Amelia Coos!

First up, a Halloween pic that I forgot to post last night. Claire with Aunt Alli and her bucket of three pieces of candy, unbeknownst to her will soon to be doled out to the neighborhood rugrats!

I think she much preferred her spot in the garage. This way, she got to not only have easy access to our candy bowl (hmmm... maybe that's why we ran out so early...), but she got to check out everyone's costume. It was so cute when she recognized a Nemo costume as he was walking up the driveway, and she exclaimed to him, "Nemo! You are Nemo!"

OK, so here's a video of Amelia coo'ing. I started cooing to her recently, just because, cuz what else do you say to a six-week-old other than narrate the news, which is too anxiety-inducing presently. (I am not a fan of extreme weather... here's why.)

I noticed she started mimicking me! It's cute as a six-week-old... this reminds me I need to get a video of CLAIRE mimcking me. While that is funny to watch, it's not so cute. She doesn't mimic me in real-time, but she says the exact same things that I say to her when I'm not happy with something she's doing. So if I go to take her shirt off for bath time and she doesn't want me to, she starts scolding me: "Mama, I do NOT like when you do that, that makes me VERY upset, please stop doing that RIGHT now, I really need you to stop that." All stern-like. It's unreal! Last week, she ended her tirade with, "You're being a turk." (Short for turkey. My moniker of choice.)

ANWAY. Amelia. Coos. SO. DANG. SWEET!

Claire much preferred handing out Halloween candy this year, rather than going house to house. This was A-OK with me, as we set up some folding chairs at the entrance to our garage to meet trick-or-treaters there. The first year in our house, I found it rather annoying to have to go to the front door every knock or ring of the bell, as our foyer is too small for a chair to camp out for trick-or-treaters. We live in a subdivision that brings anywhere between 150-450 trick-or-treaters, no joke, so it's constant -- the candy flinging.

After a half hour of handing out candy, I decided I had to take Claire at least to our neighbors, so I could get an official "first trick-or-treating" photo. We went to three houses and came home. I went inside to warm up the baby, and when I returned to the garage a few minutes later, Claire was standing by the candy bowl and cried "All the candy is gone, Mama!" with sadness in her voice.

My initial thought was, "Oh, she thinks that huge bowl of candy was hers, and she's sad it's gone."  No, I was wrong. My husband had given out CLARIE'S (three pieces of) candy to trick-or-treaters because our candy had run out.

"There were like 20 kids here, waiting for candy!" was his excuse. :)  Me personally, I would have said, "Sorry kids, closing up shop" and left them hanging, rather than give out MY OWN CHILD'S candy. You know, all three pieces of it.

So we ventured out again, because I would not let this high-fructose-corn-syrup experience go by without my two-year-old participating!

She ended up replacing her loot and then some, so Halloween was saved.

First Week As A (Temp) SAHM

I'm getting a brief glimpse of stay-at-home-mom life. Last week, Claire started going to daycare every other day. I kept her in daycare full-time until then, even though I was home with Baby Amelia. It would have been nearly impossible for me to care for both of them at once, without compromising my healing and recovery from childbirth. That sounds very dramatic (I didn't even have a c-section and I'm talking about healing!) but let me tell you. It's no joke, having a baby. So I packed her up every morning, baby in tow, and took her to school to be watched after by her Daytime Moms.

So I'm only one week in, but hoo-boy. Now I get why SAHMs feel they get a bad rap sometimes. What I mean is... I always believed it when women said "WE WORK! We just don't get paid."   You know, during the whole "working mom" conversation, in which it sounds as if "working moms" are saying that SAHMs don't work because of the wording of our titles. I never thought that, I have always thought SAHMs do indeed have full, busy, not-always-fun days. But now I UNDERSTAND it. I empathize. And at the same time, I feel I am finally validated as a mother, in some weird way. I feel like....... being a "working mom" up until last week, I never really earned my mom badge until I spent some time as a SAHM. 

I say I was a working mom up until last week because Maternity Leave and SAHM are quite different things. The first five weeks with Amelia were Maternity Leave. This meant I was parked squarely on the couch, just watching TV and nursing all day long. Occasionally I would, say, unload the dishwasher. Perhaps on a Tuesday I would fold a load of laundry. Not much else, at least not during the daytime when the baby was awake.

Now on the days when I have both Claire and Baby Amelia (I can't just call her Amelia.... I have to call her Baby Amelia... it's like a lisp) home with me, I feel like I'm a SAHM. Which means, it's a work-day.  Yes, there is still some couch-sitting, and there is definitely still some nursing, but there's a ton of housework (dishes and laundry galore), a ton of activity planning, a ton of cleaning up from meals and snacks and activities and playtime and diapers and pull-ups and underwear (potty-training on top of it all!), and there's cooking dinner, and swiffering the blessed hardwood floors because holy shit if there isn't dog hair all over the floors AGAIN even though I just did this, I am going to become a mad-woman over this dog hair situation.  (And that was this blog's longest and worst run-on sentence.)

Anyway... don't take the above verbal vomit to mean I am not LIKING my foray into this new, albeit temporary, role. In fact, I kinda think I love it. Which I'm surprised to realize SURPRISED ME. I mean, why was I shocked to realize I enjoyed spending the whole day with my two beautiful daughters?

But like I said, I feel somewhat validated now... like I finally earned a little bit of street cred in the mom world or something. I won't lie... I sometimes feel slightly judged by SAHMs when I disclose that I send my daughter to daycare full-time due to my office job. See? I can't even say "when I disclose that I'm a working mom" because I feel like using those words discredits what SAHMs do every day, which is still "work".

This post is going nowhere fast, so I'm going to end it here. The last week has been awesome, and I'm going to try my best to enjoy this precious time while I have it. I need to formulate some of the awesomeness that is Two-Year-Old Claire here on this bloggy thing, because let me tell you... she is so awesome. But later... my babe child is wailing for me, duty calls.

Amelia

I'm a mom again.

Three weeks ago, my darling Amelia was born. Three weeks man. At times it feels like a minute ago, at times I can't remember what it was like just with one.

I expected everything to be a carbon copy of my experience with Claire. Going into labor a week early, laboring for 24 hours, birthing this sweet little E.T. looking (a beautiful E.T., mind you...) creature.

Instead, I was surprised with an on-time baby (why am I even using these "early" and "on-time" labels... I don't even know, as I've never believed in "due dates"), a 3 hour labor, and a completely different baby. This one is not a carbon copy of her sister Claire, she's a carbon copy of her Mama, Lindsay.

Three hour labor... yes, I said it. I woke up on my "due date" (there I go again...) with no signs of labor, so we did what most normal people do when they're 40 weeks pregnant... they go to Ikea.

OK, I make it sound more dramatic than it actually was. In reality, it was a Sunday, and we got there just when they were opening, and we had a very specific shopping list. We were in and out (including a frozen yogurt!) in 40 minutes, a new record. (Also: I will NEVER go to Ikea again unless it's Sunday when they open. Empty, I tell you, EMPTY! A Scandinavian miracle!)

We rounded off the shopping trip with a stop at Plum Market. During both trips, I had a few contractions here and there, nothing to write home about. It didn't even dawn on me to call my sister (our designated Claire-sitter) to warn her "this might be the day". The contractions seemed too sporadic and not even close to consistent.

The day went on... Ikea furniture assembled (I do believe it was our 12th and 13th piece of Ikea furniture my poor husband put together post-tornado), a trip to Target and Whole Foods under our belts (I apparently was trying to shop my baby out of my yute), and we retired home to watch the Lions game. I laid on the couch while Nick cheered on our football friends, and eventually fell asleep for almost the entire game.

My theory is that perhaps I went into labor during said "nap" during this 8:00 pm football game. Not that I woke up or anything, but when the game was over and Nick woke me up to go upstairs to bed at 11:30 pm, I think I made it to bed without noticing contractions or anything (I'm a pretty deep sleeper and thus zombie-walked to bed in a stupor, I'm sure). Less than an hour after going to bed, I woke up at 12:30 am with contractions.

I stayed in the bathroom for about 1/2 hour timing the contractions, and was like "well dang, that hurts" and "well dang, there's another one" and then "well dang, I'm going to take a shower because OW".

So I woke up Nick to let him know "hey, no big deal, I'm just taking a shower at 1 am because OW" and he was sort of like "eh okay? are you having a baby?" and I replied "don't know?"

It only took about 5 minutes of the shower before Nick made the Executive Decision to call my sister, because we were having a baby. I don't know what it is about me, but I was so indecisive about whether it was happening or not. HELLO DENIAL. Being that my sister lives 45 minutes away, I'm so glad he called her when he did.

I spent another hour laboring in the bathroom, draping myself over an exercise ball every 2-3 minutes. Eventually I started to sound like a zoo animal. I won't lie, I was kind of embarrassed on my own behalf. I know having a baby is this natural, albeit primal, mammalian thing to do, and I was definitely playing the part, but I was muy embarrassed at my "owwwwww" moans. 

So, 30 minutes laboring by myself.  60 minutes laboring with my husband up while my sister drove over here. We're talking 90 minutes total at home from the time I wake up in hard-core labor (without ever really being in non-hard-core labor) and then we're off to the hospital.

There was no way in HAIL I was going to SIT in the front seat, because remember? OW? So I laid in the 3rd row of my minivan (hello I'm a mom of two now, of course I have a minivan) and made more embarrassing sounds every 2 minutes or so. With about 5 minutes left of the ride to the hospital, my water broke in a gush. Lovely! Once we got there, Nick grabbed a wheelchair but like with the car, I was like "nope, not sitting on that" and ended up kneeling on it backwards. I don't think I opened my eyes more than three times between leaving my house and giving birth. I was just In The Zone trying to survive each contraction (have I mentioned it before? OW!) and trying not to die.

So now we're approaching 2 hours of labor. 1.5 hours at home, and about 1/2 hour for the drive there and the ride up to triage.

In triage, they checked me within a few minutes, and told me I was complete. Which means, labor is just about over & done with. UM, HELLO, WHAT?  I mean, thank you for saying that, because if you told me I was 4 cm or some bullshit number like that or something, I would have died from pain. (And gotten all Hollywood and been one of those woman screaming and begging for the Anesthesiologist NOWWWW.)  But of course, the fact that I was thinking those things means of course I was done, the worst part was over, now it's just time to have a baby.

Now, I think they really did get kind of Hollywood on me, because I swear (and this was probably the 3rd time I actually opened my eyes to see what was going on around me) they RAN my gurney down the hall. I swear I think I felt my hair blowing in the wind. It's not like I was pushing the baby out or anything? Nonetheless, I got a kick out of that. I kind of felt like a Big Deal on the maternity wing, if that's possible.

In actuality, I think I spent a total of 30 minutes in triage, between kneeling on the bed for a few contractions waiting for the resident, to getting checked, to getting admitted and what not. So in the 2-2.5 hours I was awake and in labor, I got to 10 cm and "ready to push". W. T. F.

The rest is pretty much storybook... push, push, baby. Crying, sweet, baby. My first thought was "OMG, she's different from Claire!" because like I said, I was expecting a version two point oh of my first daughter.

But this little sweetie pie, she had my rosy complexion, my fair skin, my red hair. She nursed immediately, and was easy to console. In a matter of 3 short hours (and 40 long weeks...), our family grew.

"Life as we knew it" had already changed when we became parents the first time, so the experience wasn't as... drastic and life-changing as our first go around. But the love was just as plenty, the awe at the miracle of life renewed, and the feeling that life as we know it just got a lot better.

 

As if there was ever a doubt.

First Things First

First things first... mama finally got herself a smart phone! Only a few years late to the game. Better late than never right? Except now that I have the world at my fingertips, I realize... how small my world actually is. It's not like I'm getting more emails or calls or tweets or anything. Now I just get to constantly monitor how small my world is.
Sweet!

Anyway. I highly do not recommend my weekend to anyone else. 36 weeks pregnant... husband leaves for international bachelor party (OK I added the international part for dramatics, but it's true as they did go to Toronto, which is a five hour drive), so I'm flying solo with fetus baby, two year old, and stir crazy dog. Have to pack up our apartment and move to a hotel because the lease here is up but house isn't ready for us to move back into just yet. About a week left! Five months and counting since the tornado. Anyway, stressed doesn't begin to cover my weekend, also see: sore, tired, and did I mention 36 weeks pregnant? Oh yeah I did. That.

Here's my self reminder that things could be so much worse. Uhhhh. They could be. My morbid mind could come up with 100 things that are worse than my weekend, so I'll stop complaining.

And go back to checking my non-friends on FB and refresh twitter on my handy new little cellular data device I scored today.

Here's a pic of Claire cuz why the hell not. Love this kid something fierce. Good thing I was able to capture "Baby's first Gogurt" via pic. One for the baby book for sure...

Life Lately

I keep meaning to start a baby book or a journal or something for Claire. Let's just say it's on my mental to-do list which is yay high {picture me stretching my short and stubby arms as far as they can sadly reach}.

 

So let's just document on ye olde blog here, shall we?

 

Yesterday morning, while Claire was getting her first film of toddlery milky smell on her (moms out there know what I mean... that first layer of toddler stench, right?) while eating her morning yogurt, I just had a burst of love while looking at her and said "Claire? I love you." and she kept her head down, steadfast on the yogurt task at hand. "I love you, Mama." My heart swelled, as it is wont to do when my 2 year old tells me she loves me. Then she piped up again. "I love you Murphy. I love you Baby Sister." OK, if that doesn't make you want to weep with motherly pride, then I don't want to know you.

 

Claire seems slightly jealous of Baby Sister thus far, but maybe I'm just projecting this onto her. She doesn't like to talk much about the baby, but then again, she must not get it all that much. We've been talking about Baby Sister for months now, she probably thinks we're all talk, no walk. I asked her the other day what Baby Sister's name should be. She was confused. "Umm. Sister!" Once I thought about it, it makes sense. We call(ed) her Baby Claire, and we call other babies Baby Grace, for example. So all along we've been saying Baby Sister, with sister just being the placeholder word. Whereas she thinks Sister is the name. I thought it was cute. I tried to explain that we could call her lots of different names. The one she finally suggested is Buddha. No idea where Buddha came from. No, we don't practice eastern religions. Or any religions for that matter.

 

Speaking of which. After the tornado, when most of Claire's books were destroyed, we got a plethora of books donated to us by her daycare friends. (Again, cue waterworks/heart swelly feelings.) One of the books is about Christmas, and tells the story of Jesus' birth. For being a kid who had never heard of Jesus before this book, she is downright obsessed with Baby Jesus. In fact, she was studying the tag on her washcloth the other day, and saw the Gerber baby face on the tag. "Baby Jesus!!!" She was so shocked that Baby Jesus appeared in places other than her beloved book. Every night, she wants to read the Baby Jesus book. She even fills in the words for us. It'll go like this:

"Then Mary and.... "  

"Joseph!"

"had to walk all night long to..."

"Bethlehem!"

"And when they got there they were very..."
"Tired!"

"but they had no place to sleep. So they slept in a..."

"Stable!"

"And that night..."

"Baby Jesus was born!"

 

It's pretty damn cute, even if it is about Baby Jesus, who I don't really have much else to teach her about except the night he was born.

 

My last little blurb is about a little ritual that Nick started with Claire. I think he got it from the book The Help. He basically tells Claire some affirmations and she repeats them. It's so precious. It typically goes like this:

"I'm pretty."

"I pretty!"

"I'm funny."
"I funny!"

"I'm smart."

"I farp!"

 

For being a kid with such an amazing vocabulary, a talking wonder if I may say so myself, this is the sweetest little speech impediment I've ever heard. She can't say "sm" and instead says "f".   So "smart" turns into "farp". {Let me digress a little to say that yes, we've considered the short-term ramifications of this, and have vetted out the possible ways in which we can get our daughter to swear. Smuck. Yes. We went there. I was not pleased nor proud.}

 

I totally "get it" now when I think back to the story my mom told me once about how I used to say "K-Mout" instead of "K-Mart". She said it was the sweetest thing, and the day I said "Let's go to K-Mart" her heart broke a little. I totally get it. Once she masters "smart" I will probably shed a proverbial tear.

 

These stories are probably only interesting to me, but there you go. A little glimpse of 2 year old Claire.

Am I A Queen? Or Is Nick A King?

I'm finally getting a tad excited about redecorating our house. The first 4 weeks post-tornado were all about coping with PTSD (sounds dramatic, I know), then the past 4 weeks have been about looking at selections for flooring (wood, tile, carpet, oh my!), kitchen and bathroom cabinets, roofing colors, siding colors, brick colors, oh the list will go on and on and on in the upcoming months. (Cabinet pulls? Wall colors? Light fixtures? Faucets? Doorknobs? SEE WHY I AM STRESSED?)

 

But what is getting me excited is the easy stuff to pick out, like new bedding, or a new headboard, and the such. Which leads me to my point. Do we replace our queen bed with another queen bed. Or do we splurge and upgrade to a king?

 

The apartment we're staying in while we're displaced from our home is furnished with a king bed. It's like Nick and I cross paths in the night, the bed is so huge. Being that I'm pregnant and currently require no less than 4 pillows to sleep (no joke), this extra space is welcome. But is it too big for the long run? Who has strong opinions either way? Does a king take up too much room in your bedroom? Do tell!

 

Also, I sort of wish I had an iota of design skillz right about now. I follow a few blogs of design-y type people, and now that I'm faced with design-y decisions myself, I realize what a true gift that is. I also wish I was more of a decisive person. I'm horrible about making decisions about things that are either expensive (read: if I don't like it in the end, I can't afford to replace it - such as kitchen cabinets, or flooring) or rooms that require a plethora of things going on to come together (again - like the kitchen, where I have to pick out cabinets, counter tops, flooring, all from different contractors who are just selling you their one product - not someone who designs it all together so you know what it'll look like when the room comes together). I'm pretty sure I need to just buy a dart board, pin up some color swatches, and throw some darts.

 

That is, if I can even hit the dart board. I sort of throw like a girl.

Conversations in the Car with my Two Year Old

Claire (All concerned-like): "I don't like that noise."

Lindsay: "What is the noise?"

Claire: "It's windy."

Lindsay: "Oh, you don't like the wind? Does it scare you?"

Claire: "Yeah... it's scary."

Lindsay: "Do you remember when it was really windy outside? We're all better now, though."

Claire: "Yeah."
Lindsay: "What did we do when it was windy?"
Claire: "We runned away."

Lindsay: "Yes, we ran away, and now we're safe. Where did we run to?"

Claire: "Runned to the floor."

Claire (Slight pause in conversation): "Mama? Can I see my oatmeal?"
 

And just like that, the conversation was over. I don't know what the experts say about talking to your kids about scary or stressful or near-death experiences. I was just winging it and prompting her with questions I thought were safe and not probing to ask her anything she wasn't already remembering in her tiny, 767-day-old brain. (That's 2 years, 1 month, and 5 days for those busting out the abacus.)

 

She is clearly weary of the wind. I wouldn't go so far as to say she's scared of it, or even terrified, just cautious. When she hears it, it's like her ears perk up like a dogs and she looks toward the window. Bless her poor little heart. She shouldn't be stressed over this, even if just slightly. At one point during the tornado's brief visit on/near/beside our house, while we were cowering on the floor in the corner of the basement, I lifted my head up and looked over my shoulder. It was probably during those few seconds while I watched the actual tornado that she, too, watched the actual tornado. It wasn't just "strong winds due to the tornado", it was "that is a tornado right there". At the time, obviously, I wasn't thinking "don't let her see this for it will scare/scar/traumatize her". I was thinking "this sucks so badly that we're going to die right now." So I can't really reprimand myself for allowing her to see it, but I feel really sorry that she is on alert when she hears even the slightest howl of the wind.

 

But still, I don't think I'm giving her enough credit here. Right after we were done with our ten-second tornado talk, she asked to see her oatmeal. Which I had just microwaved about two minutes before and put into a disposable bowl and had set it on the front seat of the car for the drive to daycare. Because she was so excited to eat the oatmeal and wanted to see it to make sure I hadn't lost it and that it was still waiting for her to eat after our fifteen minute car ride. And then after I showed it to her, she was on to her next task, which is requesting to listen to "Adeley I Heard". Which is, of course, Adele's Someone Like You.

 

Bless her heart indeed.

People Are Nice

People are nice. People are very nice.


In the midst of an anxiety-filled week (see here, and here), my friend wrote me a concerned email. She was worried that I was super stressed (check!) and reminded me that I needed to de-stress for my avocado baby. She was right! She gave me a couple of ideas; one was to write a gratitude journal, and another was to re-read my blog archives.

An aside, this was nice of her: when she offered up her suggestions, she also acknowledged (I am paraphrasing and putting words into her mouth!) that she was in no shape to be doling out advice because she had no idea what I was going through, and she did ask "am I making things worse [by suggesting these things]?" which I thought was nice of her to say. In fact, she did not make things worse, I truly appreciated her email and words of wisdom. But in hindsight, it was a really nice thing to say. To at least acknowledge that she had no idea what to say in case she said the wrong thing, she preemptively apologized. Don't know why, but it struck me as nice. Aside over.

OK, so first: gratitude journal. I haven't started one per se, but here is my first list.

Here are some ways in which people have been unbelievably nice to me and my family:

1. The tornado happened on Thursday evening. (5:46 p.m. EST to be exact.) By Friday morning, my brother's co-workers had gone to Walmart, purchased clothes and shoes and a gift card for Claire, and also cleaned their kids closets for some hand-me-down clothes for Claire. They don't even know me! They know my brother! How incredibly nice is that? I was beyond touched by this.
2. This morning I received a package at work. I never receive packages at work, so I was instantly curious. The return address label had a man's name that I had never heard of, all the way from Sedona, Arizona. I live in Dexter, Michigan. I have no family nor friends in Arizona, so who is this mystery man? I opened the box and inside was a quilt. There was no card, but one corner of the quilt said it was made by the Red Rocks Quilters. I showed my coworker and we put two and two together. You see, there was a VP of Quality at my company who worked here for about two years. She retired about 1-2 years ago. During her brief-ish stay in Michigan, she lived in Dexter. I'm taking some liberties in connecting the dots here, but I'm assuming she reached out to some people at work (CEO? HR?) to see if anyone at work was affected by the tornado. And she and her quilting club made me a quilt and sent it to my work. Now, I barely worked with this woman. I don't think I ever directly talked with her, I was in a few large meetings where both she and I were in attendance, and she certainly didn't know who I was. So she sent me, a virtual stranger, a quilt in the mail, anonymously. I put two and two together because I mentioned the man's name on the return address and my coworker confirmed that's her husband's name - they have different last names. How touching is that?
3. Claire's school (daycare) had two families that were affected by the tornado. One being us, the other being a family with two kids (and the mom is also 3 months pregnant!). The other family sustained much more damage to their house (I believe a majority of it was leveled) and the mom was home with her kids, as was I. School asked how they could help, and I relayed to them that Claire's books had been trashed by the tornado, and how sad I was about that. So many people donated books to us that she now has more books than she had before. (I feel guilty about this; people were too nice!) Also, people donated cash and gift cards. When the director tried to give half of it to me, I declined, knowing the other family had much worse damage than us. Eventually, there was an envelope with money and gift cards in my school mailbox, so I don't know if the other mom insisted on splitting the money or what. I'll never know. Many people have asked how they can help, and just asked how things are going, which I am so grateful for. Sometimes even just someone genuinely asking how things are going is a gift. Even if I unload on them for a couple of minutes, it takes a weight off of my shoulders that I didn't realize was there.
4. Daycare offered us a tuition break - which is above and beyond wonderful of them. I know that we have homeowners insurance, but I still have a sneaking suspicion that when all is said and done, we may not come out the same money-wise. I feel we'll end up fronting more money out of our pockets than we think we will, so this tuition break is essentially cash back into our wallets, which was so, so, so nice of them.
5. I'm not a popular blogger by any stretch of the imagination, but I have received some really awesome blog comments from Meghan, Grace, Stephanie, Jessica, and Amber. Some of the comments have been downright therapeutic, I swear. I should have paid them to comment.
6. We've received a ton of emails, texts, Facebook messages, calls, gift cards, gifts, flowers, offers to babysit, offers to dog-sit, and other forms of support from friends, family members, and coworkers. Even a friend I haven't talked to or seen in several years sent me a card and gift card. The words people put in the cards have been so, so nice. It makes me wonder how on earth I can ever give back like people have given to me. With each card, gift, or offer of support, I would holler (or text, or email) to Nick and say "Nick! We REALLY need to start giving back."

To say I am grateful for the support we've received sounds so shallow. But I'm not sure what other word to use, so I'm sticking with it. Grateful. And as I alluded to, it has reminded me that we really need to take a look at how we can give back with our time, resources, strengths, and energy. We owe the world big time. We are so grateful.

NOW... onto the second idea my friend offered me as a way to de-stress. Re-reading some of my old blog archives. I started blogging in 2001, like, ELEVEN years ago. All here on this very same blogspot page. I never made any attempt to capitalize on blogging like so many others have (smartly) done, it was more of an online journal. So when I look back to archives, such as this, and this, and this [edited: links below], I just laugh and laugh at how... random and loopy I was. Like I said, I wasn't blogging for an audience by any stretch of the imagination, it was just to help me remember random fun times in college, random emo times in college, and other random things that came up. There wasn't (and still isn't) a rhyme or reason to my posts, I don't have a style or a purpose or any incentives to post, I just do it for shits and giggles.

• I thought I was being so elusive with my poker analogy at the end... LOL re: 2003.
• http://lindsmith.blogspot.com/2003/09/i-look-forward-to-wednesdays-most.html
• Remember how AIM used to be the shiz? In this post I copy and paste my friends away message. OMG, do you remember how crypic we'd be in our away messages? We were so deep in 2001.
• http://lindsmith.blogspot.com/2002/12/my-ponytail-is-midget-like-inch-long.html
• Oh. My. God. My favorite band in 2001 was LFO? Are you for serious???
• http://lindsmith.blogspot.com/2001/12/favorite-boy-band-of-2001-lfo.html

Thirty

I turn 30 this week. I had planned all along to take the day off and do some pampering. Now that means more than it did before, and I am really looking forward to it.

 

On the agenda:

 

- Great Harvest Bread Company - breakfast

- Coffeeshop (which one? what to get? I haven't indulged at a coffeeshop in ages, which tells you a lot about what I consider an indulgence, as well as my cheap, nay,  thrifty ways) - plan on reading a bit, either The Happiness Project or The Leftovers, both newly purchased on my Kindle Fire.

- 1 hour prenatal massage

- Mani/Pedi (definitely getting the pedi... I'm on the fence regarding the mani) - hello massaging chairs!

- Lunch out? Kind of lame but I don't have anyone in AA to get lunch with. Perhaps I'll grab a quick light lunch before my massage somewhere.

- Haircut? To say I need one is probably the understatement of my month. Situation is out of control. I look... homeless. Not in an "uprooted by tornado" way, but in a toothless, down-on-your-luck way. Or like someone on Intervention, which might be worse. (OK, that was mean. I truly do have empathy for people on Intervention.)  The place I go to is an Aveda Institute, so it's cheap (there we go again with the cheap) and you leave smelling Aveda-y (heaven) and they have a no-tipping policy!

- Shopping? Is this going overboard? I want to buy something nice for myself, but I don't know what. Bizarre problem to have, right? Nick is desperate to buy me something nice as well, but I have zero ideas, and he knows darned too well that if he comes home with a mall jewelry store purchase, that he made the wrong move. {Shudder!} I want something classy, but practical. Expensive, but not chain-y. I adore Etsy stuff, but there's just so damn much on that site, that it would take me 11 years to find something nice and pretty and not cheap. (Finding cute cheap stuff on Etsy? Easy peasy! And fun to boot! But I want something nice.)

- Dinner? Not sure what dinner will entail just yet. At some point, my day of luxury will come to an end and things like "picking up the daughter from daycare" and "taking the dog out to pee" and "making the daughter's lunch for school tomorrow" will creep onto my schedule and I will be brought back to reality. And really, after spending a luxurious (to me) day doing the things above will be lovely, oh so lovely, but eventually I'll want to hang out with Nick and Claire. Maybe we'll go somewhere low-key (mom-speak for "if my 2 year old throws a tantrum, we won't be given the evil side eye and/or be thrown out and/or slightly bicker about who's doing what about said tantrum or who's not doing what about said tantrum) and I'll order dessert first and maybe not even order dinner, which is my idea of heaven. Wait, no, my idea of heaven would be to also have a drink, of the tipsy-inducing variety, but lo, I don't think society, my fetus, or my doctor would approve. So iced tea (of the non-Long-Island variety) will have to suffice. It's a good problem to have, though. ;)

 

Hmmm. What am I missing?