When it's ripe, it's ripe.

  Growing up my mom always used to tell us about a time when she and some of her siblings tried to teach their youngest brother about how to tell if a fruit was ripe by it's color. Apparently he was doing pretty well, so they presented themselves to my grandparents to show off his new skill. "Don, how do you tell if a fruit is ripe?" To which he proudly replied, "When it's ripe, it's ripe!"

Isn't that the truth! I am a planning type of person. I like to know when things are going to happen. If it relates to me I can plan it out and know when I am going to do each step and how I will bring each project to completion. Not so when it comes to other people. I can plan things out for them, but I'll be doggon if they do things the right (read that "my") way at the right (read that "planned") time.

My daughter is the worst offender when it comes to following my plans. I suppose she gets it from her daddy, who really does not give a flip about how I've planned for things to go. Alright, so that might not be true, but he definitely gets a kick out of all my planning and things (probably rightly so) that in most instances it's quite silly to keep trying to plan or adjust plans when things are going to change tomorrow. Rachel probably does not think I'm silly, but if she does, at least I do not know about it. She, however, loves to smash up all my timelines. Sitting up, crawling, walking, sleeping through the night... all the physical milestones are just NOT happening the way I plan for them to. She has even confounded my husband with her stubbornness.

All that being said... when it's ripe, it's ripe. Rachel is slow on all her large physical milestones, but when she learns them, it is usually in the span of a couple hours. Sitting up took a bit more practice, but she learned to crawl (like an expert) in a matter of 5 hours. She had waited 10 months for those 5 hours, but 5 hours none-the-less. Climbing onto the couch took her an hour to learn to do well. Getting down probably the same timespan. Walking took her all of 3.5 hours to go from the first solo steps to walking the entire house, but she waited until she was 15 months to try. Sleeping through the night, eh, it's a work in progress, but she's mostly had that mastered since about 14 months.

Other things, they happen when they happen also. Mike did not go through college right after school, but when he decided to do it, he sped through the classes and ended up with a 3.79 GPA. When I was job hunting I applied for months and had no interviews, then all of a sudden I got callback after callback and had at least 1 interview a day for a week. It's true: when it's ripe, it's ripe. I guess that means when my diet happens it will drop all my lbs right away... right?

On Becoming a Mam-Bi

 They (whomever that might be) say that kids will take over your life. What they don't tell you is that you won't see it coming. One moment you're a swinging single, having the time of your life; the next you are a newly wed, soaking in the love; the next you're changing poopy diapers in the middle of the night when you're sick - and doing it without a second thought.

Three years ago if you showed me a snapshot of my life right now I'd have thought you were joking. It is amazing how we, as humans, can adapt to changes thrown our way. If you told me I could whip my house into shape with a 1 year old "helping" and still have time to play with her and snuggle I might not have believed it. And yet... I do it every week. In a similarly spectacular feat, I recently saw a news story about a Haitian amputee soccer team who by all reports are doing a fantastic job. Okay, so maybe their story is more interesting/amazing than mine. Also, I am by no means comparing myself to someone lacking a limb - I gained one!

Before I had children I babysat. When I was pregnant I felt my daughter moving inside me. After she was born we spent 4 months almost inseparably. I remember last year at this time when my husband took me out to dinner for our anniversary I kept wondering how the baby was - I was not used to being away from her so much. About a week ago I found myself thinking that while I have gotten used to the idea that I have to have someone watching my daughter when I'm at work, I still like to spend every other scrap of time I have with her. This child fascinates me. The rate at which she learns things astounds me. Watching her and my husband interact are moments I treasure.

Sometimes I worry that I am going to fail completely. How can I make sure she learns what she needs to: learns to love the Lord, learns to be a good person, learns all her numbers and letters, learns interpersonal skills necessary to life, and so much more? Sometimes I feel like there is not enough time in the days to show her how to be the wonderful person I want her to be. That I know she can be. That she is. Growing up I don't remember that we ever had a lot of STUFF, but there was always an abundance of love. Looking back, no matter what else, we always knew we were loved; that's what I want for my daughter.

With the advent of speaking looming closer, Rachel (always a chatty one) has begun to learn new words a million miles a minute and recently as begun to combine words. Her daddy taught her to say "baby" the other day, and now everything is "baby, baby, baby." Even mommy, which used to be "ma-ma" has now become "mam-bi." Part mama, part baby - I am now just an extension of her. I guess that's what being a mommy means.

Organization Mania

To Do lists have got to be my all time favorite hobby. Well, besides playing with the little one. I have millions of them, some in writing, most in my head. Chores, bills, home improvements, things I want to accomplish, etc, etc, etc. I plan everything out in my head and, sadly, sometimes that's as far as it gets. Way too often, in fact.

Every Wednesday I make myself a list of to-do's. Wednesday is my day off, and thus a cleaning day. So I start listing to myself the things I need to accomplish. The morning (usually until at least 10am) is reserved for playing with Littles (aka Rachel), then there's dishes, laundry, vacuuming, sweeping, etc, etc, etc. It helps me to be able to check things off, also, to make me feel like I am accomplishing things. So last Wednesday I actually broke down the loads of laundry I had to do. It helped.

Lists float around my house like leaves in the fall - which is to say there are a lot. And they are about as useful as hair accessories to a bald person. Inevitably something else comes up that HAS to be done and I end up discarding the list and just doing what has to be done. Or not doing it. Sometimes I just pretend it got done. Sometimes I pretend I no list existed (thus I did not actually miss anything). Sometimes I just give up. Today... well today is probably a mixture of both. I'm still (haha) working on things but I might have to pretend some of what I wanted to get done was not actually on the list, because I will not get to it. Especially sitting here posting on my blog (which is sometimes on the list and has its own list of Things I Want To Write About).

However, as usual, my daughter has woken up now, and thus I am probably done with today's post. Next on the list - start another load of laundry and practice with Rachel how to walk. :)

(Image Credit: To-do list borrowed from FamiliesWithAPurpose.com.)

Wrapping up the Year

 2010 is almost over. Is that possible? I feel like I lost half a year somewhere, and yet I've slept less in this past year than ever before in my life. Ridiculous, isn't it? I never realized that being a parent meant living in a state of constant exhaustion. How does anyone manage with 2? or 3? or 6? Craziness.

There still are not enough hours in the day to get everything done, but I've become partially reconciled to that sad fact of life. I've also learned what can and cannot be done with a baby in-tow. Cooking, dishes, laundry, vacuuming, picking up, shopping - yes. Moping, cleaning the bathroom, anything with chemicals, blogging - no. Take advantage of the baby's naps for the things you can't do with her, and hope she naps for a goodly amount of time.

Work is busy at this time of year, so I'm doing overtime as possible to to help out there and pay off a couple of things. It's nice to be back in the technology field. Very nice. I didn't quite realize how much I missed it. I have tried a couple of different fields since I left college - Customer Service, Marketing, Property Management - but I realize now that I really prefer technology. Which is not to say that I am spectacular at it - I am no Hacker's Anonymous, and my husband is better than me, but I really do enjoy fixing things.

The housework and I have come to an agreement: I will pay it attention as I can and it will.. well... it will continue to amass. Not just that, but we agree (it's somewhat of a coercion agreement) that if I ignore it, instead of amassing at a rate of 1x day it will amass somewhere in the vicinity of 7x day. I'm not really sure how that's fair, but who said life was fair, right? That's what my mom told me growing up.

This has been a year filled with the joy of watching my daughter grow up and the sadness of losing a couple of family members and friends. It's been a year full of blessings and craziness. Through it all I'm just happy for my life and my family.

My Hungry Daughter..

I realized today that my daughter eats much better than I do. She's onto chunks of things. I'll give her some rice cereal or yogurt with each meal, but mainly she eats her bites. By herself, mommy! While I do still have some cans of baby food around, I generally don't even break them open - she just gets bites of my food or some veggies I have in the fridge if I'm eating less-than-healthy foods. Here is a non-exclusive list of things she eats:

Sweet Potatoes
Green Beans
Potatoes
Carrots
Beets
Onions
Peas
Spinach
Bell Peppers
Tomatoes
Squash
Broccoli
Pears
Apples
Bananas
Peaches
Plums
Pineapple
Chicken
Beef
Turkey
Spam
Bologna
Hot Dogs
Noodles (macaroni, spiral, veggie, etc)
Rice (she IS Cuban, after all!)
Crackers
Wheat Puffs
Veggie Straws
Chex Mix
Wheat Bread
Yogurt
Cheese
Olives (green and black)
Lasagna
Stove Top Stuffing (who can resist?)
Ice Cream
Oh... and anything she can find on the floor

The Customer Is Always Right

To say that "the customer is always right" belittles the customer and the employee. It undermines the customer's ability to reason and reduces the employee's possibilities to act in the company's best interests. If the customer is always right, then the rules and guidelines of companies are there to be broken and/or waived, as long as you complain loudly enough.

To say that "the customer is always right" perpetuates the already inflated sense of entitlement that we, as Americans, feel. Please note that there is a difference between entitlement and right. Right is something you justly have a claim to while entitlement is the believe that one is deserving of a certain privilege (Webster's dictionary). As we all know, feeling we have the right and actually having the right are two different things. I may feel entitled to free pictures because I had to wait longer than the hour I originally expected, but unless I have a contract or agreement specifying free pictures after 1 hour then the feeling is all I have. Unfortunately for me at some places where "the customer is always right" I might actually get those pictures for free if I complain enough. Therein lies my frustration.

Perhaps a better assertion to model your business on would be that "the customer is number one." Being number one does not mean that the customer will always be right... in fact, as a company, I will actually respect you more if they are NOT always right. How can you expect your employees to educate the customer if they always have to give in? Educating your customer shows respect for their reasoning skills and their rights. Don't believe that? How would you feel if you had just paid $15.00 for photos after having waited for 15 extra minutes, and someone comes in behind you yelling and screaming and gets their pictures free? You have the right to be treated as everyone else. Now, if you had to re-do your entire photo order because the system lost your pictures, or ruined your film, that might be another story. I am by no means against doing things that bend guidelines "for business interests" as long as that is not the norm. Again - for the same reasons above.

It all boils down to respect. Respect your customer enough to show them right vs wrong, and respect them enough to treat them the same as all your other customers. Respect your employee enough to give them the tools and support they need to do the job you ask of them.

And by all means.... if YOU are the customer... please PLEASE respect the store employees! While you might be the most important responsibility that employee has, you are not the only one, and you are NOT always right.

Three Day Weekends

I don't have to be me 'til Monday
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
I ain't gonna face reality.
Three days without punching a timeclock
Three nights of goin' non-stop
No work and all play
I don't have to be me 'til Monday
-Steve Azar ('I Don't Have to be Me' lyrics)

   Sometimes you don't realize how much you needed a break until you are half way through your time off. This weekend became a three day weekend for our family - we flew out to Miami Friday night after work and returned Monday evening. Round about Saturday night I could feel my shoulders relaxing and realized how much I really needed the break. I'm not sure about you, but I get wrapped up in the things I have to do too often and forget about relaxing and taking breaths. I might not even realize until I start burning out, getting sick, or getting snappy.

Fortunately my husband is an avid sports fan, as is my aunt. As it happens, they are opposing team fans, and those opposing teams (Jets & Dolphins) were playing down in Miami this past weekend where my aunt has season passes. Three day weekend to Miami to see relatives, a football game, and not have to work, cook, or clean? Too good to pass up! It was great. The weather was cool (for Miami, that is) and the company was fantastic. I did not go to the football game (not my team) and instead stayed home to play with the baby and watch CSI, Law & Order, Mrs Doubtfire, and something else I don't remember right now. I re-realized how hilarious a movie Mrs Doubtfire is. She calls the children "nose miners." I laughed for a long time about that one. Surely you find that as amusing as I do.

Now that we're back I feel the urge of the things I "have to do" pressing in on me again, but I'm trying to just take things one step at a time so as not to get overwhelmed again. If you come over to visit you will find my house imperfect, at best, but full of love. Maybe even some relaxed parents. Maybe.

For now, I'm off to do some picking up and then to bed.

The End of the World is Nigh

On Friday, Sept 17, 2010, the end of the world as we know it began. I hate to be the bearer or bad news, but from now on nothing will be the same. Nothing. Rachel has begun to crawl. Granted, it took her long enough, but once she made up her mind to start she has not looked back.

For 2 months she has been on-and-off rocking on her arms and knees, but I've been at a loss as to how to teach her to crawl. Instead, someone suggested to teach her how to set up and lie down (voluntarily and independently of assistance). So I tried. If I rolled her to her side and held her hip, she could push up to a sitting position, but I could not get her to transition to doing it by herself. Finally she learned her own unique way. She will twist her legs to the side and go down OVER her legs. To sit up, she gets on her knees and then keeps going backward. At one point in the process it always looks like she's doing splits. I wish I were still that flexible.

For about a week, getting up and down was enough for her. Then she learned how to knee forward. In less than 24 hours from her initial attempt she was a pro. Now if you call her she can come toward you (albeit somewhta slowly). Once again, I realized how UN-baby-proofed my house was. As I lamented this fact to Rachel's Godmother yesterday she (who has been through 6 children) put me at ease: "Oh I never worried about baby-proofing. Just keep a safety lock on your cleaning supplies." [Note: that is not a direct quote because I do not have that great of a memory, however that was what I got out of it. I'm sorry, Shell, if I mangled your words.] Phew! What a relief. And thinking about it, I guess she's right. I seem to remember my mom putting a lock on the under-the-sink cabinet and closing all important doors when Heather and Josh were babies. I don't remember plug covers, but then again, there probably were. I have some, thanks to Mike, and will need to put them in here soon.

Today (Monday) I have to work and it's Daddy Day for the baby. I vacuumed and tried to pick up the most tempting items, and he did a great job of cleaning up cords and cables. I guess we will find out soon how bad of a job we've done. Baby-proofing rule #1: You never get everything.

Well I'm off to work...thanks for reading this, and if you'd like to share your stories about baby-proofing or the lack thereof, I'd love to hear them!

Mommy Time

Is there such a thing as Mommy Time? You know, where the Mommy gets to sit down, kick up her heels, and not think about all the chores still to do or take care of anyone? I used to think there was, and increasingly am thinking there needs to be, however less and less am I finding there actually is.

Can you put more hours in the day? So far I have not been successful. Right now my daughter is trying to help me put more awake hours in the day. She's sick, taking naps all over the place and not sleeping when she should. Usually if she's restless I can just snuggle her in bed with me and she'll fall asleep, but not tonight! She went from almost asleep to bursts of energy. I guess in a way it is good as I'll be able to work on this blog more. I started this post a couple of days ago, and if that doesn't tell you how little "mommy time" there is... well then I don't think anything would!

And suddenly I read a post by one of my good friend's "little" sister (who is not so little anymore!) that put everything in perspective. It's funny how things like that can happen. Your entire world can be put in perspective by one sentence. Possibly two. The one that did it for me on this occasion was this: "If you think you don’t have time to do anything, that probably means it’s time to pray, and then you’ll suddenly find that you have time to do everything else." (You can read the entire blog post if you click here.) How is it you never expect to hear something so wise come from someone younger than yourself? Thank you, Miriel, for putting things in perspective for me. And you were right - I already feel like I have more time.

So can there be more hours in the day? Probably not. Do there need to be more awake hours in the day? I've already tried that one and it had quite the opposite effect of making me crash. Is there ANYthing to be done? Pray ... and enjoy where you are at.. time or no time! :)

Rolling through 2010 like it was going out of style.

No doubt about it, we really have been rolling through 2010 at a ridiculously crazy pace. So much going on, so little time to blog about it. From now on I will make a concerted effort to blog at a more consistent pace. This whole blogging thing was much easier when I was pregnant and off work, or post-baby and out of work.

Well, so. Where to start? Tiny Baby? At 7.71 months - no longer tiny. (That decimal was for Mike, who is getting A's in Math even if it kills him). Mike & college? With two small exceptions he is pulling straight A's. The exceptions? He got A-'s in two of his classes. Work? I actually enjoy my job and am good at it. Mike's job? He likes his job and is also good at it. Cats? Crazy as ever, but have settled down a bit I think. Yappy dogs? Probably still yappy, but nowhere near me anymore - I've moved.

Where have I moved, you ask? To a house! Indeed. We purchased a nice little house in North Raleigh, and I am loving it. I don't think I will ever go back to apartments. If I had to rent ever again I would try to rent a house. I have no one above, below, or to the sides of me. I don't have to worry about what time of night I do my laundry or my vacuuming, or how loud I play my music when I clean. If I don't like something I can change it (Lowes/Home Depot here I come!). I have space for the baby to crawl around when she starts and for the cats to play. The sad thing is that I had enough furniture in my 1 bedroom apartment to comfortably fill up a 3 bedroom home. I only got two new pieces of furniture when I moved: an entertainment center (which broke when we tried to move it) and a coffee table (which is so sturdy you could not break it if you dropped it from a 3 story rooftop). I think I was either super efficient at the old place to fit everything in, or super crowded. We'll go with efficient.

Meanwhile Rachel changes weekly and learns things daily. She grabs everything with her tiny little pincer grasp, which is hilarious. She rocks back and forth on her hands and knees (see embedded picture) and scoots backwards, but has not quite started to crawl yet. New sounds, combinations of mastered consonants and vowels, trills, and giggles pour out of her at a furious pace. EVERYthing goes into the mouth. Yesterday I realized her first tooth had cut through her little gums completely and will soon be sprouting up, I am sure. She is not quite 8 months, but is on the upper end of her 6-9 month clothes. Peek-a-boo and spashing in the bathtub are current favorites. Can she really be this big already? I am astounded at how fast things change with her.

For now I must go, but more updates to come in the near future. :)