Dear Yappy Dogs

Dear Yappy Dogs,

I am writing to address our daily confrontation when I walk my daughter to school.  I understand barking the first time we pass, but it has been nearly two months now, and I’m tired of it.  I promise that me, my double jogger, 6-month-old, 2-year-old, and 6-year-old are no threat to you or your household.  Maybe I should share a doggie treat with you.  But maybe your owner only feeds you gluten-free and organic dog food.  I know I get really cranky without my carbs, is that why you bark little dogs?  I know!  Our old neighbor’s dog loved digging in the garbage for fresh diaper-wrapped baby poops.  I’ll throw baby Jacob’s finest poop over the fence, but you might prefer 2-year-old poop—a treat for you that is completely home grown!  They say dogs can sense evil, YOU KNOW ABOUT TWO-YEAR-OLD TANTRUMS!! Or maybe you can tell that some mornings I am stressed.  Can dogs smell stress?  Maybe you know that sometimes when you snarl at my darlings I want to roundhouse kick you across the yard.  And maybe you know that with my current muscle tone, my roundhouse kick would be exactly 1 foot off the ground—perfectly on target to get you right in the mouth.  Sorry.  That wasn't nice.  But neither is barking at small children.  Where is your owner?  If I had dogs who regularly barked at nice people, I would give them serious doggie time outs.  Maybe I should stand beside your fence and wait until your owner takes an innocent stroll to the door and start barking and drooling all over myself when he least expects it.  THAT WILL TEACH HIM!  I’d really like to be friendly, but you are making it very hard. 

Sincerely,

Christina 

A blog post about a blog post

I've had the idea rolling around in my mind about starting a website with funny somethings on it.  I have this little blog, but I was thinking of a real, money-making, pinterest-faking mommy website!   Then I thought about my babies and how they need me and how I tend to be obsessive about my projects.  Not to mention when you have your own website it is like being in charge of a magazine where you are the publisher, editor, photographer, web-designer, PR representative, quality-control person, advertising person,  writing person, CRAZY person.  And in this click-click-click world of ours, an article can be forgotten in minutes, so you have to POST like a crazy person to keep up with the competition.  Nope.  Not for me.  I'm happy to have this poorly designed little blog where I write my somethings.  But...

It has always been a dream of mine to be a PAID writer.  I started to research from-home writing jobs (you know you are loading viruses on your computer when you click on work-from-home ads).  I even created a profile at Elance.com.  All of the projects posted seemed a little scary and my resume has been blank for the last 6 years (that is if you are with the majority of the workforce who believe child-rearing is NOT a resume-worthy job!!).   So, I nix the Elance staletto-wearing New York jobs and look for something a little smaller, more for a sweat-pants, flip-flips mom in North Central Florida. 

I contact the owner of a couponing blog I have been following about a job opening.  She says I am too far for the job but she may be able to use me to write content.  I wasn't going to let this chance pass by.  I IMMEDIATLY wrote her back with an article proposal.  She gave me the go-ahead but said "The key to good recipe posts is good pictures."  AAAAHHHHHHH!  Self, you can do this, forget about all of your ipad snap-shot, grainy photos and step up to the plate!  Sooo I dust off my husband's camera and foot-long lens which cost 2x our rent in dental school which he used take gorey pictures of patients' mouths.  Not this time camera, no more shoving you into the scary mouths of strangers, you're going to make us famous!  

I pull together a little recipe using Pillsbury crescent rolls and literally PRAY that it will taste good.  The first try was terrible...apple dumplings with crescent roll dough--it was spit-out terrible.  DONT GIVE UP...THINK...THINK...THINK!  Something savory.  Something that is easy to make and relatively inexpensive.  I combine a few classic casserole recipes swimming in my head and come up with Chicken Cordon Bleu Bites.  I THROW it together, writing my measured ingredients on a grease-stained scrap paper as I go, and again PRAY that it will taste good.  They did! It has to look good too.  Egg wash!!  My sisters, many genius cookers, inspired me with this little one.  You wash the pastry with a little egg white/water mix to make it look SHINY!  It worked.  Meanwhile I am still mothering.  Jacob poops, Ashley poops, and I wash my hands in-between ingredients and poop thanking heaven that readers couldn't SMELL in the picture.   Chicken Cordon-Poop Bites aren't usually a reader favorite. 

Then I take pictures.  Luckily husband left the camera on auto focus otherwise I's have blurry Chicken poop rolls.  The pictures turned out ok.  It needed something.  Dear Top Chef, I've wasting many hours watching you, now it's your turn to inspire a D-blogger.  A SPRIG, I NEEDED A SPRIG.   I didn't have anything leafy and bright green, I only had the questionably-dated green onions I used in the recipe.  These would have to do.  I start husking them, like corn.  Pulling away layer and layer of nasty until I found the perfect little artistic flare of an onion sprig to accent my plate.  snap. snap. snap. 

I manipulated the final crescent roll so many times to deem it inedible.  But the audience would be eating with their eyes!  You can find the final photo at couponersunited.com  !

My hat is off to those moms who have blogs with perfect everything.  It takes hard, hard work to make things look nice.  And you really have to earn an audience's trust...so my little bun that looked like it was vomiting ham-goop would not gain their trust.  OR inspire them to cook.  So I tried, and tried again.  Until I had something nice to look at.  I sent my pics and my quick recipe to the blog owner and she said it was perfect.  Just what she was looking for.  Wheewwww.  The money would be in my PayPal account by nighttime.  Wow, I am tired, my kitchen is a mess, and there is a little ham-goop on pricey camera, but guess what guys, I'm a PAID writer.  Dream big, start small...that's the lesson for today. 

KISS

When Ally was 2, I bought a Santa sleigh craft kit which would serve as a great mommy-daughter activity and be an excellent little decoration for Christmas time.   It was one of those kits that came with 100s of little foam stickers and larger pieces that would be put together with careful attention and a little bit of glue.  The package said ages 6+ but I didn't think they knew MY daughter.  When I dumped the supplies on the cleared table, Ally quickly reached for the glue.  "No, no we have to wait and see which pieces go together.  First let's decorate the sleigh parts with the stickers, then we will glue the sleigh together," I corrected.   I applied the gold sparkle swirls that accented each side of the bright red sleigh.  As I moved to other pieces, Ally was stealthily pulling off the long, golden swirlies that I had just applied and stretched them into the air.  The sparkles shed from the foam and eventually the coils snapped.  "No, we need to keep those stickers on the sleigh," I encouraged.   She looked at me like "Stretching the stickers is more fun mom!"  I reverted her attention to the little bottle of white glue that came in the packet.  "Here Ally,  We will use this to put the big pieces together. "  I helped her place little dots of glue in the joints of the sleigh.  She did pretty well at first, then became transfixed by the squeezing of the glue and how it poured into a glob on whatever surface she held it over.   "Please don't do that with the glue."

She lost interest and went to something else.  I guess she could tell that this was MY craft and I was insistent on doing it MY way.  After I spent 1.5 hours putting the whole thing together, I felt bad and asked, "Would you like to paint the sleigh?"  She gleefully accepted and dipped the brush into puddles of blues, reds, yellows, and purples until the sleigh looked like a camp craft that had been dipped in warm poop. 

I have learned to KISS!  No, not the lipsmacking kind, or even the band with the scary makeup and tongue faces.  I'm talking about a little acronym I learned from my sweetheart husband.  K.I.S.S.  "Keep It Simple, Stupid."  When I have something I want to accomplish, especially when it involves small children, just keep it simple.  It has taken three kids and a few years to learn this.  My children don't care about the glitter, they care about spending time with mom. 

It has been hectic at home.  When I feel stretched to my limit with everything I have to do, and the guilt settles in that although I've done the dishes, laundry, feeding, clothing, I may have not really CONNECTED with my children that day, I do one simple thing.  I get down on the ground to see them at eye level.  Then we do, just, whatever.  Today Ashley and I played a game of catch with a baby toy from a yard sale.  I helped her load her little box with all of her precious things she calls her "Colors," which include nail polish and an array of highlighters.  And Ally just likes to talk.  She drew some pictures and told me about her half-alien-half-octopus creature who had a half-spider-half-dog for a pet. 

The girls really do like crafts.  So we do them, but I don't get upset when Ashley unwinds the ribbon, and when Ally veers off the path of bow-making into something else--I just stay on the ground and enjoy. 

Big Mama Proud

I have a confession to make.  I have purposefully withheld certain pictures from facebook because of, well, let's call it what it is: VANITY!  When I was pregnant with my second child I even ASKED a relative to remove a picture because I looked so huge.  I was contemplating my other blog post about bad pictures being beautiful, and I had some acute cognitive dissonance.  How can I tell my daughters to be proud of their individuality, and even their imperfections when I hide pictures of myself because I am afraid of what an acquaintance from high school might say about my size?  It does not compute.

I find the way our celebrity culture handles pregnancy and baby weight absolutely appalling.  Headlines like "Dumped at 200 lbs!", "Kim can't stop eating!", "BABY WEIGHT BATTLES" (NEXT TO A PICTURE OF KATE MIDDLETON!).   Some celebrities gain weight when they are pregnant, because they are REAL, HUMAN, PEOPLE!  They are not immune to imperfections and baby pounds just because of their ridiculous status in society. 

I don't think it is right to be unhealthy or lazy--the risks of pregnancy hypertension and gestational diabetes are real.  But each body handles pregnancy differently.   I don't get  a cute basketball protruding from an otherwise slim frame.   I get wide, I get lumpy, and I have several roadmaps of stretch marks to show for each pregnancy.  And after the baby is born?  I usually gain 10 pounds while breastfeeding.  But I get to have children-- a dream that many woman save, sacrifice, and only hope for. A changed body is a slim price to pay for the beauty and joy of meeting my baby for the first time.  
 

So here I am.  Nine Months pregnant with my third child--on the treadmill trying to induce labor.  I wasn't trying to be funny with my mid-rift, it was how my exercise top fit me at that point.  I am no longer ashamed of how I look, but I am NOT an exhibitionist!  Hence, the little shade-shirt addition (added with professional photo software Microsoft Paint).  

This photo is for you ladies who do not fit into maternity clothes at the end of your pregnancy or after your pregnancy, for those who are asked if you are having twins with 10 weeks before baby is due, for those who work their butts off (a year or longer) to get even a PORTION of their old body back, and for those who think they are the only ones who don't look cute pregnant.  Remember that you are beautiful, you are not alone, and everything you have gone through is absolutely worth it.