Is It Just Me?

So, I have this (not so secret) hope that my daughter will grow up to have curly hair. Sometimes I deliberately fluff it up (as much as it can be fluffed for being barely there), and tell myself it's curly. Or, I just take photos of it after it's dried from the bath... (See pic below.)

It's not just me, right? There does appear to be a slight curl to it, right? Be honest now.

In truth, I will love my daughter's hair curls or no curls, but this week my incredibly thoughtful husband brought Grace to see me at lunch. (I say he's incredibly thoughtful because he already put in his 40 hours for the week. He worked 4 long and late days, and then on his day off drove 40 minutes both ways so that he and Grace could spend approximately 30 minutes with me. Most of that time was shared with middle school girls and a few fellows popping in to fawn over the baby. He's a good man. What can I say, I got lucky).

Now, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, one of my 7th grade girls came in, took one look at Grace, and exclaimed, "She looks nothing like you Mrs. Dietz! She looks so much like your husband!". This is true. Everyone, including me, can see Ken in Grace. Most see Fenix as well (with the exception of his grandma on his mother's side, who asked to hold her at one of Fenix's soccer games (a bit awkward...), and then very loudly announced, while holding her an arms distance away, "Well, you look NOTHING like you're brother!". Aren't split homes fun for everyone?:)

Very rarely do I get that Grace looks like me, so I'm thinking that the curly hair is our last saving grace (saving grace...ha, do you see what I did there?).

I'd like for Grace to inherit more than my temper and lack of patience.

So, we'll see.

What do you think?

Look closely.

Is it just me, or do you see a hint of curl???

Your Child May Be an Insomniac If...

Your child may be an insomniac if you wake up at one a.m. to her sitting up in between you and your husband, clapping and grinning to beat the band.

Or, if she then refuses to go to bed until she gets at least thirty minutes of playtime in her pack n play.

Or, if at nine months, she still needs a three A.M. snack...and then another at 6.

Or,

possibly it's just time for her to start sleeping in her room, REALLY sleeping in her own room.

Transitioning my daughter from sleeping in our room, (and to be honest) a lot of times our bed, has been trying, on both her and me.

She sleeps better and longer in our bed than in her room. Or at least that's what I've been telling myself. I'm sure once she gets settled into a rhythm of sleeping in her own crib, the three a.m. feedings will most likely cease. Who wouldn't want a midnight snack with a 24 hour restaurant located right beside them?

As for her one a.m. parties in her playpen? Well, we'll have to see.

I think my resistance to moving her into her own room stems, in part, from the fact that I work. As it is, I feel like I lose too much time with her throughout the week. I leave a little before seven on school days and don't pick her up until between 4:30 and 5:00, placing us at home 30 minutes after. In the three to four hours we have between coming home and her bedtime, she nurses twice, eats dinner, and often takes a bath. There just isn't enough time. I am all too aware of how quickly she is growing up. Cuddling and falling asleep with her on the couch, caving in and pulling her into our bed, gives me just a little more time with her; time that I need and that I'm sure I'll miss down the road.

If there is one thing I've learned since becoming a parent, it's that everyone's family, and their approach to parenting is different. Books, blogs, websites, other parents are all helpful, but ultimately you do what works for you and your child.

Before Grace was born I had all of these goals and ideas from nursing for the first year to how much she'd get to use her binkie; from the introduction to solid foods to sippie cups, to what foods we would feed her to when she'd sleep in her own room, etc.

There are a few Ken and I felt more strongly about than others.

We are right on track to meeting my goal of nursing for a year. It hasn't been easy. In fact, those first six weeks were really tough. There were lots of tears and frustrations, and I'm not just talking about my daughter. We managed to muscle our way through and I'm really proud of that.

Grace only gets the binkie at nap and night time, which was our goal from the beginning. We didn't want her to be dependent upon her binkie, so we waited to give it to her until she was a month old, and then we did so with hesitancy. We wanted to make sure we didn't use it as a crutch. Hopefully this summer we'll be able to wean her away from using it at all. She hasn't been much of a binkie girl, so I'm hoping that will be a smooth transition.

We had initially planned to move Grace from our room at three months, but once three months hit, it felt too soon, so we moved our goal back to six months. Well, six months came and went, and now here we are at nine months, and Grace still sleeps the bulk of her nights with us. We've tried transitioning her here and there, but have always found ourselves pulling her back into our bed.

There has to be a middle ground somewhere, so we'll start with baby steps.

In fact, I think we'll start tonight.

It may take us a little longer to get there than anticipated, but I think that's O.K.

We'll get there.

The truth of the matter is, once she is sleeping in her bed, I'm going to miss our midnight play dates.

A Little Saturday Shopping

Grace, Daddy, and I did a little Saturday shopping yesterday.

Grace was exhausted by the end. I couldn't resist posting the picture. I love her tired half smile.

Just Because...

Full!

These last two weeks have been incredibly full with parent teacher conferences and such. I'm looking forward to a three day weekend and the opportunity to catch up on some Grace and husband time, along with getting a few things done around the house, and maybe, just maybe, updating this thing. Do the entries I've written in my head count?

My Mother Bought Me Coffee Yesterday Morning

My mother bought me coffee yesterday morning.

You're probably wondering how that's even possible, given the fact that my mom has been gone two and a half years now, so I'll have to start a little farther back.

When my mom passed I kept nearly everything.

The last time she sat in my car was when I took her to a doctor's appointment a day before she was admitted into the hospital. She had a pink sweater that she used to wear and when she got out of my car that day, she left it hanging over the back of my passenger seat. It's still there. I haven't had the heart to remove it.

Her china hutch is sitting in our house, looking nearly identical to how it was in hers. Eventually we will take out my Grandparent's old things that she had in it and add our own. We're just taking our time.

I have old cards and old notes she wrote me.

I have a "gift card holder" that she gave Ken and I one year on my dresser (yup, that's right, a gift card holder:).

Her old bible.

Photo albums.

A bacon pan (which actually is NOT a bacon pan, but I convinced Ken it was. It's actually a grill pan that my mom used exclusively for cooking bacon. Who would have known it was actually a grill pan?)

Glass corn on the cob holders....we've never used these. In all honesty, who uses fancy glass corn on the cob holders?

A fur coat.

A really old/ugly, white and gold ice chest used to place your bottle of wine in. In fact, I'm pretty sure we have two of these.

We could decorate our house and our neighbors in Christmas decor from my mother's house.

Grace has clothes of my mother's in her closet, and then we have a tub in the garage.

Her old hairbrush. (I couldn't bring myself to toss it or ANYTHING the day we left the hospital. If I could't bring her with me, I was certainly going to bring all of her belongings, and boy did I.)

We cannot park in our garage. We are lucky if we can walk through it. Each time I make it from one end to the other I feel like a survivor of some sort. I'm afraid to let our cat out there out of fear he will get squished by a falling box, or random weird appliance that my mother had.

You probably get the point by now.

After losing my mother, I had a hard time getting rid of ANYTHING. I think this is probably pretty normal for anyone going through the process of grief. Somehow those items (gift card holder and fur coat included) were a part of my mom, and I couldn't let that go quite yet.

One of the many things I kept was a small brown purse my mom would take with her when she didn't want to take something bigger.

She had brought this purse with her to the hospital and in it had packed lipstick, her insurance card, her driver's license, and then a little cash. (P.S. I love my mother for packing lipstick to the hospital.) When we left the hospital after she passed, I took her purse with me. It sits in a drawer in my dresser, and I haven't so much as touched it since I brought it home. It had three dollars in it, and those dollars have sat untouched for the last two and a half years.

I knew they were there, but I could not touch them. They were my mother's. It felt weird to use them, like I was stealing almost.

This last week was kind of rough. Remember my blog post about New Year's Resolutions?

One of my resolutions was to stress less. Well, this last week I failed miserably on that one, and by Friday I was ready for the week to be done, ready to get some perspective and change my attitude, and ready for a nice, sugar filled, calorie laden, cup of coffee.

Unfortunately for me, one of my other resolutions was to budget better (we are doing better in this department, but not as good as I'd like), so I refused to put a cup of coffee on our debit card (we take out spending money in cash each week so it's easier to keep track of, and in addition, things were tight last week, and I didn't want to start out this week on the wrong foot.)

So, I dug my mom's purse out. I felt the lipstick, and looked at my mom's driver's license, and I spent the three dollars that were in it on a much needed cup of coffee.

I felt bad. Like I said, it almost felt like stealing. To be honest, I feel kind of bad blogging about it. I'm a little afraid I'll be judged for using that three dollars on a cup of a coffee, but had my mother been here, I'm pretty sure she would have been the one to buy me that cup of coffee after a bad week...or even after a good week, or for no real reason at all; because mom's do that. Here I go sounding incredibly selfish again, but sometimes I miss that. I miss my mom buying me a cup of coffee or buying my breakfast at work (remember we worked together for years). I miss going shopping with her and splitting a treat with her on the car ride home. I miss that feeling of being taken care of. Now of course that's not the only thing I miss. I miss her MY MOM bottom line, but I also have moments where I miss being a child, who is still being taken care of, even just in small ways, by her mom.






Spending that three dollars did help me gain a little perspective though.

Those three dollars are not my mom.

The fur coat and the glass corn on the cob holders are not my mom.

The boxes upon boxes in our garage are not my mom.

My mom is in my heart (yup, here I go being corny).

My mom is in my memory.

In me.

In my relationship with my daughter.

She is not in a box or an article of clothing.

Those things may remind me of her, but they are not her.

I do not have to keep every shred of her existence.

My mother most definitely existed.

I am living proof of her impact on this world.

I hold her in my memory and in my heart.

I love her now just as much as I did when she was here.

Our relationship still exists.

She is still a part of my life.

I don't need a garage full of boxes to prove that or to remind me of that.

All I need is to look in the mirror,
to remember her,
to talk about her.

This summer I will clean out my garage. It will be hard and I will still keep some articles of clothing. I will still keep the gift card holder (because it still makes me laugh.) I will still keep a lot of things.

But, I won't keep it all.

I don't need to, to keep my mother.

My mother will always be a part of me.