First Time Swimming!

We are spending a short week with Steven's parents in Florida, taking a much needed break. It's taken me a good solid day and a half to unwind. Sophie, on the other hand, was ready and rearing to go from the first moment we got here.


She is so so so close to crawling. She has learned how to move herself forward, but she still drags her legs behind her.


She has also enjoyed laughing with and at Grandpa.


She's developing such a little personality, too. She's such a funny kid!


Sophie had her first pool experience yesterday. She loooooved it!



Grammie and I bought dollar straw hats from Target, and me and Soph hit the pool in the afternoon.


She is a water baby for sure.


She did so well, didn't even cry or seem scared for a second. Just adapted perfectly to the water.


Nana sent us a floatie to take with us to Florida, so we tested it out. Sophie loved it, of course!


Go Sophie go! I am totally signing her up for swim lessons this summer.


Before we left town, we bought her a cutesy headband with a flower bow. She is beyond adorable in it, and I need to do a proper photoshoot with it on her. Here's a glimpse of the cuteness.



More to come as we take to the water the rest of the week!

On My First Mother's Day

Those of you that know my husband know that he is a man that loves technological gadgets. I love this about him, because it often results in my getting some extremely cool techie presents for special occasions. (he's also a regular over at Williams Sonoma around the holidays....a true Renaissance gift-giver.)
So I'm back with the mobile blogging, but now I am proud to inform you that I am officially blogging from my brand new iPad! Sophie and Steven both got it for me... ;). And I super super love it.


See? I can blog and take pictures and post them, all from the iPad. Mighty cool. For example, you've just seen a picture of my very fancy new "Mommy-Pedi" that I got this afternoon before we went to a dinner party.

Whats a "Mommy-Pedi," you ask? Oh, it's a new pedicure offering at my new favorite salon, which is conveniently located in my master bath and consists of me and a bottle of Cherry Red OPI nail polish in the last 10 minutes before we left the house for the dinner party. I am nothing but classy all the way.

Finding myself at my first mothers day, I'm feeling pretty good. Sophie has started sleeping through the night ThankYouJesus!!, but none of my clothes fit right. Old ones are too small, maternity clothes way too big, and the two pairs of "in-between" pants that I bought thinking I'd be much smaller much faster than this... Well, I am certainly getting my money's worth out of them.

So we are at a crossroads, with two potential directions we could take:
(a) buy more clothes, or (b) get smaller.

I'd prefer not to buy more clothes this size, as i feel like that would be admitting defeat. So my only option here is to Get Smaller. Preferably as quickly as possible. It's not a matter of not knowing how to do this, it's just a matter of being too tired to get started. I know I'll feel better and have more energy if I can just get out the door and start running again. It's such a catch 22. Oh well. I'll get there eventually.

Discovering the Wood Floor, In Pictures

Hey, wait a minute.  What's that over there?

Hmm....

Looks different than my blankets.....

Feels different...

I wonder how it tastes?

Yep, tastes like wood floor. (Don't worry folks, she did not smash her face on the floor, she lowered it carefully down until her nose was touching the floor.)

And now I will ponder this new discovery over a nice bottle of milk.

Hoppy Easter!

Steven can testify -- I'm terrible at planning for holidays.  I end up shopping for Christmas at the last minute, I never manage to prepare a good Valentines' Day gift, and I'm just not the greatest celebrator, in general.

So, as you might imagine, I was surprised and delighted when I remembered three weeks ago to buy Easter basket stuff for Sophie's first Easter.  (Nana sent us the outfits, of course -- I'm not organized enough to buy Easter baskets AND cute clothes - come on, people!)

I used to chalk up the lack-of-holiday-preparedness to the fact that it seemed silly to do Easter baskets when it was just Steven and I.  (I obviously can't use the same excuse for Christmas....hmm.)  But having a little one in our family now has really changed my perspective on things, and I find myself wanting to make the extra effort to celebrate, to establish traditions, and to make holidays memorable for her in the same way that they were memorable for me growing up.  (Yes. I realize she is only 6 months old and will not be able to (a) consume any of the candy in her [my] Easter basket, or (b) remember any of today at all... Don't burst my bubble.)

So when we managed to get up, dressed, and out the door this morning for a Sunrise Service at church, I was beaming.  (I was, indeed, awake at 5 AM putting shredded green plastic grass into a wicker basket, but those are minor details that we don't really need to focus on right now, do we....)

I had some mighty adorable shoes to go with my Easter dress.  They were mighty tasty too.

We came home, after picking up some Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, to a stunningly beautiful morning, perfect for pictures.

And now Soph is splayed out on my lap, asleep, in her Easter snuggly romper, and its not even noon yet.  I often write here about how difficult things are, or how little sleep I've gotten, or my other general complaints of malaise...

But I can honestly say that from the first millisecond of today, its been absolutely, breathtakingly perfect.


I'm going to go knock on wood now, because having just written that sentence, I've basically kicked Fate in the shins..... Hoppy Easter, everybody, and may you have at least one perfect day for every six months of complete and utter, sleep-deprived, anxiety-ridden chaos!

An Epiphany, Of Sorts

Part of the joy of having too much to do and too little time is that you don't have as much opportunity for navel-gazing introspection.  I can remember an era of my college years when I could sit at Barnes & Noble for hours, pouring my thoughts out on paper and consuming too much coffee while doing so.  And I had such incredible swaths of free time that I would make these intricate, full-color, hand-lettered journal entries, sometimes with Scripture, sometimes with quotes I liked, often with extra drawings and things to add to the effect.

My beautiful friend Jenn got married this past weekend in South Carolina. The pictures in this post are of her wedding preparation and reception.

I was probably insufferably introspective back then, mulling over the significance of everything and taking hours and days to digest conversations and relationships.

Fast forward to now. I've had to make it my own personal mission that "Today I will blow dry my hair."  And I feel triumphant on the days when I can actually achieve that 10 minutes of personal care.  I haven't sat alone at a Barnes & Noble and written anything in probably the last 5 years, much less during my recent foray into motherhood.

But, while its sometimes enjoyable to dive so deeply into the daily grind that I leave little time for pondering the great mysteries of the universe, it is also an exhausting way to live.  Everyone needs a chance to sit back and think, a chance to deconstruct ourselves so that we can understand the "why" behind what we do.


We hung out at Jenn's house before the wedding.  Sophie made a friend, whose name I sadly do not recall...

I've felt myself slipping into a trench lately -- feeling like I'm walking about three feet lower into the ground than the rest of the world.  It has a lot to do with 6 straight months of sleepless nights, but it has a lot more to do with my own negative thought processes. (Which may also be the product of sleep deprivation -- it can really work a number on your psyche.)


My dear friend Julie was also at Jenn's wedding. It is like an alignment of the planets to get all three of us in the same room!  (It was such a delight to spend time with you both, and I feel like it went far too quickly!)

Anyway.  I give you all that psychobabble to tell you that I decided to steal away from my office for an hour today to ponder.  Pondering during the lunch hour must be done expediently -- no time for lengthy Crayola-based endeavors -- so I parked myself in a comfy chair at Panera and did some thinking.


Sophie and I at Jennifer's wedding reception in Charleston.  I love the South for many reasons, but one of them is Azaleas In Full Bloom.  In March.


I've been considering for a while that I probably have a severe case of workaholism.   Eh, not the end of the world, but still problematic if I let it get out of control.  But it's strange.  I haven't been feeling the pinch of stress at work so much as I have at home.  Its the parenting and the housekeeping that make me feel overwhelmed and woozy -- these are the things that I don't know how to do and/or don't do well.  I wake up and already feel incompetent only 10 minutes into my day.


She held the reception at this beautiful old Plantation home near the water.  It was stunning.  So was the bride.

So perhaps it's not workaholism.  Perhaps its something different.  Perhaps its perfectionism.  This was my deep Panera epiphany.  Perfectionism.  That's the problem.  And it surfaces in negative, all-or-nothing thinking.  It goes something like this:  The kitchen needs to be clean. I can't seem to keep it clean. Our house is always messy because I am a bad housekeeper. Everything is filthy and my whole life is a disorganized, crazy pile of nonsense.


Apparently I can make incredible leaps in illogical thought when it comes to dirty dishes.


Jennifer and I have known each other since probably around 9th grade.  I consider her one of my closest, dearest friends.  I loved getting to share this moment with her.


So what's the solution to this type of thinking?  Well, I only have about 6 hours of practicing this new idea, so I can't vouch for its success or failure yet (oops, there's some more all-or-nothing thinking), but apparently the solution is all in moderation.  Instead of describing things in terms of the extreme ("always," "never," "everything," "nothing,"), you just make a point to notice when you are thinking that way, and you try to rephrase the thought in a more moderate way.

So: "Our house is never clean."  Now becomes: "Sometimes there are a few housekeeping tasks at my home that need to be done."

And: "Sophie will never sleep through the night."  Now becomes: "Sophie and I are both learning about how bedtime works."


We've got naptime covered.

I can't say that I'll knock this out immediately, but I can tell you that I'm already feeling less stressed.  Sometimes I am too driven, and I end up driving myself into the ground (and then backing up and running over myself).  I'm resolved to do better, if not for myself then definitely for Sophie.  She deserves to have a Mommy who is present and healthy-minded, not strung-out and wild-eyed with the stress of trying to live up to some impossible, self-imposed standard.  All my righteousness is as filthy rags anyway, so I may as well embrace the fact that I cannot (nor can anyone else) ever be perfect.

So that's where we were this weekend -- at my beautiful friend Jenn's wedding, where I took too many pictures and yet not enough at the same time -- and that's my Panera epiphany for you.  Now I'm off to bed, because I can never get enough sleep these days.

Wait.  I mean.... I sometimes get less sleep than I'd like these days....  I would often enjoy more sleep these days..... I will keep trying to obtain a healthy and reasonable amount of sleep these days....

Transformation of thought processes -- It's a work in progress.

Mobile blogging!!

IMAG0122, originally uploaded by hrh6181.

Coming to you live from the xterra, it's my first attempt at mobile blogging! Given my pathetic lack of posts in the last month, this may be how we have to do this whole blogging thing from now on. I apologizse in advance for the misspellings that will inevitably occur (sitting in the backseat of an SUV next to a carseat with a sleeping baby while hurtling down 95 is not the most conducive spot for accurate typing...)

Apparently it will only let me post one picture at a time, unfortunately, which makes for a rather boring blog. Just to give you an idea of how techie we are here at Casa Steele, I've composed most of this post with Swype. We are so hip. we Will report back laterwith wedding pics and stories of travel with five month old!

Whoops, There Went February

Oh, hi.

When did it suddenly become March?

What have I been doing the past month?  Well, I'll tell you.  In list format.

- I bought a new car.  We needed something bigger than the Sentra (remember we got in a car accident back in December?), but I still wanted a Nissan.  Enter the Rogue.  I really like it.  A lot.

- We babysat Michael while Amy was in the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.  Ouch.

- We flew to Atlanta and saw my family.  Nana and Pop loved getting to hang out with her again!

- Pop pushed Sophie in the stroller through the airport!

- She played piano with Pop.

- She met Uncle Jon and Aunt Mandy!

- She met her cousins, Riley and Jeremiah!

- Sophie was dedicated at my parents' church.  She wore a very cute dress and didn't even have a blowout in it.  I was so grateful.

- We brought her a backup dress in case there was a blowout -- it was a smocked dress that I wore as a baby back in the 80s.  I think she looks sort of like a historical photo from the Pioneer Days in this picture.


And then, suddenly it was March.  Aunt Kristen and Uncle Matt came to visit us also, but somehow I didn't get a single picture of them!  We had granite countertops installed the same weekend, so it was a bit of upheaval in the house in general.  That's my excuse for my sorry lack of photos.  Here is a before and after of the counters:

Before -- green laminate countertops, circa 1992.

They sort of made the whole kitchen look dark.


After -- granite countertops in "Giallo Fioritto."

Huge improvement.

My kitchen almost feels too nice to use now. :)

So, what besides the above has kept me from the almighty internets lo these many days?  Well, I started working on some new routines for our household, based on the system from FlyLady.  Yes, the website is a bit hokey, but the idea behind it makes perfect sense to me.  Chart out your life into a series of routines -- morning, after work, and bedtime routines.  Fit tiny chores into each routine so that your tasks don't become unsurmountable on the weekends.  Always dress yourself all the way to shoes every morning, even if its a Saturday and you are just going to be bumming around your house, because you'll get more done with shoes on.  (Crazy, but true.  I have my shoes off right now, and look at me, I'm doodling around on the internet again...)  I'm still trying to get the hang of all the cleaning and decluttering tasks, but bit-by-bit we are starting to get a handle on it all.  The downside?  All that productivity has kept me from getting online at all during the week -- I get home and do all the routine stuff, and my house is clean and then suddenly its time for bed.  Its probably for the best, but I miss those long pointless hours of trolling around Facebook. :)