Seven Quick Takes on a Thursday Night

Many blogs I read do a "seven quick takes" blog entry on Fridays, so I am going to give it a shot here on a Thursday night!

1. I have not abandoned this blog, I swear! It seems like this last month has flown by between Mother's Day and my birthday, which are a week apart, and crazy busy-ness at work. I may not have mentioned this before but I am paid to write for my company, so sometimes, while I have interesting ideas for my blog, and would much rather spend my day writing for my blog, the most energy I can muster when I get home at the end of the day is to note the idea, thinking I will come back to flesh out the post later. Um, yeah. I will try to write a little more regularly here in the future. I am better at posting pithy, 140-word updates to my Twitter feed, @GlamOMommy, so follow me on Twitter if you dare!

2. After almost two years and nine months, I have started regular exercise again--yay! Pre-baby, I was a regular, three to four times a week, Jazzerciser. Some people may think that's crazy, but I love Jazzercise. It feels more like dancing to the latest top music rather than "exercising," but it combines cardio, stretching, and strength training in one hour. I always feel so much better after a class, because I know I've worked every part of my body. I couldn't exercise during my pregnancy, because I had an early bleeding scare and considering all the difficulties I encountered to get pregnant, my doctor advised me to take it easy for the first trimester just so I would have peace of mind that the baby was okay. When the second trimester began, I was primed to go back to Jazzercise and do it all low impact, but then I was struck with a severe case of sciatica that left me having trouble simply WALKING for several weeks. By the time that passed, I was so huge and it was so hot in Texas, I just gave up and told myself I'd get back in class after the baby was born. Um, yeah. I went three times while on maternity leave, and it was SO hard because I'd been practically immobile for so long. Now, almost two years later, I am back in class, and doing WAY better than I expected. Apparently, chasing after and lifting a 28-pound toddler is fabulous exercise all on its own. My stamina now is almost better than I went to class all the time! I'm only going twice a week after a work. The other two days, I pick up my daughter from school and my husband goes to work out, so this way, we both get a good workout in!

3. On Saturday morning, my daughter and I start the first of 11 Saturday mornings of Mommy and Me swim class. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking I didn't want my daughter to be as old as I was (six) when she started swim lessons. I wanted her not to be afraid of the water and possibly save herself. I was thinking it would be cool for her to have some good experience in the water before we go on our vacation in September (more on that later). What I wasn't thinking was, oh, that means I have to GET UP and BE SOMEWHERE at 9:15 in the morning every Saturday this summer. What I wasn't thinking was, oh, that means I have to WEAR A SWIMSUIT every Saturday morning this summer. In front of other people. With my mommy pooch and less-than-toned thighs in full effect (thus the Jazzercising!). What I wasn't thinking was, oh, that means I have to wrangle my cute baby for essentially TWO HOURS every Saturday morning this summer for a half-hour class. What I wasn't thinking was, oh, that means I have to WAX regularly this summer! (I have an appointment tomorrow!) Hopefully, it will be a fun bonding experience for me and my little gal and she will take to the water like a cute little duckling.

4. I found out this week that yet another friend of mine who has a kid around the same age as mine is pregnant with baby #2. And I feel fine. I feel I am good with my decision to only have one child, after having moments of doubt and serious babyfever this spring. While I'm not completely ready to start selling off our baby equipment and clothes yet, I feel that I am done, and I'm okay with that. I essentially knew going into our pregnancy that it was most likely my one shot at experiencing that miracle, and so I really reveled in it and tried to enjoy it as much as possible. It's a little bittersweet knowing that was truly it, especially as my daughter now looks like a kid vs. a baby and hits huge new milestones all the time, but I love her so much and I'm so grateful to have her, it's okay. She'll have all of our love and attention, whether she wants it or not! :)

Watch out world! I'm a big girl now! (21 months old)

5. Next week, for the first time in my motherhood, I am going to be single-parenting it all week, as my husband is going out of town for work. EEK! I am taking the advice of another blogger, and have lined up dinner with the grandparentals on Monday night (it's my mom's birthday), dinner with a mom friend on Tuesday night, and may take my daughter to the grandparentals to spend the night on Thursday, so I can get in one Jazzercise class at least. :)

6. As if things weren't going to be hairy enough for me next week, what with some looming deadlines at work and the single parenting, I had to go and make things more complicated by choosing NOW to start working on potty training. SIGH. I really don't know what I was thinking. For several months now, I've talked up the potty with my daughter--she comes in with me occasionally, we've watched an Elmo potty video, and read an Abby Cadabby potty book--just so she would start getting the idea. This week, I set up her little potty in our bathroom, but did not point it out to her at all or tell her it was for her. Yesterday morning as we were getting ready for work and she was playing in our room, I told her I was going to go potty, and she immediately ran over to HER potty and sat on it! Hooray--she's ready, I thought. But the thing is, at her school, they don't reinforce potty training in the class she's in now and I wasn't sure when she was going to move up to a class that would. So my husband and I stopped in at her school today and talked to the director, and she told us they have a transition class they are putting some of the early potty training kids in, and that she can visit the class NEXT WEEK (while I'm single parenting) to see if she'll do okay there, and if so, she can move on up there and doesn't have to wait until August, which is when the rest of the kids her age will move up to the potty training classes. And, in the new class, she will get music and a stretch and grow class once a week, so I think that will be fun for her...I worry that she is bored in her current class. (I may be biased, but she can count to 10, spell her first name, sing the alphabet song and many others, recite some books from memory, and recognize all the letters, shapes, and colors, so I think she's pretty smart and a fast learner and want her to be challenged and learning new things.) But, and I do this every time she moves classes, now I'm sad to see her leave her teachers, who are so sweet! It's tough...I want her to move on and grow, but I want her to stay my baby and stay with good people that love her too, so it's a push and pull all the time. Luckily, one of the teachers in the new class was her teacher when she was first in school at four months. My daughter doesn't remember her now, of course, but I loved her and so that makes it a little better for me, although we have yet to have a bad teacher at this school. :)

7. Jamaica. Jamaica. JAMAICA!! We've booked our big vacation this year, and we're going back to Jamaica! (Another perk of not having another baby--we can still afford to travel fun places!) My husband and I went to a Sandals resort in Negril about four years ago and had an amazing time. We also took the picture that became our Christmas card picture that year on that trip.

Our 2006 Christmas Card Picture from Jamaica

I thought this was pretty glam, I have to say!

Next door to Sandals, which is couples-only, is their sister resort named Beaches, which is for families. On our last visit, we walked over to check Beaches out because we had privileges there, but came back quickly after encountering all the noisy children. Now that we have a noisy child of our own, we are excited to go to Beaches! And our daughter is excited too, because she saw the pictures of Elmo and the other Sesame Street characters that live at Beaches on their website! She was like, "Elmo!!" So we will get to have a fun beach vacation in a beautiful place and help our daughter make some fun memories with her Sesame Street friends too. So, as you can imagine, the Jamaica vacation is essentially what prompted both the return to exercising and the Mommy and Me swim class! (The potty training will help too...our daughter can participate in better kid activities at the resort if she's potty trained!) And, on a few recent shopping trips, I bought two possible outfits for myself and one for my daughter for the Christmas card picture we will take on the beach in Jamaica on this trip LOL. Now I just need to coordinate a nice outfit for my husband too. :) I'm already ahead on our 2010 Christmas card--BONUS!

If you are reading this, thanks for reading! I'll try not to be away as long next time. :)

Marking Milestones with Jewelry

I love things that sparkle and shine, so it should come as no surprise that I love, love, love jewelry. (I am Glam-O-Mommy after all.) Over the years, I've marked many milestones in my life with jewelry.

For my 29th birthday, I was living the high life in Las Vegas for a weekend trip with two girlfriends and one of my friend's extended family. Her dad was considered a high roller, so it was all expenses paid for us at Mandalay Bay while we were there, which was amazing! I used my own piddly spending money to play quarter slots and won a big (for me, not for any high rollers LOL) pot, so to commemorate my 29th birthday and my awesome weekend, I took a taxi over to the Bellagio and used my winnings to buy myself a Tiffany heart bracelet with my initials engraved on it. I was so proud of it, because it was my first piece of Tiffany jewelry--we didn't even have a Tiffany's in San Antonio then. It seemed glamorous and iconic to have a little piece of that on my arm. Being 29 and single, I was fairly bitter at the time; in fact, my nickname for myself then did not include "Glam" in the title at all...it was Single Bitter Woman LOL. I regaled all of my friends and coworkers with stories of my Single Bitter Woman bad date and awful pickup line encounters (Single Bitter Woman would've been an AWESOME blog filled with hilarious, horrifying dating stuff!). I was pretty sure I was going to be single FOREVER at that point, so the bracelet was sort of a "I don't need a man...I can buy myself pretty things" statement for me too.

Ironically (and luckily for me), later that year, I met and started dating my now-husband, the Destroyer of Single Bitter Woman (hard to be bitter when you're happy and in love) and the Co-Creator of Glam-O-Mommy. :) For our first Valentine's Day together, when we'd been together about three months, he was trying to do things right, so he bought me some roses and candy from the grocery store, and a piece of jewelry...a $7 silver bracelet that he bought at Target. He kind of meant it as a joke, but I put that bracelet on and told him I was going to wear it every day until he replaced it with another piece of jewelry! And I did. I never took it off until...

Seven months later, when he proposed to me with a gorgeous engagement ring. We had looked at rings together, so he got exactly what I liked (a marquis diamond surrounded by princess-cut diamonds), and he proposed to me at the ice skating rink we frequented (he's Canadian and plays hockey, so he's a great skater and it's one thing we love to do together!) for two reasons: (1) because it's the first place he told me he loved me and (2) because he thought the ring would look extra sparkly out under the lights on the rink! Does he know me or what?

For my wedding, in addition to the beautiful wedding band my husband gave me to go with my engagement ring, I bought myself a diamond and pearl tiara to wear. At first, I did not plan to wear a tiara, because at 31, I thought I was too old of a bride to wear one, which I thought for months...until I finally tried one (just one, THE ONE) on and that was it! I was a tiara girl, to the surprise of NO ONE, since all my bridesmaids, my maid of honor, and my mother were like, really...YOU are not going to wear a tiara?! You know they sparkle right? And make you look like a princess? Are you sure?

My lovely parents also gave me a pearl and diamond necklace and earrings to wear at the wedding, since their originally planned gift went out in the trash a few years before. See, my Mother's engagement ring had a tiny chip of a diamond in it, and a few years after my Mom got the ring, she accidentally vacuumed it up while cleaning. This destroyed the band, but my Mom managed to find the tiny diamond and kept it for almost 30 YEARS, in a tiny plastic bag in various jewelry boxes. Her plan was to have the little diamond set into a necklace to give to me to wear at my wedding. About four years before I met my husband, my parents were cleaning things out of the house in preparation for a move, and my poor sweet Daddy accidentally threw the little plastic bag with the diamond away! He thought it was a stray piece of plastic and didn't even see the tiny diamond inside. Once they realized what he had done, Mom and Daddy searched the trash thoroughly, but never found the diamond. They were heartbroken about it, and so was I when they told me, because I would've cherished having that since it was the diamond my Daddy gave my Mom when they were 20 and 21 years old! (They've been married almost 42 years!) So they gave me a beautiful pearl and diamond necklace and earring set to wear on my special day instead and I cherish that as well. Someday, I hope my daughter will wear the tiara, necklace, and earrings on her own wedding day...I'm keeping all of that for her!

It's a little tough to make out the earrings and necklace in this picture,
but the tiara looks amazing, right?!

My husband, the Destroyer of Single Bitter Woman, also rocks!

Another thing I'm keeping for my daughter is a present I picked out for myself for my 35th birthday when I was pregnant with her. As I've explained previously, I fought a tough, completely unglamorous battle to get pregnant. The fact that I was pregnant and going to have a daughter was amazingly miraculous to me, so I when my 35th birthday rolled around, I had been thinking about jewelry to commemorate my impending motherhood. My parents decided to give me a little cash for my birthday that year, and since clothes and SHOES were not really that exciting an option for me at that point, I decided to add to the cash they gave me and splurge on an initial necklace from Tiffany's (which had made its way to San Antonio in the six years since I turned 29), because my daughter and I share the same first initial. My plan, from the moment I bought the necklace, is to wear it myself until my daughter turns 16, and then give it to her on that significant birthday. I hope she loves and treasures it and understands what it represents...my love for her and how she is the fulfillment of my heart's deepest desire.

My husband has given me some other pretty wonderful pieces of jewelry that I adore. And when I say 'given', what I mean is 'taken me to the store and let me pick out what I want', which is his favorite way of giving gifts and one that I'm generally down with, since he actually hates to shop and is not a huge fan of getting or giving gifts at all. So the fact that he gives me gifts this way tells me that he really does love me a lot! For our first Valentine's Day as a married couple, he gave me a pretty diamond drop necklace. For our first anniversary, he gave me a set of diamond stud earrings, because I had had surgery to repair both my earlobes since our wedding and needed real earrings to wear after they were re-pierced and while they were healing rather than costume jewelry. On my 34th birthday, I was deep in my hellhole of infertility despair at that point. I saw two things I liked when he took me to shop for a gift, a pink sapphire necklace and a pearl necklace, and told him either would be wonderful, I couldn't decide. He bought them both. I know...I am one lucky lady! He was really trying to make me feel better with that double gift, because it was literally the saddest, lowest point of my life at that time, and he was in those emotional trenches with me every day. He was my rock.

A month before my due date, my dear husband took me out for a nice dinner and to shop for a special gift since I was in the home stretch of my miracle pregnancy. He balked at the suggestion that this was a 'push present' as many people call it, he was like, "This is my idea! I just want to give you something nice because pregnancy is tough and you only have a month to go!" Together, we picked out another pair of diamond earrings, this time a little drop style vs. the studs I normally wear. And those lovely earrings were the only piece of jewelry on my person when my beautiful baby came into this world and took her first breaths and laid in my arms. And I still marvel at the fact that I am a Mommy every time I look at those earrings.

This year, for Mother's Day, I bought myself my own gift. My husband is not big on Mother's Day and my daughter made me a beautiful painting of a sunflower with her hand and thumb prints that I framed and have displayed in my office, but I had been wanting a Mommy necklace, a simple one that would look chic with jeans or a dressy outfit. I found the Tiny Tag Designs website and decided to order myself a simple two-tag necklace with my daughter's name and birthdate, which is of course, one of the best days of my life! Certainly, an amazing day to commemorate, but it's really a commemoration of the greatest gift of all: being her mother, a role I wasn't sure I was ever going to get to play, and a child's love, one I was not sure I would ever know. I'm so grateful to know it now. I got my necklace a few days before Mother's Day, and could not love it more! (Note: I bought the necklace myself and am not receiving anything from the designer or the website for this plug...I just seriously love my Tiny Tags necklace!)

My daughter's gift is super sweet and looks awesome framed in my office!
I smile every time I look at it.

While I love beautiful things, and aspire to glamour in all aspects of my life, ultimately what jewelry comes down to for me is love and life. The most important days, milestones, loves, and experiences of my life have been marked with jewelry. When I wear that jewelry, more than swathing myself in sparkle and bling, I'm clothing myself in the love and the memories of the people that gave me the pieces or that were part of my experience, whether that's my 29-year-old Single Bitter Woman self who I now remember with love and wish I could go back and advise her to relax, you will find someone, you will eventually have a beautiful daughter, life will be okay, or my husband who is truly my love and my partner in life and changed my life for the better in so many ways, or my amazing parents who sacrificed everything they ever had to give me a good life, symbolized in a pearl and diamond necklace and earrings that are really stand-ins for a tiny, not-worth-much-except-the-world-of-my-parents'-love chip of a diamond I never got to receive.

I am blessed and I am grateful to have so much love in my life. It's like the Mastercard commercial...gorgeous bling, sparkling diamonds, and pearls=$$$ dollars. Having an amazing family, loving, and being loved in return=priceless.

Another Baby?

Now that my daughter is 20 months old, I get a lot of the "So when are you guys going to have another baby?" inquiries.

OK, that's a lie. Those inquiries actually started when I was on MATERNITY LEAVE. Seriously. I was like, HELLO? Do you see the tiny pink-clad person sleeping on the Boppy right here? She just came out! Give me a break, please. I'm still sore from labor.

Lately though, the baby issue has been on my mind as well.

It's noteworthy to mention here that I am an only child. As such, I don't really understand sibling relationships. The ones I see around me seem like a lot of drama for little emotional payoff. Since I don't have a sibling and feel like I had a pretty great life growing up with the full, undivided attention of my two loving parents, I always felt like I wanted to have one child. I would consider two, but really I was good with one.

My husband and I met when we were 29. Until me, he had given no thought to getting married or having a family. I am his first and only girlfriend and we got engaged after 10 months of dating. As such, I made sure to have the kids talk with my husband when we knew our relationship was going somewhere. I definitely want one child, I told him, so I need to know that you would be onboard with having at least one. I hadn't thought much about kids, he replied, but I can go along with that. So we were good to go.

Then, two years after we got married, we started actively trying to get pregnant and encountered difficulties. Understatement, much? DIFFICULTIES.

As our battle with infertility wore on, my husband and I started to get a little desperate. We went from wanting one kid to whatever we could get. Twins? No problem. Quintuplets? No worries...we'll just get our own TV show to make ends meet! LOL. And given the drugs and procedures we were trying, multiple births were a definite possibility. When I finally, miraculously got pregnant, we were actually very surprised we were only having one baby...my husband was convinced there was a hidden twin at the first few ultrasounds, especially because I popped out belly-wise early and why else would I be so big already? (Thanks, honey.)

Ultimately though, ending up with one healthy baby is the actual end goal of fertility treatments...not the Octomom freak show that you see in the media. And so I was very, very happy and grateful to be having one beautiful, much wanted, much loved baby.

And I'm sure I am biased, but my daughter was/is a wonderful baby. She's got gorgeous blue eyes and blond hair and other than demanding food loudly when it was time to eat (she doesn't like to miss a meal), she was the most easygoing baby ever. She rarely cried and slept ALL the time for the first few months after her birth, so she was easy to take anywhere and everywhere...to restaurants, to the mall, to friends' houses. She transitioned to day school without a hitch at four months. Now she is coming in to her own independent, strong, smart personality, but even with the occasional toddler tantrums, she is a gem of a kid. Really funny and smart and generally well behaved.

So now I find myself at the point where another baby is on my mind a lot.

In theory, I want another one...another beautiful, tiny, sweet little baby to love and sing to and carry around just like when my daughter was small. Because she really was not small for very long and now she looks like a little person, because that is what she is. She's not really a baby any longer.

My I-think-I-want-another-baby thoughts reached a fever pitch this evening when I visited a friend who just had her first baby yesterday (after her own battle with infertility). I went to the hospital and I held that tiny, gorgeous baby girl and my mind flashed back 20 months. My baby's tiny fingers. Her little feet. How she slept adorably all the time. Her little funny faces and movements. Her tiny button nose. How she fit into my arms perfectly, swaddled like a little burrito. Oh, it was magical holding that other baby and remembering my own. I think my uterus actually ached.

None of this is helped by the fact that my friend who was pregnant with me two years ago is pregnant with baby #2 now and another friend is trying to get pregnant with #2 right now. A little part of me feels they are moving on to the next class in Mommyschool and I'm being left behind. I want to go with them and have another beautiful baby too!

But then there's reality. And the reality is I found working full-time hours and being a mommy too stressful for me and was lucky that my company allowed me to reduce my work (and subsequently my pay) to four days a week after being back full time for nine months.

If I have another baby, I have no idea how I would have the energy to keep working and juggle everything, and I am not cut out to be a stay at home mom full time. I'm just not. I love being with my daughter and treasure the extra time with her that I have thanks to my reduced work schedule, but I'm not sure I could handle lacking in adult conversation every day. I drove my husband nuts peppering him with questions and inane mommy chitchat every day he came home when I was on maternity leave. He was like, you really need to go back to work honey. You need the social and intellectual stimulation. I need you to have it. I was like, what...poops and burps aren't stimulating enough for you as conversation?! But he was right.

Mostly though, I have continued to work because if I didn't, I would miss my paycheck. Because I like buying pretty things, and I'm used to having my own money to do so! I also love to travel and with one child, we can still afford to travel and it is easily manageable to do so. It was hard to take a paycut, but it has been so worth it to have every Friday off with my best girl. I don't think I could take a complete paycut to zero though.

So there's the part of me that wants another tiny baby to love in theory battling the part of me that thinks I couldn't handle a second baby in reality, along with the part of me that doesn't want our lifestyle to take the financial hit another baby would bring (our daughter's almost out of diapers!), and then there's the other two factors: my husband and my history.

My husband says he's good with one child. He was good before we had her and he's good now. Until recently, he had not seemed to waver in that viewpoint at all. He is such a great father and loves our daughter so, so much that I thought maybe he would change his mind and want to go for two, but anytime I've broached the subject with him, he's pretty set with one. She's a great kid, he says. One's easy to manage. We each still get time on our own. We're so tired now I don't know how we would make it with another, he says. And he's right. I absolutely concur on all these points.

Recently, in a moment of weakness (I think), he kind of said he had not closed the door completely on having a second child, and that surprised me. And freaked me out, because as I go back and forth on whether or not we should have another baby, it's easy for me to fall back on the fact that he is generally steadfast in being set with one child and that makes my decision for me. I told him that, and now he has reverted to his previous stance of one-and-done. But now, I don't know whether I should totally believe him. Now, I'm starting to get the feeling that if I were really set on two, he'd consider it.

The other factor is my history of infertility. I am so grateful that all I endured resulted in my beautiful miracle baby. I don't want to seem ungrateful or tempt fate. I got one healthy baby. I'm done. It is possible that we could get pregnant on our own without treatment, but it's pretty unlikely. And, if we did treatments again, they might be successful again...but maybe too successful and then we'd end up with more children than we ever planned to have, which would come with its own set of stresses. I am also about to turn 37, so what if another baby had health problems due to my advancing maternal age?

But my bigger issue/worry than all of these is my fear of failure. Ultimately, I'm afraid to really let go and want, really want another baby. Because if I do, if I decide I definitely want one, and commit myself to that journey, I risk plunging myself back down the hellhole of despair I lived in for over a year while I was trying to get pregnant the first time. I don't ever want to go back there. And I certainly don't want to go back there and have my daughter, the miracle baby I do have, suffer as a result.

Maybe it wouldn't be as emotionally hard for me if we tried again because she is here, she exists, and she lights up my life, every minute of it. But what if it did? And what if we decided to go for it and we didn't get lucky this time? How would I handle my disappointment then?

Or what if we did get pregnant and then I realized I really was good with one child all along? That I should've left well enough alone? That I can't handle the reality of two kids? That I was swept up in baby fever after all? How do I know what I really want?

I just don't know. But I think about it. A lot.

Fashion Frustration

The teachers at my daughter's day school think I am NUTS. And not just the teachers she has now...all the teachers she has had since she started school at four months old.

Most people bring their four-month-olds to "school" in one-piece sleepers. Not me. I was excited for my daughter to get to wear all of her cutely coordinated outfits, complete with socks or tights and matching headbands.

First Day of School

Don't get me wrong...when I was on maternity leave and we were mostly hanging out at home (her continually sleeping, me catching up on reruns of The OC on SoapNet), I often dressed her in onesies. Due to spitting up or diaper explosions, she often wore more than one a day. However, when we met friends for lunch or went over to visit my mother, the Nana, or went for a stroll and window shopping at the mall, I put her in cute outfits vs. onesies/sleepers.

Hanging out at home on maternity leave

Having a reason to put her in cute outfits every day was probably the only thing I liked about going back to the office initially. It certainly wasn't dressing my still-carrying-25-pounds-of-baby-weight body, learning how to balance 50-60 hours of work with being a mommy, or missing The OC every day! And so I took pleasure in it...dressing her in pants outfits with matching sweaters and socks, Fair Isle sweater dresses with colorful tights and headbands, anything that was multiple pieces with matching accessories. My daughter was the best dressed baby in the nursery. She was a single-baby fashion show.

Some of my favorite looks for her

While her teachers looked forward to seeing what I put on her each day and always told me she looked adorable when I came at lunch to feed her, they still thought I was crazy. My first tipoff was a few weeks into her school experience when the school had a Pajama Day.

One of my daughter's teachers went out of her way to point out that Friday was Pajama Day. We're all wearing pajamas, Mom, she said, even all of us teachers. Sounds fun, I said. OK, so you're going to bring her in pajamas then, right Mom? she asked me seriously. Um, yeah, I responded, realizing that she was making a point to me, because my daughter was the one kid not already wearing pjs to school every day! On Pajama Day, I brought her in to school in one of her cutest one-piece footie sleepers...with a matching headband. I couldn't help myself. The next week we returned to all pajama-free fashion, all the time.

Fashion fun at school was all well and good when my daughter was immobile and eating only out of a bottle...it became infinitely more complex when she started eating baby food, doing art projects, crawling/walking, and playing outside. More complex for me, anyway, in terms of laundry. While I appreciate that the teachers have more than one kid to feed, and I was still dutifully coming at lunch each day to help feed my daughter, it was mostly in an attempt to keep her and her clothes clean and food free. Orange food, which they seem to serve several days a week at school, became the bane of my existence. I began to dread doing her little laundry, which started to involve tons of Oxyclean, Clorox color-safe bleach, AND Tide...all at once on garments to get stains out.

This is the bib I sent to the school...
even the full arms don't seem to protect her clothes from stains!

Art was also annoying, because despite the teachers' claims that the paint was washable, a few outfits got ruined by this "washable" paint.

Why not give in and send her to school in her simplest, oldest, most boring clothes you ask? Because then the terrorists win! No, of course that's not why. I send her to school every day looking as cutely dressed as possible, because I love to dress her in pretty outfits. My daddy always told me growing up, "If you can't be sweet, be pretty" and I guess that stuck with me (I try to be both). I am admittedly high maintenance (see Why Glam-O-Mommy?). I always like to look pretty and I like for her to look pretty too! I care what I look like...why would I send my daughter to school looking like a ragamuffin? Some people do, but I just can't.

I love to accessorize her looks

As my daughter has grown and moved up into other classes, new teachers have led to new fashion challenges as well...one being the backup outfit. It's always a great idea to have a backup outfit in the diaper bag in case of emergency. I always sent one along initially. At one point, the teachers she had changed her into the backup outfit provided every day...just because. Not because of an accident or any true emergency...just because they wanted to, which I got tired of, because it created double the laundry for me! So, I nipped that in the bud by NOT sending an extra outfit AT ALL, and suddenly my daughter was able to make it through the day wearing the same outfit with no problem!

Lately, I have been sending one again since she's in a different class. In this class, the kids sit at a table and get to feed themselves, which means they can get their own food all over themselves and the kids around them because they are learning to eat on their own, with or without utensils! And they go out to the playground everyday, which means my daughter dumps dirty sand all over herself at least once a day. Joy.

I don't generally go to see her during lunch anymore, because my daughter is at a clingy stage and if I arrive mid-day for a visit, it just makes her upset when I leave and makes more drama for the teachers. If I do go, I try to time my visit with the playground time so I can wipe sand off her a little, but mostly I just eat lunch at my desk or go out with coworkers.

But back to the backup outfit issue...now I'm frustrated because these teachers have started changing her into just HALF the outfit. One day I came to school to pick her up and found her in the top from the backup outfit and the rest of her original outfit, which did not match at all. That day, they changed her because her original top got wet during the day. Perfectly understandable, but couldn't they have changed the entire outfit so at least she would MATCH?!

Then, yesterday I came to pick her up to find her in the leggings from the backup outfit and the rest of the original outfit, which looked bizarre. When I asked why they changed her out of her jean skirt and into the leggings, the teacher said it was because she thought the leggings were more comfortable for her. It was a little jean skirt for goodness sake! I hate coming to school and finding her looking like a HOBO CLOWN because she is in mismatched garments! (And the shoes she is wearing NEVER match the backup outfit...that's Murphy's Law).

Despite all my comments so far, I really like her teachers...they are absolutely terrific with my daughter. I love, love, love them aside from the ongoing fashion frustration, so I just gently mentioned to them that when they change her into the backup outfit, for whatever reason (even the ones I disagree with LOL), could they please go ahead and change her into the entire outfit? It seemed like this concept had never occurred to them! And like they were cautiously trying to appease an insane person as they said, OK, sure, we can do that if you want. No sudden movements around the crazy lady...

I don't think I'm crazy though. Obsessed with my daughter's cleanliness and appearance, yes, I'll admit that. (Don't EVEN get me started on the fact that her face always needs a good scrub to free it of food/snot/dirt at the end of the day or the fact that hand-washing time always includes the teachers encouraging my daughter to run her wet hands through her hair which restyles her hair into a faux hawk most days.)

But you know, I don't always go straight home after I pick her up. Some days we have places to go together, and on those days, I have two choices: (1) take my chances on what she will look like/be wearing at the end of the school day OR (2) take a clean extra outfit in my car to put on her when I arrive and plan to scrub her face/wet down and comb her hair back into control before we go. Usually I opt for number two when we have anything major to do that I know of in advance. Other days, I take my chances on the school, which means we mostly come straight home!

OK, I can't resist putting a few more pictures of my daughter in her cute outfits

Oh well...by then it's dinner time anyway, which gives my daughter one more chance to create challenging laundry for Mommy...

Baby Making in the Infertile World: Not Glam

For most people, when you start to think about having a baby, you think romance and glamour. You picture soft music, romantic lighting, a little BOOM-CHICK-A-WOW-WOW, and two weeks later, your boobs have exploded and you're puking up your breakfast. OK, actually that last part is not glamorous at all, but I digress.

When my husband and I started trying to get pregnant, this is pretty much how we approached it. We went birth-control free, we had a little fun, and waited expectantly for the lines to show up on the little stick.

By the third month, I think the fun was over and I was starting to approach baby-making with all the romance, glamour, and vigor of a Four-Star General entering battle. After the Red Army invaded each month, I would allow myself a good cry and chocolate-fest (there's a lot of crying in this battle) for the first two days. Then, I would look at the calendar and plan our strategy for the month. I would share the plan with my second-in-command, Major Hubby ("OK, this month, we're going to attack every other day from days 12 to 18" or "OK, this month, we're going to place two days between attacks from days 11 to 19", etc.). Major Hubby would instantly forget the plan, so I had to give him a daily briefing on what was happening that day per the plan.

At the six-month mark of our battle, we visited my OB/Gyn, who had advised me not to wait longer than six months of trying with no result, but to come back and see him due to my advancing maternal age...of 33. Our test results were defeating...there was no way we were going to get pregnant without medical help. Apparently, my eggs were nice and cozy up in my ovaries and did not care to march down to my uterus each month, which was a shock. Since no ovulation=no baby, let the indignities begin.

It started with Clomid...a nice, innocent looking little pill that turned me from an emotionally fragile mommy wannabe into a RAGEAHOLIC GOING INTO MENOPAUSE. Seriously. I got hot flashes all the time (mostly at inconvenient times at work), began to sweat in completely unglamorous places, and felt anger of monumental proportions coupled with deep sadness multiplied by extreme bitterness. I unleashed this horribleness on my husband, parents, friends, coworkers, God, everyone.

After several months, we moved on from my OB/Gyn to a reproductive endocrinologist, who kept me on Clomid and added in a side of sticking a wand up my va-jay-jay every time I saw him to get a look at what the heck was going on inside me that was not resulting in a baby EVER. Totally embarrassing the first time or two I visited him...OK, pretty much mortifying every time it happened (which was A LOT) for the next five months.

In the end, the way this Four-Star General and her Major Hubby won the battle against infertility and made a baby involved the aforementioned rageaholic drug plus extra estrogen, "buttering the corn" while watching porn (poor hubby, see Bill Engvall), and more things being stuck up my va-jay-jay, from the hubby's swimmers to twice-daily progesterone caplets I had to insert like a tampon to make any potential pregnancy stick. Uh, definitely not romance and glamour.

The first time we did this, it didn't work and I was once again devastated. I had spent over a year fighting a battle that had turned me into an unhappy, constantly hot and menopausal person who was also 10 pounds heavier than usual (again, thank you Clomid). This General was ready to rip off her stars and give up. Major Hubby, who, bless his heart, had suffered many of his own indignities in this battle (see buttering the corn), did not waver. He gave me a little pep talk. He thought we should give it another try. This isn't how I pictured it, I told him. It isn't going to work anyway. I'm tired, I'm fat, and I don't want this to ruin Christmas, I said. The odds are better on the second try, he said. I think we should do it.

So we did it, on a Saturday morning, two days after receiving news via the va-jay-jay cam that we had one little soldier egg who looked primed to make the march to the uterus. One magical little trooper, ready to go. I didn't even allow myself to hope that our little magical soldier egg would turn into a baby. We did the deed at the doctor's office and went home and hosted a Christmas party for 15 people at our house. We celebrated Christmas with my parents, although I was mostly going through the motions at this point. We made no plans for New Year's because I had no hope of good news or a good New Year to come.

Sixteen days later, on the morning of New Year's Eve, we found out that we had won our battle. I was pregnant with our miracle child. It was one of the best days of my life. I cried and cried at the news (and had a chocolate-fest), but for once they were tears of joy. I went from feeling like the most ugly, unglamorous, bitter woman alive to feeling like the happiest, most grateful, most beautiful woman alive, because I was going to have a baby, finally.

My now-19-month-old daughter is a rosy-cheeked, blonde-haired, blue-eyed angel. When I was in my darkest hours, she saved me. Today, the often messy, decidedly unglamorous life I lead as a working mom, a life where my bed never gets made, toys are taking over every room in the house, and I spend entirely too much time doing laundry, a life that would surprise my formerly pristine self, is the best life I can imagine. I am a mother to a beautiful, whip-smart toddler. She is the greatest victory of my life and well worth every tear I shed and every indignity I suffered along the way to becoming her mother. So while babymaking in the infertile world=NOT GLAM, beating the odds and triumphing over adversity? Definitely glam.

Least Glamorous Feature: My Feet

I have large feet, always have. I passed through my mother's shoe size in the fifth grade and kept on going. For most of my adult life, I've worn a size 10 (!) shoe.

When you wear a size 10, shoe shopping is no picnic. The world is made for the size 7s and 8s of the world, shoe-wise. Lots of shoes that look amazing and kick-ass in a size 7 or 8 look weirdly monstrous and boat-like in a size 10. Especially if, like me, you live in high heels (but not the little spindly heels, they have to be a good-sized heel to hold all 5'9" of me up!).

So, imagine my horror as my feet swelled and my calves and ankles teamed up into cankles for the last two months of my pregnancy. I was literally down to my last pair of shoes--a slide-on flat that I almost couldn't slide my toes under at the end (they were only half on, really), so huge were my feet. Aha! I thought. This is where the expression 'barefoot and pregnant' comes from--you end up literally barefoot at the end! It was so bad that my boss took pity on me and let me work from home a few days a week for the last few weeks of my pregnancy. No one wanted to have to look at my huge, scary cankles and listen to me shuffle around the office with my feet half out of my shoes.

As the end of my pregnancy drew near, I made plans. "I'm going to burn these horrible slide-on shoes after the baby comes!" "I can't wait until I can wear all my pretty size-10 heels again!" "I'm going to buy pretty new size-10 shoes to treat myself for having to wear these ugly slide-on shoes for the last few months!" etc.

I brought the baby home wearing the ugly shoes. And I kept wearing them, probably for the first month or two of her life. Meanwhile, the first 25 pounds of baby weight came slowly off, my feet went down to normal, my calves and ankles separated into two entities, and I anticipated my return to Size-10 High-Heel Glory.

Then, I began trying on all my shoes.

And almost all of them DIDN'T FIT.

Horrifically, post-pregnancy I am now a SIZE 11! 11! 11! Nineteen months...nineteen shoe-stressed months later, I still can't believe it.

My husband tried to console me at first. You haven't lost all your baby weight yet, he said. You should keep the shoes for when you lose the rest of the weight and they fit again. So I packed 30-plus pairs of shoes away into a bin for nine months. I lost the rest of my baby weight. I tried them all on again. No go. Still an 11.

When you're a size 11, there is no such thing as shoe shopping. There's no, gee, I really need a new pair of sexy black heels, let's go find some. It doesn't happen. 99.9 precent of stores do not carry an 11 in store. Most of them don't carry an 11 online either and I have to try a shoe on to know if it is going to work for me anyway.

The one store in town that carries a selection of size 11 shoes is Nordstrom's The Rack. Shoe shopping is, what does The Rack have in size 11? Will any of these weird shoes available in size 11 work with anything I own? Why are there no sexy black heels in size 11 here?

Last fall, I got really desperate. I needed to find a pair of knee-high black high-heel boots, a staple of my fall wardrobe, to replace the pair I could no longer wear. The Rack did not have anything, so I took a chance and went to Nordstrom proper. No point in actually looking at any of the shoes...I just cornered a salesgirl and asked her if they carried any size 11s. Yes, she replied. Hallelujah, I said. Please bring me any and all knee-high black high-heel boots you have in an 11. She returned with four pairs of black knee-high boots. Three of them were flat boots.

The single solitary pair of knee-high black high heel boots were by Cole Haan--gorgeous, incredibly comfortable boots (some sort of Nike Air cushioning inside) that made my calves look slim, slim, slim. I loved them. They were The Perfect Boots. My luck is changing, I thought! How much do these cost, I asked. $249, the salesgirl replied. $249!!!!!! I swallowed hard, pulled out my credit card, and bought them. I've never spent that much on a pair of shoes in my life! But, as I reminded my husband, they were THE ONLY BOOTS IN MY SIZE IN TOWN. A town that is the SEVENTH LARGEST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES.

There is no glamour in having size 11 feet. And sadly, I think my daughter will suffer the same fate as me. Already at 19 months, she wears a toddler size 8 shoe, which is a few sizes larger than most of my friends' kids of similar ages. And like me, the tops of her feet are very high, so lots of shoes with straps across the top are a no-go because her little feet won't slide under the straps! All those adorable little sparkly ballerina flats for toddlers...she can't wear any of them. So now I'm stressed about shoe shopping for two. As if my size 11 issue wasn't enough!

Creating a Glam-O-Kid

While I love shopping in general, shopping for my daughter certainly has surpassed all other shopping on my list. Clothes shopping, toy shopping, book shopping for her...I love it all, but clothes shopping is the most fun. All the cutely coordinated outfits and matching headbands or bows, all the adorable things little girls can wear and get away with that if big girls wore them people would think they were insane. (You can't really get away with wearing bows in your hair past high school drill team. Sigh.) It's all just too cute and totally addictive.

I didn't lose the last half of my baby weight until my daughter was about a year old. So during that first year, every time I went shopping because I needed clothes myself, being two sizes up from my pre-baby state, I would try on a bunch of stuff, get discouraged by how everything looked on my new, larger, weird body, and then go buy cute clothes for my daughter instead. It's only been in the last nine months since I got back down to my pre-pregnancy weight and can fit back into most of my old clothes that I've enjoyed any shopping for myself...and even then, despite the return to my former size, things are just not in the same place they were before (they are in my midsection vs. my butt), and I haven't quite figured out how to dress this new, still weird but smaller body yet, and hey, LOOK! Gymboree is having a sale!

Since my daughter is under two, I am still completely in charge of her wardrobe, which I love. I worry that when the time comes when she starts making decisions about what she wants to wear, she's going to be a tomboy or get her fashion sense from my husband, who thinks that he only needs three pairs of shoes (one dress, one hiking boot, one sneaker) to get by in life and that every time he gets a new clothing item, an older clothing item must be stricken from his clothing rotation, even if the older item is still perfectly fine. I know it's a silly worry in the grand scheme of things, but I still think about how I will handle it if she rejects all my fashion sense. I want her to be her own person and I respect that she is not the same person as me, but I really hope she likes dressing cute and girly.

Right now, it's hard to tell if she's going to be girly at all. Recently, she and I flew to Alabama to attend a reunion of my dad's extended family. The reunion was held on my late grandparents' farm, which is still in the family. I've never been much of a farm girl, as you can imagine. Outside of shelling peas and learning to drive the tractor when I was 15, I pretty much steer clear of farm-ish activities. (I'm the only one of the seven first cousins who doesn't own camo or hunt. And there are three other girls. Seriously.)

My daughter, on the other hand, LOVED the farm. She spent the day running out toward the fields, collecting sticks, and riding on a mini tractor. Of course, she did all of this in the outfit I picked out for her.

I know, I know. White frilly socks and sandals for the farm. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking that I wanted all 59 of my relatives to think she was cute! At least I didn't put her in white tights, which was what I planned when I thought it was going to be chilly. What was I, Glam-O-Mommy, wearing, you ask? A white beaded top, black capri pants, and black gladiator heels...perfect for chasing after a tiny tot in a pink sundress who is making it her mission to find all the mudholes in the land. While this gave my sweet Southern family quite a chuckle, I assured them, this was nothing. I once climbed a mountain in Canada in heels to make my husband happy. At the end of the day on the farm, my daughter had never been happier...or dirtier.

But I got a ray of hope this week. My daughter has suddenly discovered the joy of wearing sunglasses. She has had a few pairs for months, but didn't like them and would never keep them on until now. One morning before she went to school this week, she put these on all of her own accord...note how perfectly they match her ensemble.

She's accessorizing! And striking a bit of a diva attitude, I might add. My Glam-O-Mommy heart is SO proud!