- Picture Perfect? -

So hereeeeee's a not-organized, poorly planned post..... But it makes sense in my mind, so try to hang with me 'til the end and I think I juuust might be able to tie the strings of all these mismatched thoughts into a big, beautiful bow. Just mebbe.

First!  I swear there is some kind of little switch in Harper's brain that flicks on the SECOND I pull my camera out of the bag.  It literally started when she was one month old and I was attempting her first chalkboard photo.  I don't know how to explain it, other than that she definitely knows that all I want is five minutes [or less] of cooperation so I can capture ONE good photo to put on a birthday invitation or Christmas card or whatever.  But no!  Not a chance of compliance ever.

Next!  Rewind back to Thanksgiving Day 2018: everyone was in a great mood, and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to quickly throw a blanket down outside and snap our Christmas card photo.  "No sweat," she said!  "This will be easy," she said!  

...But we got outside, and:

 ...followed by more stone faces, pestering Scarlett via a grass blade in her ear, and a grand finale of body-slamming Scarlett and making her cry.

I scrapped the sister photo op and handed over the camera to my dad to attempt a family photo, but that didn't go much better:

We finally got one that we could use for the Christmas card:

...but when it was all said and done [and actually during the entire process, too], I WAS SO MAD!!! Soooooo fuming, mother-effing mad.  I mean, WHAT IN THE ACTUAL EFF WORD?!? Everyone else's good moods had evaporated, too.  The thought crossed my mind a few times to throw in the towel and not send out a Christmas card at all, but thattttt really wasn't an option at all.  It was horrible.

I got over myself a couple days later and went ahead and ordered the Christmas cards.  They showed up on the porch a few days later, and I stuffed the envelopes and mailed them out. We got so many compliments on them! But every time *I* see that photo ^^ and/or the actual Christmas card, it brings back terrible memories.....

Then!  Some of you know that I have a 40-60 minute drive to and from work; some of you also know that I get mild traffic anxiety -- or at a minimum, very antsy behind the wheel.  All of this is because I despise the thought of wasting ~6 hours every week. This "wasted time" is time that I could be spending with my babies and/or cooking dinner and/or hanging out with a friend and/or cleaning the house and/or mayyyyybe even doing something alone that I want to do for myself!  Part of my 2019 resolution was to "diffuse the drive" -- whether it be listening to motivational podcasts, talking on the phone to someone I love, or even just taking my time in the car and turning it into prayer time.  Whatever it is that day, it would always be time well spent instead of "time wasted." 

So anyway!  I was listening to this podcast on the way home from work last Thursday, and the host is a wife and busy mom of four kids. She was talking about how chaotic her life is [or at least how chaotic it seems, in certain moments], and she is very honest about how haphazard life with littles can be.  She said that she often times scrolls through social media and then leaves Facebook feeling worthless and hollow because her life doesn't stack up to others' lives.  Oh, there's a mom over there with four kids, too...but she's posting pics on Instagram of her coffee cup with a lily in the background; meanwhile, my kids ran in the kitchen and spilled my coffee and knocked over the lily and shattered the vase.  Or how about that woman who always has a clean house, not a dirty dish or toy out of place in sight?!  She continued talking about how seeing all these posts about others' "perfect lives" can really play with her moods and emotions and change how she feels about herself as a wife and mother.  She went on to discuss how social media is so toxic, and this is because it is not real life!

And that's when it all came full circle for me...  I immediately thought back to the Christmas card event; I thought back to how badly I wanted us to look "picture perfect" when actually, in real life, we are vulnerable and messy and NOT PERFECT AT ALL!  When I'm old and wrinkly and my memory fails me, I want to be able to look back at our stack of old birthday invitations and Christmas cards -- and even this blog -- and remember the real moments.  Because I already know that, even though it's chaotic and crazy now, these are the very best moments; these real, unstaged moments are the ones I'll treasure forever.

So peace out, social media.  I'm sick of being pretty for you.  The podcast host hit the nail on the head: YOU ARE NOT REAL LIFE, and you and your portrayal of perfection will never again have a leg to stand on in this house!  Under this roof, we are raw and honest about life as we live it.  <-- Should I say it again for the people in back?!  Yes! 

From now on, we write our story as we see it, ugly Christmas card pics and all. 

And y'all, come see my messy house and [piles of] dirty laundry! 

...I'll brew you a cup of coffee when you get here. :)

- Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh, laaay-yewwww-yah! -

^^ Just a mini-clip of the good ole' [annual] Easter Sunday morning trumpet-blaring treasure that I could sing word-for-word in my sleep:  Jesus Christ is RISEN TODAY!

Womp wompppp.

Who wants to drone on and on about Easter when it's one [plus] month past?!

I do! I do! I dooooo.

[Laughably late. Just my style.]

I was super close to sweeping this year's pictures and videos under the rug and trying for more timely luck next year, but then I clicked through the iPhoto album again and ahhh! So much sweetness.  MUST DOCUMENT. And today at Mass, I remembered it's still "the fifth Sunday of EASTER," so I guess I'm not all that far behind...

But I mean, it really is so crazy that April has come and gone, isn't it?  I feel like it should still be snowy December or something.  In four pics, I can sum up Ash Wednesday through Good Friday [aka Lent!] twentah-seventeen:

Harper was genuinely concerned with my "Rorschach meets Load Toner" ^^ as demonstrated by her continual broken-record type chanting of, "Momma. Boo-boooo! Owww-ch!"

...And then there's that awkward moment when your mom tries to be inspirational/devout and you're just a hangry Debbie Downer. Sigh. ...Just go ahead and tack this year's lax Lent onto my eons of accrued purgatory time and we'll call it a wrap.

Enough about Lent; we are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song!!!  All the excitement in the world for coloring eggs...

...but not a lot of excitement for the good ole' Bunny. :/  [She loved him last year AND the year before that!]

Harper went to her first Easter egg hunt this year at the Knights of Columbus Hall...

...and then it finally it was EASTER MORNING! 

She was rull happy with her loot:

Egg! Egggggg! More egg!

On to Mass [she does enjoy life despite the long face in all our photos]...

...then all the family celebrations!

When we made it back home for the night, Harper tested out her new gardening tools and watering pot. We're gonna have the best lookin', most hyrated plants in the subdivision this year! ;) :)

For days weeks after the Easter Sunday madness, Harper reveled in her basket full of eggs and all her new trinkets from the Bunny!  Get real, Momma: what toddler would go for bean soup when there are jelly beans in reach?!

Happy [fives weeks belated] Easter, sweet friends and family!!! He is Risen just as He said! :)))

- Chinese meets V-Day -

I never pen posts at nighttime after Harper goes to bed [usually because I fall halfway asleep whilst rocking her and then am just in a zombied-out daze until I eventually coax my groom to bed a couple hours later]...........but tonight for dinner we had the WORST WORST WORST Chinese carryout ever and I'm scared that I'll die in my sleep after ingesting it soooo I'mma just prolong the inevitable and throw down a few final thoughts before I croak.  ...I've been sitting on the Valentine's Day photos for almosttt a month now, and I will never forgive myself if I die before sharing the heart holiday love. <3 <3

...I'll get back to V-Day in a second...but first can we just talk about that carryout food again real quick?

We realized on the way out of Mass that we didn't have any food to cook at home, so I twisted Brian's arm [not too hard] for just ONE small order of sesame chicken and rice + a side order of crab rangoon. We haven't ordered Chinese since before Harper could eat solid foods [soooo it's been a hot minute - AKA like over a year and a half], but tonight seemed like the perfect night to break Paleo and dive back in to sodium/carb/gluten heaven. [We've only been doing Paleo since breakfast time this morning ...but I did have a small cheat at lunch.]  So anyway, I won the rock/paper/scissors contest and Brian traipsed off into the hole-in-the-wall "restaurant" to get the food.  Five minutes later he came out and set the bag on my lap.  Three seconds later we both noticed a very potent burnt rubber-type smell ...and one millisecond later we had all the windows down in the car and were hanging our heads out and gasping for air.

The next mistake was not dropping the grease-soaked bag in the trash dumpster on the way into the house.

But no.

We brought it in because we were starving.  The taste was only slightly better than the smell; Harper took one look at it and pushed her plate across the table while her [not so smart] parents continued to nibble on grizzly chicken soaked in burnt grease.  As soon as "dinner" was finished, we scraped off the leftovers into their original containers, wrapped the containers in three layers of plastic grocery bag, and escorted the grocery bags to the garage dumpster.

...And to top it off, I've been diffusing the strongest "bad-smell-eliminating" essential oils for THREE HOURS now and the house still smells like a car screeching its tires on the Autobahn.

SH*T BE SO NASTYYYY.

Brian called dibs on the master bathroom several hours ago, which usually is a pretty frightening declaration that lets me know it's only safe to breathe in the guest bathroom for the next three days; but I can't say in this circumstance that I'm expecting it to come out smelling that much worse than it went in.

Moral of the story: never ever ever everrrrrr go to Orient Wok Chop Suey!!! 

Now! On to my last plethora of photo-posting before that sesame chicken does me in...

On to Valentine's Day!

We may or may not've gone a little/lot overboard this year with Valentin-ing...

But in the end it was all worth it, because everyone loved their hand-crafted love from sweet Harper!!

We took a pile of Valentines + Minnie Mouse pretzel packs to Harper's daycare classroom; she got to pass them out to all her friends and take part in the Valentine's Day party, too! I loved watching her interact with all her friends and have so much fun in her classroom!  And thennnnn [dun dun dun...] I felt like the worst momma in the history of bad mommas when it was time to leave and she cried....... :/

...Apparently going for long walks in the park and taking selfies witch-o mama is not even a CLOSE second runner-up to being at daycare...

^^When your Valentine just isn't feelin' the love... 

She got over it rull fast when we pulled up to the house and there was a bag of heart cookies and toys waiting on the doorstep! [Thanks, Jill!] Then she marched right down the street to give her friend [future boyfriend?] his homemade gift:

And lastly but very not leastly, Daddy took us on an Orange Leaf date after dinner!  #eatthelove #allthefeels #icecreamisthewaytoawomansheart

[[^^Harper hates selfies. She is not her mother's daughter.]]

It's 10:36 in the pee to the emm ... plus add in that deadly "spring ahead" daylight savings time and THAT makes it 11:36 [which is soooo ridiculously far past my bedtime] so! That's all, folks! I'm signing off for now and probably for forever... #revengeofthesesamechicken

...But for real...Brian just said he's so happy Harper's party is tomorrow afternoon so that if we both die overnight at least someone will be at the house tomorrow afternoon to rescue her from her crib.

Ciao now!