Sunday, November 29, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm running a tad late but Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Our household spend Thanksgiving and Black Friday at home hosting not one but two Thanksgivings. I will freely admit I was scared at of my mind to do these but the idea of having our families share our first major holiday in our new home helped me overcome that...that and many phone calls to my mother-in-law and mom for help. =) It did not help that I had 1) never hosted thanksgiving and 2) never cooked a turkey. My mother-in-law bought and cleaned out the 20lb turkey for Thursday's meal so that helped a lot. The rest were traditional sides my Mom always made us...times two. =) So those I had at least seen done. After a few issues, everything turned out fine and only one of the two meals was delayed! I call Thanksgiving 2009 an absolute success! And now to find inventive ways to eat the left overs ;)

Priceless

This picture is priceless to me. We haven't (successfully), at least I don't think, gotten a picture with Erin's daughter Zoe, my kiddo, and Grandma and Grandpa Mirly in one photo. After several takes and blinding my Mom, we finally got one where everyone was looking forward at the same time. I will always cherish this!

Friday, November 27, 2009

Pictures

I love taking pictures. Unfortunately that means I am not in many of them...which normally that is ok with me. However, recently I realized this mean that my daughter won't get to see me with her in any pictures when she grows up so I decided to change that. These are two of my favorites from Thanksgiving this year.

11.27.09 Mirly Thanksgiving (35)
I am in complete pain because she is jumping (and I do mean JUMPING) on my knees. She's loving it though but I couldn't walk for a few minutes.

11.27.09 Mirly Thanksgiving (30)
This is just a few minutes before that...we were having so much fun. =)

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Singing

Libby does love to sing

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

Words can't even explain this...but it is so freaking awesome

Monday, November 23, 2009

Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving is usually the beginning of the holiday season for my house. This year I decided to start a little early since the weather has been so wonderful. On Saturday I put up the Christmas lights outside. It was 60 degrees! I won’t lie, I had a lot of my neighbors come by and look at me a bit funny but I didn’t care. At least I wasn’t freezing my butt of this year! Plus, I had no idea what I was doing since this is our first Christmas in the new house. In our old townhouse, we only had half of a porch to decorate but in this house we have a full porch to decorate! We’re starting small this year and will build on it for next year. I am determined to get lights up around the roof at some point in time*. Until then, I am enjoying my adorable porch all lit up with Christmas lights and adorned with garland!

* Hubby: consider yourself warned for next year

Getting Healthy: Baby Steps

I’m slowly moving forward to making positive, long lasting changes in my life. One of these possible changes is happening tonight. After whining and talking about joining a gym, I am finally going in some to check them out. I’ve been a member of several gyms over the years so I know what to look for and ask…mostly I want one that isn’t a meat market. I don’t want to be looked at as I sweat like a pig because I will sweat like a pig. It’ll be awful and I will be ugly. Very ugly. Not that I care!

I also plan on getting a personal trainer to kick my big butt. My goal is to get in some serious workouts before our big trip to Disney so it doesn’t kill me and I don’t get exhausted too fast. I am excited and nervous about this change but mostly I am SO EXCITED! It is seriously something I have wanted to do for years but never felt like I was worth it to spend that kind of money. Well, now I feel like I am finally worth it. I still don’t like spending the money but you know what? I’d rather be healthy at this point. This should be the kick in my butt that I need to make some healthy changes, and I would rather spend the money on this versus another diet plan!

I am trying not to get too excited about this though. When I was in college I got on an exercise kick and dropped a serious amount of weight without trying hard. In fact, I got to my smallest size while I did that and weight watchers – a freaking size 4. I don’t expect to get that small again…mostly because I am a lot older (sigh). Honestly, I am mostly doing this to be a good role model for my kiddo AND to get my blood pressure down. Now, I do hope that I turn into the incredible shrinking Holly but if that doesn’t happen I am not going to cry over it. I just can’t wait to see what happens! I’ll keep you posted.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Miss Manners

Jim and I are trying to make sure our child has good manners. She is starting to get the hang of it. “Bless you”, “Thank you”, “Please” and “Sorry” are all being used…but the problem we are having is that when she says “please” she assumes it will happen. Just today when I was taking her to daycare she said, “Monkey Zoo, please?” in her sweetest voice ever. Of course I wanted to drop everything and just take her to the zoo to see the monkeys…but I knew that wouldn’t pay the bills. “Sorry” is another one that is getting there but not quite. It usually follows after she does something painful to us and it is the fakest sorry I have ever heard. Even as she is running over my foot with her stroller or pulling our my hair with a comb, whenever I hear her say “sorry” in her cute, fake voice it melts my heart. I guess that doesn’t help her learn though, huh? Even though she doesn’t have these down, she understands “Bless You” and “Thank You”. Usually with “Bless You” she says, “Mommy sneeze?” and I nod or say yes then she says, “oh, oh! Bless you”. So she gets it. =) Now to get her not to hurt us when she says sorry and to understand just because she says please it doesn’t mean she will get the thing she wants…hmm

Hope

I have hope that someday my daughter won’t turn on the news and only hear about death and destruction. She won’t hear about children being abused or people killing each other.

I have to have hope that this will stop. That people will live with one another and treat each other with the respect that they deserve.

I have to have hope that this will happen or I my heart is going to break into a million pieces.
I just have to have hope.

As I look at families that are struggling to keep their children alive from illnesses, I just cannot comprehend how other people are killing them. Every time I see or hear about it happening a piece of me dies. I will never get it back. I have actually stopped listening or watching the news just because of this reason. And, sadly, I still learn about it without trying. That’s how often it is happening now.

Please. I beg of you. Stop. I have to have hope and faith that people will start being human again. Love each other. Please. I have to have hope for my daughter and her future on this earth.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Sick Day


11.12.09 sick day
Originally uploaded by Holly Mroczkowski.
About a week ago I got a cold. Now a cold is not normally something that would knock me off my feet but this one sure did. By Wed night (day #4 of the cold), I wasn't sure if this was just a cold. So imagine my delight when the next morning Libby woke up super crabby and not feeling well at all. I took her temp (several times - hello OCD!) and she never had one. But I knew, just KNEW, that if I took her to daycare she would end up coming home with me early. I packed and unpacked the car FIVE times and then finally at 7:15am decided to try it. I had a big meeting at work and I really needed to be in the office that morning. So off we went...my crabby kiddo and me. I attended/talked in my meeting at 8:30 and at 9:30 called to check on my sick girl. Sure enough she had a temp and I had to go get her. The rest of the day is a blur (mostly because I actually took cold medicine for the first time in 3 years)...but we survived. Now it is Monday, one full week after this cold showed its face in my house, and I am almost 100% healthy, Libby has a slight cough and Jim is starting to get all stuffy. Go away cold! No more sick days!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Growing Up

Please tell me when my child got so big? In looking at recent pictures I am noticing how big she is getting. I definitely cannot call her a baby anymore. She is a little girl now.

*sigh*

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Dancing

I don't know which Libby loves more - dancing or the muppets (specifically Miss Piggy). Fortunately, she has found a way to combine them. Here is a video of Libby dancing with her Daddy while watching a dance routine between Miss Piggy, Kermit, and cast. Normally, she tries to do a longer tap routine while Miss Piggy does it...This is something I will always cherish.

Struggling

I often ask myself, "Why do some people have it so easy?" Then I realize those people don't know what hard work is. Unfortunately, when you are struggling with something you still want to have things come easily. Something I have always struggled with is weight. For those of you that know me, you have seen me go up and down over my lifetime and it is a constant roller coaster. This is one of the things have always struggled with but am determined to get a handle on for my family - specifically for my little girl. I don't want her to see her Momma gorging on bad foods, not exercising, etc. Unfortunately I am failing right now. I was able to drop a lot of weight and keep it off for a year after Libby was born but then I said I was going to take a "break" from dieting. Now, a year later, I am back up to where I was when I got pregnant with Libby and feeling, honestly, like a failure. I got comfortable which was something I vowed never to do again. So, here we go again my friends, I am going to try to stick with it this time and find a way to actually make this work in my life versus making it be such a battle. That's the hard part - trying to find a balance to make this work in every day life. Because, lets face it, the holidays are coming up. I am not going to be "perfect" the entire time - I may eat a piece of pie...but what I have always lacked is self control to only get small portions of things to balance it out. So my goal this go around in my latest weight battle is to do better portions and not completely eliminate the goodies I want. Instead, have little tastes of them when I crave them. It's all about balance.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Play-doh Fun


My child is nuts about play-doh. I thought 2 year olds couldn’t have a long attention span. Apparently they can when there is play-doh involved. On Sunday, Libby played with it for 2 hours straight. She’d play with me and then switch to Jim and then back to me. It was wonderful. We made all kinds of things with it: suns with rays, a snowman, banana, hot dog, duck, etc. Nothing was boring to her. She just loves it and even asks for it in the morning. We got a tub with 3 1lb tubs of red, blue, and yellow. She’ll cycle between the colors. We won’t let her play with all 3 at once because lets face it. If we did that, we would only have one thing left of it because she’d mix them all together. Luckily for now she is very happy with one color at a time.


Sunday, November 1, 2009

A not so happy halloween

I had big plans for Halloween this year. Libby was going to go trick-or-treating for the first time. We finally had a neighborhood where she could walk around. It was all planned out. So when I woke up yesterday I was completely excited and then I looked at the clock. 8:30 am?! How is it that late? For those of you that don't know, our child never sleeps in. Never. The latest she has ever slept is 8:15am and that is when she was sick. So I immediately thought something was wrong and went to check on her. She was fine...just sleeping in. I thought, "hey! whats the harm!? I can get a head start on things downstairs." So I left her alone until 9:15 when she was still sleeping. You would think all of this extra sleep on Halloween would be great, right? Extra sleep means no crankiness AND she can stay up later to trick-or-treat. WRONG! I took her to Target to run off some energy and she ended up throwing 3 major, throw herself on the floor fits. Moms did the classic look at me saying how they felt my pain and had been there. But I haven't! She's never done this before in a store...at least not to this degree. So home we went where I thought I'd get some food in her and down for a late nap. WRONG again! She wouldn't nap...just screamed. and screamed. and screamed. So eventually we went to get her and she never did nap. The crankiness continued and then got worse. So by 6:00 we knew she would never make it walking around the neighborhood. No halloween for her. =( Luckily she did get to go to Boo at the Zoo and trick or treated at her daycare. So there was that...and she was the cutest puppy ever!