Confession #1: One of Those Days

This seems like the perfect day to begin a blog I've been thinking about starting for a long time. The reason it is so perfect is that today has, so far, been a complete disaster. I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to share my mishaps and general bad behavior with others. It's probably a bad idea, but I just can't help myself. I guess that's the thing about confessing, you usually feel better afterward.

I woke up at 6:15am to my 1.5 year old daughter calling my name, “Momma, Momma!"  She has an incredibly loud morning voice which is fairly unnecessary considering her crib is next to our bed flush up against where I sleep.  (A causality of living in a 600 sq foot apartment.)

But, awe, you say, how sweet. And it is. Being a mother is the most wonderful of gifts and I cherish being able to love and care for my daughter. That is the foundation of who I am. Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way...

Waking up to “Momma, Momma!" is wonderful but less so when you've only had 5 hours of sleep and that is after taking an antihistamine because you’ve been crazy sick and having a daughter who is pissed that you won't bring her into bed with you pounding on the mattress screaming and trying to take your pillows away for 20 minutes at 1am.

That is how I began my morning and it continued in pretty much the same fashion. Arden wanted "peach" as she calls the organic peach banana oatmeal baby food I still let her have. Before you judge me, the bottle clearly reads 6 months +, so, she's definitely on the + side and she eats it almost entirely by herself WITH a spoon. Yeah. Who's judging now?  Baby food explanation tangent aside, Arden wanted some and I was out. That is an equation for an unhappy baby. And she is also a sick, teething baby at the moment. The fun never stops. She's had a brutal cold for a week and is also getting her second molars in. So she's a hungry, snotty, coughy, drooling mess, who wants to eat “peach” AND watch one scene from Aladdin all day long. That's right folks. I let her watch tv. I try to rationalize it every which way I can and it comes down to being a survival mechanism for me. She sits and is happy instead of trying to bite me on the back of my leg so I allow it.

And the one scene she wants to watch over and over and over?  You guessed it. I can sing you every word and almost always nail the harmony to, "a whole new world…” What have I done?

I scramble to redirect Arden to another food choice and begin to slowly start to loose it. My house is a complete mess. I mean, a disaster. I don't see myself as a particularly gross person but maybe I am since I let my house get this way. I don't even know how it happens. I'm sick, my husband and baby are sick. Hubbie is basically working two jobs, Apple Genius by day and trumpet player by night. I barely saw him earlier this week as he worked at Apple then played three shows at Mary Poppins.

Yesterday the only down time we had together was the 21 minutes it takes to watch Modern Family on hulu. You'd think we'd have had enough family all on own but there's something so entertaining about watching the trials and tribulations of other families, even when it's made up. It's not like I'm sitting around playing angry birds all day.

My home is literally bringing me to tears. Every single toy is out. Dishes in the dishwasher need to be unloaded with 2 loads waiting to go in and it's only 7:30am. Dog litter box, #1 & #2. Kitty liter box #1 & #2.  Kitchen floor so dirty it looks like Yosemite. Carpet barely visible beneath already mentioned toys and tuffs of animal fur. Christmas tree still up with no ornaments. Depressing but at least I got those down.  4 boxes of Christmas stuff that have to go to storage. CDs everywhere that the baby has pulled out and yes we've tried to block her from being able to get to them. She can now climb and tear things down so we are out of luck.

I'm not handling this very well and I'm basically acting like a crazy person. I start praying for God to deliver me from myself and realize we've got to get out of the house for a change of scenery. I figure I'll blow off some negative energy while carrying Arden around running errands. So after 30 minutes of getting dressed and snow suited up to brave the elements and a last minute of-course-after-we-are-all-ready-to-go diaper change, we head out. Into the snowstorm. It's snowing and I decide to walk to Staples to get the paper that we need for the printer. It's cheaper there than at the drugstore anyway and it'll be good to walk. We get there without too much trouble and I quickly undo any savings we would have had by buying a nicer 50% recycled paper. I just couldn't buy the cheap paper when given the option to be a bit more socially responsible so easily. All the options we have and choices that we make day in and day out are exhausting. It almost always seems like I'm choosing between saving money or doing something that's better for the environment.  And please don’t ask me why buying paper has to be such an emotional decision for me.

So we head from Staples to the grocery store and that's when my stupidity kicks in. Arden and I are shopping and I remember I have a 20% off reward that I can use on any one total purchase. So, I start getting everything we need feeling excited that even though it seems like a lot, we'll save a bit of money and I'll have plenty to eat when I get home. Well, I bit off a bit more than I could chew or rather, carry home. I had my 25lb daughter already strapped to my front in her ergo and a ream of paper in my backpack. I now added $100 (make that $80 :) worth of food to that load and it was ridiculous to be sure. A very nice youngish, Asian American woman behind me in line asked me if I needed help and how far I was going. I said I'd be all right. 1/2 gallon of milk, 3 cans of Progresso soup, 6 7 ounce yogurts, eggs, 10 jars of baby food, 4 cans of tomato sauce, ground meat for the lasagna I’m making later, bone in chicken breasts, ricotta, mozzarella, peanut butter, Swiss miss puddings (a treat for my hubbie), need I go on?  What a monstrosity I must have looked like carrying all that down 30th avenue in a snowstorm. But I definitely burned off some steam, got a change of scenery and anything that makes me laugh at myself was worth doing.

I'm not sure this imagery is necessary but my camera was there so here you are.  And, yes, that is a box of 100 calorie hostess cupcakes in the middle of my bags.  Posting on dieting in the works...

Conditions from our bedroom window.  What a view eh?