Attempting to be a Super Mom

Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness.  Lifebuoy , on the other hand... (Yechh!) ~ A Christmas Story You are standing outside the doors of your child's school waiting to pick them up.  The doors open and the children start spilling out into the school yard. Your child's teacher sees you, makes eye contact, and starts walking your way.  They are only about 15 maybe 20 feet away, but the walk to you feels like slow motion as your stomach drops and you want to turn and run, but can't. They tell you, your child did something so awful to a classmate that it makes you cringe and really want to run away. Surely I am not the only one this has happened to, right?  This is the 3rd time this has happened to me, this year.  When it happens to me, I feel like I've hopped in a time machine and I'm t...

About a month ago we bought our first family Betta fish, Obi Wan Kenobi.  We've loved him and the kids enjoyed feeding him twice a day as well as cleaning his tank once a week. Yesterday Sydney and I cleaned his tank.  Everything seemed fine.  This morning we turned on his light, and fed him.  He was swimming along working on his love nest that we removed yesterday by cleaning his tank. We left to run some errands and when we returned, poor Obi Wan was doing the dead fish float. He had some issues with eating since we got him.  I did some research and read that it's normal for a fish to not eat well for a week or so after you get them.  An adjustment period, I suppose.  Well, it never got better and I looked at different foods, soaking his food first to soften them, nothing...  Today, he sadly took a swim to the great wide ocean in heaven.  We'll miss him and are all sad.  Ben is heartbroken, but he feels everything so ...

Last night, we got Sydney to sleep around her actual bed time, but Ben wanted to stay up and party.  Finally he crashed at about 10:30.  If only I could have gone to bed at this time.  Too bad that wasn't the case.  Shawn and I had a lot left to do.  He had spent the evening ironing his clothes and we still had so many to fold and put away.  I finally got to bed a little after 12:30.  To a lot of people, this may not be a big deal, but I'm not a night person.  I'd rather be up nice and early, than be up late at night. Luckily, my kids decided to sleep all night in their own beds.  They didn't get up, not once until 8:15 this morning.  This is not common here.  Ben is usually up coughing or wanting someone to come snuggle him.  Lately he's even been sneaking into our bed, only for us to wake up about 15 minutes later, being kicked or knocked out of bed.  Sydney usually climbs out of her crib and joins us in bed, anytime f...

My best friend Lauren posted this great note to her facebook about breastfeeding.  A lot of new moms try and have a hard time and then feel bad about themselves or like failures.  Know that this is common, you are not alone, and there is help for you out there. Here's her post: As a new mom there are lots of things people dont tell us, one of those is that to breastfeed it takes alot of effort and patience on both ends.   It is not something that just happens naturally. Each of you have you will have different experiences, so hopefully mine will help you.  Learning to feed Cullen was not easy.  He had to be born early due to complications with the pregnancy and therefore spent a few days in the NICU.  When he first popped out I tried to feed him , which you can absolutely request happen before weighing, bathing, shots etc.  He didnt take, which is absolutely ok.  Infact I didnt think he would, we were both drugged out of our minds from ma...