Milestones

Sleeping Beauty turned 6 months old today. I can't believe what a big girl she is! Sometimes I miss my little (okay, weighing 8 lbs 13 oz at birth, she was never little), snugly baby, but in all honesty, this stage of babyhood is my absolute favorite. I love seeing the changes that occur in my baby daily, and I love how interactive she is now.

It seems like she's grown up so much overnight.

Okay. Not overnight, but definitely in the last two weeks:


*Two weeks ago she finally mastered sitting up.

*One week ago she started eating rice cereal.

*Three days ago Cinderella made her laugh and laugh, just by throwing a ball around.

*Two days ago she had her first big-girl bath.

*Today, she's 6 months old.


That's a lot of milestones to have met in the last two weeks!

Where has the time gone?

The scariest thing to me about Sleeping Beauty being 6 months old is that Prince Charming and I have started contemplating Baby Number 3.

What are we thinking? Sleeping Beauty is still a baby!

A BABY!!!

But not for much longer.

Six more months and she graduates to toddlerhood.

It all goes way too fast.

Readjusting

We have been back from Texas for almost a week now. Cinderella still has not slept past 7:00. She gets grumpy and argumentative around 10:00 because of it.

I get grumpy and argumentative around 10:10 because of it.

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Sleeping Beauty started rice cereal Sunday night. I mixed it with water (the breast pump wouldn't work). She was so excited to try real food, and was so disenchanted with her first bite.

Poor thing!

Not that I blame her; rice cereal is nasty stuff!

Fortunately, every night since then has been better. I now mix a little bit of squash in with her cereal. She LOVES it!

Sunday night she slept terribly! Up every 3 hours, it took her an hour to get back to sleep each time.

I wasn't sure if it was the cereal or the spicy spaghetti sauce I'd eaten for dinner.

It was the spaghetti sauce.

The past two nights, Sleeping Beauty has slept in until 5:30.

Woo hoo! Yay to a full tummy at last!

Now this I can adjust to.

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Since Sleeping Beauty has slept through the night, I have woken up more tired than usual.

My body aches from lying in bed for so long.

My head aches from getting so much extended sleep, and wanting even more.

It is taking me a long time to fully wake up once Cinderella comes in.

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Poor Prince Charming had to go back to work on Monday. He usually sets his alarm for 5:45, and gets up with 10 minutes of it going off.

This week, I don't think he's been up before 6:15.

He doesn't usually see the girls before he leaves, since they used to be still asleep.

Not so this week.

Musings on Being 29 1/2, Part 2

So I rambled on in my last post about how my life is different than I thought it was supposed to be.

IT'S SO MUCH BETTER!!!

Well, I suppose I can't really say that since I don't have anything to compare my actual life to.

I suppose I should simply say I'm satisfied and content with the direction my life has gone.

True, I don't have a career, but I'm working towards one. It's not necessarily my passion, but it is something I have proved I can do competently.

I have two beautiful daughters with hopes of having a third child in a few years.

I have a wonderful husband in Prince Charming, and we've shared 7 years of marriage, instead of only the two we would have had if I had followed my plan.

Assuming Prince Charming would have been the man I married if I had waited.

But that's a discussion for meta physicists, or space-time-conundrum people.

Anyway, I like my life.

I like my home, I like being a mom, I like being a wife, I like my city (most of the time).

I haven't got anything to complain about.

Musings on Being 29 1/2, Part 1

When I was in high school, and my first 2 years in college, I had my life all planned out.

Of course, nothing is as it was supposed to be, which is both good and bad.

I had always imagined my life would be vastly different from the one I now lead. I planned on marrying at 28, waiting 5 years to have my first child, then waiting another 2 to have my second and and final child.

I planned on having a career first before marrying.

That's it. That was my plan.

Specific, but missing a lot of details.

The details came later, obviously, but not how I thought they'd fall into my overall plan.

I was married at 22, not 28.

I worked a job for 7 years, but never planned on making it my career.

I have two children, so far; I'd like another one. The first two are 3 years apart, not 2.

Now, I'm a SAHM, which I swore I'd NEVER be, and I'm loving it.

I also thought I'd still be thin, and stylish, and well-traveled.

I thought my boobs would always be their cute, perky, B-cup selves.

That was a great fantasy!

I'm not thin anymore. I'm not fat, but I look like I've had two kids. I'm definitely not stylish; I'm comfortable.

And those cute, perky B-cups? Gone forever.

Sigh.

Instead I have voluptuous, saggy, larger-than-a-B-cup boobs. They are working boobs; definitely not for show anymore.

Not that I'm anyone in my house is complaining.

Especially not Sleeping Beauty, or Prince Charming, for that matter.

I've barely traveled anywhere. I've never even seen the Midwestern states, let alone the rest of the world.

"Someday," I keep telling myself. "Someday."

Of course, being 29 1/2 isn't all bad, but that's a subject for another post.

For now, I'm just going to wallow in the knowledge that my life isn't what I thought it would be.

Sometimes it's good to wallow; it makes us appreciate what really IS and not what was supposed to be...

Musings over Ground Beef

Last night I was browning ground beef to make crock pot chili for tonight's dinner. I doubled the recipe to have plenty to freeze for those cold winter nights; therefore, I was cooking 3 pounds at one time.

First of all, ground beef has a nasty smell when it's being cooked.

Second of all, 3 pounds of ground beef has three times the nasty smell.

I was close to gagging.

Add that to the fact that I absolutely dislike touching raw meat, and it was close to bedtime, and I was having a very unpleasant evening.

As I was browning all that nasty-smelling raw meat, I began musing.

I am a fairly squeamish person.

I don't like to touch worms, I detest spiders, I refuse to remove the giblets from the cavity of the Thanksgiving turkey, and I don't want to be anywhere near vomit. Blood doesn't bother me, but gore does; hence, I don't watch scary movies, and I watch battle scenes through my fingers.

I won't even eat mushy cereal, including oatmeal.

I think I've done a good job so far not transferring this squeamishness onto my daughter.

Except the spider thing.

That one I can't help.

Cinderella absolutely loves worms. She's fascinated with Sleeping Beauty's bowel movements. She doesn't like mushy cereal either, but I make her eat it.

I don't want her to know my dislikes; I don't want to create a squeamish daughter, if I can help it.

I force her to eat zucchini, oatmeal, and eggs; foods I won't touch with a ten-foot pole, but which she actually enjoys.

She will not grow up a picky eater; if she becomes one later in life, that won't be my fault (or so I keep telling myself).

So, as long as I can continue to devise cunning ways to prevent my daughter from realizing that mommy's not eating eggs like everyone else, I will ("Mommy finished hers already." "Mommy gave hers to Daddy because he likes eggs so much.").

Who knew ground beef could cause such deep meditations?

The only thing left to ponder is why I'm cooking chili when it's going to be 92 degrees out today...