Grandma P & Aunt Judy's visit

The Fam


Four Generations


After the Colts win!!!


We had a blast w/ Aunt Judy & Grandma Patterson (Ellie's Great Grandma!). We went to Tucson & Tombstone. Ellie was SO happy to meet some of her family on mommy's side finally!

Here are some fun pics from the last couple of weeks:

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2285954015/a=5766466_5766466/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

smooshy face

Is it just me or does Blogger sometimes smoosh pictures?

Anyway, just a fun picture of Ellie and I!

Happy Saturday! We are going to see Avatar today w/ mom and Aunt Judy... We were supposed to take them to Jerome, but the weather here is too bad (CRAZY!). Tomorrow--GO COLTS!!

Driving to Montana

This is an excerpt from It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita, by Heather Armstrong (of Dooce.com).

It perfectly summarizes my life and thought process these days. I could never articulate this as wonderfully as she has here. Just insert CRAIG where it says Jon, ELLIE where it says Leta and this would be my life to a T. I hope you other mommies can relate. If not, I can not be friends with you. If you aren't a mommy (or daddy) yet, read this over and over and over until you go cross eyed. Even then, call me after you become a parent and let me know if you agree.

The baby's birth, however, seemed to have tripped a latent portion of my DNA that caused at least half of my brain to be consumed at all times with the thought of chores that needed to be done. In the time it took Jon to change Leta's morning diaper I could have the dishwasher unloaded, bagels toasted, coffee brewed, bed made, and dog pooped, and that was only if the diaper hadn't leaked. On the frequent occasion that she was covered in pee and Jon had to take a few extra minutes to change her clothes, I could wallpaper the living room and mow the lawn.

When I was a kid I hated this about my mother, her constant need to get something done around the house. If she was talking to a friend on the phone she was also dusting the living room or hauling dirty clothes to the washing machine. On Saturday mornings she was up at the crack of dawn vacuuming her bedroom or scrubbing the tiles in the shower, and I remember thinking, doesn't she know the Smurfs are on? How could she mop the kitchen floor when Gargamel was chasing Smurfette with a stick?

Once I became a mother I realized that free time was one of the many luxuries people give up when they decide to procreate. I kind of understood this going into parenthood, but it's not something you can TRULY appreciate, like everything else about parenthood, until it drops on your head like a piano shoved out of a window eighty stories high.

Free time was the four minutes it took Jon to change Leta's diaper; it was the one minute I had to use the bathroom after I set her down in the crib; it was the thirty seconds she would remain calm in the car seat after we returned from the grocery store. On the infrequent occasion that she remained napping for longer than twenty minutes I felt like a teenage boy who had just locked himself in the bathroom with a stack of porn magazines, like OH MY GOD, THE POSSIBILITIES. WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?

Before Leta was born, I used to hate to run errands, and I would put off going to the grocery store until the milk was so expired that it had grown arms, legs and a full functioning liver. But all that changed, and I wanted to go to the grocery store every day if only to see other human beings who spoke in sentences and could wipe their own asses. It reassured me that there was living, breathing life outside of the twilight zone existence of taking care of a creature whose primary means of communication was through her bowels.

One night Jon let me go to the grocery store alone, something a new father should be very wary of letting a new mother do, because once I was behind that steering wheel I became drunk with the freedom. I honestly thought that the car might sprout wings and take off in the air, and I was flooded with grand ideas about escaping to Montana where i could assume a new identity and drink martinis and sleep in until 8 AM. It would have been so easy to have kept driving, forever. Maybe no one would notice I was gone!

But five minutes into shopping at the grocery store I started to miss that little screaming baby at home. WHY WAS I MISSING HER? That was MY time. Why was I thinking about her little cold feet and her fuzzy hair and the yummy creases in her baby thighs? WHY WHY WHY? So I didn't gas up and drive to Montana, but instead came back home and immediately went into the house to smell the back of her neck. And while she was still under Jon's watchful eye I landscaped the backyard and remodeled the basement.

A few cute January pics

Eating in her new high chair--not sure what is up w/ her hair in this one!


Not too sure if she likes apples!!!


Where's Waldo?


Lovin' bathtime!

Man Hands

It took me a long time to come to grips with this, but I have to share something.

Ever since I got pregnant, I have developed man hands!

I have always thought I had pretty, feminine hands. In fact, I have been told this by many a folk. However, Craig and I were studying a picture of our new family (Ellie's newborn photos) and noticed something startling... The hand we THOUGHT was Craig's for so long in the picture was actually mine! See for yourself.



Further proof:


It's so strange! Why did this happen to me!?!?!?!?!?!!!!

Multi-Tasking

Before I had a baby, I always thought I was a very talented multi-tasker. I could talk on the phone and do laundry at the same time. Cook dinner and hold a conversation while drinking a glass of wine. Drive and text. Talk to/listen to a client while typing something else. Work out and read emails. You name it, I was pretty good at combining it. However, I guess I mainly was always packing more than one activity in, so I had more time to chill out later. In the evenings I could just sit and stare at the TV or even better, on the weekends do nothing. Sometimes I could read a book (wow!) or even just sit and chat w/ my husband.

Now-a-days, it seems like there is a neverending stream of things that need to be done! If you have kids, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you don't, I'll leave it up to your imagination. But I feel like I have become a SUPREME MULTI TASKER!!!!!!!!!!! I will say that for the most part, this is something I'm proud of, but it has also caused me to go a little insane. I have no less than 15 lists running (all in my iPhone, thankyouverymuch) at ALL times... and I couldn't even tell you how many I have in my head. At any given time I have no less than 72 internet browser windows open, and believe me, I am actually doing something on each page!

Let me give you an example of all of the things I am doing right at this minute. And it's only 7:20 in the morning: writing a blog post, writing an email to a client, reading work emails, reading personal emails, cleaning out my personal email in box, shopping on oldnavy.com, watching ellie on the monitor, drinking coffee, eating an english muffin, THINKING about what I need to do today, reading perezhilton.com and cooking soup in the crockpot. Oh and keep in mind, the baby is SLEEPING right now. Just wait til she gets up.

Luckily, thanks to some traits inherited SOLELY by my father (sorry Mom), I am an organized person--almost to the point of being considered annoying. In fact, I'm pretty sure it does annoy my in-laws (my family is used to it) and I KNOW it annoys my husband. However, it helps me function on a day to day basis. The amount of crap I have to take with me to work is mind blowing. I literally leave the house each day with no less than 4-5 bags. Purse? Check. Breast pump? Check. Lunch box w/ little ice pack to put breastmilk in? Check. Briefcase? Check. Lunch box w/ healthy lunch because you are trying to lose baby weight? Check. Gym bag? Check. And this is just to go to work BY MYSELF. Imagine when I have the baby with me?!!! Forget it.

Right now I'm reading a book (oh, don't worry--I only read while I'm feeding Ellie or, to be honest, while going to the bathroom) by Heather Armstrong talking about her battle with post partum depression. I feel so lucky and blessed that I did not have this. I feel so bad for women that battle with this that it physically makes my stomach hurt. I honestly stress myself out thinking about how HARD it would be if, on top of all of the amazing feats I accomplish on a daily basis that I would be battling mental illness on top of it! If you are my friend and you ever have this problem, please call me. I will not be able to relate to you necessarily, but I will come over to your house and do whatever you need me to, I promise!

I feel bad because Craig lately has been randomly asking me if I'm mad at him... Like when I'm doing dishes, entertaining the baby, getting her dinner ready, thinking about what we are having for dinner the next night, worrying about something I didn't get done at work. And he is watching This Old House on tv. Honestly, I am not mad at him. It's just that I literally can not do ONE more thing, like talk to him, at that moment. He gets somewhat of a pass because men are physically & mentally incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. It's a genetic defect that they can't help. He will always do anything I ask him to and is super helpful, so I'm not complaining. I guess I am just putting off a vibe that is making him think I'm annoyed. I'm honestly not...

I hope you don't read this and think I'm complaining. I absolutely love being a mommy and wouldn't trade it for the world. I guess I'm just bragging a little about my ability to do more than one thing at a time. And maybe complaining a little :)

2009-Year in Photos

I created this fun slide show of our favorite pictures from the last year!

Love you all!!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow