Back to the Blog

Alright, so it's been months since I posted here and, to be honest, I've missed it. I think about postings in my head and haven't gotten them down on the computer. I can say we've been busy, which is true, but I also think I just needed to let go of one commitment for a little bit for my sanity and, well, the blog was it. Thus, the message in this post...read on.

Every day every parent doubts their ability to be a good parent. You spend so much energy and thought making parenting your primary focus and yet you still worry that you're not doing enough or not doing it right. It's totally overwhelming and stressful and makes your head spin on a daily basis.

I grapple with this regularly - load up on activities vs. spending quality time at home with my kids. Letting them play independently vs. engaging them in constant play. I love my kids more than anything and they astound me each and every day with their humor, charm, intelligence, sincerity, generosity, and so much more. Many days I feel like I didn't do enough - maybe I didn't do enough arts and crafts with them, or I didn't do enough reading, or I didn't limit their time in front of the tv, or hundreds of other "I didn't"s.

But deep down, I do know that I did. I do spend a lot of time doing all of those things with my kids. I just wish, so hard, that I could wipe away all of the extraneous things in our days - grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry - all the stuff that must get done, but that takes away from my time to "just be" with my kids. If only those things could fade into the background and I could spend all the quality time I want with my kids, for just a day, or two, or three.

But life isn't about "if only"s, any more than it should be about all the "I didn't"s. I am struggling with remembering to appreciate each moment and making the most of the time we do have. I am cleaning through a lot of the clutter, emotional and physical clutter, in our lives to allow me more energy and time to enjoy our life and enjoy the moments as they come.

Wish me luck.

October = Illness

Around here it seems that October cannot get by without bringing the first of the season's many cold bugs into our home. Kara's third birthday was October 3rd and she had a slight cold then. By the next week, it had passed on to John...and then turned into croup. Fortunately the croup part only lasted about two days, but the cold lingered on for him. After missing most of the week of school, we packed up and headed north to Maine for a long weekend, visiting my extended family and enjoying some fall color. During the whirlwind trip, I came down with the cold. I felt okay the day we drove back, thankfully, but have spent the last 3 days being pretty miserable. And finally, not to be left out of anything, Matt woke up this morning declaring his body's submission to the cold as well. I'm truly wondering what it would be like for our family to stay healthy through October. The last few years have consistently resulted in a thorough spread of illness through our household. It's unfortunate, for many reasons, but mostly because we all truly enjoy fall and all the many fun activities there are to do during this season. At this point it looks like we may need to scale down our fall activities we had planned for this weekend so we can just get some rest and recuperate. So tough.

At least we were able to enjoy Kara's birthday and our trip to Maine was great. A lot of good family togetherness and seeing my grandmother for the first time in two years was also good. Her older sister (just turned 90!!) was able to come out from California and that was great too. My grandmother has severe dementia, so may not have known who anyone was specifically, but definitely had some recognition of those around her and certainly was happy to see her sister after many years. It was a very special visit. The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins and I got to visit with my brother and sister-in-law, which I always enjoy. It was kind of a crazy trip to make for a weekend, but it was well worth it.

Now we're on to finishing off October with a potential camping trip next weekend, soccer games, starting swimming lessons, and of course, Halloween. Kara seems to be changing her mind on her costume choice by the day. She clearly doesn't understand yet that her options might be more limited than she thinks! Working on that....

I'm optimisitic that my blogging will become more frequent again soon. Once my head cold diminishes and I have a clearer brain, I'll get back on top of things...or maybe I'll get better about accepting that I'm always behind and figure out a way to enjoy it all more instead. Hmm, I think I might like that idea better!

Pictures to Come!

So you may have noticed a serious lack of pictures lately on the blog.... Well, I've been trying but the link to upload images to my posts has not been working for some unknown reason. This morning as I fiddled with it a bit, I just found a work-around for it and obviously just got a picture to upload with my other post. So hopefully that will continue to work and I'll be able to post some more pictures of our summer fun adventures. Sorry if things have been a little heavy on the text and light on the images lately!

New Blog to Check Out

I have a neighbor and friend who just this week has started a new blog that is really worth checking out - Manic Mom's Monthly Menus. If you are a mom and are looking for new recipes and cooking tips, Erin's site is awesome! I am already excited to try some of the recipes she's got posted. She's a great person and really likes to cook for her family. She's got some great tips and explains how she's adapting a recipe based on cost and food preferences, along with ideas of how she might do the recipe differently next time or alternatives to try.

Check it out and I hope you get some helpful information!

Pics will come soon

By the way, in case you were wondering, my recent posts have not included pictures. And I will begin posting with pictures again soon, I promise. Right now we're still in the process of switching everything over to the laptop and I'm doing most of my posts from the laptop, but the pictures are still on the old pc. So, I apologize for all the text without any good photos to go with it, but that will change soon, I hope! Thanks for your patience!

Booking it together

My 2 kids are at the dining table as I write this and they are each working diligently - Kara in her Seasame Street coloring book and John in his writing/counting workbook. He's reading just fine already, but the writing skills are definitely in need of some practice. And I have had trouble getting him motivated to work on the workbook, but this seems to be working...for now. Both kids are content and I get a chance to type a bit on the blog - great for all parties! Now that we have the laptop my blogging can become more flexible and I can do it here at the table with the kids. I love getting them engaged in activities where I can start them off, they can take off with their creative sides for a bit on their own (but I'm always available for assistance), and then I can help finish up and clean up. It gives them a sense of accomplishment in their projects and they can (mostly) do them without the sibling fighting that seems to be growing in intensity around here lately. Any time I can go for 10 minutes or more without listening to anyone scream, cry, yell, or whine, I figure it's a success! ;-)

100!

Well, I got an email today that declared I have had 100 "hits" on my blog since I started the counter in mid-August. That's pretty cool. I started this as a way to relay info on the kids and to share a few pictures. And it is still just that. But I feel pretty good that at least a few people are checking out my site and finding things that are interesting and helpful. I know that a few of my neighbors are using the recipes I've posted. So, I want to say a big "thanks" to those who are checking this out and I hope it's a good read and enjoyable. I'm still hopeful that I will become better at putting up regular posts. We just got a new computer, (the old one was about as fast as a dinosaur) so I'm thinking things will become easier to do more frequent posts. We'll see. Thanks again! I'm enjoying it so far and I hope you all are too!

Already behind - yikes!

Okay, so I initially started the blog thinking that I'd be able to keep up with it and already I feel behind! I've gone for 5 days without posting anything. Oooops! On Friday I found a new menu area to add a ton of cool stuff to the blog site, but I haven't had the energy or time to explore it yet. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get that together and will have some cool new stuff for everyone to look at, including some pictures of the kids, a better picture of me, and some links to other blogs that I enjoy. Maybe I'll even add a picture of the hubby, although he might put a ban on that, we'll see. ;-) For now, it's late, and I'm exhausted after cleaning the house all day for a playgroup we hosted in the late afternoon. Now after doing some overdue financial things on the computer, it's definitely time for me to go to bed! Keep checking in this week and you should see some new stuff! And I promise to be better about making time for it. ;-) Good Night All!

Save, save, save!

Well, my first blogging lesson was learned this morning. SAVE your posts as you go along! I was typing away and was almost done when I managed to hit some combination of keys (I'm still not sure what it was) and whamo! the whole thing was gone! Picture and all! I looked around and tried to figure out if there was any way to retrieve it, but it was gone. Ugga! So from now on I will be regularly saving my work as I'm drafting new posts. I guess it's all part of the learning curve on these things. Definitely not the fun part of this process though! Well, on to try and recreate what I had written the first time....

New to this - Yikes!

Okay, I am brand new to the world of blogging. In fact, I've really only ever read a couple of different blogs, mostly written by friends and neighbors. But I've been inspired to start one of my own. I've found myself over the last couple of weeks thinking of things that I would write on a blog - mostly funny stories about the kids that I know I'll never remember to share with anyone. So I'm going to give this a try and see how it goes. We'll see how good I am about posting those stories and keeping it all updated, but I want to give it a try. I hope you will enjoy reading it and will share your comments and ideas with me as well.