Brown Bear

I have been a pathetic blogger. It's been over a month since my last blog. (This is the confession part).

I blame my lack of work-life balance. I blame my lack of work-life balance on me because I can't walk away from work. If I'm not at work, I'm on my phone reading work email or thinking about how I'm going to respond to the email I just read. I NEED TO UNPLUG AND LET IT GO. I'm smart enough to realize that my lone actions will not raise the stock price tomorrow morning. But I'm too much a perfectionist/pleaser to let any of the balls drop.

Oh well, enough about my balls.

Here's a moment that drives me to correct my work-life balance issue.

I'm reading "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" to Sara.

Mom: "Who's that?"
Sara: "Brown Bear" (in her cutest little almost-2 voice - really came out "Bown Bear")
Mom: "How does Brown Bear go?"
Sara: (Very confidently) "Beep Beep"

LOVE IT. LOVE HER.

My blog is a reflection...

My blog is a reflection of my life. When life is even-paced, I tend to blog alot...and (I feel) it can even be funny and interesting.

But when my life is in chaos, normally because of my job, I go silent. I don't have time to download pictures, articulate little stories about the girls or even keep up on reading friends blogs.

I have been spending way too much time and energy focusing on things that go on at work. It's a struggle because co-workers say things like "You work too much", "You shouldn't have to work at night" and "You're stressing too much". But no one ever says "Ah...be late, don't worry about it".

And because no one ever says that, I work too much and at night and stress out about it.

But I'm back, at least for today because it's Saturday and Todd has taken the girls upstairs to give mommy a break.

So..what has been going on in the last two months?

Heck, in the last week, Sara said "I love you mommy" for the first time where I didn't ask her to say it. I said "I love you Sara" and there it was, right back at me - "I love you mommy". That was on Tuesday morning.

And the on Wednesday morning, she tee tee'd on the potty for the first time. I couldn't believe it - she's almost 22 months but still. We haven't seen any repeat performances so it may have been a fluke.

And little Sara is talking up a storm, mainly "I want X", "Mine" and "Hello Mommy" but it's just wonderful to hear her little voice.

Paige is such a big girl - no big milestones but she is turning into such a little lady - worrying about her hair, learning to read and become aware of what others think of her. That one sorta freaks me out. If I pass anything on to her, I want it to be confidence and to just not care what other people think and say. It is going to be my biggest challenge with my girls.

I am going on a trip to Vegas with the girls (Beth, Kim and Jaklyn) on Thursday - I'm so excited. I really wish Todd was going because we really are soul mates in Vegas but I know there will be no lack of fun with girls.

Hopefully it won't be May when I post again... I'm sure I'll find work-life balance somewhere...somehow...

Merry Christmas...

We spent Christmas in Phoenix this year - we drove straight through both ways! We are raising little road-tripping warriors and I love it!

Actually, we tried to stop and get some rest on the way back in Odessa, stopping at a "great family hotel" only to unpack the car, get the girls pajamas on and FIND BED BUGS in the hotel room's bed! Blech!!!! Todd saw the news report on them several months ago and decided to pull up the mattress to check it out and there were the "tell-tale" signs. I wasn't convinced so I googled the hotel and sure enough - lots of hits on bed bugs. So then we look a little bit more and one of the little buggers crawls by. I can't tell you how disgusted I was that I had brought my girls to somewhere they could get bitten up while we slept. I so wish we would've taken pictures - we reported it to the hotel but they totally blew us off. We were so angry about the room that we just packed the car back up, bought some Vivarin and drove til 4:30am. I was NOT stopping anywhere else to have this happen again and waste more time.

We came home, washed everything in hot water and haven't looked back although in writing this I'm really how freaking pissed off I am at the hotel. I need to give them another call on Monday. Although, as I said, we didn't take any pictures (and I take pictures of everything, what the heck?) and we weren't there long enough to get bitten so I don't think they would feel any obligation to us at all.

I've included some of my favorite Christmas pictures - my two girls fighting over the cookies for Santa. Paige tried to set them out "oh-so-nice" for Santa and all Sara wanted to do was eat them. We let them go at it for a while cause it was just so funny.

Here Paige has just finished laying out the perfect cookies for Santa. And Sara, well, she's hungry.

Paige is covering up the cookies here. I guess she thinks that Sara is going to forget that they're there???

Sara is ready to take what she feels is hers and Paige starts to melt.

And here is the full blown melt down. Sara went to bed right after this and Paige got to arrange her cookies any way she wanted.