30 Days of Joy

For a while I made some posts with the "brought me joy" tag, intending to do it regularly. Then I got uber busy and all mom-ed out, and sort of sucktastic about blogging in general. I'm working on it. And thus, I'm picking up Maggie's gauntlet and going to try and do something FUN every day for 30 days. Actually, I'm sure I do something fun every day, so the key will just be recognizing and remembering it in the haze of poop/puke/flying prunes that is my daily life. And then making it online to post about it.

So here we go Internets, FUN day 1:
Guilt free "gear up for a crazy day" power breakfast:



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and as I imbibed the aforementioned high calorie goodness, I giggled over some websites I'd gotten behind on:
Damn You Auto Correct
Failbook
Passive Aggressive Notes

I also used sucktastic above, which my spell check violently opposes, but I'm letting it ride. How fun is that?

I made The Cupcake, and The Cupcake makes messes...

Six months, holy crap. Life is on fast forward lately and every time I blink The Cupcake grows another inch. We don't have her 6 month appointment till next week, but I'm dying to hear her stats - she was smack in the middle at her 3 month appointment, and now at 6 months she's wearing 12 month clothes...She doesn't seem "husky" but who am I to judge :) So we've wasted a few more outfits (did she EVER fit in 9 month clothes? or just go straight from 6 to 12?)



One thing we're spending a lot of time on at the moment is FOOD - she just started purees, which is a bit of a craft project. At least, she seems to think it is. And there are colorful smears of various vegetables all over my house, so it's fair to call it decorative. Feeding The Cupcake went from a few seconds to pop a bottle in her mouth (which she is just starting to hold by herself too!) to a HUGE time sucking ordeal involving set up, wrestling, her ninja moves swiping the food off the spoon while I blink, and the necessary bath time clean up immediately following.

Will I ever not be tired again?!?!?

But speaking of tired, she is clearly NOT:



Something came together in her little mind recently and she is suddenly a wiggly wormy dancing fool. She just cannot stay still. She has completely bonded with her Jumperoo, and will thrash around like a wild animal for at least half an hour now. When I hold her, she tries to jump the same way. I sing the Jumperoo songs in my sleep. She rolls over in her sleep now, and then gets upset to realize she is on her stomach and immediately starts to scream until I come and right her. Apparently this is so that she can do it again. Silly babies.

She's getting a bit more generous with the laughs, though she still makes us work pretty hard. Smiles are doled out freely though. Naps are a roll of the dice - a real fight over the weekend, but as I type she's been snoozing for over 2 hours in her swing.

This means I've been able to do a few crafts in preparation for the wedding shower I'm giving mid August. I can't share photos or give anything away yet, but the invitations are in the mail, and I have pink paint in my hair (which clashes with my red shirt, but didn't seem pressing enough to actually address). I spent a lot of time last night working with my Cricut, and hauled TC to Joann's this morning only to find they didn't carry the "watermelon" Krylon spraypaint I needed (gotta head back to Michael's I guess). Photos to come, eventually :)

Stampin' Up

I love invitations. I don't care if it's not "green". I do occasionally waiver on how expensive they can be, as with postage, but I have always loved getting mai. I cannot give up sending "real" paper invitations to the parties I throw. An Evite just isn't the same, and while a Facebook invite is certainly convenient, nothing sets the tone for a party like a clever invitation.

For the bridal shower I am throwing in August, I've finished the invites, addressed the envelopes, and even found the PERFECT stamps! I don't always worry too much about stamps, especially now that I don't get to the post office as often, but when I saw these "CELEBRATE" stamps I knew I had to get them to coordinate with my upcoming invitations:



I won't give too much away, but the colors (and sentiment) were just toooooo perfect! Of course, they only had ONE sheet, and I needed two, but I was able to supplement with these:



which also worked nicely, and are very pretty. They're both forever stamps, so you could stock up without worry of a price increase (supplemental stamps are such a pain - I always just end up putting on a 2nd full price stamp to save the hassle - I'm wasteful like that).

Pics to come!

Riding the bus was the scariest part...

I volunteered with the [MN]Love booth at Twin Cities Pride today, and got to play with some chalk:



Not a terrible rendition of the logo, right? I was pretty impressed with myself considering I did it on the fly/outside/stooped over an awkward table.


I didn't stay too long at the festival (had to get home to pump before my boobs exploded)but I did have a lovely visit with the folks from Visit Decorah and found out in addition to Minnesota and New York, I am also a legal wedding officiant in the great state of Iowa (and Wisconsin if I get a note)! So if anyone is getting married and would like to send me to either NY or Iowa, I would love to cross #161 off my bucket list!

If you haven't gotten your "Marriage is..." photo taken yet, look for the [MN]Love booth at Rochester or Duluth-Superior Pride festivals, and remember to vote NO on the ammendment in November 2012...

Pumping Moms

I'm contributing to a new blog called Pumping Moms and my post is up today. You can read it here, it might eventually be a good resource for EP (exclusively pumping) moms. But if you are scared of boobs or breast milk, or if you'd rather not learn about my sore nipples (I completely understand) you should instead distract yourself with this HILARIOUS post from The Bloggess that Al sent me this morning.

Bucket List #100: Get my car detailed

I really should have taken some before photos, but it would have been too embarassing to post them. Most people's cars get gross after they have kids, but mine was almost too gross to subject a gooey projectile vomiting kid to, and that's not exaggerating. There were no floor mats, though you probably couldn't tell. There was more dog fur than Norm is currently wearing. And at some point an entire package of silver thumb tacks spilled everywhere and I continued to find them for years. So it was definitely time. And I was scared that whatever was probably growing under the seats could be hazardous to my daughter's health.

So the car went in, with the plan being have the trunk fixed (it stopped locking...which made it a guessing game whenever you put something in there - would it fly open and spill all over the highway? Would someone come along and realize they could just lift the lid and help themselves to my belongings? Not good) and splurge on a detailing.

And of course, it all went wrong from there.

The trunk problem was more than the latch, it was also the struts. And then the wrong struts came. And then only one of the right ones came, so they had to wait again. And my brakes were gone. And when they took apart the brakes to replace them, the knuckles were stripped so that had to be fixed or the car couldn't go back together.

This is why I avoid regular timely car maitenance, it always spirals into a giant disaster and I am traumatized. Which only means I save up even more problems for the next time. Viscious cycle.

Eventually they got it all put together, and I had to give back the cushy courtesy car we'd been tooling around in for over a week, along with a nice big chunk of $$$ that was certainly NOT in the budget at this time...

But the car is clean. And The Cupcake is safe from mutant french fries, thumb tacks, and whatever else was making a cozy home in the rubble.

P.S.
If you google image search "car detailing," you get a ton of half naked ladies washing cars. Guess I had no idea what was going on when I dropped off my little family car.

Disappointment

My cake was dry :( So sad.