Oh Wow

So I was watching a commercial for a new show coming out on Animal Planet, its called Hillbilly Handfishin’.   Yes, Hillbilly Handfishin’, and it is exactly what you think it is.  A bunch of people (hillbillies) playing around in dirty, nasty looking creeks catching fish with their bare hands.  You would think it would be a bunch of gross old men, but in the commercial I saw, they had a few younger women in the water too.  I don’t get it.  The water looks gross, fish are gross, and it seems like you are making fishing a much harder task than it needs to be.  Why would you not want to sit on a nice clean and dry boat and wait for a dumb fish to catch your bait?  Oh wait, I can get filthy dirty, swim around in nasty water, and grab around like a crazy person trying to catch a fish with my bare hands, please let’s choose the second option.  Gross!  Not to mention, it seems like more often than not, you are not actually going to get the fish with your hands, pretty sure they can move quicker than us.  I want to know who does this…and who at Animal Planet thought “Hmmm…hillbillies catching fish with their bare hands…I’m going to make a TV series out of it!”  So yes, I will probably end up watching at least 1 episode.

*http://animal.discovery.com/tv/hillbilly-handfishin/

The lights of my life

Some days with my girls are a challenge, but at least every day is new and exciting.  They keep me on my toes and show me things in life that I would otherwise be too busy to notice.  These instances make everything worth it, even the really challenging days.  The other day I was on the phone with my husband, and my daughter was cheering “Go, Daddy, Go” in the background.  Like a good mom, I ignored it until I got off the phone.  J  After I got off she said “Mom, I was cheering Go, Daddy, Go for Daddy because he is doing an awesome job at work”.  I immediately felt bad for ignoring her and not letting her “cheer” for her Dad on the phone.  I wish I could think as matter of factly as my daughter does.  She just says it how it is with everything.  She says so many funny/interesting/smart things to me on a daily basis (ohh…potential blog topic later!).  I like to think that she is a genius, but I will just settle for her being keenly aware of everything around her and being able to report these findings in such an entertaining matter and making me smile everyday!

I'm in love

I am in love with a website called www.zulily.com.  It is one of those deal of the day sites, but it has a lot of different items each day.  Check it out.  Anyways, I know that I am addicted because as soon as 9 am rolls around, I have to get on and see if they have anything good.  It’s never anything I need, and sometimes it is not even good deals, but they have such cute stuff.  It’s mostly baby items, kids’ clothes, or house wares, but most of it is stuff I’ve never heard of.  I like to dress my girls in cute clothes and not the same ones that are out there everywhere, and not in the aforementioned risky clothes at the local stores.  So whenever I find cute clothes on the site, I always feel like I need to get them, even if the girls don’t need any new clothes.  I really need to stop, and not just because it costs money, but because my daughter’s closet bar is literally starting to bend in the middle from the weight of their clothes.  Which I think does say a lot, since they are little and their tiny outfits don’t weigh all that much.  So I guess I will stop, but not because I want to, but because my husband will probably refuse to put up a new closet bar if this one breaks since he already told me to stop putting so many clothes in there J  (at least until fall clothes come out, she needs clothes for school of course!)

Am I old already??

I am only 28.  I still feel young, and I hope that I even still look young.  But apparently I am getting old.  There have been kids out all over the roads in the student driver cars, is it me, or do they all look about 10 years old??  It scares me, not only because it makes me feel older, but also because it just doesn’t seem safe that they are driving.  I know when I was growing up; I couldn’t wait to get my license at 16.  If I was honest then (which I wouldn’t have been…I was 16), I would have said I wasn’t ready to drive.  Looking back on it now, I KNOW I wasn’t ready to drive.  I did it obviously, but there were many near miss incidents, and a lot of goofing off with my friends.  Now looking at the kids out there driving with cell phones and the texting, it sure doesn’t seem any safer than when I was growing up.  I know I would make all the kids so upset by saying this, but I definitely think they should change the driving age to 18.  They are legal adults at 18, so why not?  At least in myself, I know there was a dramatic difference in my personality/responsibility level between the ages of 16 and 18.  I think we would see a lot less accidents.  It breaks my heart when the spring/summer season rolls around every year; the news is just flooded with teens that are in car accidents.  I think that banning texting while driving helped, but I really hope the age changes before my girls get there.  I realize I sound like an overprotective old lady.  Someone please do a study on the difference between drivers starting at 18 instead of 16 and prove me right.  Thank you.

Wasting my life away

I think I have a problem.  I am addicted to facebook.  I don’t even know how it happened.  I just caught myself typing in www.facebook.com without even realizing it.  I know I check it a lot, more because it’s how I communicate with everyone than just to look around.    But still.  It apparently has become a reaction for me to just to hop on the computer and get on facebook for no reason and without anything to even look at.  Next step will probably mean logging on facebook in my sleep!  This is bad, I can see how teenagers do this, but I am supposed to be an adult with better things to do.  If internet/social media play this big of role already, I am extremely scared for what this will entail for my girls when they get older.  Maybe I better put myself on restriction.  Ok, my new rule is, if I hear my daughter talk about facebook, I’m done!  Now someone will just have to hold me to that…

3 going on 23

I am very disappointed with children’s clothes designers.  My older daughter has recently moved up to the “girls” size clothes rather than toddler size.  Looking at the options, it seems that they were all created for young 20 year olds.  I personally don’t want my daughter dressing provocative, not at the age of 3, or even the age of 10 for that matter.  I know that styles are changing, but since when is it cool to look trashy??  I just want my 3 year old to dress like..well, a 3 year old.  Why can’t they make the cute toddler style clothes just in bigger sizes?  It seems like all the clothes are either kind of slutty looking or just plain t-shirts with decorations that are either not cute, or something I wouldn’t want her wearing.  I can’t really remember what I wore when I was 3, but I have to imagine it was cute little dresses, or jumpers, not mini-skirts and tube tops.  If my husband would even allow me to put those outfits on her, I would feel like one of those moms on Toddlers and Tiaras, or the moms who buy their kids the push-up bikinis from Abercrombie.  Apparently my decision to not dress my daughter like she is going out clubbing is going to require searching for cute clothes or for me to buy a sewing machine and learn to sew…which might not end well either!

How did I get this far in life?

I had a good education growing up.  I attended good schools, my parents taught me things at home, and I went on to get Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from a local university.  However, I realized that I do not know a lot of basic information about the country that I live in.  All of this thanks to a little show on the History channel called How The States Got Their Shapes.  If you haven’t watched this show before, do it, it’s great!  Anyway, the show is basically all about the history of our country and all the states.  They ask these basic questions that I apparently never know the answers to.  Like where was America’s first oil well?  I thought I knew this…Texas..nope, WRONG….Pennsylvania.  Okay..maybe that was a fluke, where was the Nation’s first gold rush?  Okay California, maybe Oregon..nope, WRONG AGAIN, it’s North Carolina…North Carolina!!  I would never have gotten that one right!  I kept telling myself that it was only those few questions, but I’ve seen maybe 7 or so episodes and it happens to me every time.  The only reason I don’t hate myself after each episode is because my husband, who is also well educated and always seems to know everything about everything, gets a lot of them wrong too.    Thank goodness we paid tens of thousands of dollars on our education to be taught this information off our cable TV.  God Bless America.

Try, Try Again

I try to cook, I really do.  I can bake, but cooking is just not my thing.  I tend to go in spurts.  I will have a week or two where I try all these different recipes and all these new things we have never eaten before.  Then I end up falling back into my staple foods.  You know…spaghetti, tacos, chicken, blah, blah, blah.  It’s not that we are even picky eaters, we eat most everything.  It does make me feel a little inept because I can’t cook well.  Most people tell me it’s a good thing that I can bake, because that’s the better food!  But my husband isn’t a big sweet eater, and my daughter has an egg allergy.  Both of those issues pose a problem with the one thing that I am actually decent at.  I wish there was some way I could transfer my knowledge on how to get the perfect texture cookie to equal not burning and drying out chicken every time I cook it!  But it doesn’t work that way.  At least my family is supportive.  My husband rarely tells me he doesn’t like something.  Even my daughter will choke it down, while gagging like she is going to throw up, she’ll still be telling me how good it is and how much she likes it.  I guess if everyone will choke down my cooking, it must be good enough, right??

My life in a bag

Everyone has vices.  Mine are purses.  I love them.  Getting a new one makes me happy and brightens my day.  It’s like Christmas morning when you get to empty out your old purse contents and rearrange them into your new purse.  I think my purse contents are getting a little out of hand, but I can’t seem to go back.  The more stuff I put in there, the more I find I need.  Once something goes in the purse, it can’t come back out.  It somehow magically turns into something that I couldn’t possibly not carry around all day every day.   I think you can probably see where I am going with this.  My purses are getting too big.  I want to carry the cute little small purses, I really do.  They are cute, not heavy, and cheaper than the big bags.  But there just doesn’t seem to be any way I could pull it off with all the stuff I “need”.  My problem now is that the hoarding going on in my purse is starting to transfer to my daughter’s diaper bag.  I am finding excuses to keep so many things in there that I most definitely do not use on a daily basis, and to be honest, probably not even on a weekly basis.  But I can’t take anything out, because as soon as I do, I will need it!  So now I carry around an overflowing purse AND diaper bag.  I’m sure I’m doing damage to my back, but there just doesn’t seem to be any other way, I need to be prepared for everything.  You will thank me some time when we are out and you need nail clippers, bobby pins, or a clip to hang your new purse off the table so it doesn’t have to sit on the dirty floor.  You’re welcome.

Baby Timer

Okay baby timer company, you are obviously mom’s, and you must have had babies that like to be awake at all hours of the night.  This timer is one of the best investments I have made.  It worked wonders with my older daughter when I was exhausted during the night and couldn’t remember anything about anything, but now with my youngest, I have realized how completely dependent I have become with this contraption.  For those of you that don’t have one, or don’t have kids, I will do a little explaining.  To start, babies wake up to eat, a lot, and that doesn’t stop during the night.  Not only are you supposed to get everything done that you usually do, you also have to factor time in to feed your baby (in my case, every 2 ½ - 3 hours during the day, depending on her mood…yes I realize this is a lot, but if you know her father, you understand) and remember the times for everything.  So the way this timer works, is that you push a button that starts a timer so you know when you last fed/changed diaper/etc for your child.  So how did I come to realize I apparently no longer look at a clock and have become dependent?  When after my daughter was screaming like crazy acting like she wanted to eat, I’m telling her “it’s not time yet” (which of course is completely rational, I know that a 2 month old understands logic!)  So I go to look for the timer, because I actually couldn’t remember if it was time to for her to eat or not, time has turned into a blur.  I pick it up, and every time on it reads 26 minutes…..damn it!!  I left the lock turned off and my older daughter pushed all the buttons!  Now what do I do??  I have no idea if it has been 30 minutes, or 3 hours!  I don’t want to be the bad mom that starved my infant, so I feed her just in case….she wins.  Life lesson…..turn on the lock for the timer.