Wonders, Mishaps, Blunders and Joy.. commentary on my life as a mom in the form of letters to my son
From time to time my phone goes missing for a few minutes. When I get it back I’m always surprised to discover what new images have been added. Here are a few latest gems.
These photos have not been filtered or adjusted in any way.
Clearly.
One lone shoe.
Mommy ordering photos.
Toys.
Lovey.
Mommy eating a chicken sandwich or maybe he was trying to capture the view.
Someone was having a good hair day.
This one we posed for.
Trust me, I hate hearing about other people’s vacations just as much as the next gal, so I’ll just share the highlights from ours….
In case you missed it, we spent last week in North Carolina attending a wedding in Lake Lure and stayed at the inn where parts of Dirty Dancing was filmed.
Johnny's Cabin (and no, we did not stay here).
We were expecting it to be muggy and gross but instead it was mild and gorgeous, but as with all vacations there were ups and downs. I’ll let you decide which is which.
One of the many reasons I adore traveling is meeting new people and learning something unexpected each day I’m away from home. I suppose I don’t have to travel to do that, but I seem to be more open to it when I’m living out of a suitcase. Here are those highlights:
Me completely geeking out on the audio tour at Biltmore Estate.
One of the best parts of our trip for me was of course being together as a family but I also thoroughly enjoyed (as exhibited in the photo above) visiting Biltmore House and Gardens in Asheville. Completed in 1895, George Vanderbilt’s 250-room chateau is as impressive today as it was more than a century ago. Biltmore House is truly an architectural and historical wonder.
Lately I have been anything but present.
I find myself getting distracted easily.
My mind wanders.
No, my mind races.
I’m always thinking about the next thing. The next thing I think I need to do, the next chore or task to tackle, the next deadline, the next appointment or place I am suppose to be.
I am struggling to be present,
to live in the moment,
enjoy the here and now.
My phone has become an extension of my hand.
I get lost on the Internet and consumed with social networking.
I grow impatient quickly and let the littlest things irritate me.
I wouldn’t say I’m a worrier, but I do spend a lot of time anticipating the future and that only proves to be problematic, futile even, because no matter how much I’d like to convince myself otherwise, I can’t control the direction in which things will go.
All I can control is this moment.
Right now.
This breath.
I recently started keeping a Gratitude Journal, using the app by the same name. Thank you, Nichole for introducing this to me!
Making a list of just five things each and every day that I am thankful for and that make me smile has helped me take witness of my life and think about what I’m doing, s.l.o.w. down and enjoy these moments.
My son deserves the best of me, as does everyone else in my life. I am learning how to be present.
How do you keep the most important things in focus when the rest of your life is a blur? How do you stay present?
I left my phone in my friend’s car Monday night. The circumstances are still a bit hazy aren’t important. Upon discovering this Tuesday morning and after the twitching subsided, I actually enjoyed being without my phone for two days.
Honestly.
Because I have a laptop. 🙂
Yes, I was fine until the electricity went out for the better part of the afternoon on Wednesday, which also happened to be a rare day Lucas decided to take a nap.
To make matters worse, I decided if I couldn’t be online or watch TV that I would take a shower; shave my legs, deep condition my hair and put on a face mask, only to find our hot water had been shut off too!
No, we are not delinquent bill payers. It turns out there was some “power line” emergency on our street or rather a termite infested tree that had to be chopped down. I still don’t really know, as my husband and I both got different stories from the men in hard hats directing traffic.
At any rate, everything has been restored now and I learned a valuable lesson: while it might be nice (and necessary) to unplug every now and then, I like being connected.
I like commenting on Facebook status updates and posting photos of my kid and seeing yours on Instagram. I enjoy “checking in” places on Four Square and hearing my husband’s voice midday. I’m lost without my electronic calendar and having iTunes at the ready is comforting, as are the text messages my BFF and I share throughout the day. Pinterest is where I get all my good ideas anymore and I am bound and determined to beat Jessica at Scrabble one of these days!
In short, connection is good.
Just in case you wondering.
After I filmed this, I realized I CLEARLY left off a few very important items that I can’t live without: (in no particular order) caffeine, chap stick and exercise, but I enjoyed my guest star so much, I stayed with this version. Can you blame me?
Last night Lucas finally went to sleep somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30, after multiple pleads visits from both Mom and Dad to “settle down”.
I love this time of the day, the hours that we reclaim our house and get to enjoy the peace, the calm after the storm, if you will; a real conversation, a movie from start to finish or other adult activity.
Tonight, however, went something more like this….
Todd nestled in our bed with his laptop to write an appraisal for work and I was in the living room spread out on the couch watching TV, computer on my lap and wine in hand. I was tweeting, pinteresting, catching up on blogs and above all, relaxing, in other words, I was multitasking.
It was after 10:00 by the time I made it to bed. Todd was asleep shortly there after. I laid next to him quietly and read for an hour and a half… 100 pages!
At 11:45 I turned off the light.
There in the dark, even though I said I wasn’t going to do it, it beckoned me.
And you know what happened next… one Website sent me to another and then another and another and another and…
I played six turns of Scrabble (scored one bingo!), five turns of Words With Friends, tweeted more, pinned five new items, checked out my Facebook news feed, commented, “liked”, listened to the whirl of the dish washer run through nine cycles, nudged my partner a couple of times to stop the snoring, thought I heard Lucas open the door to his room twice and all the while cursing myself for being up past my bedtime AGAIN!
Then I wrote typed this post.
Stupid phone.
(Written and) sent from my iPhone
Image courtesy of Pinterest. Click image for source.
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
I was assigned my first e-mail address as a Freshman at the University of Arizona. It was 1991.
Professors were suppose to connect with their students regarding classes and assignments via electronic mail, but no one had a computer in those days. Students and faculty alike were meant to use the computer lab in a building several blocks from my dorm.
I can count on one hand how many times in my four years I attended college that I visited the computer lab.
All of my college papers were written on a Brother ML-500 Electronic Word Processing Typewriter. I thought I was so state of the art with my dozens of floppy disks.
My first encounter with the Internet was also in college, circa 1995. My boyfriend at the time had a desk top computer (talk about state of the art), a giant piece of machinery that took up the entire surface of his kitchen table. He even had a printer. He used an online communications system called Prodigy.
He boasted how he could “look up” anything and information would be provided right there on the screen in front of us. Sure enough, as soon as I blurted out “Madonna”, he printed out a one page biography of the controversy-making pop queen. I was astounded.
Fast forward to 2011 and you will find “248,000,000 results on ‘Madonna’ in 0.16 seconds.” on Google.
To say that times have changed is a gross understatement.
By 1996, I was on a computer every day at work, but had yet to experience the world wide web. I did have an AOL account and would go home on my lunch break to IM friends. It was amazing, just like having a phone conversation, but better and way more fun.
Five years later, my parents bought me my first lap top on which I spent hours on e-mail and on-line shopping. My favorite shopping cart at the time was at Amazon.com. Since 2001, I have made over 100 purchases on Amazon.com (of course they keep track).
Sharing this new technology with my father was for lack of a better word, sweet and amusing. He never quite accepted the concept that what you found on the Internet would remain there for you to recall another time and so he would print out everything. Having hard copies made him comfortable not to mention killed a lot of trees.
What I have found in my 15 years of Internet experience is that as long as you own a computer (or an iPhone) and have Internet access, virtually (pun intended) anything is possible.
The Internet is the best and arguably the evilest invention ever. Everything is available right at our finger tips.
Today we get our world news, entertainment and weather on line. We Tweet, Pin and Stumble. We order groceries, diapers and the latest fashions, we research, find support, self-diagnose, fall in love, plan a wedding, prepare for a baby, book an exotic vacation and connect with our entire high school graduating class, even if we never said a word to them in person. We play Scrabble with our neighbors and laugh out loud to videos of giggling babies, we download, upload, bookmark, backup and can hide away from the world if we choose.
It’s sad when you stop and think about it. With the Internet, the need for real human interaction is almost unnecessary.
Knowing what I know now, I wonder if I could go back to 1991. Could you?
This post is for Write On Edge’s weekly writing assignment RemembRED. This week’s prompt: recall those early memories of being online.
I’m back from vacation, home from BlogHer ’11, my mind is reeling and my heart is full. Oh, and I have a brand new blog design!
Over the next few days, I’ll be working with my amazing design and WordPress team (Kristi and Ashley and anyone else willing to help me!!) to work through the bugs and improve navigation, so please bear with me. I am so excited to be on WordPress, but know that it is going to take some time to learn a new platform.
Before I share my BlogHer ’11 experience, I want to share some highlights from our trip to Hawaii.
Our time in Maui was a lot of fun, but to be honest, a week is a long time to be away from home. Particularly with a toddler. Lucas did great on the flights there and back, but by Day 4 was starting to get ornery and talking about all of his favorite things back home, including his favorite babysitter. Gulp!
Here’s my high/low list, starting with the good stuff first!
The view from our hotel room. Sigh!
Yes, I am a huge dork!
Beach Yoga Bliss.
Black Rock at Sheraton Maui.
Now for the not so great:
The good outweighed the bad and for that I am grateful.
Directly from Hawaii I headed to San Diego for BlogHer ’11. I’m still in the process of decompressing, unpacking, reconnecting with my family and laundry, but promise to share my thoughts on one of the best weekends ever soon!
A few weeks ago, I bamboozled Lucas into going to the park by way of the bank, thus taking the very l o n g way to the park so that I could get in some exercise.
While we were standing in line at the bank, he started fussing. In other words, he was on to me and wanted nothing more than to get out of the stroller and create some sort of havoc. To calm him down and keep him put, I gave him my iPhone.
This practice is normally a last resort and used mostly at restaurants so that his dad and I can finish our meal in peace and down our adult beverages with a small amount of dignity.
I have several toddler friendly apps on my phone; Voice Cards, Talking Tom, Toddler Puzzle Shapes and ABC Train, just to name a few. I also have “emergency” episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba and Sesame Street and a playlist devoted to Lucas’ favorite tunes.
At any rate, he knows his way around an iPhone, without too much input or instruction from me. I don’t know how he knows, he just does, so I wasn’t too surprised when the middle aged gentleman in front of us asked me how old Lucas was. After I told him, he responded with shock and awe that someone so young could use the device so well. I laughed it off.
Lucas and I carried on a conversation about the shapes in the puzzle he was working on and I reiterated nine more times that we would eventually make it to the park when the man blurted out the most bizarre thing: “Daycare kid?”
I was a bit taken aback and it took me a good 30 seconds to reply, “No, I stay at home with him”, to which the man had nothing to say. No further insight into his strange question at all.
I’m still confused.
Up until now, I’ve been able to avoid any sort of Mommy vs. Mommy or Mommy vs. stranger who may or may not be a Mommy run-in, not that I would call this a run-in per say, but it was certainly one of the first out in public Mommy moments I’ve had that has stayed with me. I haven’t been able to shake this exchange for some reason. Why is that?
What did he mean by “daycare kid”?
What do you think? I would love to get your take.
P.S. If you have a favorite toddler app, please let me know!
