My new blog design is installed!! It’s quite a bit brighter and happier now, don’t you think??
Thanks so much to Judi at Doodlebug Designs for being patient with my picky-ness and concern about the smallest details – you did a great job, and super quick!!! It was a very fun process!
Or worse – missing PARTS of TOYS??
I pretty much know where all of the toy hiding places are. . . under the tv armoire, under the couches, under Ali’s dresser (which is an especially hard reconnaissance mission), but hopefully NEVER in the trash (Ali has a new obsession with “trosh“. She announced that the TV Remote trosh the other day, and so now I’m scared for it’s life).
Sometimes Ali is the one who “loses the toys”, sometimes it’s Oreo batting them around, sometimes it’s accidental kicks or slips by Chris or I.
There are a couple of “pet” toys that I really like to have all of their pieces in known locations. Her Fisher-Price singing and counting piggy bank has 10 coins (how will she ever learn to count to 10 if her piggy bank doesn’t have enough coins?!?!), and then she has a stackable cup/ball set that she really likes (and so do I, apparently). I sometimes go on missions to see if I can locate all of the pieces of these (and other) toys.
The Piggy bank is especially tricky, because Ali and Daddy have this game with the coins of passing them back and forth via their mouths (good thing none of us are germophobes around here.), and so they often leave their “home room” (all of her toys have a room in which they “belong”) and are found in random places. Recently, I was determined to return all the coins to their piggy owner. It took quite a while, but when I found that last coin, I rejoiced as much as the lady in Luke 15 (who, ironically enough, was also hunting down her tenth coin).
Today I found a new place that I’ll have to start checking. I accidentally kicked one of Ali’s balls underneath a very heavy bookshelf in my office, that also has very low ground clearance (high enough to let a ball through, but low enough to not allow my arm to reach it). I also found a few other toys under there while recovering the ball.
I know what you’re all thinking: “if she had more kids, she’d quit worrying about the location of toys.” Probably true, but believe it or not, my obsession has calmed down quite a bit in the last few months. Maybe it was from adding two more jobs (and a blog) to my already busy schedule.
Please tell me that I’m not the only Mom in the world that is this anal.
I really appreciate all of your encouraging comments about parenthood!! They really were great, and very uplifting. I especially appreciate the two comments from the Moms of Three being very encouraging and NOT pointing out the fact that I am a total and complete wuss! Thanks, Jennifer and Amanda!! ;) My post from yesterday was a bit more vulnerable than I’m used to being. I’m very willing to be vulnerable and honest in person, but you see, in bloggy land, I am aiming for a different “type” of blog.
I would say that my blog encapsulates about 85% of my states of mind, because 85% of the time I am happy and enjoying life. I just refuse to dwell, on those other 15% of the states of mind on my blog, because, let’s face it – no one wants to read that! I don’t even want to go back and read that!
So even in yesterday’s post, I laboriously wrote and rewrote it, trying to make is as absolutely humorous as possible to desparately try to not sound whiny.
So this got me thinking again on all of the different types of blogs there are, and I’m curious: if you are a blogger, what type do you think you are? What type do you want to be? And, whether you’re a blogger or not, what type do you most like reading?
These are only my opinion here, and I think that, like personality types, no one is just “one” type of blogger. We are all mixed. Oh – and – one more disclaimer, I have over 60 blogs on my reader, I am not writing these descriptions based on specific blogs I read, so don’t go thinking I’m talking about you and get offended!!! “This Post is for Entertainment Value Only. Any similarities to real blogs is purely unintentional (or if I WAS thinking of a certain blog, I’ll never admit it!)”
The Informational Blog – This type of blogger writes seemingly to keep everyone “up to date” on the goings on of them and their family. A lot of their posts have the flow of “Friday, we went to. . . .and then today we did . . . then tonight we . . . “. Although very informative, they might tend to sometimes have a dull writing style.
The Record-Keeping Blog – Somewhat akin to the informational blog, but they make no bones about the fact that they’re really blogging to log their own family history. They start blogs with things like “This blog will probably be extremely boring, but here are things that I want to remember. . .” Actually they usually are interesting, in spite of their disclaimer.
The Whiner Blog – This type of blogger seems to find no end to opportunities to whine about their life. I mean, do they REALLY think that makes a blog entertaining? (This is what I was desparately trying to avoid yesterday).
The Realist Blog – This type of blogger manages to be “real” about all aspects of life without entering into the Whiner Blog category. It’s a very fine line they walk, but they do it beautifully.
The Entertainer – This type of blogger tries to turn all of their blogs, whether informative or random, into entertainment for the reader, and for themselves. They try to pick out the funny or entertaining moments to share from a trip rather than just the rundown of the aforementioned informational blogger. (This is the type of blog that I aim at, and hope to attain one day.)
The Informational/Entertainer – Like I said, there’s a mix of every type, but this is such a common mix that I decided it deserved it’s own category. A LOT of blogs waffle between being informative and entertaining.
The Pure Humor Blog – This type of blogger doesn’t even necessarily write humorously about their own life, they just make sure that EVERY post is funny.
The Techie Blog – This type of blogger LOOOOVES their techie stuff (I’ve been known to write a techie post or two), and they LOOOOOVE talking about it. This is a great blog to find out the newst and latest out there.
The Advice Giving/Seeking Blog – This type of blogger could be either or both seeking or giving advice. It always lends for interesting comments.
The Controversial Conversations Blog – This type of blogger loooooves to get people talking!! They love bringing up topics that everyone has a strong opinion on, and get everyone arguing about it. Also a great way to get commenters, if you can take the heat (I’m too sensitive to what people think of me to open this can of blog-worms).
The Introspective Blog – This type of blogger spends most of their posts exploring the inner workings of their soul and heart and mind. And boy do they get deep. They love to focus on the minutia of every tiny fleeting thought or feeling that they might have had since they were 5 years old.
The Spiritual Blog – This type of blogger is beautifully focused on God and it comes out in their blog. They write of wonderful truths that God has been showing them and tell how God is working in their life (I would love to write more posts in this category, but that goes back to being willing to be vulnerable and not being afraid of what people may think).
The Sweet Blog – This blog type often goes hand in hand with the spiritual blog. Their blog is always sweet, uplifting, encouraging, and complimentary. It feels like you just had a therapy session to just go visit their site!
The Rare Blog – This type of blogger hardly ever blogs, but you keep them on your reading list anyway, and wish they would blog more!!
The Obsolete Blog – This type of blogger quit blogging long ago, but again you keep them on your reading list thinking that one day they may just get a wild hair and write a post!!
The Popular Blog – This type of blogger makes all the other bloggers jealous by being so dang popular! How DO they get 15 comments in 30 minutes!? Then there’s. . .
The Superhero Blog – This type of blogger is NATIONALLY read and has hundreds of comments on each blog!! Best not to even aspire to that sort of blogfame.
The “High” Blog – Every time you read this type of blog, you wonder if the author smokes pot while blogging. . . it just makes no sense and has the most off the wall humor that you’ve ever seen!!
The “Brag about my Kids” Blog – I know, I know, I know, I fall into this category a lot also. This type of blogger loves their kids and thinks they are the best in the world, and has endless stories to tell about them (which are often quite entertaining!!).
The “Incognito to even my own Mom” Blog – This type of blogger is so conscious of security that they have no pictures, no names, no way to ever tell who they are!
The Situational Blog – This type of blogger specializes their blog into talking about one particular subject. i.e. a TV Show, a situation in their life, etc.
I’m on a roll. I think I’ll now analyze the different types of blog readers (didn’t know I was going to pick on you, did you?!):
The Oft-Commenters – These are the people that keep our blogs going. They always have a nice comment to leave, and let you know that you have at least a couple loyal readers!! The number of oft-commenters you have as a blogger directly correlates with how motivated you are to blog.
The “Mom’s” – These are the people (maybe Moms, maybe not) that do not make it a habit to read blogs, but they have ONE blog that they read religiously!! I’d say these people are usually Mom’s or Dad’s or close relatives to their chosen blogger. These people may be rare or often commenters, but their comments are always held dear.
The Blalker – This person loves reading blogs, but never comments. Ever. This type of reader drives ALL bloggers crazy because they’re trying to figure out who their blalkers are!!
The Blalker with an Excuse – They all have a reason, don’t they? “Well, I don’t know you”, “I don’t know how to comment”, etc. No excuse is an acceptable one!! :)
The Rare Commenter – This person rarely comments, but reads religiously. So you know you wrote a good blog if you get this person out of the woodwork to comment on it!
The “Read My Blog” Commenter – This person (usually a salesperson or someone of that sort) goes to random blogs, makes a comment about how their blog could help this person, and never comes back. Or, it could be . . . .
The Local “Read My Blog” Commenter – This person is in your local blogging circle, but their comments always seem to magically refer back to their own blog (I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this a time or two).
The Wierdo – This person comes out of nowhere and leaves a completely random comment that makes no sense on your blog. I had a guy from Brazil do this one time. I deleted it, and that caused a firestorm of mystery of “What comment was so bad that Rachel deleted it??!”
The Advice Giver – This person always has advice to go with their comments, whether it was asked for or not. They and the aforementioned Advice Seeker Blogger are a perfect match!!
The Every Now and Then Reader – This reader is someone that you are aware that they read your blog, but their reading is sporadic, so you’re never sure whether to reference your blog when telling them a story that you also had blogged about, or just tell them the story like they’ve never heard it before.
The Collateral Reader – This reader is a loyal reader (maybe even a “Mom” reader) to one of your blog friends, and so they read your blog collaterally. They are rarely commenters, but you know they’re there, because your friend tells you “My Mom reads your blog ALL the time!!”
This was fun! Analysis is my favorite pasttime!! :-D
But I’m sure I missed some. Let me know of any blogger or reader types that I left out!!!
Today was one of those “I’m exhausted purely because I have an 18 month old” days. She wasn’t disobedient or rebellious, just 18 months old. You know, busy, high maintenance, wanting everything, then not wanting it when she gets it, etc.
Also, some of her demands are so loud and urgent that, for the life of me, I can’t understand what she is asking for, which makes it really hard to get her to ask meekly for something that I don’t even know what she wants.
Naptime turned out to be slightly shorter than normal, a little under 3 hours (during which I worked, of course, which actually IS relaxing to me). I wasn’t quite ready to enter back into toddler land, and she didn’t seem as awake as she usually is, so I decided to try a Grand Experiment.
I grabbed her with her paci (only allowed at naptime and bedtime) and her pillow and headed to my bedroom, where I had turned out all of the lights and closed the blinds really good. I told her that it was still night- night time, so we needed to rest. She said “night-night, rest”, and laid down on her pillow.
I laid down next to her on my pillow, and put my arm around her to reinforce the night night idea. I think it was the first time that she had realized that I actually slept there, because she got this voice of wonder, tapped my pillow, and said “MEME’S pillow!!!” (Meme is my name of the day). But she got the point. She laid down, put her fingers on her eyes (presumably to close them), and said “night-night”.
The Grand Experiment lasted for a whole 12 minutes, which I’m pretty sure is equal to about 8.5 Months in Toddler Years.
There were a few interruptions, like a long string of her “tooting”, laughing, and then announcing “TOOT!!” (Daddy’s been teaching her some new tricks), but she really did actually lay down, very still (except for the arching of her back and straining for the toots), for TWELVE WHOLE MINUTES before she was standing up in bed, reaching for the pictures hung precariously close to the bed, pointing and naming “Daa-y! Meme!! Ayi!!”.
So we got up, and are now playing (I’ve started and stopped this blog a few times to read books, give out snacks, and help pull out toys).
So my question is: if ONE toddler exhausts me (I know you’re all thinking I’m a complete wuss right now, and that’s fine because I probably am), how am I ever supposed to have more than one?
She really doesn’t exhaust me every day (maybe not even most days), but I’m pretty sure that if I had two, today would be a rarely calm day.
I want to understand though – some of my friends tell me that they’re less exhausted with two than they were with one. I’m assuming this is because they play together rather than with only Mommy? But I would say last night with both Ali and AJ, there was just as much crowd control needed as there usually is entertainment, so I’m not sure if I buy that whole “they entertain each other” logic.
Chris and I joke all the time and say “add that to our list to have an only child”. But I really like the whole “one kid” thing. At least right now I do. And not just for the easiness of my life – Chris and I really enjoy Ali and love to relate to her one on one (or even two on one). Besides the fact that Chris needs me doing the accounting for his company (plus the other two companies I work for), which is something that would be excruciatingly difficult with two children.
I know – it could be just selfishness and maybe I should be trying to get pregnant, but I HAVE actually prayed about it, and have yet to be convicted.
Ali and AJ had another play date tonight, and had a blast!! Here are pictures, as well as a few of Ali earlier in the day. . .
Ali looking serious. She learned how to climb up and get down out of this chair all by herself today. . .
So excited!!
Ali found our 3-D glasses from the movie theater, and since she is such a glasses lover, she was immediately attached to them. Doesn’t she look like the academic? Or just plain “baby geek”??
Pretty eyes.
Yay!! AJ has arrived!!
Although excited about AJ, there is still time to sit down to a good book.
hmm. . . . a ballplayer and a reader?
Ali taking a rest break.
Sweet girls!!
Ali looks like she’s giving AJ a back massage. . . or hitting her. One or the other.
BFF!
Giving AJ a hug!
We got out the guitar to entertain the girls. And boy did it work! They loved it! 
AJ very delicately playing:
A duet!!
AJ then started playing “air guitar”. Well, I guess it wasn’t completely air guitar, because she was playing a baseball bat. But she was very good!! She kept rhythm with me. Then she wanted to come up on the couch and sit right next to me so we could play together. Don’t we look like a couple of hippies?
Rest break!
Storytime!
AJ is finally warming up to Oreo. She would barely touch her, and break into squeals and giggles.
. . . aforementioned squeals and giggles.
As usual, the girls had an absolutely wonderful time!!
Since I haven’t had too many posts with pictures in the past week, I thought I would share a few.
Here’s Ali sharing her most prized possession with Daddy. . . her glasses. Yes, she’s still obsessed with them. She would wear them all day AND night if I would let her.
Eli comfy on Gramamma’s shoulder after Sunday Lunch.
In case you wondered, this is what our living room looks like for small group. Except that I (the photographer) am holding the youngest. And Ashley seems to have avoided this shot. Oh yeah, and half of our small group couldn’t be there. Just picture this shot, but with twice as many people and kids in it. But the miraculous part is, ALL of these kids go quietly to bed by 8pm, and it’s just us grownups until we all give it up around 11 or 11:30, then everyone wakes their kids up, takes them home, and puts them back to bed. It’s an amazing miracle.
I’ve been working all day (in moments between Ali and Work and Chris) on picking out the prints and “papers” for my new blog design!! I’m so excited – it should be up by the end of next week. I have been wanting to do this for a while – it kills me to have a Blogger standard background. Geesh. How will anyone accept me as a serious blogger with a STANDARD background? Ridiculous. So I’m getting one made by Doodlebug Designs. I have felt silly wanting to get that done, but Chris sealed the deal on Saturday when I was telling him about what I had been thinking about, and he said “all hobbies have expenses associated with them. This is your favorite hobby, so it makes sense to spend a little money on it.” I sure love my husband!
And it IS true – I don’t really have any other “active” hobbies right now, but I sure am head over heels in love with blogging!! It is such a perfect form of communication and journalling for me. ANYWAY, that’s my justification for paying for a custom designed blog (again, coming out of the previously mentioned “Rachel’s spending money” budget, so no guilt about taking food out of Chris’ mouth or diapers off of Ali’s butt or even litter out of Oreo’s box just to have a pretty background on my blog).
Another exciting blog thing that I’ve been working on for quite a while but just haven’t told you about yet – my first blog book shipped today!! There’s this great website called Blurb where you can download their software and “slurp” your blog into book form, and get it professionally printed in a nice glossy book. So I did my first 100 posts, and plan on doing that for each set of 100 posts. It includes all of the pictures, comments (yes, if you comment on my blog, you’re going to be published now!! Congrats!!), everything.
It took some work because I had to go through and format it (it imports the pictures and text separately, so you have to set up the formats the way you want them), and also reload all of the pictures to get the best quality pictures (Blogger reduces the image size when you upload them, so when it slurped them back into the book, they weren’t as good as they needed to be).
It is QUITE amazingly affordable (my 145 page book, including the nicest cover (hardback customized) was under $65 including shipping), and by far the best baby book that I could ever do for Ali!! I have this dream of a whole shelf full of blog books for Ali to read and enjoy. It’ll be like an encyclopedia set of her life!! Not that she’ll know what an encyclopedia is. I’ll have to tell her, “an encyclopedia was a set of big, brown books that we used to look things up before there was an internet”. She will gasp in horror – “how DID you survive?!”
As soon as my book comes in, I’ll take pictures to show you the amazing, exciting invention of a blog book!!!
Now people, no poking fun at me for how obsessed I am with blogging. After all, you’re reading it, so it must have SOME redeeming qualities, even for you!
I hate lotions. They are so oily and greasy and dirty feeling. I hate special cleansing soaps. They are way too time consuming. I hate pretty much anything that takes time or feels oily. I take off my makeup and clean my face all at once and without having to use any water every night with a good old Oxy pad. If you’re wanting to find out what face cleansing ritual is best, certainly don’t ask me.
However, over the past few months, I have started to notice something. I’m aging. It’s quite the surprise. I’ve always been the youngest everything.
When I was 16, I went on a 6 week long missions trip to Cyprus to be an administrative assistant to a missionary. I flew back all by myself. When I was going through customs in New York, the customs agent looked at me very suspiciously, looked at my passport, looked at me, looked at my passport, then said “Do your parents know where you are?”.
The month after that (still 16), I started working in a real office with a real job for one of the companies that I still work for to this day. I was the “child” of the office, and everyone babied me and couldn’t believe how young I was. Some people still think I’m the child of the office.
I started college at 17 and graduated at 21. My most insane professor had this rant one day about that all of us should be voting in the presidential election that year, and made us raise our hand if we weren’t registered to vote. I was the only one brave enough to raise my hand, and he accusingly and agressively asked me why not. I explained that you had to be 18 to vote, and he looked at me like I was a freak, and said “you’re not 18?!?! WHAT are you doing in college???”.
I got married when I was 19. I absolutely loved everyone’s reaction when they would meet me and find out I was married, then proceed to ask how old I was. They always assumed that I was some rebellious teenager that had eloped against my parent’s wishes. I would calmly explain that my parents were a) fully aware that I was married, and b) were completely supportive of said marriage.
Plus, Chris is 5 1/2 years older than me, so that has always helped me feel young too. Especially when we were first dating and married and I was still a teenager.
So anyway, now that I’m 26, getting old is coming as a bit of a shock to me. I have started noticing wrinkles. Not terrible ones, but wrinkles none the less. I see lines that stay after squinting or smiling for a while that didn’t used to stay there. I see wrinkles around my eyes when I smile that didn’t used to wrinkle there. I especially noticed in our recent family pictures as compared to the family photos we had done just six months earlier.
See? January 2008: no wrinkles around the eyes when smiling:
July 2008: Wrinkles!! I think they’re even referred to as crow’s feet!!! Horrors!!
So after pondering these changes for several months and then having it so obvious in the pictures (don’t tell me you can’t see it. It’s SO there!!), I finally decided to do something about it. I have a tendency, if addressing a problem, to want to take care of it once and for all and just go all out. So I start in Sephora. I look at all of the $50+ bottles of 1/2 an ounce of miraculous wrinkle-away serum. I look at the Holy Grail of wrinkle remover, $130 stri-vectin.
Lucky for my budget (all of this would be coming out of my spending money, so it would only affect me, not Chris or Ali. Our wonderful love of budgeting is another blog for another day, but get this – budgeting is FREEING, people!! You never have to feel guilty about spending money again!! As long as you’re within the budget, of course. But, I digress).
As I was saying, lucky for me, Ali and I were at the mall to have lunch with my good (and practical) friend, Ashley (and AJ). I told her about my wrinkle woes, and she said (after assuring me that I wasn’t a wrinkly prune, of course) that Oil of Olay worked just fine, and that I should try that first. So I went to CVS that afternoon and got a night cream and a day cream. Not only was it on sale AND had free samples of face cleansing wash with it, but I got $10 extra bucks for buying it!! So I got it for about half the price, and am giving it a try.
I’ve been using it for about a week now, and I, of course, hate it. I hate oily stuff, and the stuff is called Oil of Olay! But I really think I would hate any sort of anything. I also hate the day cream because it apparently has a slight sunless tanning tint to it, and so the smell of it reminds me of my very destructively vain teenager days (destructive because I was so vain I would use sunless tanners that turned me a sickening streaky orange color that I actually thought looked good.)
ANYWAY, so I’m old. I’m using old lady cream, and let’s hope it works. When we get Ali’s 2 year old pictures in January, I’ll be able to compare my wrinkles and see I miraculously look 10 years younger. That is, assuming that I can keep torturing myself with oily nasty lotion twice a day.
On the way to my parent’s house on Saturday. . .
Virtues Fail?
