fish in a sea of great fish. Like all things in my life I do strive to one day achieve blogging brilliance.

So I will share with you just a few of the little things that make me happy about blogging. And being able to say anything I want without interruptions is not the only one.

When I first started blogging I was so afraid of telling anyone I knew that I was a blogger. It was like my dirty little secret. Shhh. I have a blog. Thanks to my friends on an infertility chat board I had the start up support that I needed. I had my loyal four followers, and I was good with that. But then I started to get a little more bold. I told a person or two that I knew that I had a blog. Actually, I don't even know if they ever read my blog or not since they never said anything to me. But it felt liberating to tell them and so I told a few more.

Now I think I tell it at every family gathering and try to slip it in the conversation in the lunch room at least once a week. It's shameless promotion. And any blogger that doesn't check their stats on a regular basis, well, they really aren't all that driven by my standards. The stats and comments are what keep bloggers like me going.

I won't tell you what my stats are because I know that while they excite me they will be embarassingly low to publish. What I will tell you is that I have found a new "milestone" in my blogging career. There are times that I can see who visits my page but I have NO IDEA how they found me. And that really excites me. I can see what searches they have done that have led them to me, and I can see when they click to visit from Wordless Wednesday but there is a whole new group of visitors that have been coming from I-don't-know-where and I am so happy to see them!

Welcome complete strangers! Pull up a bar stool. Tonight I'm pouring, well, water tonight because I'm sick and have been on a bazillion kinds of medication. But come back in about a week and I'll mix up some Mai Tai's.

Wordless Wednesday

Merry Christmas to all!

Bah Humbug?

My husband really isn't all that into the whole holiday thing and every single year I have to put up the Christmas trees and all the decorations single handedly. Sometimes he will look in on me to make sure I'm not balancing from the top step of the ladder on one foot while trying to place the bow on top of the tree but other than that, he's out.

I figure though that he will need to start finding a little Christmas spirit as Hayley gets older. I have no doubt that she will ask her Dada why he isn't helping decorate the tree or why Mommy is out on the ladder stapling up Christmas lights by herself outside.

I'm just trying to prepare him slowly for that day. So he kind of has a free pass for maybe the next two years. I didn't ask him to help me decorate this year but I did ask him to help me wrap her presents. Now, gifts are kind of a source of contention in our house. Not because of what I bought, but because of the rules of wrapping.

My parents wrapped everything when we were kids, including the stocking stuffers. The rule was, we could go to the Christmas Tree before my parents were up, we could even look at all the gifts underneath but we could not wake my parents up before six am. The stocking stuffers became a diversion tactic. My parents wrapped all the gifts in them and we were permitted to open our stockings without my parents being up yet. We sure savored every single little gift that we opened- right down to the tube of chapstick we usually got.

When my husband and I got married I instructed him that the stockings were to be stuffed and it really didn't happen by a man driving a sleigh. He was somewhat horrified that on top of buying gifts he needed to find stocking stuffers. I got them that year but they weren't wrapped. And so began the debate. I told him they had to be wrapped. He told me Santa doesn't have time to wrap stocking stuffers. Finally he relented and he has wrapped my stocking stuffers ever since.

However, last year a new fire ignited when my sister's partner had the same argument. Why do you have to wrap the stocking stuffers? Because that's the way it has always been. So I'm waiting to see what happens with the stuffers this year, and I'm guessing with how tired I am that we will begin a new tradition in my life where they don't get wrapped. I give kudos to my other sister who has four children and still wraps every last stuffer. I don't know if I have the energy.

We wrapped gifts tonight, together, for the very first time ever. My husband was surprisingly good at it, although he only wrapped square or rectangular boxes and left the odd shapes to me. I was wondering how it would go when he muttered "I hate wrapping presents".  I looked over to see what the problem was and he was mad because there was an inch too much paper on the end.

Puh-leeze, I even bought the kind of paper with a grid on back so you can get the perfect cut every time! Just trim off one square!

He was mad because it was one more step. I can see I have my work cut out for me.

Winter Wonderland

With the official start of winter I figured it would be only appropriate to borrow a template from Typepad and give my blog a little holiday cheer. Oh yeah, and I finally got up the nerve to actually change my blog title. You likey?

I'm not all that witty so it took every single brain cell I have to come up with that. I'm not really sure I could think up anything else so I'm hoping this one grows on you like it has grown on me. Check in and post a comment, for the love of Pete, PLEASE POST A COMMENT. If you are a fellow blogger you know how it is when you check your blog and low and behold, someone commented. The comments are the little things that let us know we aren't just blogging to ourselves.

I'm still desperately trying to find someone that can create (an affordable) blog design for me. Maybe now that I've changed my title it will appeal to a designer more than my last one. They may be intrigued and inspired by the new title in a way that they definitely were not by the last one.

On a totally unrelated note, I commandeered my husbands laptop since he is sleeping in this morning. Should I be concerned that it is making noises that sound like popcorn popping?

Change of atmosphere

So I've posted about it before- you know, changing up the look of my blog. Getting a professional design and all. I've been on several "waiting lists" since then to no avail. So I am still going to work on changing my design, I'm just going to have to do it by myself. Which means it won't be pretty.

See, the title of this blog is "Adventures In-Fertility". At one point it was highly appropriate. I was venturing through, well, infertility. And then it became my adventure in fertility. And now I have a child. So it really isn't appropriate to call it Adventures In-Fertility anymore. Actually, it is quite misleading. I mean, if I were still infertile and I were searching for something to relate to the very last page I would want to click on is one where I would see yet another success story.

As sad as I am to see it go, I have decided that I must rename my blog. And I have an idea of what I'm going to name it but I wanted to give all four of you a heads up that it's coming. The webpage will be the same. Luckily my website is vaguely generic and will withstand any future identity crisises as well.

So within the next couple of days look for a new name. Same content really, just a new name so I don't accidentally lure someone here thinking they could find another fellow infertile to commiserate with. That being said- every infertile is welcome here at any time.  Pull up your chair and I will pour you a virtual drink as Mel does. Since you probably aren't drinking anyway, what with still trying to get pregnant and all. I just don't want to add further salt to any wounds for anyone still looking for their miracle.

Get ready, here comes a new and improved Jenn.

Wordless Wednesday

Conversation overheard:

My mother in law (bless her heart) is pretty hip. She has a cell phone and she sends text messages to her children and her grandchildren. It is so cute to watch her with it- one day this summer on our visit there we were walking through Walmart. She whipped it out and sent off a message to my oldest niece asking if she needed anything while we were there. The response? A watering can. See how handy those text messages are?

So while we were there last week I was standing in the kitchen when I heard my sixteen year old niece talking to my mother in law. "Hey g-ma, w-up?

I am not lying when I say this. I wish I had a pen in my soapy dishwater hands because I swear to you my mother in law answered in text also. Out loud. She probably knows more abbreviations than I do. I know it takes away from the story that I can't remember her response but it was flippin hilarious I tell you.

And in case you are wondering, apparently we ARE that family that sends text messages at the dinner table. Same niece. She has an older sister and she said something unkind to her. Older sister headed off to the dining room while younger sister stayed in the kitchen with me. A few minutes go by and younger sister whips out her cell phone. She tells me "I'm going to text her that I'm sorry".

What?

She is in the next room for heaven's sake. You are going to spend twenty five cents to send her a note? Let me do it, HEY, YOUR LITTLE SISTER SAYS SHE'S SORRY.

Do you think she heard me? I yelled. She's in the next room. Yep, she heard me. Saved you twenty five cents.

I suppose one day I'm going to be taking whatever measures necessary to keep the communication open with Hayley but for right now I'm just shaking my head...

Baby It's Cold Outside

Just in case you were wondering how cold it really was while we were up North I took a picture of my car thermometer. (don't mind the b-berry quality photo- not bad for a gadget that is supposed to be a phone) And yes, it really was that frickin cold (at least for a desert lizard like me).

Although, it was still to the positive Fahrenheit so I guess I should stop my whining. Free buzz for XM radio- I LOVE the Holly Channel- non stop Christmas music with no commercials 24 hours a day. XM103. Go there.

Not Santa!!

My child is such a happy go lucky child I have always worried at how friendly she is with strangers. You know, blowing kisses and going quite freely to people she just meets. Apparently I can feel safe if the stranger resembles Santa.

 

Dear Guy from the Truck Stop in Parowan,

Dear Mister,

I apologize for eavesdropping on your phone call. It was rude of me to listen in as you were telling your family that you were selling your tools here and there to try and get enough money to put gas in your car to get home.

It broke my heart to hear you say that you were close to Butte, even though Parowan is probably six or seven hours yet and it also broke my heart to hear you say you put your last dollar into the gas tank and that it would get you home.

I know you wouldn't have enough gas to get all the way to Butte on one tank and I wish I had more than twenty dollars to spare at that moment. I hope that when I slipped that twenty dollars to you that you knew you would find your way home, one way or another.

I hope that you did find your way home last night. I'm sorry that your circumstances left you somewhat stranded far from home with no money. I hope that twenty dollars helped to get you where you needed to go and I hope you get to see your family soon.

Love, the eavesdropper from the truckstop in Utah.

The Promised Land

One thing about living in Las Vegas is that we don't have a few of our favorite fast food places. We don't have a Tim Hortons. (We ate Tim Hortons donuts and coffee every single day that we were in Canada- and sometimes twice a day).

We also don't have a Chick-Fil-A. Who do I have to write a letter to? We really need a Chick-Fil-A here. Since we don't have one however, we have to go out of our way to have it whenever we go to a place that does have it. For example, Denver. Or Dallas.

And apparently thanks to this device, you can locate one whenever you are driving through somewhere like Salt Lake City. We hopped online, googled it, and then used the handy-dandy GPS to find our way to it. One small hiccup- the GPS doesn't tell you that the ending location is in a mall. In the middle of Christmas Rush. On a Saturday. In a town that doesn't shop on Sundays.

However, you can try, try again and it will give you another location. And GPS will guide you to the second location as well. We dropped an hour just meandering through Salt Lake City trying to find a Chick-Fil-A but we were people on a mission.

Then we saw this.

And my husband turned to me and said with an excited smile, "Hey, that Brigham Young guy was right, this really IS the promised land!".                                    

There's no place like home

We left Canada on Friday morning and surprisingly Hayley didn't seem to mind going back in the carseat. We thought that once she figured out we weren't just running down the street to the mall that she would be a screaming mess. It turns out that portable DVD player cures all. Why oh why didn't we have that thing plugged in from the moment we left Las Vegas? It would have been a much nicer ride there for sure!

At any rate, the roads were mostly clear. We drove halfway and stopped in a nice little hotel in Montana. We will definitely stay there again. We got out of the car at 11:00pm Montana time and figured we would get a nice six or seven hours of sleep. I have a new formula for calculating how much sleep you will get. Take the amount you think it will be, say six or seven hours. Divide by two. Then subtract three. That is closer to the real amount of sleep you will get when travelling with a toddler.

We checked in and by 11:30 pm my husband and I were ready to pass out. We didn't count on Hayley being recharged and not wanting to go to sleep. I "wrestled the alligator" for an hour and then gave her over to my husband who finally got her to sleep. Score one for dad.

What is it about sleeping children? Why must they lay sideways in the bed and thrash about all night long? I took more kicks to the ribs than when I was pregnant and even a few to the head. Note to self- find a way for Hayley to sleep on her own next time.

When we were driving on Friday the roads were awesome. We woke up Saturday and got back into the car to find this just a few miles into the trip. Luckily it cleared off after about four hours and we were really moving along. See my next post about the promised land.

Wordless Wednesday

Arrived Safely in Canada

Where do I start? We knew that Hayley could only stand to be in the car for fifteen minutes at a time so we also knew that we were in for a challenge trying to drive fifteen hundred miles with her.

We hopped in the car on Thursday at 2:30 pm. By 3:00 we knew it was going to be harder than we thought. At any rate, we chugged along as fast as we could. We hit rain just outside of Salt Lake City but we have an Audi all wheel drive so I was confident we would be fine. We were left in the rain puddles by another Audi and my husband's response was that if it had been five years ago and we didn't have pumpkin pie sleeping in the backseat he would have chased the guy. Oh how we all grow up...

The temperature started dropping once we hit Idaho and I got the lucky first snow. Fortunately it was just blowing snow, not really sticking to the road. Hayley was asleep by this time and we decided we better just try and push through the night.

Bad idea. She woke up at 2am and absolutely refused to go back to sleep. So, to make a very long car drive sound very short, we made it here after 30 hours in the car. We were all on each other's very last nerve but we did make it.

We haven't had much sleep since we have been here- Hayley is all out of sorts and although I had the stomach flu just last week I also had another round of 24 hour puking. I think it was some medication I took for my chest pain- another story for another day.

Hayley is so cute around her cousins- there are just so many of them here! And even as I type with one eye on the computer and the other eye on Hayley I know that these are the experiences that someday she will remember with fondness. The long car trips from hell will fade into the distance- maybe she will remember one specific instance or two but not the entire 30 hours. Unfortunately for me, I will remember every minute of that 30 hours. But I too will remember the look on her face every time she sees her cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents, and then that 30 hours will be nothing in the grand scheme.

I will try to post again soon- it was tough to commandeer the laptop in between my husband and my nieces and nephews but I have found that it seems to be unoccupied at six in the morning and since no one else wants to rise early with Hayley I can sneak in a little computer time. What I want to know is why is it still pitch black at eight in the morning here? I am all out of sorts! I'll be back tomorrow morning. Catchya around this time...

The Stomach Flu

Without fail the stomach flu made it's rounds through the rest of our household. I woke with the flu on Friday night. I will spare you the truly gory details but I will say that it was making an exit one way or another.

I spent the entire day in bed on Saturday while my husband did his best to dote on both sick Mommy and sick Hayley. Poor guy, I swear he is earning his place in Heaven. Both Hayley and I felt better on Sunday- just in time for my husband to catch it. Argh.

Seriously, my house smells like puke. Permapuke. Even the healthiest dose of Febreze has not been able to eradicate that smell. The washing machine has been going non stop. The toilets have been scrubbed more times than they have all year. We went outside on Sunday just to get the stink blown off us. It didn't work.

And in just three more days we are all getting into the car and making our trek North for Christmas. Stay tuned, there are bound to be some road trip stories from hell coming soon. The good news is (I think) I may be able to post from my Blackberry. If not I will definitely take notes memo-style for a play by play recap when I get home. Holidays and family are always good for a laugh.

Oh yeah, and if you are looking for tips to deal with the stomach flu, well, here are a few:

Even if you think your toddler is ready to drink milk again give it 24 more hours just to be safe. Really.

Layer the sheets in your toddlers bed to make it easy to clean up in the middle of the night- mattress pad, sheet, mattress pad, sheet. Then when they have an episode you can peel back the top layer and voila! Clean sheets below without the wrestling!

Fluids, fluids, fluids. Change them up. Do whatever you have to do to keep your toddler or yourself sipping a little something every few minutes.

Sleep it off. Personally I waited until I had tossed my very last cookie and then I took a dose of over-the-counter motion sickness medicine. It controlled the nausea and knocked me out. Don't do this if you are the only adult home though, it really will knock you out.

If your baby is sick and needy clear your schedule. They grow out of the snuggly stage way too fast anyway. I spent three days just snuggling Hayley and now that she is feeling better I'm missing it already. Who cares if I got the flu too- I was going to get it anyway.

I'm really not an expert and I know these tips are practically useless. I just felt the need to pass along some useless advice.