the planning begins

i am a mother to a little girl who will be turning 7 in 21 days.

i am a mother who has given into her daughter's request for a birthday party with friends.

i am a mother who will be throwing a birthday tea party for 8 little girls in 19 days.

i am a mother with a shitload of work to do!!!

apparently, so does reese. she's been keeping her own list of items to get for her party and one of them is "party manners." i had to laugh at that one, reese seems to take after daddy in the manners department.

the part i'm nervous about is having all the moms hanging out during the party. i am NOT good at small talk and even worse at keeping the house clean enough for adult guests (my list at walmart includes ant traps, is that telling enough?).

it should be fun, i just have to stay focused and not let the calendar get away from me. i also need to figure out what the birthday girl will be receiving from us this year. on her birthday list she included: a nerf gun, an ariel head (for hairstyling practice), a pug (!!!), and american girl doll, with 'esesorees' (ahem, accessories), paint and easel, barbies, a webkinz and a computer. there will have to be some brainstorming going on. i would love to get her a trampoline for the backyard but our backyard is so small and hilly that i imagine she'd bounce over the fence and into the woods beyond. we'll have to save that for some other birthday.

for the now, it's time to get some coffee and head to the grocery store. seems un-american to spend memorial day buying food but at least i'm buying SOMETHING and *that* is american. hey, maybe we'll add an american flag to our shopping list. thanks for reminding me, blogger! we have the holder on the porch but no flagpole or flag. seems like a navy family should display a flag every day, not just patriotic holidays. we'll have to get on that!

summer's a comin'...

preschool is over!

yay! and boo! what am i going to do with cade allllll day??? especially since his favorite activity is picking on elisha whenever possible. the neighbors *might* be hearing more yelling from this house and i just might be the one doing it, as i'm running away from home.

there's one last preschool activity. today the preschool is hosting a family day at a local park. some craft activities for the kids, feeding the ducks, playing in the fresh air...which sounds fine & dandy but it starts in 45 minutes and i'm still working on my first cup of coffee. there's a reason why cade went to school in the afternoons and it's called "momma can't be anywhere before 10:30." my eyes still won't fully open, for god's sake.

the fun part is it's a picnic so we bring our own food to eat in the park so i have to get that all put together too. meanwhile, i just want another cup of coffee and some more computer time.

to do list...

i woke up today WITHOUT my alarm going off, and yes i am impressed about that. right at 6:45 my eyes popped open and i didn't even think about rolling over and snoozing for a bit longer. instead i thought about what i could do today that would keep me busy.

so far, i'm planning an exciting day of:
1. reese off to school
2. clean & vacuum main level, it's desperately needed!
3. take cade to preK
4. head to walmart and choose some more flowers/plants for our house (isn't it sad how walmart has become the neighborhood greenhouse as well? i have no clue where the closest greenhouse or nursery is, but i can find 3 walmarts no problem.)
5. spend after school time planting some flowers while the kids play

i might throw in a walk for the dog if i really get busy on the house cleaning. i've been making time to walk the dog every day, hoping to aspire to 'pack leader' among all my other job titles. which reminds me, cesar milan is just YUMMY, and it cracks me up to think that south park has added him to their list of popular folks to parody.

ok, off to the bus stop!

sunny sunday

i click "create post" and after playing quietly for the last 10 minutes, elisha must suddenly speak up and begin whining. how does she have such perfect timing?!?!

we had a wonderful mother's day. the kids let me sleep in til 9:30 and then i came downstairs to be greeted with homemade cards and coffee a la rob. i had wanted for the last few weeks to go on a family hike at one of the local state parks and we finally did that yesterday. it was a 2 mile loop, complete with a view over the potomac river. it was gorgeous weather, and surprisingly no one got a single bug bite! (this could be because i generously applied the avon bug spray, but it was breezy so maybe that helped also.) the 2 year old only needed piggy-backed about 1/5th of the way and everyone agreed that we should do that again. rarely do we get that much agreement about ANYTHING in our family.

to top my weekend off, i stepped on the scale for a 1.6 lb loss this morning. life is going well right now.

coffee loosens the lips

another saturday, another 6:30am wake up call from a certain 2 year old who was extremely thirsty at bedtime and needed to use the facilities. pottytraining is awesome, except before 7am.

it wouldn't hurt so badly if i would have headed to bed before midnight. it wouldn't have hurt so badly if rob hadn't decided that it was time for a big emotional discussion about our relationship, and we stayed up for another 90 minutes hashing that all up. i have no clue what time i fell asleep but i know i didn't sleep nearly enough.

i have dibs on a nap some time today, even if i have to sit out in the van to hide from the kids.

part of the whole relationship discussion has to do with me and my own little depression.

or it might just be craziness. i'll settle with calling it depression, that sounds a little less scary than crazy. they can treat depression with medication...do they have meds for "crazy?" or do they go straight to electro-shock therapy and padded rooms?

i guess i'll be researching our insurance coverage to find out what they allow...and then trying to figure out how to even get an appointment to get things started. sigh. i've been hoping it will just go away by itself, and it does for a few weeks but then it's followed by a few bad weeks and it's getting harder to come back. there's a song by pam tillis, called "land of the living" and the refrain starts out "hurry back to the land of the living." that's truly how i refer to it in my mind, those days when the fog lifts and i can feel good about myself, i feel like i'm back in the land of the living. during my dark days, i feel content to watch the world go by from my window.

i'm also overeating like crazy, whether that's self-destructive behavior i'm not sure. or was it self-destructive behavior when i was on weight watchers and lost 80 pounds in 4 months? looking back at it, i thought it was awesome but now maybe i enjoyed restricting my eating a little too much? the last few days (now my cloud has lifted once again), i've been strict about my eating again and i feel self-confident, sexy, powerful. i type it out though, and i feel crazy. crazy or not, i'm 10 pounds above where i was when we moved here, arg.

how did i get like this??? media? my parents? high school boyfriend?

i told rob last night that talking about all this with a professional is going to be a lot more difficult than just moving on. i'm not sure i have the energy to go through all this. i don't remember a specific incident that would cause this behavior, so maybe it's just me. maybe it's my maternal grandma smiling down on me from somewhere, having possibly passed her depression on to the next generation.

on a good note, i finally remembered my blogger password so i can share all this uplifting news with the world. (ok, i know no one really reads this, but it's out there so it's possible!! :b)