Blankee Lovin Girl

I have written about this before, but I want to say that Lucy's love for her blankees grows stronger every day. She has two that she equally adores. They are the same blanket, just different colors. In case you want one of these magnificent blankets, HERE is the link. She has the Dot Velour Blanket under Classics. These are the softest, most loveable blankets I have ever found. We got the hot pink/orange when we were waiting for Lucy because it matched her room. The light pink one was a gift when we got home. Thank goodness we got that spare. She used to love the hot pink one more than the light pink one - that is not the case any more. She loves them equally. She sleeps with both of them and rubs on the satin edge. When she was throwing up a lot with the acid reflux, we had to hide one of them in case she got sick so we had a back up ready. I can't even imagine trying to put her to bed without one of them. She would flip out. They have to be washed seperately in case of an emergency where we needed one immediately. When one comes freshly out of the wash, she will snuggle it with such love. I thought I would share a few pics I got of her today actually playing with her blankets. She literally will play with them.

So cute - I know her ribs are really showing, but it is just the way she is laying. I think she has actually been putting on some chub lately. You can see in the other pics she is not so boney.






Goal update - tax organization - DONE!!!!!!! I feel so relieved. Seriously, I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that I don't have to worry about this. Watching the camera dvd and reading the manual tomorrow. And Lucy has been back to her sweet little self this week. I have been totally calm with her. I seriously have not raised my voice once since Monday. It has been awesome. So, goals are going really well. I love having goals. Why didn't I do this earlier?

Weekly Goal #2 and ART

First things first. I actually have three goals this week that I have been thinking about a lot lately. Quite ambitious of me!

First and most important to me, choose my battles with Lucy more wisely and let the small stuff go. This is an ongoing goal for the rest of our lives. I have been talking with several very helpful and knowledgeable mommas lately about Lucy's "attitude." I think that I am letting it get to me more than I should. We are having a battle of the wills and I think I am actually making it worse by making a big deal about it. I feel like I end up telling her No a million times a day and then I wonder why she says no so much. She is going through normal 18 month old stuff. Most children go through a no and very vocal (in not a good way) stage. I am so used to my quiet, sweet Lucy and this new temperment has just caught me off guard. I am going to take the approach of ignoring her seemingly constant whining and shouting no and really praise her good behavior. She HATES to be ignored, so I think it will actually work and won't require Justin or me raising our voice. I am only going to use time out for very serious things - like hitting, which she doesn't do much. Time out is extremely effective with Lucy, and I don't want to lose that by over doing it. I am pretty sure that she is not actually a bratty child, she is just enjoying testing me at the moment. Thanks to all of my friends who have let me vent about this and have given me such great advice. I truly appreciate it. I don't know what I would do without such great friends.

Second goal, organize our tax deductions. I STRESS out in a major way about taxes every year. Our taxes are really complex and take a lot of time to get prepared for the accountant. We always have a million unorganized receipts all over the place. This year, I am not going to stress because we are going to tackle it this week. I am going to have everything ready to go to the accountant by the time all of the W-2s and 1099s get here in the mail. I will not work myself into a tizzy over taxes this year. WILL NOT DO IT! I am so excited to be so ready to go this year.

And my final goal, read the owner's manual of my camera and watch my Nikon dvd. I need to actually know what the buttons do in order to maximize my picture taking. I have literally never opened my owner's manual. I pulled the camera out of the box and just started shooting. I want to know more of the technical stuff.

And now, what I am just giddy with excitement about - I picked up all of our artwork from the framer that we bought in Vietnam. It is all back on stretchers and looks awesome. Here are all of our pieces. You can't see all of the detail, but they are each amazing and several have a lot of texture to them. They are all oil paintings done by artists in Ho Chi Minh City. If you are ever in Saigon, DO NOT MISS THE ART! It was such a pain in the butt to get all of this home, but it was so worth it. Which one is your favorite? I think my favorite is the red one with the Vietnamese girls and the Buddhist monks. I can't wait to get it in frames. Slowly but surely I will post pictures of the pieces in frames and actually hung on the wall!

Three small Van Goghs. These will likely go in our downstairs bathroom. They are very textured because the paint is very thick. These were $15 each!!!!!

Three men with no face (Thomas Crown Affair) paintings - all of the paintings this size were $35 - seriously, I feel like we stole this stuff

The detail on these is so amazing. The gold is very metallic and rich. I wish you could see it better. You kind of can in the up close one.


This is for Lucy's room. One of my favorites

This one is kind of hard to see, but it is elephants where their legs are kind of stilts. The color is amazing.

Working in the field. The grass is all textured.

This one is so cool - it is swans in a lake, but their reflection is elephants. Until the recently, I had only seen the elephants and never noticed the swans.

The Buddhist monks. My other favorite. I actually really love every single one of them.

Thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love

I finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert on Thursday evening. This is after starting it on Tuesday evening. When I got to Tuesday and had not started reading, I was a little worried that I wasn't going to complete my first ever weekly goal. As soon as I read about 25 pages, I knew that I would. I had this book in my hands A LOT for 2 days. Any chance I had, I was reading. I could not get enough of her stories and adventures. I kept a pen close by and highlighted the passages that seemed to make the most sense to me. Some of her words touched me deeply and I knew that they were ideas and thoughts that I would like to read many times over. For me personally, this is a book that needs to be read, allowed to process in your head for a while, and then read again. That is exactly what I plan on doing.

Here are some of the ideas or thoughts that I took away from the book. This is kind of a jumbled mess, but it highlights some of my favorite bits of the book. If you haven't read the book, I suggest you do. You won't ruin the book by reading my thoughts. Every person will come away with such different thoughts after reading it. I can see where some people wouldn't enjoy it that much. But I needed this book. I learned so much from her stories and insight. It made me think down deep about myself and changes that I need to make in my life. It was inspirational.

One of my initial thoughts was that I need to do yoga and learn to meditate. I need a way to give my brain a break. I would like to do yoga for the sense of serenity and calmness that it can bring, not as a part of my exercise plan. I will get much more out of the mental side of it. I love the idea of sweeping my mind clean for a bit of time each day and just letting it relax.

Here is how she defines Yoga on page 122: "Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek, instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise. Only from that point of even-mindedness will the true nature of the world (and yourself) be revealed to you." Sounds pretty good to me.

I think that through meditation, I can get closer to God. The author believes in Hinduism. I love her outlook on religion though. I agree with her in the idea that we don't all have to believe in the same ideas in order to get to heaven.  You don't have to have the same beliefs as her for this to make sense, you just need to have a belief that you truly believe in, in my opinion.  I am a Christian and I believe in my God. I want a better relationship with God and I think I can do this by setting some time aside for myself each day to focus only on Him and my prayers with Him. She says, "There's a reason they call God a presence-because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time." Right now is the time for me to improve my relationship with God, not in a day or week or month, but right now.

For quite some time now, I have been waking up very early in the morning. Way before Lucy is awake. I end up staying in bed until she is awake because I feel like I need to be sleeping, but obviously I have gotten enough sleep or I wouldn't be awake and unable to fall back asleep. I think that maybe I am up at this time because God is telling me that it is the most quiet and peaceful time of the day and it would be the perfect opportunity to sit and focus on my faith - free of distractions. I am really going to start getting out of bed when I wake up, washing my face to wake up a little more, and then sit quietly and focus on God. It is going to take some practice and getting used to, but I am awake already, why not make the time beneficial to my mind and body?

I have, as I have addressed on this blog, a real issue with sleep. For years I have been inflicted with insomnia. I cannot seem to shake it. The acupuncture has really helped, but I still take medicine for it every single day. Before the acupuncture, the medicine was not even working. I don't want to be on prescription sleep aides for the rest of my life. I am over it. I want to be able to lay down in a bed, relax, and peacefully drift of to sleep. Honestly, I can't even imagine what that would be like without my medicine because it has been YEARS since I have been able to do this. I want to be able to take a power nap if I need one, but I can't. The reason why I have such a hard time with sleeping is because I literally cannot shut my mind off. I cannot stop these random and often times bizarre thoughts from racing through my brain. It is not usually thoughts of worry, just totally random and nonstop, rapid fire thoughts of all kinds of things.

The author wrote about how she lived with sleeping problems for several years. Hers was probably more related to depression, but she had a very hard time turning off her head just as I do. She could not let her mind rest. She says that "When I ask my mind to rest in stillness, it is astonishing how quickly it will turn (1) bored, (2) angry, (3) depressed, (4) anxious, or (5) all of the above." I could not agree with her more. It took her quite some time to figure out  how to quiet her mind so that she could meditate and sleep. She wrote about how her mind would race when she was trying to meditate or sleep. In one chapter (pages 134-136), she actually documents the weird thoughts that are going through her head that she is trying to stop but can't. These thoughts are similar to mine. They are random and unrelated and keep changing and blah blah blah. Her description felt like I had written it. She eventually learns how to calm this after a while, so that is my goal as well. To teach my head to chill. If I could get my brain to relax for just a moment, I could get some peaceful, restful sleep. This is why I REALLY need to learn yoga and meditation. I think I can kick the insomnia naturally with these two practices.

This is how she describes her mind on page 132 (and I often totally feel this way): "Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' - the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit, and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but-whoop!-how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's all over again; and then it's the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."

And finally, I want to talk about what the author was trying to find in her life. She was trying to find pleasure, holiness, and a balance of the two in order to live her life to the fullest. I think one of the biggest things I took away from the book was learning to be more content in my life. You are happier, laid back, and more relaxed when you are content. I have so much already. I am so blessed. But we live in a society where you can never have too much. Where you are always trying to out do someone or get more. When you chase this idea of always wanting more and more and more or having what the other guy has, you will never be content because what you have will never be enough. Some people are going to ALWAYS have way more than you, but there are also millions and millions of people who have way less. Don't try and live anyone else's life by trying to have what they have or act how they act. Live your life. Be content with your blessings and situation. I want to be more content. I have plenty, in fact, I have excess of almost everything. I don't constantly need more "stuff". This is easy to say, but hard to live. Heres to trying!

Here is a passage that reiterates this idea from page 95: "It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly." This makes so much sense. My life isn't going to be perfect, but neither is someone else's.

These are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. They just make so much sense to me.

From page 115: "You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight." For Elizabeth Gilbert, it was learning Italian. This made her soul happy. We all need to find something in life that gives us total happiness.  Everyone deserves happiness.

I love this about always chasing time - I always find myself saying how I am so behind and don't have time for things (page 155): "Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time-when pursued like a bandit-will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't.  You have to admit that you can't catch it.  That you're not supposed to catch it.  At some point, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you."  It is time to live in the present and stop focusing on the lack of time to do things.

Her thoughts on praying on page 177:  "Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine.  If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur?  Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention.  If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift."  I find myself lazy in my prayers - always saying about the same thing and putting little to no thought in it.  I am going to start articulating my prayers in a much clearer manner.

About controlling your thoughts and not letting them control you on page 178: "On first glance, this seems like a nearly impossible task. Control your thoughts?  Instead of the other way around?  But imagine if you could?  This is not about repression or denial.  Repression and denial set up elaborate games to pretend that negative thoughts and feelings are not occurring. What Richard is talking about is instead admitting to the existence of negative thoughts, understanding where they came from and why they arrived, and then-with great forgivenss and fortitude-dismissing them."  Richard is a man in the book who helped her in India with her holiness.  She also says, "Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow:  I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore."  She said she repeats this vow around 700 times a day.  I love it.  I don't want to think negative and unhealthy thoughts, but they come so easily.  If I am more aware of them, I think I will be able to learn to control them.

I find that I often times speak before thinking, and it has been known to get me in trouble.  She says on page 190, "Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss."

This is my final passage that I love - there are so many more but this is already so long!  About happiness on page 260, "People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough.  But that's not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.  You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.  You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.  And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.  If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment.  It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your sould hold tight to its good attainments."  I LOVE THIS so much.  We have to work for happiness.

I know that I went on and on and on about this.  I just wanted to share a fraction of how powerful this book can be.  I truly believe that this is a book that can change your life in a magnificent way, if you let it.

Changes!

Check out my new blog design. Here is the thing though, I want a custom header with some pictures in it and a quote, but I can't figure out how to get what I want. Any suggestions for custom headers are welcome. I don't want anything elaborate, just more personalized. I also need to widen the section that posts go in, so that my flickr photos fit without getting cut off. I don't know how to do that.
*UPDATE: Thanks to some help, I was able to adjust the width. Still working on the header.

The next part of this update needs your help. If you read this blog and are not listed in my sidebar of blogs I read and would like to be, drop me a line and I will get you added. I tried to get several of the ones I read updated, but I read SO many that I need your help to remind me to add you. If you are a wordpress user, make sure and leave your site address, because it doesn't show up in your profile. I will happily add blogs that would like to be added. And like I said, there are lots and lots that I already know of that are not up there and should be. I am slowly working on getting it all up to date.

It is going to look great in here when it is all done. I was inspired by my new blogging friends who just jumped right in and had their blogs looking a million times better than mine. I have thought about changing mine for a long time, but I was entirely too lazy to figure out how to do it.

Happy Girl

Here are lots of pictures of my happy girl from the past couple of days. Thanks for all of the anniversary shout outs!!








She has never fallen asleep like this out of her bed before. It was so cute.

Where's Lucy?

Here I am!!


Here are some new one's from my idea of "From Lucy's Eyes"
These are maybe the cutest shoes I have ever bought her. They are from Target and were already almost sold out, which is why she got a size 7, but I think by this summer, they will fit fine.

Sippy cup

The ever fun and exciting, musical instruments


And finally, this is a frightening picture of me screaming in frustration for those of you waiting for your I-600 approvals who did not get them, even though you have reached the maximum of 60 days. I am so sorry for all of you. I would love to see lots of people do this - post a picture of yourself or your child screaming. Maybe if we can make enough "noise", the approvals will come!! I pray for you all every single night. (I can't believe that I am posting this scary picture of myself, but I am hoping it will make those of you waiting smile and feel a little better, even if it is only for a few seconds!)

Happy 4th Anniversary

Today is Justin and I's fourth anniversary. I have never really written about our wedding on my blog. For me, it was one of the best days of my life. We had so much fun. I was not stressed out or freaking over little details. I simply enjoyed the day and tried to take it all in. Everything fell smoothly into place and it was just perfect. I honestly loved every second of it.

It was January, so you have no idea what the weather is going to do. I didn't care what it did as long as it wasn't icing. It was overcast all day and then when we left the church to go to the reception, it was doing this misting kind of thing that made for some amazing pictures. My very favorite picture is below. I wish I had more of the professional pictures to post, but I don't have them with me.




We had an enormous wedding party. I had 11 bridesmaids. Yes, you read that right, there were 11 of them. I have 3 sisters, plus my closest friends, and that was that. A whole gaggle of people stood up with us. They wore deep red dresses and carried white roses. My dress was exactly what I wanted. I bet I tried on 200 wedding dresses. While it was fun, it was overwhelming. I always knew what I wanted and had to have the designer take the top from one dress and the skirt from another to get what I wanted. So, after trying on all of those dresses, I never even tried on the dress I ended up getting before mine actually came in.

With my dad and you can see the idea of the dress - very simple with a big bustled skirt


The reception had all white flowers and white christmas lights everywhere. My goal was a wintery feel. I think we accomplished it. My cake was 4 white tiers with red roses in between each tier. Justin's cake was a full drum kit. It was so cool. We had a great motown band from Memphis. Justin was, of course, very concerned that our band was awesome. They were. The dance floor was full the entire reception. I really had so much fun. I adored being the bride for the day.



Justin is my rock. The person that makes me stronger, happier, and more grounded than any other man could. He is the perfect match for me because he is so opposite of me in most ways, which makes me grow as a person. He is calm and collected. It takes a lot to get him worked up. I, on the other hand, am high strung and very emotional. He points things out to me in a way I would never think of and that ends up making so much sense - I just needed someone to show me how to think of it that way. We have been through a lot in our years together. Some of the times were very difficult and frustrating, but we always came out of every hard situation stronger and more in tune with one another. I love you, honey! This is going to be our best year yet!

I got flowers from Justin this morning. They are beautiful and gave me the chance to work on some photographs of up close flowers. Most of the lilies are not open yet, so that will have to wait for tomorrow. Nicki, the black background thing worked. See the rose one? Crazy, huh? There is just that one spot of green in the bottom right hand corner. I am pretty fascinated.

From Her Eyes

I am going to start something new. As I play with learning to use my camera, I am going to work on seeing things the way that Lucy sees them - from her perspective and angle, versus my own. I think I will see some interesting things and I will post them as I catch them. She is so curious and at the age where she wants to touch everything, all of the time. When I try and think about how new so many things are, I can be a little more understanding of why she wants to explore absolutely everything. While it is exhausting to me, it must be so exciting to her. Here are a few of the things that really catch her attention at my parent's house.

When you are in this position..........

you see this.

The kitchen from Lucy's perspective - she works in the lower cabinets in her Vietnam squat, so her main perspective is from this angle

The coffee table - always has something new on it and never fails to attract because of the remotes



These are just some of my favorite new pictures







Today was one of those days with Lucy that I just really cherish. She was in a wonderful mood all day. She was full of giggles, smiles, and fun. She did not need constant attention, but played well all day. She was cracking me and my mom up tonight before bed. She was just being so funny. I love these days.

I am making serious headway with the book. I absolutely love it. I read every chance that I get. I can't get enough of this book. I have been making marks on pages that really made an impact. This is the kind of book that I can pull out, read my notes, and make some adjustments that will improve my day. I have already read 200 pages, so only 115 to go!! I am going to reach my goal of the week. That would have been pretty bad had I not achieved my very first goal. I got some comments that others wanted to do the same idea. That is great! I look forward to hearing your goals. Once I am done, I have several ideas from the book that I want to comment on and discuss. I feel like I am really learning.