Runaway October

I spent a bit of my super early morn­ing nurs­ing and read­ing oth­ers res­o­lu­tions, cour­tesy of decor8. Bad idea. Now I have 6 mil­lion I would like to add to my own list and whit­tling it down is hard. So here it goes.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. No “shoot”, no “Christ on a pony”, no “son of a bis­cuiteater”. The sen­ti­ment is the same, so tech­ni­cally it is swear­ing, just not using the actual word. This is going to be a super tough one.

2…) Smile more. I have one of those faces that in it’s nor­mal state can be mis­taken for a scowl, which in turn makes peo­ple think that I’m surly. Really, I’m not. Also a smile can make a per­sons day.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. This was great inspi­ra­tion for that and it truly makes sense. If we want our chil­dren to grow up as respect­ful adults, we need to model that behav­ior always. Some days I go to bed and can­not think of a time that I sat down and played with Declan, or did more than fill a sim­ple request for a glass of water. Poor lit­tle man.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. It’s been open for almost 2 years now and I’ve never put a sin­gle item up for sale.

5…) Along with num­ber 4 goes do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Declan is get­ting big enough that a lit­tle struc­tured craft time would be fun for both of us. Also, send­ing home neat lit­tle crafts with my day­care kids would give me a great sense of satisfaction.

Of course there’s the manda­tory ones — Lose weight, make more money, get orga­nized, buy a house, get rid of debt.… blah blah blah.

So, that’s the long and short of it.

Good Luck on your res­o­lu­tions and have a Happy 2008!

I don’t think that I’m a good cook. Not even a decent one, really. Some­times I get the urge to cook some­thing I find… like this potato soup… and I just get this nag­ging feel­ing in the back of my mind that it’s not gonna be any good.

Mom and Matt always say what I cook is great, good or alright, but they kinda have to say that if they expect me to keep cook­ing. Declan’s taste is so fickle that he doesn’t count. I’m kinda sur­prised that they don’t cringe when I say I’m try­ing some­thing new.

Maybe it’s because I’ve had some colos­sal dis­as­ters in the kitchen or because even things that peo­ple fawn over are just “Meh” to me by the time I’m done cook­ing. And noth­ing ever looks good. I should really work on my food pre­sen­ta­tion skills.

While on the topic of cook­ing and con­fes­sions… I’m hope­lessly addicted to Cook­ing­Blogs. Don’t even get me started on Craft­Blogs. I horde them in my del.icio.us account and get some weird, sweet sat­is­fac­tion when adding them to my Google Reader. Maybe because I wish I could be tal­ented enough to be the pub­lisher of one of these awe­some blogs, but it’s highly unlikely that will ever happen.

Mmmm… we just picked up some awe­some pork tamales from Costco of all places.

So the hol­i­days are just about wrap­ping up and it’s time to go back to normal.

If I could leave up the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions year round I would. I love the lights and the smells and the count­less hours wor­ry­ing if so&so is going to like what you bought or made them. Of course, if I left all the Christ­mas stuff out, it would be destroyed by lit­tle hands like every­thing else I own.

We’re super broke, so no gifts for any­one but the kidlets. Declan received a huge wooden pirate ship, com­plete with lit­tle wooden pirates, canons and a plank (as in “Arg! Walk the plank, Matey.”) He also got about 87 courses worth of wooden play food — he loves the ketchup bot­tle. Rowan… I dunno. Some­how I ended up buy­ing him like 8 wooden rat­tles. When is he going to use them?

We went to the In Laws for Christ­mas din­ner. I wasn’t look­ing for­ward to see­ing cer­tain peo­ple and was half tempted not to go because of them, but Christ­mas has always been a fun time for us. Ann made the day won­der­ful as usual. Din­ner was deli­cious, even though Rowan insisted I eat it cold. Matt’s par­ents bought just about every large thing on our wish­list. I never hoped that we’d get so many things that we’ve been need­ing, but to receive them as gifts was such a treat. The boys’ Aunt came this time, though she was absent from Thanks­giv­ing. She loves to buy things for Declan and we are grate­ful for the things she buys, but to be truth­ful I’d be happy to never have a toy that required bat­ter­ies again. She bought a Tickle Me Cookie Mon­ster this year. It’s one of those toys you see as an adult and think it’s adorable (it orig­i­nally made me laugh), but when you see it as a par­ent it makes you want to cry. My only sav­ing grace is Declan goes between ambiva­lent about it to ter­ri­fied of it. Once Cookie Mon­ster starts throw­ing him­self to the ground and rolling around, Declan books it! Some out of town rel­a­tives of Matt’s fam­ily showed up, so I was able to meet some of the extended fam­ily. Unfor­tu­nately I also got the oppor­tu­nity to try and ignore Matt’s thiev­ing brother for the day. That was fun… not.

I’d still like to get the kids down to Zoo­Lights, but it has been so, so cold for us Ari­zona Natives.

Happy Hol­i­days every­one. I hope yours was as amaz­ing as ours was.

• He brings you his last Skit­tle. Not just any Skit­tle — the one he dug out of the couch which has to be six months old and is cov­ered in lint, hair and sweat from his chubby lit­tle hand.
• He points to every pic­ture of beau­ti­ful women in mag­a­zines and says “Mama”.
• He attempts to brush your curly-ass hair… with a round brush.
• He kisses your boo-boo’s.
• He yells at the dog when she gets in your face.
• He brings you a small wooden trea­sure chest… full of soggy cereal because you said you were starving.