Mommin' It Up!

February 9, 2010

Giving Pride the Finger

I do not believe it is a coincidence that the subject of pride has come up for discussion several times for me lately, with several different people, in several different environments. It’s not coincidence, because it’s something I need to think about, and work on. It is something I am sure, that God has been speaking to me about.

I believe that pride is the number one thing that keeps us from forming true relationships with each other. And by “us”, I mean women, although I think it applies to all genders, races, and creeds. Pride is the shiny veneer over a scratched dining table, the thickly-applied concealer over a blemish, the cleverly-placed accessory that covers an ugly scar.

And it’s the Berlin Wall that forms between what could be beautiful relationships. Its size is a wonder, its strength, its mass seemingly impenetrable. It is closely and vigilantly guarded.

It needs to come down.

As I mentioned before, at BlissDom I told Lotus how much her blogging about her depression had meant to me. Her courage to admit her struggles, her realness, her acknowledgment that sometimes she is not okay, gave me the strength to write about my own battle.

How much could we help each other, if we would only ask for help for ourselves? Maybe you call a friend and just ask her to listen as you vent about your frustrations as a mom. And she learns that it is okay to have those frustrations. To admit them. To know she is not alone. Maybe you confess that you have doubts about faith, marital problems, feelings of worthlessness, fears, financial problems, worries that you are screwing up your kids. Maybe you just say, “I need you to take the kids for a couple hours.” Maybe you do this, you give someone the opportunity to help you, to listen to you, to love you as you truly are, and not for how you have been presenting yourself, and you change a life. Maybe two lives. Maybe you blog about it and you change dozens.

Maybe you win yourself one true, intimate friendship. Maybe you become the answer to someone’s prayer.

Maybe you take a sledgehammer to the Berlin Wall. Make a hole big enough for someone else to escape through, to find freedom.

Maybe you find it yourself. Only one way to find out.

February 8, 2010

Girlfriends are the New Black

I have been trying to post something about BlissDom for over an hour. And apparently, I’m not quite ready to put it into words yet! It was fun, amazing, sweet, wonderful, and so much more. The best part was just spending time with lady bloggers that I LOVE. So courtesy of Flickr’s Valentine’s Day effects, here are some photos of the weekend. A more profound recap is coming soon, I promise!

Cousin love! Emily and me all dressed up for the Thursday night cocktail party.

Cortney, Emily, and me in line to see Harry Connick, Jr. who performed for us. The weekend with these two was a bed of roses! Seriously spending time with them in the car and in our room was one of the highlights of the weekend for sure.

One of 2009’s gifts to me, the beautiful, funny, talented Katie of Domestic Debacle.

The lovely Lotus. I made her cry because I blubbered everywhere and told her that because I’d read her blogs about depression, I knew I could write about mine. I *love* her. And she’s HYSTERICAL!

Susan and Shannan make me want to dance, dance, dance! These two Cincy girls are awwwweeesome!

This photo of Andrea (who I have nicknamed SassySnacks after this weekend!) and Emily makes my heart go pitter-patter. So much love!

More to come this week. Thanks so much again to INTEL for sponsoring our attendance at BlissDom! If you haven’t already, go ENTER our contest to win an mbook pocket PC powered by the Intel Atom processor.

For more BlissDom photos, check out my Flickr phototream.

February 5, 2010February 5, 2010

Guest Post: Your Must-Have Baby Items

Hi, this is Emily, coming to you live from Blissdom at the Opryland Hotel. Jenny, our friends and I are having a great time! It’s so nice to be in the company of other ~~nerds~~ bloggers. Anyway, today’s post was written by my sister, Anna, who is expecting her first baby. She is, of course, looking for advice, so I suggested she do what Jenny and I always do when we have a question, and turn to our brilliant readers. So take a look, and let Anna know what baby items she will just have to have and what will likely end up at the bottom of the closet.

It took my husband and me awhile to decide to start a family. Many of our friends have children and it seems they are much more willing to share battle stories with us than stories about the wonders of being a parent. It wasn’t all that long ago that our friend described her evenings taking care of the children, including things like homework and baths and putting the kids to bed. Notably missing from her description were the things that we typically do in the evenings: veg on the couch and watch TV, eat in the living room, spend a considerable amount of time on Facebook, go somewhere at the spur of the moment and, my favorite, nap. Here was our conversation after we got home:
Hubby: “You know when Mandy was talking about their normal evening ? It sounded horrible.”
Me: “I know. Shudder. Why do people even have kids?”

Fast forward a few months and we decided to that we too wanted a little life-sucker… I mean blessing of our own. In the words of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock “Is it so wrong that I just want to one of these to grow up and resent me?”

It’s been a few months since we found out we were excepting. (I bought the pregnancy test with CVS ECBs, Woot-woot). As we check the weeks off the calendar, our baby becomes more and more real. Our excitement grows along with my belly. And so do the questions. I’ve started to do the very first thing that comes to me when facing uncertainty: research. I’m pretty sure that researching is a genetic trait that runs in our inbred family. Before making a decision, I simply must gather as much information as humanly possible.

Which leads me to my question for you: What is a definite must on our registry and what should we leave off? With so many options and verities of baby stuff, I have no idea what I should get for the baby and what we should do without. Was there anything that you found collecting dust and just taking up space? What were the things that you really needed for your baby, the things that you couldn’t live without?