Remember Momma with love, Harrison.

Some of my favorite blogs.  Emphasis on some.

Lately.

Lazy moms non-guide to non-potty training.

This day sucked in an incredibly awesome way.

Why Having Non-Mom Friends Is So Important.  Basically thanking my lucky stars for her.

Can Daycare Be Called School?  Or is that just as obnoxious as I thought it was when I was 20?

How We Chose Harry’s Daycare.

Date night ideas, which may or may not end in the marital relations.

Little known facts about yours truly.

“So I unload the top of the dishwasher, then peek out to check. Unload the bottom dishwasher & peek out to check. Wipe down the counters & brew a cup of coffee & head outside for another 30 minutes.” ~from my Babble.com post

The comments poured in, different opinions & questions & then first neglect, then abuse.  oh, the rage.  It was strong.  Not because someone disagreed with my parenting choices or felt they were wrong – I highly expect that for every decision I make regarding my child.  I formula fed & suffered postpartum depression & don’t spank my child so if you think I still have a thin skin regarding parenting choices, try again.

My rage came from blatantly flippant use of the words “abuse” & “neglect.”

Definition of child abuse (per dictionary):
mistreatment of child: severe mistreatment of a child by a parent, guardian, or other adult responsible for his or her welfare, e.g. physical violence, neglect, sexual assault, or emotional cruelty

Definition of child neglect (childhelp.org):
Failure to provide for a child’s physical needs. This includes lack of supervision, inappropriate housing or shelter, inadequate provision of food and water, inappropriate clothing for season or weather, abandonment, denial of medical care and inadequate hygiene.

My child playing 10 feet away where I can hear & see him easily is not severe mistreatment.  Him learning independent play in a secure environment where I am seconds away is not careless disregard.

It makes me wonder if those that throw those harsh words around so easily have ever seen true neglect & abuse first-hand.  If they’ve ever lived with a nine-year-old boy that only weighs 40 lbs because his mother bought drugs instead of food.  If they’ve ever had to carry a hyperventilating six-year-old out of a store because a piece of glitter landed on her hand & she had a flashback to years of child pornography.  If they’ve ever sat with social workers for hours as part of a home study & heard a little boy say he was given to the devil.  Because I have & those are memories that marked my heart forever to where the word “abuse” is as strong as a racial slur or the R-word.

Child abuse & neglect are powerful words, real words that are real in our society.  They are the children that are starved & beaten & locked in closets, torn apart at the hands of people they know, molested & left for days.  Every ten seconds, a report of child abuse is made.  More than five children die every day as a result of abuse.  Child abuse is serious & it is a serious allegation.

I beg you to be mindful of the words used to describe another parent’s actions.  Are they truly abusing their child, causing danger to the child’s overall well-being?  Or is it a simple heated discussion where you feel you are right, by golly? 

Let’s talk about parenting.  Let’s share ideas & concerns & hopes & fears.  Feel free to disagree with me respectfully & accept that I may defend my stance.  But let’s have this parenting discourse responsibly.

If you do see child abuse & neglect happening, please call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453.

The 10 cartoons you would love to take out in a back alley if you had the chance, as voted by you!

I took on picky eaters & the ever-faithful argument of Nature vs. Nurture.  What say you, my friends?  Nature or nurture?

That time I spent a summer in the North Carolina mountains.

I’m an ungrateful bitch because paying a copay to be told to “double allergy medicine” irritated me.  You know, after I called & spoke to the advice nurse & asked if we should come in & she said “ABSOLUTELY.”

Naptime sucks.

I still haven’t been able to walk up to other moms & just say “hi.”

I’ve written a bit more & you can check it out here, but these were the highlights & a way to catch more of what we’ve been up to & how I’m raising my wild beast toddler.

Pictures of our first week of spring.

I feel like all I do is pick up other people’s shit, but I think that’s just being a mom.

How we have fabric kitchen chairs with a two-year-old.

I ordered mom clothes.  Yes, they’re all from Old Navy.

I don’t fit in with other moms.  Apparently none of us do.

Things I learned from The Lorax.

Shit I find in Harrison’s bed.

That goes under the blog “Lazy Girl Problems.”

That’s Morgan in one of the thousands of bathrooms at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville.  She’s not paying attention to me because a) she’s known me for 3 years & expects weird behavior or b) she’s also a blogger & understands weird behavior.

Huge bathroom, right?  Plenty o’ stalls but I still had beef with them.  See, Morgan is a short gal by tall girl standards & her head hits the top of the stall door.  This was my view:

Nope, I’m not standing on my toes.

It created an awkward moment or five after I used the facilities & had to scoot my shapewear back up over my rear.  & by “scoot,” I mean wiggled back & forth in a chicken dance until I was out of breath & my underwear was shoved up my ass, but my shapewear was on & up under my boobs so I just called it a success.  A panting, sweaty success.

That everyone got to witness as the top of my head bobbed around over the door & I looked like a drunk fish on the line.

Trout, anyone?

There’s this wild, wonderful heart-song that has been beating through me ever since I boarded a plane for Nashville & I have not quite found a way to piece it all together.

When I went to Blissdom, I found myself at an awful crossroads in my career.  I lost a job & gained contract work, but nothing felt secure.  I spent nights lying awake, ticking away the 18 months of COBRA coverage & worrying how I would find another job.  How we would get insurance or a home loan.  The anxiety crept up to my throat & I sat on the couch in my doctor’s office & she asked me to define the problem.

“I don’t know!” I wailed.  The control freak in my clashed & battled war on my spirit & everything inside me wound tight for no reason.  Why couldn’t I let go when I finally had everything I ever hoped for?

I have a job I love. It pays well. I am home with my son. I am writing successfully. I have insurance coverage for 18 months. We won’t be homeless.

Four days of wild creativity, of hearing lectures where I was told to admit that I’m a writer, to think of goals & pathways & to be okay reaching for them.  To  sit with others & hear that sometimes, they feel split one thousand different ways & they worry about the uncertainty of free-lancing, but oh, isn’t the free part of free-lancing so wonderful?  Yes, it is.    Jon Acuff spoke of the “reverse Superman” of changing into business suits from conference clothes & my heart hurt at my own memories of soul-blackening work  & somewhere in Tsh Oxenreider’s session about growing with quality, a wave of awesome slapped me upside the face.

Really, there’s no other way to describe it.

I have a job I love. It pays well. I am home with my son. I am writing successfully. I have insurance coverage for 18 months. We won’t be homeless.

I’M GOING TO OWN THIS SHIT.

 Finding myself writing for a living didn’t happen the way I thought it would, but then again, I never dreamed of an @microsoft email address either.  Potentially growing our family on COBRA isn’t something I would have ever considered before but being home with my littles is something I have considered often.  Selling our house & getting a home loan on Doug’s salary wasn’t our idea, but we will learn to live simply & install floors on our own & that will be just one more adventure to take on together.

When my friends ask me what Blissdom is, I smile.  It’s fashion shows in the bathroom with a friend that lives an entire country apart & a photo shoot in downtown at night & the words “I am a writer” scrawled across my journal with other notes but mostly, Blissdom is where I come alive.

Here are some awesome toddler beds, from the affordable to the no-freaking-way.

I think everyone should take their toddler out to dinner. (but don’t be a jackass about it)

I asked for tips on becoming a stay-at-home momma.

I talked about the importance of volunteering even in a crazy-busy life.

I showed off fifteen incredible nurseries for normal people.

The response was so awesome that I did it again.

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My friend Amy just opened her new Etsy shop, Smitten Image, & would love to offer one of you a freebie print to her shop!  I love this fire truck but the barn animals with their “sounds” beneath them hits my funny bone in the best way possible.

Cute, right?  I KNOW.

Hope on over & let me know which print you would pick & I’ll select a winner in the comments!

I bitched about my kid not sleeping.

I bitched about our neighborhood.

I bitched about preschool.

I bitched about weekends.