Room For Improvement

Of the home, personal, family and bloggy variety.

On the blog front, I'm going to try actually blogging more than once a week. I know its a radical idea but it just might work. And thanks to a brilliant idea by Kate from The Big Piece of Cake I'm going to be making some changes over at Juniper and Coffee.

On the family front, we have started our homestudy process for our second adoption. There is so much paperwork to do and hoops to jump through but I am thrilled that we are making progress to bring our little baby home.

And where do I begin on personal improvement. I'm going to be 40 soon. I thought it would be a good idea to enter my 40s in good shape, a shape I'm proud to be in. Right now my shape is a bit too round, a bit too muffin topish for my liking. So I'm doing something about it. You know exercise more than twice a month, eat right etc.

I've set a goal to lose 30 pound by my birthday in September. Its kind of a huge goal but that was the weight I was 5 years ago and that is the weight I'd like to be again. If I reach my goal I am going to buy myself some ridiculously expensive rock star jeans. So far I've lost 1.5 pounds in a week and 1/2 so that's not too bad. We'll see if I can stick with it.

And finally home improvement. This is the biggie. Our house, as you know, is a CrapShack. But we've started making it better one room at a time, starting with the basement rec room. The sump pump has been installed. The dry wall is up.

And now . . . we've started painting!



The walls used to be a dark burgandy color which was perfect for the previous incarnation of the basement as Scottowatomi Bingo, Casino and Dancehall. But now with one child and another one on the way, we need to make it a bit more family friendly so we chose a warm taupe color. I think it will be much nicer and much lighter down there.



Now we just need to work on the floor. The floor has tile on it but it was ugly and stained so we put carpet down. Big mistake (what with the water and all). We are going to put new tiles down but we need to get up all of the wood and glue they used for the carpeting. I'm afraid this might take a while. But baby steps, right?

You Weren't Wearing That When You Came In Here

Yesterday I had the wonderful luxury of free time.

Bubs' father was off of work for the week and volunteered to watch Bunny in the afternoon. I was thrilled. I had errands to run, errands that go much smoother without a three year old in tow. Grandpa also offered to take Bunny out to dinner with Grandma, so Bubs and I got to have dinner in a real restaraunt.

I ran my errands in peace. I drank coffee in peace. Then I decided to shop in peace. I needed a few new things for spring so I hit the mall.

I gathered some possibilities and hit the dressing room. When I looked in the mirror, I froze. I looked like a bag lady. Before I left the house, I remembered to do my hair and put on make up. But I apparently forgot to change my clothes. I was wearing ratty jeans, an old t-shirt and a sweater with a hole in the sleeve. Completely appropriate for toddler wrangling and cleaning the house. Completely inappropriate for dinner in a nice restaraunt with my husband.

So what is a girl to do?

Buy new clothes of course. I bought a nice pair of pants and a sweater. Then I went into the bathroom and changed my clothes. Ratty clothes went into the bag and pretty new clothes went on.

Afterwards I had a spring in my step. I looked good and felt good. And then I had a great dinner with my best guy. A pretty good deal all around.

Would I have bought the clothes if I didn't need an immediate makeover? Probably not. I don't tend to buy things for myself that often but I'm glad I did.

(And yes I am aware that I could have gone home to change before dinner but . . .)

Fresh

The air is fresher now. The breeze is blowing warmer.









My mind is clearer. My body lighter.







People are venturing outdoors. The world is inhabited again with smiling faces, dogs wagging their tails, children laughing.









Grey and brown are beginning to be replaced with green.











It is time for the first swing on a big girl swing. Time to learn how to ride a tricycle.









Time to laugh. Time to love. Time to grow.

So That's How Babies Are Born

* I am still looking for one more person to share the love with. Seriously people, I am going to send you free stuff (including something I made, like jewelry). I want to share with you, I'd like you to pay it forward too but that is up to you.

Bunny knows that some animals have babies by laying eggs and the eggs hatching. She also knows that some animals (and people) have babies in their tummy. She has no idea what this means but she knows there is a difference.

Today Bunny and I were watching a video of Kevin Henkes' "Crysanthemum". Its a cute little story about a mouse named Chrysanthemum. At school all the little girl mice make fun of her name because is a flower's name. One of her teachers is pregnant and says she loves the name and will name her baby Chrysanthemum if its a girl. So then the girls like the name and all want flower names too.

Well the story says the teacher had a "healthy baby girl". Bunny asked what that meant. I told her the baby was born and was no longer in the teacher's tummy.

She turned to me, all wide eyed innocence, and said "How did she get her hand in there to get it out?"

"Um, the doctor does it," was my reply.

Spreading the Love

Edited to add an update at the end.

Lately its been a bit angsty here in But Why Mommy land. A sample of the things running through my head go like this:

Me, Me, Me, Whine, Whine, Whine, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Worry, Worry, Worry, Turtle, Turtle, Turtle, Obsess, Obsess, Obsess, Me, Me, Me, Bubs, Bubs, Bubs, Me, Me, Me, Whine, Whine, Whine, Whine . . . well you get the picture.

Its gotten to the point where I can't stand myself. I hate to think what others feel about being around me.

I've been looking for a way to break out of the funk, to find a little ray of sunshine in my grey and rainy days. And then it happened. I was catching up with the blogs in my Google reader (and there are over 500 I haven't read - yes I know I could delete some but you all are so talented and funny I don't want to miss anything) and I found that little ray of sunshine in the form of Denise over at Eat Play Love. If you haven't read her, you should, she's fabulous.

Denise was spreading a little love in the blogosphere by paying it forward. I was one of the lucky winners of the pay it forward sunshine and it made my day. Heck, the rate things are going it may well make my month or year and I haven't even recieved my goodie bag (I'm sure I'll be over the moon when it comes).

So rather than sharing my doom and gloom (at least for today), I'm going to share this sunshine with you, my beloved readers. The way it works is the first three commenters on my blog today will receive a little goodie bag (a little present if you will) from me filled with some goodies from Milwaukee and maybe some craftiness too. If you are one of the lucky winners, you get to spread some of the sunshine and love to your readers. And so on, and so on, and so on. Even if you don't win you can still share the love on your own.



(Also don't forget to include your e-mail address or make sure I can contact you through your blog.)

UPDATE - Sometimes when you share the love good things happen. We just got the approval to use our home study agency from our first adoption. This is the best news that we could have gotten and we are now moving ahead full steam. Thank you universe.

Looking For Signs

I am one of those people who read into every situation. I'm always trying to find out the hidden meaning in things.

If this happened then it must mean that X will happen or Y will not happen.

It like I am looking for fate to determine my path in life.

I do this all the time. When I'm getting dressed, if the blue sweater falls out of my closet, then I'm going to wear the blue sweater.

I did it with my career. I quit one job with out another lined up and then received a phone call out of the blue from a friend hiring me for a job. That must be fate, I must be destined to work there. Then, I post on a message board that I want to quit another job and BAM! myself and my entire office staff are let go. (I mentioned this in a long rambling e-mail to Kate when she wanted to talk career. I think she meant her career and she may now think I'm totally crazy, but whatever.)

But what about other areas of life? If something happens, does it mean that I should go with it? Or should I stick with my original path even if there is a twist, turn or detour on that path?

I was faced with one of those possible signs recently. We had decided to move forward with Turtle's adoption after postponing it for a while. I had joined a local group of parents who had or who are adopting from Ethiopia. I started reading books on Ethiopia to learn more about the issues facing the country and the children. After reading There Is No Me Without You , I was convinced that we were doing the right thing. In fact, I wanted to adopt 10 kids right away (okay maybe not 10 but more than one).

So I got out our list of things to do and started making headway on it. Then I called our social worker to schedule our homestudy visits. There was no response to my first e-mail so I sent another. There was no response to that one either. I thought it could be possible that she was on vacation so I called to leave a message.

She answered the phone and told me the reason she had not contacted me is because her agency was no longer processing international adoptions. I asked when that came in to effect, she said the first of the year. Interesting. I had been in contact with her at the end of November telling her we were going to put off the meeting until after the new year. She said nothing at that time. At no point up until I contacted her in February did she make any effort to tell me that they were not going to be working with us. She said her director would call me to discuss this further (yeah he hasn't called - big surprise).

Of course this happened on a Friday afternoon and I was left with no real opportunity to come up with any alternatives until Monday. So I stewed all weekend long. I did what I always do. I wondered if this was a sign. Did this mean that we shouldn't pursue the adoption? Did this mean that we should look into other options? Was someone trying to tell me something? And if so what the hell were they trying to say?

Our international agency contracts with local agencies for the homestudy process. They have another agency we can work with and I have heard good things about them (although I had heard great things about the one that screwed us). But I contacted the international agency to see if we could use our social worker from our first adoption because we know her and trust her. They haven't made any determination yet.

So here I sit, totally frustrated. We can go with the new homestudy agency and move forwar with our current international agency. Or we can find a new international agency and move forward with our old social worker. Or maybe, just maybe, the universe is trying to tell me to do something different.

Bubbles

I've been silent for a while. I've got some thoughts running around my head but I can't make them coherent. Some thing happened that I am not sure is good or bad. I'm trying to make sense of it, to figure out what it means. Until I can do that I'll probably be silent for a little while longer.

But I couldn't deprive you of the glory that is Bunny for too long, so here is something to tide you over.