Tag Archives: Life

I’m so complicated. Really. I am.

Posted on November 26, 2012 | 28 comments

I can’t recall who started it. It was trending not just in my twitter feed and on facebook. It was in my house, too. Em didn’t want to go back to school after her long break. MQD was not particularly interested in going back to work. It seemed like no one wanted to “go back.”

I have adopted a silence when people start hemming and hawing on Sunday in the late afternoon about “going back to work.” When you stay home you don’t have much to add to that conversation. Either you crack a joke at your own expense quickly or you start pointing out that you don’t get days off at all.

I usually just fall quiet. I am not trying to get pelted with bon bons from the stay at home mom crowd for saying this out loud. But staying home with my kids is so far the best job I have ever had. I make my own hours. I love the people that I work for. And I wear whatever I want. The same things that make it awful are the things that make it wonderful. I spend all my time with my co-workers. All of it.

This particular Monday I had a tougher time falling back in to the swing of things. My house is clean. My refrigerator is full of left overs. My laundry is done. A long weekend with family and  I had plenty of extra hands on deck. Christmas is more than a month away. I am not ready to start that. So, what exactly am I to do?

Lucy and I had a lazy morning. We stayed in our pajamas. We did some yoga. We chatted with a friend when she stopped by with our eggs. Late morning became afternoon and before I knew it Emily’s bus was going to be home and we weren’t even dressed. For all intents and purposes I did not “go to work” today. Sure, I kept the kiddo alive and happy all day. And on a good day that is enough for me. She is my “primary job.” But on the days when I sit back and watch her and I disengage and I wonder if “this” is “enough” – it makes my heart hurt.

Sitting on the floor in our bedroom by the window I could feel the lonely settling down in to my bones. I was trying to be light hearted when I called him. “Every one is back to work and school and I am just here. It’s so quiet. It’s like I don’t know what to do.”

He was joking.    “You should clean something.”

I wanted to hang up.  I wanted to not cry.  I wanted to not make mountains out of molehills and rail against the Universe that cleaning things is a waste of time when it will all be a mess again tomorrow.  He was kidding.

But damn that man of mine.  Even his jokes can see through me.  Surely he could hear the blue.  I don’t wear it well.

 

Not even ten minutes had passed before I ripped the covers off of the couch and put them in the washing machine.  He might have been joking, but I feel pretty fantastic. Sometimes I do need to feel like I “did” something.  And by sometimes I mean all of the time.  The washing machine will be done in four minutes.  In a little over an hour I will pull clean cushion covers out of my dryer and wrestle them back on to the couch.  And I will feel like I conquered the world.  Or at the very least I will feel like I beat back the blue for yet another day.

But it is not just because I cleaned something.  I can’t have you or MQD thinking my life is really that simple.

I also put on lipstick.  And in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due I must thank my mother (presumably) for losing a lipstick in my couch.  Because apparently it takes more than just a shower and a completed chore to make my heart sing.  It takes lipstick, y’all.

 

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Posted in Bad Mood, Nonsense, Parenting

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An Attitude of Gratitude

Posted on November 20, 2012 | 43 comments

I learned my life lessons from 80’s television.  If you tapped a cane on the floor right now I would stand up straight.  I would grab the back of a chair and lift my chin.  In my mind I would hear Debbie Allen saying  “You want fame? … Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying. With sweat.”

Some time in the early 1990s I decided that sweatshirts with the neck cut out were maybe not the very best look for me.  And I abandoned my dreams for Fame.  I hung up my legwarmers and decided Fame wasn’t for me.

A couple of days ago I contributed a picture to The Feminist Breeder’s Normalize Breastfeeding Campaign on Facebook.  I chose to send a picture of myself sitting down after an excellent day. Lucy was nursing and I was having a glass of wine.  It was the perfect image to reject the idea that nursing mothers have to spend their lives cooped up in a nursery, missing out.  Gina’s “offensive” picture featured a piece of bacon and a nursing baby.  I thought it was amusing to feature a glass of wine and a nursing baby because Facebook is clearly pro-pictures of people with a drink in their hand.

I have been blogging in my little corner of the Internet for almost three years. It has been a great way for me to hash out my feelings as my life progressed from single parent to a married mother of two.  It served as a record of my pregnancy and Emily growing from a teeny little thing to the 7 year old going on 17 that she is today.  I have been honest.  I have talked openly about my insecurities and my struggles with being a woman and received a lot of “Good for you!” and “Thanks for sharing” and pats on the back.

And then yesterday the picture posted of me having a glass of wine while nursing my baby and within an hour I had that icky “what have I done?” feeling.  Comments racked up and the great majority were negative it seemed.  These weren’t people that read here and support me.  These were strangers sharing misinformation (that breastfeeding and a glass of wine don’t mix) and saying that I was a lousy mother.  (My favorite being the woman that pointed out that I was ignoring my baby when I looked at the camera!)

Every day I aim to choose happiness.  I choose to see the good and the joy in the smallest moments.  It is part of who I am.  Yesterday was a test.  I kept waiting to feel my stomach flip flop and a tear escape my eyes as I read another comment from a stranger about how I was classless.  But it didn’t happen.  Because I didn’t need to look very hard to see that there were really only a handful of people shaming me.  And they were doing so from a place of lack of knowledge.  They really believed that you can’t nurse a baby and have a glass of wine.  Shame on them for judging me? Maybe.  But don’t we all just do the best we can with the information we’ve got?  And for every criticism there were more than a dozen women that said “this picture is great!” or that I looked so relaxed and happy.  Or that I had great eyeglasses.  (Special thanks to them because amidst a persecution of your character it is important to remind yourself that you are fashionable!)

This morning I am taking the opportunity not to speak to the judgement and the misinformation (largely because the inimitable Amy West has already done so.)  Instead I choose to thank my friends and the many strangers that responded on the Facebook thread or on Twitter.  So many of you spoke up to say “Hey, you are doing a great job, keep on keeping on.” And really? If I am honest – thank you to the folks that said you can’t have an alcoholic beverage and nurse a baby because it was an excellent platform for dispelling that widely believed myth.

My last thank you goes out to the women and men that spewed the kind of garbage that can only be done from behind the protection of your computer screen.  You probably didn’t mean to.  But you made this girl with her tiny little blog feel famous!  Because you aren’t Internet Famous unless somebody hates you.  I am going to have to wear a clean velour sweatsuit every time I leave the house if y’all keep this up.  I might even need to bust out that sweatshirt with the neck cut out and some legwarmers.  Rumor has it – Fame costs, but I can take it.

Even as a child I knew I had to suffer for my art!

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Posted in Nonsense, Parenting, Pregnancy

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“Punctuation, is? fun!”

Posted on November 15, 2012 | 9 comments

Keep

What’s that saying “the bloom is off the rose?” It means that the thrill is gone.  The newness has worn off.  There is no longer new car smell.

Lucy still smells like a baby.  At least once a week as I close my eyes to fall asleep there are tears on  my cheeks.  My nose is pressed against the top of her head, inhaling.  And at least once a month MQD will ask “Are you okay?”

Always my answer is the same.  “She’s getting so big.”  She just walked by me now with the television remote control in her hand.  Great. I can add Lucy to the reasons I can never find it.

My baby is almost ten months old.  Ten months. For ten months she has slept next to me at night.  She has napped in my lap in “our chair.”  She nurses on demand and she is not shy in her demanding.  She will not take a bottle.  And I haven’t really tried all that hard to convince her.  This is exactly what I had hoped for when I made the decision to stay at home with her.

I do not long for nights out on the town.  I am not craving an evening alone with my husband.  We carve out time.  It works for us.  She will be little for such a short time.

She used to nap for an hour a few times a day.  I needed the rest, too.  It was Lucy Enforced down time for me.  As she nears a year old her naps are growing less frequent. But they are growing longer.  I’d like very much to put her down for one of them.  I have tears on my keyboard while I type that.  Jeez, I am not shipping her off to boarding school.  I am just considering putting her down while she takes a nap.  I’m not even talking the “It’s 10 am, put the baby in the crib and close the door until 11” naptime.  I am thinking maybe we both lie down on the floor in the living room so that when she falls asleep I can roll away from her and stand up and empty the dishwasher without “help.”  (I like to dream big, remember.)

The baby smell is not gone.  But perhaps the bloom is off the rose. I am not sure if I am holding on to her for me or for her.  And when I start to feel like I am making choices for my children based on my needs and not theirs it is time to examine those choices.   She is my last baby.  Remember when you came home with a newborn and they slept on your chest?  I don’t want to let that go.

Em came in to our bedroom the other night with a wicked cough. I got her some cough medicine and checked her for a temperature.  I was preparing to make her a spot in our bed when she said “I can just sleep on the couch with Fisher, Mom.”

“Are you sure?  I mean, you have a cough,” I said.  I could hear how ridiculous it sounded when it came out of my mouth.  It was a cough.  Not meningitis.  She slept that night on the couch.  And soon Lucy will take a nap without my boob in her face.  And she will be just fine.  But I don’t have to like it.

Trash

This afternoon I made the decision to Keep the flowers on my kitchen table and to Donate a few of those crummy vases from the florist that you keep stashed behind your wine glasses.  And for the Trash?

Just like I can’t figure out a way to make my baby stay a baby – I also can’t seem to figure out how to get an orchid to bloom again.  In the coming weeks while I adjust to the idea that Lucy needs to start napping on her own I am going to pretend I am crying over this orchid.  Yup.  I sure am.  Because what is more sad than an orchid without a single bloom?

*Can you name the novel the title for this post comes from?!  Bonus points if you saw this play with me a hundred years ago.

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Posted in Parenting

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A Pubic Service Announcement

Posted on November 11, 2012 | 27 comments

Just a quick Public Service Announcement for you on a Sunday morning.

It is entirely possible that your baby is smarter than your dog.  You can let that sink in.  I’ll wait.

My dog is really quite bright.  At nine years old he is wise and grey.  He is patient and kind.  Unless he wants to go outside and then he is less than patient.  He will whine and bark and run in circles shouting “Hello, assholes!!  Didn’t you hear?!  Your dog wants to go OUTSIDE right NOW!”

Lucy didn’t say a word.  She just waited until I went to the bathroom and hurled her little body at the screen door until it popped open.  Fortunately kids are slobs and she didn’t shut the door behind her or I’d still be screaming her name and looking under the couch cushions.

The takeaway from this little tale – your baby might be smarter than your dog.  And lock your screen door.  You’re welcome.  20121110-153712.jpg

 

**Note to my readers (some of whom I formerly considered my friends) – Really?  Do you not even pay attention?? A PUBIC Service Announcement?  Note the title, kids.  Killer typo.  And  not one of you gave me shit about this. No wonder my baby is running away, I am a MESS.

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Some more Stuff

Posted on November 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Stuff. I have written about my tendency to hold on to Stuff before. I hold on not just to scraps of paper and pictures and acorns and single mismatched earrings. I hold on to people, too. It is both my greatest quality and my weakness. In recent years I have learned to embrace the “people are in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” theory. Previously I tried to keep everyone in my life for a lifetime. I thought it made my life richer. Sadly, I think it may actually just dilute the people that are there day to day.

I have embraced the theory. I have. I have let go. And I have done so with peace in my heart and the knowledge that just because someone is no longer in my day to day does not mean that they were not there for a reason or that their season may not come around again.

I try to live this theory as it applies to my Stuff, too. I don’t always succeed. Right now in the back corner of my attic storage is a lampshade with black fringe from my Leg lamp costume. I know it is an item that served it’s purpose, it had a reason. I should let it go. But I want it to be a Lifetime piece, I do. I know it has no practical purpose… but you just never know. What if I need it?

In the last seven years I have moved three times. Prior to that I had moved only a handful of times in my life. I took advantage of each move to let go of some things. Having children makes the keeping of everything impossible. Holding on to each and every precious item, it is adding to the pile of Stuff that they will someday lug around.

Daylight Savings Time allows for a perfect morning. We all woke without the use of an alarm clock, our bodies gently nudging us towards wakefulness before the alarm clocks starts screaming Wake Up! You’re Late! (I wake to Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life every single day. Start each day with a laugh and a little perspective.) While Em ate breakfast I rummaged around in my junk drawer in the kitchen for three more items. I promise I won’t spend all month showing you shit from my kitchen junk drawer. Really.

Trash and Donate were easy today. For the trash I have two cheapie cat toys. A catnip toy that has a hole in the corner and a weird little ball that sheds blue plastic pieces. Lucy is a huge fan of cat toys and I am a huge fan of her not choking. We no longer have cats so these items have outlived their usefulness. They have neither a reason nor a season coming up in the near future so in to the trash with them. As I tossed them in to the kitchen garbage can I got a little misty. For the first time in more than 15years I will not be filling a christmas stocking with cat toys for an ungrateful beast that shits in a box in my house. A heartbreaking realization, I know.

Donate – I often wonder if the collect box tops for education campaign is real or if it is akin to the collect soda pop can tabs for cancer campaigns of my youth. I had jars of tabs, bracelets made of tabs, tabs in my pockets, in my backpack. I don’t remember ever doing anything with them, but I knew it was tacky not to pop them off before I chucked a can in to the trash. (In to the trash! Gasp, those crazy non-recycling 1980s.) I clip boxtops from the few items of prepackaged food we buy and I toss them in my kitchen drawer, or in to the bowl of fresh fruit that sits on the counter. Very occasionally I get it together and turn them in to the school. This year I have managed to send them in on three separate occasions and it is barely November. Yeehaw, stay at home mom for the win!

My Keep item is one that has surely outlived it’s season. But dammit, its reason is genius! 17 years ago I used to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va quite often. Any and all funds that were not spent at Anheuser Busch’s amusement park were spent on their fine American made product, the Budweiser. Even as a young gal I oozed class and style. I didn’t always have a frosty mug with me, sadly, and I couldn’t just go around slugging beers from a can. I could snap on this metal handle and Tada! This item has a two-pronged approach to assisting you in catching a wicked buzz. Not only does your beer stay nice and cold because your hand is not warming it up but you can’t put it down without it tipping over so beers had a tendency to disappear before my eyes!

I can’t tell you the last time I used this. I pull it out on occasion to show someone. Typically someone visiting from my college days. But this item has lived in every junk drawer I have had for the last 17 years. It has outlasted the purge of moving to a new state. I can’t get rid of it now. Dare I say that this item has no reason, it has no season? Is this a Lifetime junk drawer item?

For today I am going with a solid, yes. Yes, it is. I wanted to show you how handy it is. No can of beer to be found. Here it is providing a handle to my jar of Fish Oil Supplements. Fish Oil has done wonders for my achy creaky joints in the morning. Amazingly enough a solid decade of Budweisers did not seem to make me bounce out of bed feeling like a million bucks. Who knew?

Stay tuned for 26 more days of my treasured pieces of crap. Can you even imagine the wondrous items yet to be revealed?

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Balance

Posted on October 29, 2012 | 23 comments

It’s no mystical secret that life is a careful balancing act. Every single decent therapist I have ever spoken to has said within twenty minutes “Well, Kelly, it sounds like you need to find some balance and I can’t tell you how to do that.” Well, I am not forking out $125 an hour for you to ask me questions.

Balance. I have spent my entire adult life looking for it. Work and play time. Ambition and relaxation. Exercise and diet. Save money for your future but live in the moment.

Looking crazed, I thought I’d be gone for hours!! Free as a bird!!

I work really hard to keep balance in my life currently. Take care of everyone else and take care of me. It isn’t easy. I left the house this afternoon with the intention of staying gone for a few hours. I have never been away from Lucy for more than about 90 minutes but MQD and Emily were both home. She had a full belly. She had just had a nap. She would be fine and I needed to get out. Bad.

MQD is pretty good about not crying wolf. I wasn’t gone 45 minutes before he sent the first text “We have a very sad baby.” I was getting my nails done. Yup. I am that shallow. Once a month I take an hour for myself and that is what I choose to do. Judge me, if you like. It makes me feel pretty. I sent him one back “Bring her to me, I can’t leave just yet.” He got things calmed down on the homefront and ultimately I was even able to stop and get milk on the way home. That’s right. I went to the grocery store. Party on, Wayne.

I could have stayed out longer. But I wanted to be home. Walking through stores window shopping or sitting somewhere drinking a cup of coffee wishing I was at home would not make me happy. I took my perfectly manicured fingernails home and strapped on an apron. Emily and I sat on the floor in the kitchen and we grated six zucchinis while Lucy took out every single piece of tupperware we own. And I was happy.

That might have been enough Balance for the day. But enough is never enough for me.

After I whipped up some ridiculously good zucchini bread (slammed full of vegetables and almonds for protein power!) I sat back and thought “I’m not cooking another god damned thing today!”

For breakfast tomorrow my family will have delicious zucchini bread made with love and natural sweeteners. For dinner tonight? I taught Emily how to line up Scoops Tostitos chips and place a loving dollop of canned hot dog chili in each one. Then we put some cheese on those bad boys and slid them in the oven.

Because it is all about balance. Em had a fever this weekend and was under the weather. I told her she could have anything she wanted for lunch, anything at all. She picked salad. SALAD.

My girls will grow up loving vegetables. But some day, many years from now, I hope they will both stumble through a 24 hour grocery store after the bars close and grab some Tostito Scoops, a 79 cent can of chili made with godknowswhat and some cheese. Her friends will encourage her to just put them in the microwave (or cook them with their space-aged cell phones) and she’ll say “No way, man, my mom made these when we were kids and you have to take your time and line up the chips and cook them in the oven.”

If it sounds like I hope my kids grow up to occasionally stumble drunkenly through a grocery store and eat food that is one step above low level dog food, yes, I do. They will also probably buy their vegetables from the farmer’s market and recycle like their life depends on it. And that, friends, is Balance.

It’s not hard to picture her drunkenly stumbling around, actually.

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4 years & 40 weeks

Posted on October 26, 2012 | 12 comments

I love you so much I can’t stand it. I even love it when you look at me like “Damn, you love me so much I can’t stand it.” xo

On our anniversary I write MQD a list of things I love about him. Well, I usually do.

I can picture the look on MQD’s face and the face he will make this year. He will read my post and say “I don’t get a list this year? Four years and you are out of things to say?”

Depending upon my state of mind I might laugh and say “Nope, I only love 1,018 things about you. That’s it. 365 things for the first first two years and 288 things last year. I shorted you 77 things last year.” Or maybe I will get all misty eyed and say “Are you kidding? Did you even read what I wrote?” and he will hug me in the kitchen and do that thing where he sways his hips but doesn’t move his feet with his arms around my waist. I believe he thinks it is dancing.

On October 27, 2008 I went on my very last first date. A few days after that we went to a Halloween party and we danced (with feet moving, slow dancing in the kitchen is its own private art form.) Four years ago.

On our first anniversary I wrote him a list. 365 things I love about him. It made him cry. I was moved because he didn’t do things like that, cry. On our second anniversary I did it again. Again, he cried. The following year my list was 77 items short because I was short on time and we were moving and I was so pregnant I just couldn’t make myself stay up late to finish it the night before. He forgave me. I was carrying his child after all.

This year I had ample time to get my list started early. Every time I have sat down to write it I have come up short. In front of the keyboard weeping I can’t write a single line. When you write Reason # 1 – This Life how do you write a Reason #2.

Michael,

Our first year together you gave me Hope.

Our second year together you gave me Love.

Our third year together you gave me a Family.

In our fourth year together you have given me This Life.

Today is the start of our fourth year. Our baby, our Lucy, started walking this week. And I was not at work. I was at home. I saw her first step. And her second. And her third. She sleeps in my lap for her naps. Because I have nothing but Time.

My dreams are coming true. You did this. I was so afraid to speak them, to admit that my wildest dreams were at home with my family. But I did. And you made them come true. A clever list about how you make perfect pancakes and you look adorable in a bow tie is not enough to demonstrate my love for you. Not this year.

Our relationship has shared much of the last year with Lucy. Having a baby can definitely put romance in the backseat (and not in a romantic, teenage car sex way.) It is only fitting that our anniversary is shared with Lucy, too.

A pregnancy is 40 weeks long. Today Lucy has been on the outside for 40 weeks and 1 day. She has officially been on the outside longer than she was on the inside. And I didn’t miss a minute of it. Because of you.

Four years ago we stepped inside my front door and you followed me. I spun around to kiss you and I have been dizzy ever since. You took my hand and we walked down the aisle after we were married to Tommy Roe’s Dizzy. I was dizzy that day, too.

Today. Four years after our first date and 40 weeks and 1 day after Lucy was born I am still dizzy. I think it’s Love. But I am open to the possibility that I might just be really tired. I’ll just have to check and see if I am still dizzy next year.

I love you. More every day. Hope. Love. A Family. The Life I’ve always dreamed of. I can’t imagine what you’ve got up your sleeve for year number five. Good thing you’ve got a year to think about it. Now come on over here. I’ve got a slow dance in the kitchen with your name on it.

Yours,

Kel

http://youtu.be/odv_d6LJcnY

 

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Posted in Family, Parenting, Wedding Planning

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Complicated

Posted on September 16, 2012 | 6 comments

I tend to make things complicated.  Overly complicated.

I woke up early this morning.  Lucy woke up early this morning.  Is 3:30 the morning?  Eventually we went back to sleep. Around 5:30.  I fear that may have been the morning nap.

On the weekends in the morning MQD and I have a date.  Sometimes on Saturday.  Sometimes on Sunday.  The kids goof around in the living room and we stay in bed for twenty minutes.  It is the sum total of our alone time for the week since Lucy has been born.  I treasure it.

This morning it was raining.  MQD was tired.  I have a sore throat.  This is not a recipe for a super weekend morning date.

I make things complicated. Is MQD tired because he is tired of me?  Did Lucy wake up at 3:30 because we are both getting sick?  Is my sore throat a bug I caught from Emily and the cesspool of germs that is the first grade?

No.  Today I decided to make things simple.  MQD is tired because he is tired.  He told me I can take a nap this afternoon so I let him sleep in.

I have a sore throat because my throat is sore.  A shot of booze  in my decaf coffee means I will have a fabulous afternoon nap.  And my throat doesn’t hurt anymore.

Lucy has ticklish armpits.  And she thinks this little joke I made up is incredibly funny.  Hey Lucy, your village called.  They want their Lucy back!!  To really drive it home you have to say Luuuucy in a crazed and loud voice.  See previous comment regarding a shot of liquor at 9:30 in the morning.  Not having any trouble with this.

Sometimes you have to simplify. Sunday is a great day.

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Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting

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Observations

Posted on September 15, 2012 | 11 comments

It is a common refrain “It happens so fast! It’s amazing how much you forget!” Kids grow so quickly. They move from one stage to the next almost seamlessly and you somehow forget completely what was happening only last week.

I thought this rule about completely forgetting the details of portions of your life was specific to raising children. Somehow the lack of sleep combined with the excitement of reaching the next milestone contributes to the forgetting, I assumed.

Yesterday I went in to my office, to my old job. What do you call it when you have an office in a building but you don’t really go there anymore but you might again someday and no one has exactly replaced you because things are slow? In any case, Lucy and I headed in to the office around 8:15. As soon as I got to the end of the street I noticed something weird.

There were a lot of cars. A lot of cars. On the road heading to work were lots and lots of people. We live in a pretty rural area. I get out of our neighborhood several times a day utilizing the rolling stop and look both ways method. But this? All this… traffic… I didn’t know what to make of it at first.

“Damn. There’s a lot of cars all over the place, Goose.”

Somehow I had forgotten all about this morning “rush hour,” such as it is.

I continued on my way to work. Perhaps you recall my commute to work. I drive from my semi-rural neighborhood right smack dab in to the middle of nowhere. It’s not unusual to see a cow. A chicken. A horse. I slow down when I see a dog near the road. Even though I know they are likely not lost it is a habit.

I slowed down when I saw the first dog. A bigger black lab-ish looking dog. As I neared the dog he took on the tell-tale dog pooping posture and I giggled. Because I have the intellect of a twelve year old boy.

A hundred yards later I saw another dog. A smaller tan dog. I had barely recovered from the hilarity of seeing a dog poop when Blammo!! Another dog pooping. I had tears in my eyes by now.

I did not recall my drive to work being so hilarious.

I was almost to my office. I saw the third dog from a great distance. A husky sort of mixed breed. He circled a mailbox as dogs are apt to do.

And then (I am not sure I can resist the temptation to write “I shit you not”) he assumed the position.

Three. Three dogs pooping. It was crazy.  And an awful lot of cars. That’s what I saw on my way to work on Friday. I was not prepared for this.  I forgot a lot about what it’s like to drive to work in the last six months.

For the first time in a long time my post has no related picture. You’re welcome.

(Sidenote: I told MQD this amazing tale over coffee this morning. He was not sufficiently impressed. When he failed to recognize the overwhelming amusement in this turn of events I declared I was leaving our breakfast date to share this fine story with the interwebz.  So he is to blame for my wasting the last three to five  minutes of your life.) 

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Money and Priorities

Posted on September 12, 2012 | 12 comments

The decision for me to stay at home with the kids wasn’t easy for me or forMQD.  I had to wrap my mind around being largely dependent on him financially.  Since I would be taking on the bulk of the grocery shopping and management of the household it made sense for me to be responsible for our finances.  It can’t have been easy for MQD to simultaneously turn over not only the bulk of his paycheck to me but also the spending of said paycheck.

So far we have been doing a pretty good job of communicating.  Sharing finances can get messy and I expected there to be more bumps in the road than there has been.  A tight budget means that sometimes you have to go without.  Priorities are what they are and Mom and Dad tend to fall to the bottom of the list.  It’s hard to want to spoil the kids and not have the financial means to do so.  But I grew up in a house without deep pockets and I think it made me appreciate the things we did have.

Sometimes I am shopping and something just jumps in the cart.

MQD, I spent $3 on one of the kids today. But he looks so happy.  It was worth it.

It’s looking like maybe I should have spent $6.  Someone is looking awfully jealous.

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