delighted to be

renewal / january 2, 2013

and finally, it’s the new year. tyler and i stayed up watching HIMYM on netflix (we’re almost to the end! ted mosby, hang in there!) and rang in the new year with a big smooch before we crawled from the couch to the bed. sexy, i know. :)

january is a wonderful month. my house is finally free of christmas (a holiday i’ve got a love/hate relationship with) and i can finally breathe again without all the clutter (aka festive decor) around the house. it’s refreshing to have a clean slate and a big list of goals. it’s exciting to look forward to the future and the wonderful plans it brings. i’ve noticed some people have words for the new year; themes they strive towards. i think that’s a fantastic idea.

so mine is simple, and it’s the first word that came to me. this year, alie, you’re all about renewal.

RENEWAL: to make like new : restore to freshness, vigor, or perfection | to make new spiritually : regenerate | to restore to existence | to begin again.

so step one, begin again. i’ve got to find the person deep down inside of me that tyler fell in love with. that fun-loving, crazy artist has been pushed to the back burner from all of last year’s crap (there, i said it!) and needs to resurface. last week i started painting again, have i told you? it’s really just little watercolor pictures and a few sketches here and there, but it’s lifted my spirits already. they are quite horrible but it’s my own fault for not practicing the past few years. i have plans for a trilogy of watercolored animals for jack’s room. here’s the first (and please don’t laugh):

in the spirit of renewal, here are my other goals, in no particular order:

-take my daily vitamins, especially 4g of folic acid, iron, and my super-B complex
-drink 64oz of water daily
-eat more leafy greens (kale, swiss chard, bok choy – i’m talking to you!)
-exercise 3x week (yoga, pilates, running)
-paint more often. draw more often. ART NEEDS TO HAPPEN.
-sew a quilt (especially excited about this one – i’ve already got the pattern thanks to a lovely Christmas present i received in the mail)
-buy a house (*possibly* – this one’s not set in stone because we don’t know where we want to be – east bay? in the city? stay in san jose? – but we’d love to buy a house by next Christmas. that is, if you can drag me out of our current home first. i do love it here so much!)
-expand our family (you read right. after a lot of horrible internal struggles and cryings and renewing, i DO want another baby. not yet, but soon.)
-be happier (this should come as a result of the above)

Here’s last year’s goals … did I accomplish them? Not sure.

” I’m not much into new year’s resolutions, but I have resolved to enjoy life more and to be happier with who I am as an individual. I’m trying really hard to embrace the imperfections and focus on being the best wife and mother I can possibly be. I want Tyler to look at me and know I am happy, and I want Jack to see me as a role model. If I’m not confident in my own skin, how can he be confident in his?”

what are your goals? does anyone else even make goals anymore?

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potty training, part two / december 27, 2012

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how potty training has been going with Jack.

Well, it hasn’t. At least not anymore, as of two weeks ago.

He did great the first two-and-a-half weeks, and then it was Thanksgiving. He did fantastic over Thanksgiving while we were at various houses and restaurants, with the exception of two (one big, one small) accidents. Those are forgivable and I can laugh about his bigger accident now. (Let’s just say the incident at The Old Spaghetti Factory made me grateful for several mamas in the bathroom with older kiddos who graciously repeated to me, “don’t worry…we’ve all been here before!” as they grabbed me more paper towels. It was bad.)

When we got home from our Thanksgiving festivities, something changed and all of a sudden Jack didn’t want to poop on the toilet anymore. He’s embarrassed by it. Every single day I cleaned out one or two poop-filled sets of underwear and with every single poop-filled set of underwear I got more and more upset at him. I lost my temper and he lost his. We were at war with each other, and it was a never-ending cycle. So two long weeks in, I called it quits. We’d tried consequences and cold showers and everything we could think of.

I really thought about plowing through it, but realized it just wasn’t worth the toll it had been taking on our mother-son relationship. I went to bed upset at him every night and knew something had to change.

So he’s in diapers again, but our relationship has never been better. So when I’m ready to make it work again (when he’s two-and-a-half? three?) it should be a cinch. He still holds his pee sometimes (when his diapers are fairly dry we take him to the bathroom when we change him and he goes right away for us), so next time around when he gets over this fear of pooping thing it should be easy, right?

{potty training, part one}

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perfection / december 26, 2012

…a little cluttered, but otherwise this, to me, is perfection.

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christmas morning 2012 / december 26, 2012

basically our Christmas morning went like this:

while amelia’s stocking hung empty on the fireplace, a light rain sprinkled from the sky. it’s amazing how quickly that lonely stocking brought back floods of memories of what we had and what we lost, and yet at the same time brought upon me so much happiness and joy for even knowing the little girl in the first place.

i’ve thought an awful lot about mary, the mother of jesus this christmas season. i’ve thought about her love and compliance with what the angel told her, and about her faith in the lord’s plan. did she know her son, whom she loved so much, would later be crucified? did she know he’d be abused and broken and hurt? did she know he’d bear the rest of the world’s sorrows and pains and fears upon his shoulders? how she must have wanted to help him, how she must have wished she could take away his burden. she knew that boy was special. but did mary know that her son’s life would change the course of humanity forever? did she know her son’s sacrifices would bring happiness and joy and peace? i sure love that woman and i can’t wait to meet her.

sometimes i wonder what amelia’s purpose was, and why she was meant to live so long. why did we get to take her home? why did she take a breath at all? i think and think and speculate until my whole day is shattered just in pieces of theories and thoughts on the matter. i guess it really isn’t important, is it? but as humans we’ve just got this desperate need to know the answer to things. especially hard questions.

christmas really was lovely, though. it was relaxing and peaceful and as much as i love my family, tyler and i agreed it was rather nice to spend a big holiday with just our trio. we even let jack get a little crazy with the vanilla cupcake goldfish grahams santa left in his stocking (we almost never eat sugary, pre-packaged food, so this was a big deal for him). being at our own house, we didn’t feel as bad when he started stomping his foot and wildly screaming, “one! two! three!” and trying to do somersaults in our kitchen for ten minutes. sometimes it’s little memories like “the time jack went kooky from all that sugar” that are nice to create in your own home.

am i alone in this? i do love our family and i miss them terribly, but i’m also a fan of staying home for the holidays.

…p.s. do you think mary kept a journal, or did she really keep all those things in her heart? if she kept a journal i really would love to read it someday.

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