What matters most...

My God, my family, my friends, myself.

The past few weeks I've had strong feelings of self-doubt. Especially at work. I've decided this evening to focus on the things that matter most to me and not let the other stuff get me down.

Sure, it's hard when someone at work sends you a crappy email that's out-of-line. After which, everything goes wrong when dealing with this person resulting in more things for them to point out as your shortcomings...sigh.

But what's harder is reminding myself that the person who made me feel bad isn't really who matters. This is my struggle that I vow to work at.

I'll begin by referring to the list above because they are what matters most to me...AMEN!

As my baby girl, Teresa, says every night, "Good night, mama....sweet dreams, mama....I love you, mama....sweet dreams, mama..." Repeat until the bedroom door closes.

SWEET DREAMS MY FELLOW 2-HOUR MOMS!

One-liners & memorable quotes

I feel like we capture life in Twitter spans now. I actually look for those awesome "what kids say" moments and immediately post them to Facebook. My child is 2.5 and is currently amazing at one-liners! Here's a sample from just this past week:

• "Mommy, you're old. I need a new mommy."
• Me: "Reilly, are you a monkey?" Reilly: "I not a monkey. Monkeys don't talk."
• "I a big boy toddler big flashlight guy."
• Me: " [something something]... your father." Reilly: "That's not my father. That's my Daddy. His name is Jeff." Me: "What's my name?" Reilly: "Um... I don't know. You don't have a name."
• Me: "How'd you get so cute?" Reilly: "Daddy." Me: "How'd you get so smart? (say mommy!)" Reilly: "No! Daddy!" Me: "Well what did I do?" Reilly: "You make me dinner."

Then there's this note that came home with him from daycare yesterday:

Ahhhhh, the moments we live for!!

Why social media scares me

I long to be this amazing goddess of social media and events. A maven, if you will. A guru. One who can write a book and not market it and people will flock to Amazon to buy it based on my name alone.

But then I read this post on Social Media Today about this blogger's schedule. She starts her morning at 7am with an hour of blog work. She then goes to her real job, and checks back in for 15 mins around 10am. Then spends her whole lunch time working on blog and Twitter stuff. Then another 15 mins at her break at 2. And then evenings from 7-8:30 blogging, consulting, etc.

So obviously, she is single. Or at least doesn't have kids. And she didn't even mention her Facebook account!

This makes me sad... how will I ever find the time to truly be amazing if I have to go on having a family? That settles it. I will have to give up having a family. Somebody notify my husband and child, while I sneak out in the middle of the night tonight! Hmm... but should I take the dogs with me or leave them here?

Yeah, that just won't work. Guess I'll have to go on being average. Have a job and two blogs that only get posted to a couple of times a week. I guess I can settle for not being famous... for now.

Such a pushover!

I have been working insane hours these past couple of weeks, preparing for executive review after executive review - an endless number of executive reviews! So today was finally the big 5 hour Ops Review and I got it all pulled together and represented my global colleagues who couldn't be there, and it went really well! Presented some cool social media activities we've been working on, some cool ideas for more social implementation at upcoming events. Really cool stuff. So now, I am just pooped. I plopped the kid in front of the TV for some Dora the Explorer time while I let the dogs out, prepared him some dinner, etc.

But I couldn't pry him away from the couch to eat. "I wanna eat here, mommy." Yeah, cause mac and cheese is so obviously 2.5-year-old on-the-couch-eating food. Not likely. But I had such a great day that I absolutely don't want to end it with a fight with the kiddo. We already fought over the fact that I only gave him a bite of the gigantic cookie I brought home from work. So I proceeded to sit with him on the couch and feed him mac and cheese while he watched. Great parenting, I know.

But he's happy, he's fed, and he's not screaming at me. And now I can get him to take a bath and go to bed and still claim to have had an awsome day!

Reilly just yelled, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm writing a blog post about how I'm a bad mommy." He said, "I talkin about Loki. Not about you, mommy." (Loki is our dog... apparently she was bothering him).

Vacation and back to work

I'm pleased to report that I successfully logged off for 11 days! It wasn't a huge vacation trip, just a little cross-country drive to visit the grandparents. It was such a wonderful week! It was all about seeing the world through a 2.5 year old's eyes. The swimming pool. The "beach" (at a lake). Catching fireflies. It was so wonderful!

Then back to work - luckily, I was pleasantly surprised to find only 500 emails in my inbox!

The kiddo had a bit of a struggle getting back into a daily routine with boundaries. In fact, we're still struggling with the bedtime boundaries that went out the window during vacation.

I'm two weeks back from vacation and have had a headache for the last 4 days... how sad to already need a massage after just 10 days back at work!!

Weekend of happy mom memories

I got up bright and early (7:51am) on Saturday as it was "my day" to wake up with Reilly. I decided to get us dressed and go run some errands, and had the brilliant idea to call a friend and her son who's a year older than my little one to meet us at Chick-Fil-A. Chick-Fil-A is by far the best rainy Satuday lunch spot on the planet. Not only do the kids get chicken nuggets (classic diet staple), but they get fruit and milk and a book. AND there's an indoor playscape built for the little kids. Our kids played for a SOLID one and a half hours! Leading to a 2.5 hour nap afterwards. So awesome.

Then on Sunday, we went to a co-worker's house who has horses and she showed my kiddo how to brush the horse and then threw a saddle on him (the horse, not the kid) and let Reilly ride around her property. And then took him around the property again, after a very happy "I wanna go again!" My favorite moment was when he yelled "Giddyup!"

I felt like an awesome mom this weekend. Truly memorable moments.

Then Monday rolled around and we were back to the "Hurry up, honey, mommy has to get to work!" routine. *sigh*

Two more weeks until family vacation! Jeers to British Petroleum for ruining our beach vacation, but we'll still have a good time at the grandparents' house since they have a pool! Not looking forward to that 16 hour drive, though...

Constant Stream of Noise

Today was rough. It was a clingy and chatty day for my son. It was like I had the TV on all day but never saw a thing. A constant stream of noise but none of it amounted to any substance. He ends all sentences with "Right?" and replies to all comments with "Why?" If I use the Mommy tune-out he will continue to repeat his statements until I acknowledge some recognition. My auto-pilot now includes random interjections of "yes", "that's right", and head shaking. I've tried several techniques for a little quiet but none of them seem to work. He follows me around while I do house cleaning, talks over the vacuum (and usually pulls out his extremely loud lawn mower to help with the job), he even talks between bites while eating. Naptime is usually the only peaceful time in this house and now those are lost since I have to nap myself. When he's home there's no time to myself.

I was blessed with a child that is motivated by mommy and daddy's approval. He has a STRONG moral compass and wants to make sure (every second) that he is on the right path and that he is thinking the right way or doing the right things. I know this but it still wears on me. I have tried answering his questions with questions rather than definitive answers. It seems to help but it takes more effort on my part and is very exhausting. On day's like today I can usually only muster up "Yes's" and "Uh huh's".

I have only 2 hours a day and 2 days a weekend to set, correct, and maintain proper behavior. It is a constant science experiment to see what is ACTUALLY going on. I know from my bachelors degree in child psychology (and watching a few episodes of Super Nanny) that almost all childhood problems stem from parenting. Fix the parents, fix the children. It's just really tough to do in 2 hours.