The Housing Habitat Hereditary Talent

There are many traits I have passed down to my wonderful daughter that I wish I could hand pick away from her. Things like my anxiety and worry, or obsession with planning and arranging. However, along with some of those traits, also comes weird and adorable hereditary things that I totally love.

I was an only child in that my half sisters never lived with us and were much much older. So I spent a lot of time alone. If memory serves, it all started on Groundhog's day, which when you grow up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is actually a big deal. So in school we made this little paper groundhog, colored him in, put him on a popsicle stick in a styrofoam cup that we colored and drew on dirt, grass and flowers, so that he could pop out to see if there was more winter or an early spring. 

I brought my craft home proudly but decided that the groundhog needed a way better habitat. So I got an old shoe box and made him a 3 room house for his comfort. This, to date, is one of my mom's favorite stories. From then on I made cardboard homes for any and everything that needed it.

When I was a nanny I bestowed my talent upon the 5 year old I spent my days with and her mind was blown. Give me a gingerbread house and I'm useless, give me some cardboard and weird thing to build a home or habitat for and I'm there, with gusto.

For Easter this year I broke down and got my daughter an LOL doll. I honestly don't fully understand the whole LOL thing and I'm not here to judge it. She's been talking about it a lot so I spent good Friday hunting this thing down and found one. I didn't choose the best one for my first LOL experience but this child is obsessed. She LOVES it.

She had an epic Easter. After church and all egg opening fanfare, my mom finally made an appearance with her Easter basket. She brought it over in what looked like half of a pizza box. In the box, the basket had new socks, new underwear, new camisoles, a Reese's bunny, gummy bears, a new stuffed animal pig and a coloring kit. 

My kid tore through it in 2 seconds, mostly excited for the coloring and candy. Right after Grandma left, I settled into my room for some Netflix and Popcorn before tackling the laundry and my daughter had taken the box from under her basket, along with her LOL doll, and started making her a house. She was drawing in a bathroom and bedroom and everything:

I need to find more pictures. As you can see, a little car she got for Easter was also outside the door that I had to help her cut. It is pretty awesome, I can't lie.

It made me so happy to see her creating this. And it's not even the first time she's done something like this, I just keyed in more to this one, and noticed her commitment to it.

You see, I feel often that everything I carry mentally, especially lately, gets taken out on her, very much inadvertently. Circumstances have made me more tired, less active with her and not as good of a mom as I should be. There are nights when she just wants dinner in front of the TV and I sneak a salad in my room and she comes in and hugs me and asks for dessert and we kind of just do our own thing in proximity. But then I feel bad like I was a crap mom for not making her eat like a lady at the table and tell me about her day. 

It's moments like the one where she crafted a new home for her new favorite toy where I'm like, okay I'm actually not doing so badly. I try to raise her to be independent, strong, capable, smart, funny and outgoing, which I'm told she is. I just think motherhood is hard. There are so many times I feel like I'm on such a solo mission to guide her and be fair but as her mom and not her friend. It's not an easy task.

She's plugged into so much more than I'd imagined and is almost too smart for her own good, so sometimes I feel like she heals with me when it comes to mental stuff. Just as I work from 8 to 5, that kid is in school and aftercare from 9 to 6 with all the activities on the weekends. I think she's earned time to veg and definitely to just be a kid. 

I kind of love that she got my weird talent for cardboard housing. I made so many cool things when I was younger that I just loved. They all had little stories and worlds and reasons for being that I was eager and happy to explain to anyone who wanted to listen. I loved just expanding upon one silly craft that could keep my imagination going. And what I couldn't buy or have from some commercial, or if there was some toy that my friends might have but I couldn't, I made for myself. I think my daughter getting that hereditary trait is okay; kind of bad ass really. And there's always therapy for all the other traits!

Easter Sunday Is Here!

I hope I'm not the only person who will never fully understand the resurrection of Jesus having anything to do with a bunny, baskets of candy, toys and Peeps, but we all follow the traditions right?

When my daughter was little we had time for the egg hunts and going to various Easter Festivities. This year we finally pulled off an at home and indoor egg hunt. It went well but after a birthday party with cold swimming fun and cold stone cake yesterday, my little one seems to be a bit...overdone. 

Easter used to be an Easter dinner thing too, if I recall. Often at my Grandma's house because my dad worked as a Pastor Easter Sunday but then wouldn't have to cook if we went elsewhere. I also recall a little bit of Lent stuff from Catholic school days, but mostly remember the Stations of the Cross being the longest, most depressing things ever. 

I did, however, always love Peeps. Yes, I am that weirdo that just loves Peeps! I am super strange in that I open the package and leave them out a day or two so they get a little firm, if you will, and then of course devour them. I somehow got this from my mom I think.

Like most church-y things, I love the tradition and anything that brings us together. It's over the past 3 years that Easter has been more work than fun. Today is a bit better, I will admit, but I definitely feel my daughter and I are starving for chill time.

My husband is at work and we have the house to ourselves. My daughter has been obsessively playing with the thing she wished for most, her LOL doll. I don't completely understand the whole LOL doll thing, I can't lie, but boy does she love that thing. It's the weirdest $13 I've ever spent.

I have endless laundry awaiting and am already fantasizing about a big salad for dinner after a popcorn pig out session and some stolen Easter Kit-Kats. We are having un-seasonally gorgeous weather and I'm already psyching myself up for Game of Thrones and an early morning workout tomorrow. 

While I'm definitely feeling a little more reserved and taken down lately, I am ready for another week with some positive things ahead. I have seen the negative results of my tech break but will keep it up as long as I can for my mental health, and so I can better focus my energy here. We are almost at the 5 month landmark for daily posts and I want to keep the posts going strong.

So Happy Easter readers, have the "Reester" Bunnies, the Cadbury eggs, the Peeps and dinner for me and enjoy the rest of your weekend! 

Workout, Errands, Mom, Repeat

I've had quite the anxious flare the past few days. To combat, it's distraction, distraction, distraction and working out is always at the top of my list with that. The transition to my new obsession, 9 Rounds kickboxing, was much easier and more positive than I had originally imagined.

9 Rounds is a new phenomenon of 30 minute kickboxing circuits, 3 minutes each round, and there are no class times, you just go during operating hours and start at the bell. I'm that weirdo who needs a 5AM workout block or maybe 5:30AM at least. I'm a working mom who commutes a good 40 minutes, if not longer, and I need to get my stuff done EARLY because summoning the energy after 6PM is often impossible.

I can't lie, it really helps to punch things. Ironically when we first moved to WestChase about 8 years ago, we were one block away from the newest kickboxing fad, and of course now the name escapes me, but I was desperate to join. Hubby was convinced I'd hurt myself and it was also crazy expensive. Now I found a place that works for the budget, the time and is the stuff of my workout dreams. Did I also mention no running? I love to not run. 

Today, on Good Friday, I have a miraculous day off filled with Easter errands and even a little fun. As part of Florida life the forecast is completely horrifying and I'm sure will include rain and thunderstorms, but I will not be deterred.

Somehow my mom ingrained in me this weird routine on me from my childhood of Peeps, new socks, new underwear, and a bathing suit in my Easter Basket. I'm one of the few people on this planet that actually enjoy Peeps. My daughter will be getting similar things, between my mom and I but is obsessed with chocolate so I definitely have to go get those supplies today.

This morning I was able to get my daughter ready for after care myself, pack her lunch, and drop her off, which is not something that happens often. I was also able to guest star at my former, new and re-designed, boot camp for a volleyball court sandy workout, after I had already done 30 minutes at 9 Rounds. I was pretty proud of me.

Currently I am blogging in my favorite local bakery, awaiting a breakfast date, before hitting the mall later with another friend and then dinner after I pick up my little one, bathe her and get her ready for Grandma time. It ended up being a very full day in the best way.

These are the days where I feel I can thrive well and mentally reboot because, I repeat, distraction, distraction, distraction. Pinpointing the anxiety triggers can be as exhausting as the anxiety itself, but sometimes it really helps me to sift through, even the most uncomfortable parts of it all.

When I was younger I used to write poetry or do a lot of painting and now time gets in the way of those things often. This blog has become my most productive, albeit diatribe-y use of my time for letting some things out into the universe.

Sometimes I'm kind of hard to explain to people. Often, I'm not fully "gotten" by people. I had a friend ask me about going to Good Friday service which is about 30 minutes away from our home at our church. Last year I tried with my daughter and I carried her out of there screaming and punching me. She was the only kid in attendance and they had no daycare. Also, the Good Friday stations of the cross stuff is slightly severe for little ones. I loathed this time of year when I was in Catholic School; the stations took hours!

Not only did I forget that today was actually Good Friday in that sense but to drive up there for a 6ish service and then home sounded exhausting and, by default, was the only Friday I could get my mom to babysit for a night out with a friend I'd been trying to connect with for a month. Sometimes you gotta do you instead of get stuck in what you "should" do. Besides, I'll be there like a good churchgoer on Sunday.

Most of my days feel like a routine of Workout, Errands/Work, be a Mom and repeat and some are more successful than others. I work hard not to overdue it but know I need to get out and be social and coexist more often. 

I'm able to kick my anxiety, in some ways, when I workout often, have good interactions with good friends, and get myself away from having time to "obsess and mentally wander." Working out extra makes me so tired that I can't stay up overthinking and over analyzing and I'm also often too tired to eat my feelings aka binge on Oreos and junk out of stress.

Mom stuff goes both ways. Sometimes I feel like this together, competent, attentive mom. Sometimes I feel like I'm one step away from an evil queen in a Disney movie locking someone away in a tower. It just depends on the day. 

I'm so lucky that my job doesn't leave me to carry too much stress around with me outside of the office, so rarely does my anxiety get me there but more so in the calm or down time. I'll find my way again and we all get into a funk but I think it's important to get yourself out of said funk on your own if at all possible.

I tend to thrive best in the comfort of certain cohorts, with excess workouts, a little meal planning, a little splurging, and a lot of time to mentally reboot and sleep. Often I take a huge step back from social media but with blog promotion, that's tough but it's something I'm very much considering right now. The blog would still be posted daily but the daily updates on Facebook and Insta would take a pause.

For today with the impending stormy weather, I'm ready to storm into my tasks and take names. I'm pretty determined to make this into very much a Good Friday if not even a great one. Have a wonderful holiday weekend readers and I will report back tomorrow on whether or not today was as designed!