The New Year

I could post pictures of Christmas, but I already did that on Facebook. I could post pictures of NYE, but again, Facebook. So I'm just going to jump into my New Year's Resolutions. I went back to 2008 and looked at that year's resolutions. I didn't manage to have time for any at the beginning of this year...wonder why....

Kinda laughed when I read the old resolutions. I definitely accomplished a few....if you don't want to go back and read them, here are the ones i accomplished, even if it was in a nontraditional way...

#1- Having a baby. I vowed to have a baby by Christmas of 2008. Phew. Got that one done at the last minute.

#5- A new car. One that made me look like a rockstar. I managed to get myself a fully loaded SUV with personalized plates. Doesn't get more rockstar than that.... :)

#7- Reading 12 new trashy romance novels. Definitely accommplished that goal. Mary Balogh, thank you for your delicious series of books.

#8- Go through at least half of the boxes in our storage area and get rid of stuff. Well, the basement flooded in June and pretty much took care of that half on it's own. The other half got sorted and organized courtsey of our Gorilla shelves and a garage sale.

#10- Being grateful for the things I already have. I'm still working on this one. But I feel that since Max, this one is a lot easier to handle.

If I had to pick a resolution from 2009, even if it wasn't official, it would have been being a good mom to Max. And I'm confident I accomplished that. Just today he picked me over daddy. Hahaha.

So here are my resolutions for 2010....

1. Have baby #2. We are officially going back to the doctor on January 15th. We hopefully have a plan and accomplish the first step of this by June. If not, I will try to be patient and remember how wonderful baby #1 is. As I said to Kendall, "You get what you pay for." Our 20,000 dollar baby is AMAZING. Hope if the second one is "cheaper" we don't get bit in the butt for that statement. Hahaha.

2. Lose weight. It seems cliche, but I want to lose weight, even while trying to have a baby. I am hoping to be able to exercise during a pregnancy, something I wasn't allowed to do the first time around.

3. Start a master's degree in School Library Media Specialist. The more and more time I spend in the library with my kids, the more I realize, this is what I should be doing. I'm tired of being judged by the test results my students produce in 3 hours on one day at the end of the year. I really just want to connect with kids on a topic I'm passionate about- reading. I have these grandios ideas about things I could do as a school librarian. Wright State has a program. I'm in the process of getting more info about it.

4. Redecorating several rooms in the house. Our bathroom and bedroom, the powder room, and Max's big boy room. My brother is going to come down the last week of January to paint, so this one SHOULD get done. :)

5. Read 12 fantasy books. It's my favorite new genre. I've already read one for January and am working on book number 2.

6. Spend less money. I am trying to streamline what we really need. We're thinking of trying the Magic Jack for our home phone. It will save us money on a land line. And also thinking of getting rid of some of our cable package. We don't use all of it now that we have Max. Why continue paying for something we hardly ever use? We also currently pay for 3 movies at a time from Netflix. We really only need one at a time. Just in these three items I think I can save us 100 dollars a month. That's 1200 for the year!

7. Be a better friend. I get so consumed with my own life I neglect my friends. I don't call, I don't write. I suck. I'm going to try to be better about this.

8. Ride my bike 15 miles. This was a goal in 2008. If I am physically allowed to, I want to do this. We even bought a bike trailer for Max. We started practicing riding in it with his bike helmet this fall. This summer, I totally want to ride long distance.

9. Go to church more. I need to be a good example for Max. While I don't believe you HAVE to go to church to talk to God or celebrate him, I think Max should learn the importance of community. Plus, there are several different organizations through St. Patrick's that would allow us to meet new people in the area. And we need more of those people.

10. Take a kick ass vacation. Suggestions?

7 Years!

Kendall and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary t his Monday. Even though I've been sick (for two weeks!) and had no voice, we still got a babysitter and went out to dinner. We tried a new place in town called Kents. They wood fire their steaks and are the only place in Troy that offers both choice and prime cuts of meat. Being the steak connoisseurs that we are, we wanted to take this place for a spin. Let me say, we were NOT disappointed.

The steak was DELICIOUS and cooked exactly to specification, the twice bake potato had an amazing cheese crust, and the appetizer that we chose had fried zucchini, portobello mushrooms and ravioli that were to die for. I was stuffed! Our bill came to about 80 dollars with tip, so it's definitely a place for special occasions and not for casual dining.

After dinner we headed to downtown Troy and strolled hand in hand around the town square. We took a self portrait in front of the Christmas tree in the middle of the driving circle. I think this will become a new tradition for us as we took once there last year, just 6 days after Max was born.

Which led us to talking about how we can't believe our baby is 1. Time sure does fly. Kendall is such an amazing father and husband and I'm so grateful to have found such a hard working, dedicated, loving man. We know so many people who are already divorced and I am glad that we work so hard to make our relationship strong. It takes some fighting and swallowing of our pride sometimes, but overall, we make things good. I look forward to continuing the celebration. And hoping that next year we are also celebrating the birth of another child. Keep your fingers crossed that we can make that happen!

My Baby is One!

Where has the time gone?? This time last year I was snuggling a 9 lb 13 oz little baby in my arms and figurig out how to get him on my boob. And today he ate an entire cupcake all by himself! I stood in my bedroom last night and cried. I can't even imagine how we will all feel when our babies are turning 18! 30!

I am so greatful that God blessed us with this wonderful little boy. And I think it's even better that he was born at Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

So we've been pretty busy beavers lately. Here's the quick highlights...

• Max's first Thanksgiving was a success. I bought 2 dollar place mats in the shape of cornucopias at Kohl's the day before Thanksgiving and set a beautiful table with my china and crystal. Max ate turkey and yams and stuffing and pumpkin pie. Such a big boy! I find it hard to believe that last Thanksgiving he was a 9 pound baby in my belly! Then I look back at pictures of myself, and it's not so hard to believe. :)

• Work has been stressful. Kids are stirring up crazy drama. We've already had one girl admitted to the mental hospital here in Troy, two boys got into a fist fight, a girl lied and told the grade she had cancer, another girl is spreading rumors that a 7th grade teacher is a lesbian and a boy is being accused of sexually harassing a girl via texting. *sigh* I really need these two weeks off....and then some!

• Kendall, on the other hand, FINALLY signed his partnership contracts! He is now officially an "owner" of a small business. He owns 1/5 of the family practice. I took a half day off work to go to his office Christmas lunch and got to watch him sign all the paperwork and stocks. I have to admit, I got a little teary eyed. It took us a long time to get here. Lots of late nights for Kendall and doing things by myself have finally led to his dream of working in his own office. He got a very generous buy-in plan that puts us out of debt from the practice in just 4 years time. Which means we are NOT 1 million dollars in debt! Thank God!

• Max can now say three words besides mama and dada. He says "bye bye", "hi" and "this". We think he is currently attempting "dog" (sounds like "daugh") and "grandma" (which sounds like "gaga", "gama" and "ga" depending on the day). He is also becoming VERY mobile. If you give him a little cart to push, he can walk around the whole room. I'm waiting for him to take that first step away from the furniture.

• We also took Max is his first UD game! We only stayed for about an hour but he didn't seem intimidated by all of the noise and enjoyed watching the crowd. Looks like we're going to have to get some more tickets! GO FLYERS!

Weird Things I Do

You know how we all have habits and patterns that we follow? I was sitting here eating a snack thinking about mine and wanted to share a few.

1. I like to eat Cheese and Peanut Butter crackers with a glass of milk. I eat them the same way every time. I bite the cracker, take a sip of milk, chew and swallow. Then I repeat this process until all crackers are gone. However, sometimes I encounter a pack of crackers that doesn't have enough salt on them. If the first cracker doesn't, odds are the other 5 don't either. So I pitch them. Wasteful? Yes. But a ruined snack isn't worth the 25 cents.

2. My morning routine is almost exactly the same very day and I pace myself all based on the morning wake up song on Mix 107.7. If I am flat ironing my hair when the song comes on, I know I am on schedule.

3. During the work week my lunch usually needs to be microwaved. It's either leftovers or a frozen entree. When I dismiss my 5th period kids at 12:05 I always put my food in the microwave before walking the 6th period kids to the cafeteria. (Yes, we walk 8th graders in a single file line to the cafeteria- annoying.) The kids know that I won't walk them down until my lunch is started.

4. I sleep in a t-shirt and underwear. I can't wear pants to bed. They make me feel constricted. I wear shorts every 28 days or so (you should understand why) but those nights are always the worst sleep I get. Even when I was 9 months pregnant, I slept in Kendall's t-shirts and my giant maternity underwear. :)

5. I have a giant mole on my neck that I play with when I am bored. It is raised and I have had it since I was young. Even as a young girl I would play with it. I also play with my left ear when I am bored. When I was young I played with it so much that I wore grooves in the cartilage. It still has those grooves. I still rub them. Ask me, I'll let you feel. :)

Randomness

• DC sucked except for seeing Sarah Ford. Seeing Sarah was the only thing that happened that didn't end up with me yelling at someone. :)
• Kendall FINALLY got to see what his partner contract is going to look like. While I can't say I'm 100% pleased, I'm hopefully optimistic. I may not get to job share next year, but the year after that is a distinct possibility. His buy-in won't cost us anything out of our current budget and we'll still get productivity bonuses to boot, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to make up for half of my salary yet. BUT the best part is that we get the whole deal paid off in FOUR years. Yes, that means in four years time, we'll hopefully have a large portion of our other debts paid off AND we won't owe the practice anything. Which means everything Kendall earns, we get to keep. Which makes me breath a little easier.
• Max is sick...AGAIN! An ear infection and I think teething. His temperature went up to 103 this weekend. We took him in to the office Saturday night and ran a flu test on him (one of the perks to having a key and the alarm code to a doctor's office...oh wait and being married to a doctor :) and he was negative. Which was a relief. But he had to stay home from "school" today, which means Kendall and I had to split the workday and stay home too. Can't say I was too disappointed to leave work at 11;30.
• Speaking of which...I'm soooooooo unmotivated at work. I didn't even bring any papers home to grade today while I am "watching" Max. I knew he would take a long nap, and I decided I wanted to make my Christmas list. :) I have a movie planned for the end of the week...so no worries. HA! This is how I know that I should be job sharing. When I'm at work, all I can think about it getting home to him. When I'm at home, I'm grateful that I get some time to my day to see other grownups. Working part time just seems ideal.
• I am in the process of looking for invitations for Max's birthday party. Nothing is good enough. If you find a cute birthday party invitation with puppies on it, send it my way....but I need it soon. His birthday is only 3 weeks away! I may have to resort to online invitations. Not my favorite choice though.
• I'm really starting to get the baby itch again. I know, you're thinking, "But Lisa, Max is BARELY out of the baby phase!" But I can't stop thinking about how he's almost a "big boy" with all of the things he does now. And it makes me actually miss when he was tiny. Plus, I fear it taking too long. I don't want Max to be 16 with a baby brother. I exaggerate....but still....
• I am addicted to coffee. I used to think it was stupid to drink it every morning. Now I am cranky without it. The kids at school know when I don't have my morning joe.
• Is anyone else in LOVE with Glee? I put both of the CDs on my Christmas list. And it looks like they're releasing the first half of season 1 on DVD right after Christmas!
• I am officially ready for Christmas music and my trees and lights to be up. Sorry folks, I LOVE this holiday!

Baby 101

Sometimes I worry that Max is way behind and that I'm a bad parent. I'm sure that every parent feel this way at times, but I watch videos of Nicole and I read the blogs of friends with babies and I feel like maybe Max isn't going to be very smart and it's my fault. I know all babies are different. I know that boys and girls are different and do things at different times. For example, my mom says I was trying to walk by 9 months. My brother waited until almost 14 months. I was talking by a year. My brother wasn't. I know girls are typically easier to potty train and will train sooner too. Even knowing all of these things, I agonize over whether I'm doing the right things to make him successful.

For example, I've tried reading Max books. He won't sit still long enough to read them. Now that he can move, he has much better things to do. Like crawl over and play with his toys. Even at night, he doesn't want me to read him a bed time story. So I worry that because I'm not reading to him every night, he's going to grow up to be stupid. I keep trying to tell myself that when he gets a little older, he'll want to do it.

I was watching TV early in the morning last weekend and say an informercial for Your Baby Can Read. There was a 9 month old baby reading flash cards! Max can't even say any real words yet! Is that my fault? I talk to him all the time. We practice saying words out loud. I try not to use baby talk with him. When he is playing, i try to tell him what things are. Is this enough?? I hate watching that infomercial because it makes me want to order those stupid videos so that my kid can be "advanced".

Many of my friends who are parents don't seem to remember what it was like at Max's age, which I find to be very frustrating. At least it would give me a gauge for where he is at if they could give me an idea of what their baby was doing. I don't want to push him to do things too soon, but I also don't want to sit back and not push him hard enough.

Being a parent is hard.