Helena

Helena is Gemma's first middle name.

Helena was my Grandma's name. Her first name.

My grandma was born February 25th 1932. Or 1933. Or 1931. They weren't quite sure, and neither am I.

She passed away February 26th 2005. That, I am sure of.

I was a college freshman, away at school at the time. I had no idea that she was in that kind of shape. If I had known...I was coming home for the weekend to celebrate her birthday but instead...

Growing up my grandma's house was a home away from home. I spent nearly every weekend with her, shopping for dresses, playing with Barbies, baking cakes.

Saturday nights, I would sit in front her recliner (the one that matched Granddaddy's), while she rolled my hair in thick foam rollers, for church in the morning, while we watched Cops and America's Most Wanted. She wasn't very gentle and water always dripped in my eyes. At 10 o'clock we would always go to bed and I would always sleep with her.

I can't find the words to express how much Grandma meant to me. She was unlike anybody else in a way that is real. It makes me angry that the term "unlike anybody else," is thrown around so loosely because saying it about her doesn't mean as much as I would like it to.

She was blunt. She was funny. She was thrifty. She was beautiful. She was religious. She was sassy. She was genuine. She was loving. She was creative. She was friendly. She was brave. She was strong.

She taught me how to make a bed and felt under my shirt to see if I was getting boobs yet. She took me to church and sometimes we would go to Pizza Hut afterwards. Or if I was really lucky, the pool.

I can only imagine what she would teach Gemma. I can only imagine.

I love her. I miss her,

I have forgotten her just a bit.

Hi Grandma.

I'm thinking of you.

Thanks, Kim!

I will admit, I have been neglecting my poor blog lately. Luckily, Kim from Kyndall's Smile has left it some much needed love. She awarded me with my 2nd ever blog award the Beautiful Blogger Award. Thanks Kim!

The award rules are:

• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Copy the award and paste it to your blog.
• Link the person who nominated you.
• List 7 interesting things about yourself.
• Nominate 7 other beautiful bloggers.

I am not sure if I can do interesting, but I will go for random. Hopefully that counts. 

1. When I was in 1st grade I wanted to be a marine biologist and I was OBSESSED with manatees. Now, I think they are kind of weird looking.
2. I am 5'2".
3. I didn't get my license until I was 19 and I never brought a car to college so I am just now beginning to drive a lot. I still have some new driver tendencies and driving on highways, pulling over for an ambulance behind me, and driving behind anything that is carrying a strapped on load on the back (like logs or poles) really freaks me out.
4. I think I decided not to go to law school...I still don't have a backup plan.
5. When I was younger I LOVED the babysitter club books. I had like every single one and I would read instead of playing like a normal kid. When it was warm outside I would always bring a blanket outside and lay it down in some corner of the yard so I could enjoy my book. I usually would have a hard time getting comfortable and go back inside after like 15 minutes :)
6. In high school I was the bad kid. B-A-D.
7. I hate when people talk about how quickly time passes. It always makes me feel like my life is almost over and it literally makes me kind of nauseous. This is a new thing, and started sometime near the end of my pregnancy.

Like I said, maybe not interesting, but random.

As for 7 other beautiful bloggers:

(I am not sure if some of y'all are even into the award thing, take it if you want, if not, I promise my feelings won't be hurt!)

1. let it be
2. My Story Is Not Over
3. Natballs (www.natballs.blogspot.com) for some reason I can't visit her blog right now!
4. Raising Evey
5. The Bailey Family
6. The Browns
7. And because I am STILL grateful for my pretty, new blog (and out of ideas of who to nominate) I give an award out to Mrs. Muffins once again.

Enjoy y'all and take care!

Sleepy

I worked two 9 hour days this weekend and I am exhausted! Realistically, I know this is nothing to complain about, but it has been so long since I have kept this kind of schedule (not to mention having to wake up at 6 a.m.), that the wind has been knocked out of my sails a bit.

That being said, I made money this weekend. That makes me very, very, happy.

I have had a lot of random stuff on my mind lately, and you know what that means...

Bullet points =)

Without further adieu:

• This show, Being Erica, is really cute. I am not sure if I have mentioned it before but I "found" it on Hulu and watched the entire first season in a little over a week. That is crazy for me, I don't have as much time to binge on t.v. as I did pre-baby.. Check it out here.
• I like my job. I think the people there are really nice and I think that once I get past the difficult first few weeks it will be a good fit.
• I am switching babysitters. Again. After a week of shuffling my poor sweet baby from one person to another the sitter called and told me that she just didn't think it would work out. The day before my long weekend. Luckily, my cousin and his girlfriend stepped in for this weekend and the old sitter was kind enough recommend her mom as a replacement. She seems nice and I feel like it could work so please hope for me that this is a good fit.
• Speaking of good fit, Gemma has become a giantess. She is so long. I am having a mini baby clothes crisis because I need to change her sizes (from 3-6 to 6-9) between seasons. Should I buy winter or spring? Some of each? Should I wait? Her clothes fit well enough to last a little while longer...right? Probably not. But maybe. I could buy a few winter things. But would that be wasting money... That is the ridiculous loop in my brain lately.

I know there is more on my mind but I want to give my entire focus to the Keeping Up with the Kardashian's season finale.

Priorities my friends.

Priorities.

Growing Pains

As is to be expected, there have been some growing pains as I am starting my new job. I have only worked 3 consecutive days so it feels like there are so many kinks to work out. I don't think I realized just how relaxed my life had become. There were times that I felt it was hard but it is a completely different kind of hard than what I am facing now.

Working out the details of my new situation is DRIVING ME CRAZY.

All of a sudden, I have to get Gemma on a schedule because I need to make sure that she is ready to go by 4 or 4:30 and I need to make sure she eats at a meal time, because that is what you are supposed to do, and we really should be waking up earlier so I can get more done during the day...

Have you ever put an almost 6 month old baby who has never had a schedule on a schedule? It is so freaking hard.

I have also had Babysitter drama. I brought Gemma to the sitter on Monday and got a text on Tuesday that she didn't have heat until potentially Friday and her house was freezing so I had to scramble to line up a sitter. My mom watched her last night and a neighbor watched her tonight but unless they deliver the oil for the official babysitter's heat sometime tomorrow, I have no clue what I will do with her. It is not like I can call and explain and hope that they are understanding after the mess that was last week.

Dropping Gemma off with anyone is difficult for her and she cries. It breaks my heart. I would never let her cry for long at home and I feel awful that she is crying for so long with other people.

And on top of all of that, I am learning a new job.

Part of me wonders if all of this is worth it...I really hope it is.

I Have Seriously Been Considering...

Cloth Diapers

What do you think? 

Any experiences?

 Am I completely crazy?

I Did it Grandma, Now Please Shut Up!

So I finally took the big leap and gave Gemma her very first bites of solid food today. Oatmeal, if you are curious.

It looked something like this:

Gemma + Oatmeal=Love

She loved it. In between bites, she would get tense and shake a little bit in anticipation of the next bite. I actually made a little bit of the oatmeal, fed it to her, and then tried to feed her a bottle. She refused to drink from the bottle and fussed until I made her two more teaspoons of cereal, and she ate all of that too. 

I will admit it wasn't complete love at first bite.

 Her first few bites were tentative...

                                                                                

...but she got the hang of it.

Afterwards, I felt like my baby girl had changed. Certainly she wasn't so vocal before. Or so hyper. And she didn't lay that way did she?

The cereal must have been magic. Or laced. Now she is all grown up.(well, kinda)

I called my grandma and told her about how funny she had been, but not about how she had changed. I also didn't tell her to shut up, although the call may have that affect as she can no longer accuse me of starving my baby. I told her to check her email because I sent her about 20,000 pictures of her Great Granddaughter's first bowl of oatmeal.

Yum! 

Master of Disaster

Life is getting to me right now.

I had to miss work. Again. Today.

Babysitter broke her hand.

Grr...

Not at the babysitter (the growl I mean.) That growl was directed towards life in general.

Instead of dwelling on this misfortune I will choose to be happy. There are many things to be happy about, like the fact that my baby finally decided to roll over, at the ripe old age of 5 and a half months old. G-double-O-D J-O-B, Gems. You made Mama proud. +)

Also happiness inducing, I received my very first blog award courtesy of Meg at Let it Be. Thanks girl =)

Part of the "rules" is to name 10 things you are a master of, so in no particular order:

I am a Master of:

1. Doing almost anything while holding a sleeping baby in my arms, including but not limited to, making a sandwich, checking the mail, and brushing my teeth.
2. Singing every single lyric to Juvenile's Back that Thing Up...the unedited version ;)
3. Naming all 19 Duggar children in birth order. Word.
4. Growing an out of control uni-brow in mere hours minutes.
5. Being mommy to the very very best girl in the entire world.
6. Wasting ridiculous amounts of time online and then blaming my lack of accomplishment on a fussy baby.
7. Making sweet tea that is sooo good it makes you wish you were raised in the country too.
8. Finding people's weak spots and keeping them in mind when need be.
9. Using context clues to decipher any new slang that I was previously unaware of. Take that, Flo-Rida.
10. Giving baby advice because HELLO, I have been a mama for FIVE WHOLE MONTHS.

And now I will pass the award to a few of the bloggers that I follow :)

Kris @ The Amazing Life of Zakiah Camille.

Hayley @ Gone with the Twins

Nicole @ Mrs. Muffins

Ask and You Shall Recieve

Notice anything different around here?

My super boring, depressingly barren, blog is no more. Thanks to the amazing Mrs. Muffins completely HOOKED ME UP. In like a day. And she asked for nothing in return. Pretty amazing right? I am really grateful for that generosity and I LOOOVE the new look, so thanks again Mrs. Muffins! 

I am so glad that I asked for help with this. One of the greatest lessons that I have recently learned, is that you can't get something unless you ask for it, and of course the old, "it doesn't hurt to try," still rings true.

Other than my gorgeous new look (here of course, personally, I still desperately need to get my eyebrows done), things have been relatively uneventful. We got another 6 inches of snow today and they are saying that this is the snowiest winter in recorded history. Insane. I could show you a bunch of winter wonderland-picture but I am not going to because a.) I live in the middle of town so the pictures wouldn't be that winter wonderland-y, they would just be kind of snow on pavement-y, and b.) carrying a 14 pound baby around on a sheet of ice that is two inches thick scares me. I don't want us to fall on her face ya know?

So, instead of braving the elements we have stayed inside. I could have used the time to clean but instead of I have surfed the internet and spent time with my buddy D.V.R. Not surprising at all.

I did manage to cook dinner today and I was pretty proud of myself. I had to take apart a whole chicken though and that was serious business. I tried YouTube-ing "How to Cut a Whole Chicken," videos. They all went pretty fast though so I sort of did my own thing. I was fine removing the wings and the thigh but when it came to separating the breast my technique left something to be desired. It was literally straight out of the PETA leaflet gross. Yum (or not). After tossing about 2 pounds worth of "I have no idea what that part is," I was left with something that resembled chicken breasts and that was good enough for me. I followed this recipe. It was yummy, if a bit bland, but it kind of worried me when I realized that my entire dinner was a bit...yellow.

I am pretty sure that a dinner that is only one color is not a good. In fact, there are a few things about this plate that may point to why I am about 15 pounds heavier than I want to be right now!

Yikes!

Anywho, it has taken me an entire day to string together these few paragraphs, so I think I may just leave you with this...

and the promise of many more distracted, but well-intentioned posts to come =)

Just Click

According to the American Heart Association, heart disease is the leading cause of death among women over the age of 25.

I don't have to wax poetic about mothers and sisters or daughters or to give charts or numbers or figures.

Leading cause of death says it all.

I know financial times are tough, but all I am asking you to do is click!

Follow this link and click on the red bar that says "click now" and Campbell's will donate 1$ to the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women Movement.

Thanks y'all!

Makeover

You may have noticed recently that my blog is looking a little...basic.

Previously, I had the same cutesy, pre-made template forever and then, all of a sudden, one day I was all like, "OMFGeez. I hate this old lady crap, and it is a total misrepresentation of myself, and who have I become?"

So I went through a few other "looks" in quick succession, got frustrated with how much I HATED them all, and now it is blank. 

I need your help. The blankness is driving me towards a breakdown as dramatic as the one that led to the blankness in the first place.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, what I am asking you all for is any advice you have on Blogger design. How can I spruce things up? Do you have any links to websites to walk me through it? How in the heck do you use the free digital scrap booking stuff? 

I am sooo lost and Google hasn't helped me as much as she usually does.

Or maybe, if you don't have any tips on blog design, you can point me in a direction with templates that don't look like Great Granny's sewing box threw up all over the place. 

It would be much appreciated.

It is looking like now might be the perfect time to work on getting this together because they are calling for another 10"-20" inches of snow on top of the 18" that is still left from this weekend's blizzard. I think the next time we leave the house Gemma may be walking.

So, please. Take pity on me. Help a mama out!

I Totally Might Get Fired...

Already?

Yes, already. My foray into working motherhood may be over as quickly as it started.

Damn snow.

I work evenings (as I have mentioned) so by the time I realized that I was not going to be able to make it in to work because of the bad weather all of the bosses of the facility had gone home. I had known earlier in the day that I would not be able to drive in myself because our roads are literally still covered in ice that is 2 inches thick, so I had arranged to have my dad (yes, I am a baby) come pick me up for work but he ended up being super late because of a bunch of accidents on the highway so I tried to call in and Lord knows who I even talked to...

Plus, we are supposed to get another 10-20 inches of snow tomorrow so I probably won't be able to make it in then either. I am kind of nervous that they are going to get super mad at me but really, can I be expected to drive in that?

This is my first job in a long time and I don't want to mess it up. More importantly thought, I wouldn't wanna do anything to mess HER up.

Maybe that isn't the best representation of her preciousness. Let me try again.

                                                 

She is totally worth more than some silly job. I just really hope I can keep both.

Blizzard of 2010

We got a whole lotta snow!

First Day

Thursday was my first day as a working mother.

I think I started getting ready four hours before my shift. Me. The girl who wears jeans when she wants to look good (in my defense, that has only been since mid-pregnancy).

I kept packing her diaper bag and then remembering something else I should be sure to add. I tried on one black shirt and then swapped it for another black shirt. Gemma must have sensed my anxiety because she was FUSSY. In between getting both of us together I would stop for 20 minutes at a time to soothe her, change her, feed her, or whatever and literally minutes later she was crying again.

Grr...

Dropping Gems off was difficult, but to be honest, not impossible. I really have a lot of faith in the babysitter and I feel like she is safe there. It is just sort of a gut feeling that she will take care of her well. Of course, I miss that I am not able to be with her but I know that I have to work.

For both of us.

Work itself was okay. Boring. I think I will wait to decide how I feel about it until I am more settled in and I know what the job will be like. I think it is hard to tell right now, especially as the position is newly created.

After work, I went straight to the sitter to pick her up (of course!). When I walked in she was fast asleep in the babysitter's grandma's arms. I swear, there is something special about grandma's and babies, even when it isn't their grandma. Apparently Gemma had fussed quite a bit and babysitter's grandma diagnosed teething. I felt terrible that she was so fussy. Somehow responsible. I really hope she is more cheerful next time but to be honest, I am not holding my breath!

Does anyone have any advice for helping a young baby get used to a sitter? I have no idea how to help, I can't exactly explain the situation to her. Any help is appreciated!

Last Day

Today, was my last day as a stay at home mom.

For now at least.

I can't believe we have finally come to this place and I am excited and terrified at the same time. After today, I will not be the only person who takes care of Gemma.

I am going to have to share my job with a babysitter.

Scary. She seems great (the babysitter), but still. It is so hard.

I will still get to spend most days with Gemma. I will work 5-9 (p.m.) during the week and then full days (8-5) every other weekend. We will still be able to have days like today, Target runs and iced caramel macchiatos from Starbucks and trips to the post office.

I probably shouldn't be whining. Errands aren't much fun and it will be nice to have a little money when I am running around, not to mention I have been bored out of my mind for months so getting out of the house will be great.

But leaving Gemma is a big deal. A HUGE deal. We haven't been apart for a combined 30 hours her entire life and now we will be apart 30 hours a week.

Yikes.

I am scared. I don't want to share. I want some things to stay the same.

Deep down though, I know everything will be okay. More than okay actually, I think this is the first step in a positive direction. Things will be great.

But still...

Wish me luck!