Teen Mom, Richard Simmons & some facts about Gracie..

  Watching Daddy shave in her pink polar bear pjs...life is good!

        One of my goals in writing this blog is to have something to share with Grace when she wants to know what she was like as a baby. By the time she gets around to asking this, I will undoubtedly be old & senile and unable to remember what it felt like to bury my head in her neck and soak in that baby smell. So I will have this as a reference. Most likely not the boob-job, teen moms, richard simmons parts. But things like this:

    

        Dear  Gracie...these are a few of the things you really excel at this week:

• Putting everything directly into your mouth. Including, but certainly not limited to, your own fists (the WHOLE thing), your father's nose and styrofoam coffee holders. 
• Having ridiculously kiss-able, nibble-able chubby rosy cheeks. 
• Sharing your drool dripping pacifier with your Mumma. And by sharing, I mean shoving & smashing it into my mouth.Thanks, doll. 
• Waving. But only when it's convenient for you. This tends to make Mum & Dad look like giant liars. 
• Throwing yourself backwards unexpectedly. Sometimes I think you like the world better when it's turned upside down. 
• Incorporating "mamamama" into your cries and whines, especially when we have the audacity to suggest you remain sleeping at 1 am. Daddy says this is because you already know which one of us is the sucker. 
• Arching your back and refusing to cooperate, particularly when we suggest you subject yourself to the torture device known as your car-seat. 
• Standing up on your own, while holding onto things. Your wobbly legs nearly give me a heart attack every time and have caused several epic superman-like dives in an attempt to save you. 
• Lighting up in a grin that covers your whole face whenever your father walks into the room. And clinging to him for dear life when he attempts to hand you over to me. I simply grew you IN MY BODY, brought you into this world (and you had to squeeze out of my body somehow) without any pain medication, and had you as a permanent accessory to my chest area for the first 5 months of your life. No big deal...Daddy gets a look of adoration. I get...this:

                                                                    

                                    

This is just a smattering of the many skills you have. You come up with something new to amaze me with every day, baby girl. You are almost nine months old- which means you been outside of me as long as you were in. If you could slow down, just a little bit, I'd appreciate it. You also smell really delicious when you come out of the bath & it's just about all I can do not to smother you in kisses constantly (shockingly...you don't seem to enjoy my kiss attacks-what's that about?). That's all for now. 

                     Love, Mumma. 

Maybe this is why you don't enjoy my kisses..because I place you in shopping carts for my own amusement? Sorry about that.






I swear, I don't normally watch this much TV. In fact, I've become sort of a TV nazi since Grace entered our lives. Particularly since I spent one painful all-nighter writing a 10 page literature review about the evils of television on language development. Did you know that just having TV on as background noise reduces parent-child interaction by 20%? OK- stepping off soap-box...NOW. :)
  However, TV provides a plethora of interesting things to talk about. Mainly because TV programming has turned completely ridiculous. 
    
           Teen Mom. Thank you MTV, for this gem. Let me preface this by saying I am in NO position to judge these young women. Being a mother at 22 is difficult enough & I have two super supportive families backing me, as well as a helpful, involved and wonderful fiance, who is such a fantastic father. I can't even imagine being 17 or 18, without the support of resources that I have and making it work. However, I would love to sit down and talk with these girls. Maybe shake them a little bit. Just a little. 
         The couple that gave their baby up for adoption. AMAZING. What a gift. And such a strong, smart decision. One I'm not sure I would ever have the courage to make. I hope that someday their little girl gets to see how they struggled everyday with their decision and that she can understand that she was loved, more than she could even imagine, by being kept away from the ignorance & instability that her birth parents deal with. I am also impressed with Maci. She's 18, works hard, goes to college and deals with her slacker loser boyfriend. She understands that sacrifice was part of the package and rarely complains. 
        The one I would really love to chat with is Farrah. Yes Farrah, being a teen mom is hard. It's not a choice you would have probably made. But it happened. Adjust, accept, move forward. You live in your parents house. Rent free. They pay for EVERYTHING your baby needs. They are supporting you through college. They are doing FAR more than a lot of other parents would do in that situation. And you repay them by dating every guy that moves and going out every single night because you're "a teenager". What makes me saddest is not how you treat your parents...but the fact that one day, you are going to wake up and your little baby is going to be starting kindergarten. And you will have missed all of those precious baby moments. Watching your baby grow & learn is the greatest gift I have ever been given. And you are throwing this away for...pizza dates with complete losers? Mani & Pedi days with the girls? BAHH!


       In other entertaining television today.. Richard Simmons was on Ellen. And Ellen look petrified-- the entire time. I couldn't have asked for a better way to kick-start my day. I couldn't decide  whether he was on drugs... mentally unstable... or just THAT excited about life, weight loss & being Ellen's personal exercise equipment. I'm still unsure. 






   Off to continue my staring contest with the platter of Christmas cookies Andrew's grandmother made for us. Am convinced this is some kind of torture device created just for me & my foolish New Year's resolutions...