Ten on Tuesday: Wacky Week Edition

SO much going on in the next few days, figured I would document a few things here while I have a few minutes (I'm anticipating naptime ending any minute now, so we'll see if I can actually make it to 10.)

1. Body Hiding Friends: Did you see this article that was floating around Facebook and Twitter yesterday? Awesome read. It made me totally thankful for the friends I have in my life who will listen to me vent, overlook my disaster of a home, and never judge the decisions I make. Which leads me to...
2. Mama Competition: I had no idea before I became a mom that the world of mothers (particularly, it seems the stay at home variety) is seemingly one big competitive clique. Everyone things they're doing it the right way, their kid is smarter/bigger/stronger/fill in the blank-er than other kids. I know comparing kiddos is natural and in some ways inevitable, but it happens too much and it leads to too much mama insecurity. Because really, now that I stay home, raising AJ is kind of my job. And if he's lagging behind a part of me will always wonder if it's because his mama isn't doing a good enough job. Which leads me to...
3. Tot School: In my crazy blog hopping that I did during nap time yesterday I wound up finding a blog (or rather several blogs) devoted to pre-pre school activities for little dudes and dudettes. Now, many of these blogs are written by homeschooling moms and so their goals seem to be to get their kids into the homeschooling mode as early as possible while also teaching the older kids. I'm not currently planning to home school. I'm pretty sure I would suck at it. But those blogs? Have some pretty stinking cool ideas. So AJ and I might be having some pretty fun learning adventures this summer thanks to the internet. Which leads me to...
4. Emily and Henry's visit: Okay, so that connection is a bit of a stretch, but I did meet Em on the internet and so far all I've seen of the young Henry are pictures on the internet, so work with me! I am very excited to have mama and littlest dude come to visit this week. The trip will be short. The goal is to sell off some of our scrappy stuff (and in my case to not use the money earned to buy more scrappy stuff). I am going to try to remember to take pictures with something other than my cell phone. Which leads me too...
5. Project Life: I bought the kit in December. I journaled and took pictures faithfully for the first almost two months of 2011. Then, the crappy stuff started, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure there's much of late Feb and March I want to remember. So I'm kind of a drop out. BUT!!! I'm just looking it as taking a semester off. I've cleared out my album, moving the stuff I did in January and Feb to the end of the 2010 album, and I'm ready to start fresh on June 11th. Which would be...
6. AJ's birthday: Party preps have entered the "am I really going to be able to pull off the things on my to do list" stage. I'm guessing I'm probably not alone in that my ideas of things I'd like to do often does not match up with the amount of time I have to accomplish the tasks. I also may or may not have a problem with procrastinating, so while I've been collecting ideas since February, I haven't actually moved forward on many of those things. But when it comes down to it, he'll have fun, he'll remember none of it, and my one main goal is to make sure this party doesn't land us in the ER like last year. Which leads me to....
7. Allergy Boy: We had our first real birthday party guest experience this weekend. AJ has been to parties in the past, but back then he wasn't really eating big people food, so we could get by on a couple of snacks and some nursing. We were incredibly lucky in that the hostess of said party called and asked about AJ's allergies and planned a meal that he would be able to enjoy most of. It's pretty hard to find an AJ friendly ice cream cake though, so I baked a batch of cuppycakes to bring so the little dude wouldn't feel left out. Of course we left as they were cutting into the cake because AJ was overtired, he fell asleep on the way home...and didn't eat the aforementioned cupcake until the next day. Ah, well. At least we tried. And I was left with nearly two dozen cupcakes in my fridge, which leads me to...
   
8. Weight Watchers: I was super stoked to be down a pound this week. That puts me about 2.5lbs from 20 pounds lost since I started in March. It just so happens that my birthday (32!!) is one week from today, so I've decided to shoot for hitting 20 at my weigh in next week. Whether it happens or not, I'm pretty proud of making so much progress in a short period of time. And speaking of progress...
9. The Bathroom is almost done: Back in February, Karl decided it was time to turn the downstairs storage closet into the bathroom it was initially intended to be. At the time we were thinking we'd have to move AJ to one of the downstairs bedrooms when our new baby arrived, so we wanted the bath to be down there to make life easier. He had already pulled permits and began construction when we miscarried, so the project went on as planned. It took three months and many nights and weekends of Karl slaving away downstairs, but the closet is now an (almost) fully functioning bathroom. There are a couple minor things to be finished, but it's pretty stinking awesome to see what Karl accomplished in there. He even built the vanity cabinet himself. Ty Pennington has nothing on my husband. Well, except a megaphone. And an endless budget. Which leads me to..
10. Barb wants to be a millionare: Did you read this post? That Barb is a funny girl, and an awesome friend. Yes, I am kissing up, just in case the reality show pans out...

Wow, that was a long ten! How about a cute photo flashback to end this entry? I found this picture recently from May 2010. The little dude had hardly any hair and had just recently started taking his first unassisted steps when we took this trip to Florida for my 31st birthday....

Time flies when you're having fun, right?