Recipe for Lifelong Love and Craziness

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar (substitute for 2 cups snips for boy)
• 1 tsp spice (substitute 2 large snails for boy)
• 4 tbsp everything nice (substitute 1 4-inch puppy dog tail for boy)
• 1 year of patience (multiply by 18 depending on dependence level of final product)
• 6 months of undisturbed sleep
• 1 healthy adult diet
• 1 adult social life
• 1 clean house

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 98.6 degrees
2. Combine sugar, spice, and everything nice (or snips, snails, and puppy dog tails if boy is desired) into a large heart shaped bowl
3. Allow to rest for 4 weeks (if able 12 weeks is even better)
4. Fold patience into mixture
5. Mix in undisturbed sleep, paying close attention to attitude changes of mixture
6. Hollow out the center of the mixture (making a bowl shape) and add social life and healthy diet. 
7. Mix well - making sure to combine the ingredients completely and thoroughly.
8. Place mixture in a heat, cold, and emotional resistant dollar sign shaped cake pan.
9. Bake for 10 months - checking occasionally for proper development.
10. Remove from oven and install in your only guest room to rest.
11. Check your heart to see if it still exists inside your body. If created correctly it should now live in the guest room with your creation.
12. Provide proper nutrition, clothing, nurturing, and love but prepare for rejection and hardship.
13. Take lots of pictures and share your creation with your family, friends, and strangers.

Congratulations! Don't forget to show us how yours turned out by including a comment about how yours is better than everyone else's.

Full Time Working Mom with Lots of Love

The mom guilt I feel sometimes is overwhelming. There is so much pressure to juggle work and kids perfectly and so much more to stay home full time with your children. Trying to decide which to do is intense and layers on all that guilt.

When I chose to continue working after having my oldest I wouldn't have labelled it a choice really because I HAD to work to pay the bills. But, if I had said I wouldn't have gone back to work if not required on a monetary basis then I would have been lying. The truth is I am just not the type of person who thrives on being home all the time with my kids.

This doesn't mean I don't love my kids and value the time I get to spend with me, because I totally do! My girls are my world, but in order to feel fulfilled I need the opportunity to work within a career. And if you think this makes me less of a mother then by george are you wrong! I think this can be another amazing example of how to mother while working and still mother well. I don't have to be a stay at home mom to be a good mom and vice versa--you don't have to work outside the home to be a good mom. We are all good moms in our own right, mostly because we love our kids and do what we think is right and best for them.

For us, doing what is best for our girls means I go to work every day, and that's perfectly fine no matter what anyone says or thinks. All the love in our home and lives can attest to that.

Shelf Dilemma

Tonight is Open House for our school and I have been cleaning like a mad person trying to get things ready. I really don't want parents coming into the library and thinking that there is some slob crazy person teaching their kids. I know that I shouldn't expect to have everything perfect when we haven't even been in school for a month and when I am taking over in a position that hasn't been really filled in years. Does that mean I don't want things to be perfect? Um, NO! Throughout the day I barely sit down because I am so busy cleaning areas of the library, hanging signs, organizing closets, and so much more. Personally I strive every day to make this place as perfect as I can, and then the students come in and I have to accept the mess and move on. By the end of each class period I am struggling to keep tables lined up and books from falling over on shelves. I am picking up forgotten notebooks and pencils even though the students know better. The truth is that I clean here as much as I clean at home and it is equally as exhausting and I barely have enough energy to clean my house!

With that I have made a decision that many librarians will not agree with but we have to pick our battles, do we not? It is well known in libraries that books should be shelved with the spines out and lined neatly up about half an inch from the lip of the shelf. This helps the shelves look even and doesn't allow for smaller books to be pushed further back than larger ones. Like this:

Looks nice, doesn't it? Well I want to be the person to tell you that it is all a sham! Those neat rows of books are a horrible pain in my librarian rear end and I am not afraid to say it. See students come in and they pull books off those shelves, and in the process shove the entire row or parts of the rows back which leaves me with half neat shelves and half messes ones. And here is where my dilemma arises. I spend hours a week fixing shelves where the books have been shoved back--pulling them back into their neat little rows--just to have a student come in behind me and wreck it all. So, do I keep wasting this time making neat rows as is "proper" library shelf etiquette? Well of course not.

From now on all of my shelves will hold books that are pushed back and not neatly lined up. I mean why fight it? Today is the day I push all the books back and rejoice at not so neat, but otherwise cleaned and organized, rows! 

Dear Daughter, You are My Strength

My sweet girl,

Tomorrow is the first day of my new job in a new town and it is also your first day full time at daycare. Both of these things are super big and exciting but for some reason, I can only focus on one of them. I want you to know that I never intended on you being in someone else's care for so many hours of our days. And as I lie in bed right now, snuggling you close and breathing you in, while you nap on our last day together I can feel the pressure and anxiety building inside me. There is so much to prepare for and do before tomorrow when our adventures begin. I should be grateful for these few moments to myself.

But the truth is I don't want to move.

I want to hold onto you tighter and feel your breath against my skin and the thumping of your little heart against my chest. I want to soak in all this love and warmth so when I walk into that daycare tomorrow and place you in your teacher's arms I can have something tangible, even if only a memory, to hold onto. I know I am going to be a blubbering mess-- I will probably even cry more than you. But I also know that this love we share between us will always give me the strength I need to do what I have to in order to make our lives better.

You are my purpose, my motivation, and all the strength I will ever need. I love you.


Love,

Mommy