Leggings, Facebook & Friends

I often sit down to do my editing and writing when Maggie has fallen asleep, ignoring laundry that should be folded and floors to be swept. If I can get a bit of time to bust through some photos and pound out a few words, I feel like I fall on the happy side of life much easier. If I don’t get that time, I find myself grumpy and short with those in my life.

So today I sat down to do a bit of blogging and ended up on facebook, the suck of all time-sucks. Some of my girlfriends and I have started a mini group where we post things about our kids, lives and leggings. Nobody else can see it and we’re able to just be ourselves without too much ado. I posted a question to Deneva about leggings and pretty soon Kara and Lara had commented back. Before we knew it, Lara and I were messaging back and forth (turns out Thomas and Maggie were both napping) and filling up our nap time as if we were in 7th grade again, putting off that dreaded homework.

52 comments later, I found that I’ve sworn twice, confessed my hatred for the mall and wondered if Deneva’s style of pure comfort, while looking really cute, has anything for me. I swear we could have wrapped it up in about 4 comments, but that really isn’t our style. Lara and I used to spend hours on the phone talking about nothing and everything. This time she helped me out in the leggings department and I got to steal some of her precious moments of alone time while Thomas napped. My mom always used to tell me that she knew I was talking to Lara because I would always be laughing really hard. I guess not much has changed, because I’ve had to stifle my laugh a few times during the 52 comment thread. (Not to mention that the dang fire alarm went of when I tried to make a cup of tea.)

Anywhoodle, I was all set to write about how a few weeks ago Charlyn made a comment to me, after looking at Maggie’s one year book, about how many different people Maggie has in her life. And it is so true, the girl has people for miles that adore her, love on her and engage her. She is one lucky little chicken. Last week and weekend was like a wild ride full of play dates, parties and gatherings. In every situation, our friends and family make a point to spend time with Mags in their own different way. We stopped by Kara and Ryan’s on our way out of town a few weeks ago and Kara had bowls, books, and paints for Maggie to work with. It was both messy and amazing.

I’m thankful that Maggie has so many different people in her life because that means that in the areas that both Barry and I aren’t that great at or interested in, hopefully we’ve got somebody that will be able to fill the gap and expand Maggie’s knowledge with true passion. For example, I know that I’m never going to be a very good artist. I draw the same exact stick figures and flowers that I’ve been drawing since about 2nd grade. I took one art class in high school and promptly asked the girl next to me to help me do my pencil art picture…which meant that she did it while I talked to her about it. Ugh. That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to get down on the floor and draw, paint and expose Maggie to every single art form possible, it just means that if the time ever comes that Maggie is more interested in drawing, for example, I’ve got some people in mind that will be able to help her out.

Just like I’ve got friends that I turn to when I’m faced with legging problems (not really a problem in the big scheme of things, but I think you get my drift) I’ve got friends that I’d turn to if I wanted to bake a wedding cake or tear down a wall in my home. I’m not interested in baking a wedding cake, so you, friend, can wait; however, I do want to knock down a wall in my home, so you, friend, might be hearing from us soon.

Enough is enough about all this. I’ve got a precious few more minutes before Maggie wakes up and is ready to go. Our neighbor is mowing his lawn, ours needs to be mowed, but if you think I’m going to do that during nap time, you’ve got another thing comin’! And if you want to know the end of my leggings drama, tune in. Some day I’ll tell you.

The Teepee is Still Cool & Other Goings On

I’m already kind of over this post, but since I’ve sat down to write it three different times, I’m just going to roll with it. Today was one of those days. After I took a shower this morning, Maggie decided that she wanted to put ‘poo in her hair too, and proceeded to dump a glob of shampoo into her open hand and slather it all over her dry hair. I tried to work around it by putting her hair in dog tails (as we like to call them) or even rinse it out without getting her fully undressed….it just wasn’t going to happen. So, we had a mid-morning bath, even though not twelve hours ago she’s been scrubbed clean. Regardless, she loved the tub and probably could have stayed in there for much longer, but I was ready to move on with our day.

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I am pleased as a little plum that we’ve gotten the official ‘Spring is Here!’ notice practically hanging in our garden with daffodils and new little buds pushing to be noticed on trees and plants. Just this morning (before the shampoo incident) Maggie worked really hard to get her boots on by herself and head out the door. She informed me to ‘watch from window, Mama’ and proceeded to march out to the top of our yard to investigate the squirrels. I watched through the window and happily flipped our pancake breakfast until I noticed that she was pulling the flowers from the ground one-by-one giving them a hefty sniffing. Um….no, thank you. I’d like to enjoy those flowers, so please don’t pick them. Thankyouverymuch.

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I am way, way, way backlogged on my photos and I don’t see an end point any time soon. Life just keeps barreling along. I’m not complaining. I love taking pictures and documenting our lives, but when this happens I fight the urge just to ignore everything that I haven’t gotten to yet and catch up to the NOW and be in the present. But some moments are far to precious to be ignored and left out. So, I’m going to roll with it and see how it goes. See how many of those moments I’ll hold onto….before the moments that are happening now, like shampoo in dry hair, get the best of me.

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I was just going to leave it at that, but then it hit me, after looking at these images, which I thought had nothing to do with this post, that our daughter loves soap and water. She must because she is her father’s daughter and he’s a water ghoul if there ever was one. This scene of Maggie at the sink is a common one, mostly when she’s visiting my parents. She loves washing, washing, washing, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. And when there’s soap involved, it always ends up in her hair.

(And for those of you wondering, and I know there’s at least one of you: dish soap doesn’t really help get the knots out of curly hair. Nor does dry shampoo. Believe me, I was hopeful for a moment.)

MARCH TO MARCH

Last night I confessed to Barry, as I pulled some of Maggie’s size 2T boxes of clothes from the garage, that I’m having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that we have an ALMOST two year old. I just can’t believe it. I’m one of those moms, you know, the ones that still think of their KID as their baby. Maggie is still my baby and I’m not sure when I’ll think otherwise. 

I’ll try hard not to do too many reflective “I can’t believe time went so fast” type of posts, but seriously…where the hell did all the time go? Wasn’t it just two weeks ago that Barry and I were staring at her, our first night home from the hospital, wondering what do now that we were parents. 

I gathered some of my favorite pictures of Maggie from this last year…they’re in chronological order. You’ll be hard-pressed to find the baby that I see when I look at them, because clearly The Little Miss is growing. Like I said, she’ll always be my baby.