Frazzled Reflections

On Sunday my husband took our little girl on a date to see Monsters University . I was sure to talk up the event and he accused me of being as excited about their upcoming outing as she was. I can't say that I was more excited than our daughter. After all, we had a nearly impossible time keeping her focused on anything through church. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have reminded my slowly awakening daughter what she was going to be doing after church, but yes, I was excited for them. It wasn't like I was going to be getting "me" time during their date. I would be spending time at home with our son, but I was excited for my daughter. She not only got to see a movie, she got to spend quality time being treated like a princess by her daddy. While it was rare, I vividly remember "dates" with my dad: going to the Home-a-Rama in the Detroit area when I was only a little older than my daughter is now and going to see both Back To the Future 2 and 3. They ...

When you move into a house that is a disgusting mess on the inside, the outside kind of gets forgotten. After all, you need a place where you can safely live on the inside, right? At least that was our primary concern when we moved into our house. The first summer the outside was primarily ignored, except for my husband's proud purchase of a tractor mower which actually gets a significant amount of use. You see, we have a HUGE front and backyard. It was a selling point, and still is when we think about all the space our kids have for playing, except neither of us are great at yard work. But that is for another blog and another time. In addition to the interior of the house which has rather large things that bug me, the exterior has had several small things that bug me. While I was working diligently on the living room ( Part 1 and Part 2 ), I decided to tackle some of those smaller projects. First came the front door, which had a faded, poorly painted green color that did not ma...

Every new parent has heard the warning: "Enjoy these years; they go by so fast." Yes, yes they do, but after spending a delightful morning and afternoon with my four-year-old and two-year-old I have to say that I do not miss the baby years. My beautiful children were beautiful babies: chubby, blond, and the spitting image of...their father. I love my husband very much, but hearing over and over again that there was no mistaking the paternity of our children, especially with our little girl, got a little old. I really wanted a baby that looked like me, but apparently the genes run strong on my husband's side, and there was no escape for our children. I loved both children long before for they were born, from the moment we knew we were pregnant the love grew with each stage: the first ultrasound, the first kick, and the first time I held both of them in my arms. But each newborn experience brought its challenges. Our daughter was a terrible nurser, and at six weeks looked...

Well, not quite. When most people say they are at high school weight, it indicates a certain skinniness. I've never been that skinny. Slender yes, skinny no. And as the older sister of three sisters who have always appeared skinnier than me, I've had lifelong body issues. Even when I was in the best shape of my life (high school) I didn't see myself as skinny. My body issues were never enough to driving me to eating disorders. I like food too much to be anorexic and I hate the stomach flu too much to be bulimic. And that is not to downplay those very serious eating disorders. I could have very easily have been one of those girls (or boys) who succumbed to an eating disorder. I am a control freak, I don't share my deepest feelings very easily, I moved in 6th grade and the summer before my junior year which seriously disrupted my support system of friends twice, and like most teenage girls, I hated the way I looked. The reality is that my love for food and disdane for puk...

Sometimes our flaws and good qualities are the same thing. For me, one of my simultaneous flaws/positives is that I can get very focused on a task and do not stop until I finish a task. That might be why several house projects have been at a standstill. During the school year I can't divert my attention from all my teaching responsibilities (lesson planning, grading, parent communication) to take time to work on something in the house while still maintaining important time for my family. Evidence of my ridiculous focus would be the time I put into working on our guest room when we first moved into the house. I stayed up late several nights in a row to get the room done. I needed to have at least one pretty room in the house, and I lost sleep making sure that happened. So it should be no surprise that I have worked tirelessly since Sunday to FINALLY finish our living room walls. These walls have been the bane of my existence for three years, and I decided that they needed to be d...

The first thing I noticed about our living room was the wood floors. When we saw the pictures online, I immediately noticed what looked like wood floors. Unfortunately, those wood floors are in terrible shape, and we were so distracted by everything else in the house that I didn't notice that the living room walls had wallpaper as well, until we returned for another look AFTER putting the offer on the house. Yep, more wallpaper. Paintable wallpaper. You know, the stuff with texture that people put up on walls and then paint whatever color they want. I have never thought that was a very good idea. It had to look tacky, and if we had kids, how were we going to keep those walls clean, no matter what kind of paint we used? But the previous owners decided at some point that this is how they wanted to cover their living room walls. I was disheartened to discover more wallpaper, but it couldn't be that bad, could it? When we moved into the house, this is what the first floor look...