i'd love you forever

It's about time Christian found a full time job (you know, one with benefits where you don't spend all your money on the merchandise you're supposed to be selling). So we talked about setting a goal for the number of applications he needed to send out per week.

Tonight he sat down with Graham and started looking. {Graham is a big help.}


First up? Full time position with Coca Cola in Fortaleza, Brazil. Awesome.



Molly: "If you got a position with Coca Cola in Fortaleza, I would love you forever."

You know, as if I wouldn't otherwise.

{I think my mom would stand in front of the airplane in order to keep us from moving to another country...}

christmas blunder

Conversation between Christian and me circa 2 minutes ago:

Christian: I actually really really like one of the sweaters I got you.

Molly: You just told me you got me a sweater.

Christian: CRAP!

Molly: Wait. I have to blog about this.

Christian: Noooo!

it's good to be king

Graham and I had an impromptu photo session this morning--inspired by the pad of paper he happened to be lying on...

making it look easy

{This is a really looong post. I got to typing and just kept going. Feel free to not read it. It's long.}

My friend, Nicole, pointed out that I "make new motherhood sound easy" on my blog. I
ll admit. It has been rather easy for us, but not all fun and games. Perhaps I should clarify.

Being a mother to Baby G is easy. He is a very good baby. He eats. He sleeps. He smiles. He cries (sometimes). He spits up (all the time). He poops and pees. He is a very mellow baby and is usually quite content. This week he discovered his lungs and complains a bit more, but he isn't fooling me. I know he's an easy baby.

I do have to wake up 2 or 3 times a night to feed him. He likes to go 3 or 4 (or lately 5 or 6!) hours between feedings when he first goes down for the night. Then around 4am he decides he should wake up every 2 hours. That's not as fun, but I don't hold it against him!

I guess waking up at night is what you make of it. I'm one of those people who is awake as soon as I stand up and asleep as soon as I lie down, and I am so grateful for that. I like to tell myself that if I can piece together enough sleep throughout the night, then I have no reason to be tired. I like to wake up in the morning and think, "Well, I slept from 11 to 1:30 (2.5 hours), from 2 to 4:30 (2.5 hours), from 5 to 7 (2 hours). That adds up to 7 hours. I'm fine." When he was first born, I'd do the same thing only I'd be sure to go to sleep around 8:30pm and stay in bed until 10 or 11am in order to add up enough hours.

Yes. I am lucky to have a baby who sleeps, even if it's only for 2 hours at a time. I know I am lucky. My heart goes out to all of you with babies who stay up and cry all night.

Now let's switch gears for a minute. Let's talk about me. My body has not been quite so nice.

* For 3 weeks breastfeeding hurt so so badly. Only the other moms out there really understand this pain...

* The day after breastfeeding stopped hurting, my skin started itching. You've already read about that. It has been 5 weeks and it still itches.

* A couple weeks ago, I started feeling like I was going to pee my pants. You don't really want to know that, but I'm being honest about postpartum life here. It lasted a couple days, doctors had no answers for me, and then it went away. Came back again. Went away. Please stay away...

* All my friends told me their stitches (from tearing or episiotomies) stopped hurting after 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks. At 6-weeks I couldn't stand for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time before I hurt so bad I had to lie down. Turns out I hadn't healed correctly and it took another week for the doctor to properly fix me. I feel fine now...

* A couple days ago my throat started to hurt. A day later I was exhausted. Then I got really weak and had a headache. Woke up during the night sweating and with a fever. Paranoid I was getting the flu. I feel better now. Throat still hurts...

To make a (very) long story short, my body has thrown one thing after another at me. My body has not had a normal day since I came home from the hospital, but I'm fine. I guess I don't mind that much. I have a beautiful baby. If my body wants to give me hell, I can handle it.

So motherhood isn't all fun and games, but I love it. Perhaps it's all in the attitude. Of course, it helps when your baby is an angel...

all i want for christmas

All I want for Christmas is for my body to be normal again. Enough with the blasted itching!!

But since that isn't happening any time soon, I've come up with some other things. This isn't my real Christmas list. Just things I felt like putting on my blog.

These boots.

Yes, they are labeled "wide calf." I have wide calves. Even when I'm at my skinniest, my calves measure just over 15 inches around. They could beat you up. Go measure yours. You'll be surprised at how normal your calves are.

Standard knee-length boots say they measure 15 inches around, and I can never zip them up. Have you every tried to squish calf muscle/fat into a boot? It's called calf muffin top. Not pretty.

I've never purchased a pair of wide-calf boots. These boast a 17-inch calf. That means I could actually wear them over jeans. Oh wait, didn't I used to make fun of that ridiculous style? Whatever. I'm giving in. But you won't ever catch me wearing boots with fur over jeans. No siree.

These boots fit my criteria, too. I know that the current style is slouchy or pointy or or riding boot or ugly-victorian-style-ankle-boots (Now you know the truth--I don't like those). But these are pretty much what I have been looking for for a long, long time. Minus the little bit of wedge heel, but what can you do?

Will I get them? Probably not. $160 is a bit over my price range right now. May sound like pocket change to those of you who do a lot of shopping, but we just don't spend a lot on clothes. We'll see.

This frame from Pottery Barn Kids.

Did you know that I had never been in a Pottery Barn Kids before last night? I guess I never had a reason to. And I will probably never go there again. I can't stand looking at ridiculously cute stuff that's out of my price range. Dangerous. Dangerous. But the frame is adorable. So plain and simple. Graham, I might just have to get this for you...

Speaking of Baby G, has it been a while since I've posted a picture of him? Well here you go. A couple shots I took on my phone this morning.



{Yes, this took me more then a half hour to write. Christian isn't here to slap my hand...}

pack rat

Sometimes I start to worry that I'm a pack rat. Every corner in our house has something in it. We end up with piles that never get sorted.

My sister Ashley and I always comment on how our sister Amy's house is always so...well...un-cluttered. How does she do it? I think it's impossible.

So today I'm starting with our hall closet and throwing out (or donating) anything we don't need. (The camping gear stays. I am determined to use it come spring.)

Then I think: You know? The fact that I'm worried enough to throw things out means I'm not a pack rat, right? And then I feel better.

And as a Christmas present to Christian I am going to make room for all my cake stands in the hall closet. If you ever need to borrow a cake stand (or nine), just give me a call.

limiting my time on the computer

I have to cut myself off. I'm sorry. For the next week, I'm limiting myself to a half hour of computer play time a day. I find myself sitting here reading blogs, writing in my blog, looking up things (What do I even look up? How does it suck up all my time?), and who knows what else.

I have a tree to decorate. A living room to clean (I swear I just cleaned it last night). A room to clean. A baby's room to clean. Christmas presents to make. Christmas presents to wrap. Friends to visit. Walks to take. A baby to feed.

None of that gets done when I'm on the computer. No, wait. The baby gets fed even if I'm on the computer.

Christian has permission to slap my hand if I spend more than a half hour a day on the computer. But he has to be nice about slapping my hand. That's all I ask.

thanksgiving weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving.

Here we are preparing dinner in our kitchen. I was doing yams on the stove, Richard was peeling potatoes on the counter, and Christian was preparing our little turkey in the sink.


We had a great dinner at Christian's parents' house (yummy!) and got to compare Graham to a picture of Grandma Paula when she was a baby.


Then I went down to Hollister for a couple days while Christian worked.

Amy, Ashley, Mom, and I walked our 2008 5k route.



We took some pictures with Luca and Diego.



And of course we had to get one with Grandma Carter and the baby boys.

too many cars?

Three people with driver's licenses live in my home. We have 3 cars. We all attend the same church. Our church is 1.5 miles from our home and we could easily walk there.

We somehow managed to drive all 3 cars to church today.

Oh how I wish we walked places...

top 10 words of 2009

Did you know that people track the top words/phrases/names used in each year? Of course you did. I'm the one who finds out about these things long after everyone else. I need to pay more attention, or perhaps I need to watch more TV, which is where I found out about this.

It really is fascinating.

Top Words of 2009

1. Twitter (Funny, since I stopped using Twitter this year.)
2. Obama (Of course. Does he Tweet?)
3. H1N1 (Lucky for the Pork industry this isn't "swine.")
4. Stimulus (Was that this year?)
5. Vampire (Gag me with a spoon.)
6. 2.0 (Technically this is 3 words, people. Molly 2.0--new and improved)
7. Deficit (Booooring.)
8. Hadron (Huh? Did I miss something important this year? Do I look stupid by admitting this?)
9. Healthcare (Vampire beat this???)
10. Transparency (Huh. This will likely make the top 10 of 2010.)
And the list goes on...

Top Phrases

1. King of Pop (RIP, MJ. You may have beat Bobama here, but he beat you in the top names...)
2. Obama-mania (I heard this way more in 2008.)
3. Climate change (Not global warming?)
4. Swine Flu (There's the swine!)
5. Too large to fall (Huh? Never heard this. How about "housing bubble" or something? How is that not in the top 5?)
And the list goes on...

Top names and past years can all be found on the Global Language Monitor site. Fascinating. I could spend hours on that site.

motorboat

1. Around 3 this morning I was playing with Baby G's legs and started saying "________ go so slow. _________ go so fast! _________ step on the gas!" Only I couldn't remember what ________ was. What goes slow? What goes fast? What steps on the gas?? I knew it was 3 syllables. I thought about it for an hour. Then I went back to sleep. Then I woke up at 6:30 and thought about it again. Then I woke up at 8:30 and thought about it again. At 9:15am I was looking at Baby G and yelled "Motorboat!" What a relief. Sheesh.

2. I had a dream last night that I bought cute colored tights. They were adorable (and looked a lot better in my dream than they will in real life since, of course, my leg were perfect in my dream). I need some colored tights. And skinny legs.

Photo from anthropology.com.

3. I'm watching TV, which I rarely did in the past, but I need something to keep me awake while I feed the babe. And Kelly Ripa happens to be on the station I'm watching (I usually just watch whatever is on when I turn on the TV). She has an amazing body (in case you've never seen her), but holy arms. Is it the shirt or does she always look like a body builder?


4. Pictures of Thanksgiving weekend and video of Baby G coming soon.