Tracey Bianchi's Mom Connection

A review of Tracey Bianchi's book, Mom Connection.

Tracey Bianchi speaks to the mother at the forefront of her joy, her pain, her day-to-day of raising a child(ren) while confronting the ways in which the mother can feel a disconnect from people and life in general. The need for community and companionship for a new mother, and a veteran mother, is of great importance to maintain a healthy and connected sense of well-being. Bianchi brings to light, and realistically enlightens the reader, how to find, or re-find, that "mom connection" in the world of relationships beyond the front door of the home.

Questions such as, "who am I really and how do I make time for myself now that I am a mother," are real questions I have asked myself and I know other mother's have done the same. Bianchi offers great tips and advice to help the mother answer these questions and find the balance that is so very important between being a mother and an individual. Bianchi encourages the reader to grow relationships while helping restore the every exhausted mother to a place of sanity....and we all know how important sanity is as a mother. I am not always sane, my husband can attest to that, but Bianchi helps you to get out of your own way by giving you 5 mom-tested tips at the end of each chapter that offer great resources to tap into.

Bianchi really gets down to the core of what it is like to "feel alone" as a mother and how we shouldn't feel alone while also presenting ways to prevent and overcome this engulfing feeling. Bianchi's ideas and advice on the subject help bridge the "alone" gap into meaningful relationships. Her insight and humor are refreshing and encouraging. As a new mother myself I would recommend this book to mothers who feel they have a good host of support and to mothers who are feeling very alone. Everyone can get something out of this book.

I have one free copy to give away. If you are interested please let me know!

daunting decade

well evelyn seems to have very little interest in walking without holding onto something. she will push her walker all day long like a champ but when you take it away from her will just stand for a few seconds but then decide to sit and crawl. she has ventured out to take 5 or 6 steps but ends up plopping back down. i just hope she is walking by mid june when all her cousins get here so she can walk around and follow them...much for fun than crawling....or maybe not, maybe crawling is just the greatest fun of all fun. what do i know, i gave up crawling decades ago...yes, decades.

speaking of decades, i am approaching my third decade in a few months. yikesabee. i really don't know what to think about this daunting decade that i am inching toward every.single.day. makes me think of john mayer's song, stop this train. if you haven't heard it you can HERE. the lyrics are fantastic.

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't but honestly won't someone stop this train

So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun

to me, the true brilliance of the song follows the previous line:

Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you'll renegotiate
Don't stop this train
Don't for a minute change the place you're in
Don't think I couldn't ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we'll never stop this train

i think it is easy for many to find themselves in the lyrics of this song. i know i have find myself lingering in the spaces where i do feel scared to get older because i've only ever been young...and i know how to be young. the thought of turning 30, or any number older, just feels like i'm placing another brick onto the accelerator...speeding faster and faster to what? to where? to the unknown.

looking back i do wonder where my 20s went and how they went so fast.  it may be a bit early for this, but here are some of the highlights of my 20s:

~ found my way to bryan college

~ met some of the most incredible people and forged some of the greatest friendships of my life

~ found myself

~ met my husband

~ graduated from bryan

~ married my husband

~ started a life with my husband

~ had evelyn

i would have to say all in all my 20s have been pretty kick ass. i guess there won't be any stopping this train. 30s...here i come.



the prodigal rib

i had had the most productive work week, balance-it-all week, until i woke up this morning to my rib out of place for the third time in a year. this unfortunate and excruciatingly painful prodigal rib is result of lifting too much weight in my 30 minute attempt at the arms P90X DVD. so today i can barely: lift my 20 pound daughter (who is currently yanking every clean cloth diaper out of the sack and stacking them on the couch), turn my head to the left, or complete any work while she slept. i suppose i was due a good "rest day" but don't feel rested, not one bit...i just feel stiff and twinges of pain.

thankfully, thought, i have an aunt who can fix my unfortunate, non-serendipitous prodigal rib. just waiting on her to show up and hoping evelyn doesn't require much physical contact for, um, at least 2 days. huh, yeeah riiight.

in evelyn news: she has started to shake her head "yes" to questions. questions like, "do you want an orange?" "do you want to see so-and-so?" "do you want to be potty trained today?" its fantastically charming when she does it and it always makes me smile. she is little-miss-personality. she gets so wrapped up in her books sometimes she just can't help but take a bite of one of the corners...nibble here, nibble there. we've taken to hiding the "good" books because they really don't stand a chance once her razor sharp pearly whites get to chewing.

still no walking by herself...without holding onto something else that is. she is a champ at walking with her walker-thing with wheels that she can push - like a mini lawn mower...maybe i should put her to work outside on the grass. holdthatthought. but she will attempt to push anything she can get to budge: her small fold-up chair, a big chair, her wagon, a box of cereal, it doesn't matter really. she will stand alone but when she realizes it she usually crouches low, sits then: commence crawling. i'm sure she will walk when she finds it more efficient than crawling. i keep telling her, "come on, start crawling so we can get you potty trained!" i'm dead serious. i'm tired of this diaper nonsense. :)

i've cut my hair really short but no one seems to notice. (my husband didn't even notice. when i brought to his attention that something was different he focused his gaze, squinted his eyes and asked, "you put on make-up today?" thanks, honey, but nope. i chopped off about 8 inches of hair! *withering stare*) maybe i should pull a britney to get some acknowledgement of my new do? thoughts?

now that every diaper is out of the bag and covering the floor and my prodigal rib is screaming at me i will go take a big cocktail of drugs and wait out coldplay to come fix me.

* i was kidding about the cocktail. happy friday!

clap on, clap off

we are all waiting with bated breath for evelyn's first steps. she has been "cruising" for quite some time now and even walking using her walker toy since her birthday but no steps yet. today she pulled herself up on sam and let go and just stood, balancing for a handful of seconds before sitting back down. we just stare at her like she's capable of doing a back flip or something radical. i can only imagine what we look like to "kid-less" people. laughable...i am sure. nonetheless, she is pure entertainment to us.

she started to clap a few days ago. she thinks it is the best thing since discovering her love of avocados and will clap spontaneously, usually when she realizes she's forgotten her newly found trick, and also on-demand. for some reason she didn't catch onto the clapping fad months ago when we started to try and teach her how - probably because i read it in some book that she "might/maybe/may/should be clapping" at this-or-that certain age and felt i should try to force her to learn to clap because the book said so. those books are almost bad in the sense that if your kid doesn't do the thing they say that they might or should be doing at certain months, you automatically think they are going to be the "special" kid that eats the paste in kindergarten.

moving right along...

i just love how inquisitive she is. she seems to ask questions with the sounds she makes when she looks at things, especially when she looks at pictures. she has this obsession with pictures. we point out people a lot to her - something i've been doing from very early on - and it is interesting to see how she studies the faces and can even point to certain people when you ask her to.

we've also been signing to her specific words like: eat/food, bath, mommy, daddy, etc. and its amazing how well she understands. she signs eat/food back every now and then but nothing on a regular basis yet. we can even finger spell certain words, without speaking/using a voice at all, and she knows what we are talking about. the first word that had been spelled out to her was the word fan. she knew what the fan was and where to locate it by looking up at it well before we started finger spelling it to her. after only a handful of times finger spelling the word, while saying the word, she was able to recognize f-a-n being spelled alone and look up for it. she did this before she turned 12 months. i was blown away. so we started to finger spell more words - words we use often like book and cat. the language development is just one of the most mind boggling, intensely incredible things about humanity to me. 

one of evelyn's favorite toys is the t.v. remote. she goes after those things like they are laced with crack or something. every day she seems to learn a new trick or maneuver and figures out how to get to things she couldn't days and weeks previous. sam tried to tuck the "daddy remote" in the drawer in the coffee table beside the couch because this line does not seem to matter to a 12-month-old; "This is Daddy's remote, not mo's." you're shocked that doesn't work, aren't you??? moments later, evelyn saunters over/crawls like a bat outa hell, pulls herself up, and, without much effort, manages to get the drawer open, pulls out the remote, raises it in the air with a grand smile on her face, looks at her father with that same smile and says, "uuhhHHHHH?!" yep. she's watching us alright. sort of like the aliens in that M. Night Shamalayayayayannnn movie. we often leave out a bunch of half-drunk water glasses too. not because we are lazy and don't clean up after ourselves... just to be prepared in case of alien invasion.

all that enter must wear green...

as promised, here are pics from evelyn's first birthday bash. we had a fantastic turn out and she had so much fun playing with everyone who came...especially the little boy babies who she tried to beat up. yep, we have THAT child.
and with no further ado...

the cake and some decorations

tasty cake, but king soopers should probably hire a new cake decorator.

banner and photo collage

rainbow with pot of gold made of fruit. this was my other baby. so proud

lucky charms are tasty treats

the spread

tasting her special birthday cake and lovin' it.

taking a break to read a little.

reading from her new book

crab crawl over the book

gimme that, daddy

walking with her new toy.

evelyn with honey and pa

realizing we forgot to take pictures after we changed from our outfits

happy birthday to our little shamrock baby

this blackberry lovin' maniac

remembering this week of my life last year is pretty bitter-sweet. sometimes more bitter than sweet. i often refer to it as "hell week" because in many ways, the many ways leading up to evelyn's actual arrival, was nothing less than one of the worst experiences i've ever endured. i hear about many women who have absolutely wonderful birthing experiences and recovery periods and that they look fondly upon that time of their life. i have a tendency to disbelieve such stories just because mine was so disappointing. there are many things about the week that led up to evelyn's birth that still upset me to this day. it is easy to say, "i wish i had done this differently, trusted my body more, listened to the drs insisting i be induced less..." but despite all that i felt went wrong, and most of it went wrong, i did get to go home (eventually, and after being admitted 3 separate times on 3 separate days) with a blue eyed, pale skinned, bald little baby girl. and because of that i am one of the lucky ones, one of the blessed- beyond-measure ones, and for that i am thankful.

i belive God intends for us to learn from the things in our life. He also allows us to experience the things we do for reasons....sometimes for reasons we may never understand while we walk this earth. i'm not sure why i had to go through what i did and feel bereft of memories i should have had because i ended up having a c-section, and was so doped up i couldn't remember the night evelyn was born. everone else seems to have memories of her birth night but i don't. my memory is not having memory. but i am blessed to have a husband who can help me fill in the gaps. and he does...quite often.

i know how cliche it is to say, "it was worth everything i went through." i don't like being cliche and have a tendency to dodge behind the bushes when cliche is walking toward me. but it was worth it. every bit of it.

and in two days we will have a one-year-old blackberry lovin' maniac. happy birthday, mo. we just love ya.

birthday lolapaloooooza is COMING! mark your calendars!

in honor of evelyn turning ONE on st. patties day this year we have decided to throw her an all-things-green lolapalooza! we just had to do it. i know she won't remember and no, she won't get to taste any of her cake - scoff and gasp if you must - so really this bash is more for us than her. and if our memories hold up over the coming years, as we hope the many pictures i anticipate taking will, then i have no doubt this party will be a blast-n-a-half.

i went to one of those party central stores this past weekend to pull together the last of the decorations. it took great strength and a shallow pockets to keep me from buying up everything i saw despite the spirited employee who kept harassing me while i browsed. yes, she did harass me and even convinsed me to get a banner. its pretty fantastic, though, i can't lie.

truthfully i wish this party was yesterday because i just am itching to decorate, put out all kinds of green food and see evelyn in her green tutu outfit. not much is cuter on a little girl baby than a tutu.

yesterday and today we had a photo session in hopes of capturing the essence of our little inquisitive charmer. since pictures are dang expensive these days, and we now are the proud owners of a brand new camera, i figured i'd give it the ol college try. i will warn you in advance: evelyn is not the "lets sit and look all doe-y eye'd into the camera and not move" type of child. maybe number 2 will be. (NO,we're not expecting) she is busier than most bees every single day and today was no exception. so these pictures are now brought to you out of a little sweat, tears, exasperated sounds and words....PG stuff only, of course....ENJOY!

happy

meltDOWN

always proppin' a leg

what i feel like she is doing...