Hard to believe that the last time I posted was in July! Time has flown. Since then I’ve had a baby (who is now 4.5 months old), my oldest son just turned 2 years old, I’ve sold a house, bought a house, left a job and have become a full time mom, celebrated a bunch of holidays and birthdays and I’ve started a new blog! This one has it’s own URL! It’s www.knowyourstory.net. I’m so proud of myself! Though blogging for real has it’s pressure! So much so that I’m struggling to get it started. When it’s for real, meaning I would love to drum up some business for services that I would like to provide to people, it feels like you can’t just talk about whatever is on your mind. Whatever I talk about, it has to be enlightening to my readers, and the blog and each post has to be done just right so search engine’s will notice it. See, pressure! So it is for that reason that I decided to write something on my personal blog today, a way to get out my thoughts and anxieties so I can get those type of things out of the way and get down to business.

Now my new blog as I mentioned is about the services that I want to provide people. Since I have a lot of interest in genealogy, family photos, people’s stories, photography, and have a background in graphic design/print production/printing, I’ve decided to offer services in exactly the type of areas that I find interesting. Should I ever drum up business, it will be a miracle! For the most part my clients need to be local, but a lot can be done via the web so I just may end up being surprised.

Check it out! knowyourstory.net

Oh…you’ll notice that I’ve only posted 2 things so far and they are about procrastinating! I can’t seem to stop doing that when it comes to that blog. My mind is full of thoughts but I’m not a great writer so I’m freezing up. I am hoping that by receiving all my Grandm’s photos tomorrow so I can organize them for her, that I will have a lot to write about and start posting.

Oh…one more thing! I have started tweeting!

My husband and I fight the most when it comes to our families. Holidays are one of the topics that tends to get heated. Tonight out of the blue over dinner my husband and I started talking about Christmas. I think he asked what we were going to do with our sleeping arrangements at my Grandmother’s house. There are just simply more people sleeping there then there are beds, let alone room for 2 cribs ( I am due with our second child in Oct).

To cut to the chase, my husband was raised mostly Jewish and every Christmas his family whet to Sanibel Island, FL for 2 weeks. They didn’t celebrate Christmas. So when my husband said that WE WILL have Christmas at our own house (not my Grandma’s) starting in the next couple of years, because there is just something about coming down your own stairs to your own tree, that did me in. How the fuck does he know? I am the one who for 32 years have been driving to my Grandmother’s house and walking down her stairs to the her Christmas tree. Just because she paid for all those things, doesn’t mean that they didn’t feel like mine. Because they are MY traditions and I don’t know anything differently.

So we stopped talking during dinner and now haven’t spoken much sense. I think my feelings are hurt. I was shocked when he said that, and with such force. I feel like already that my little nuclear family is turning into “those distant relatives” because we live about 40 minutes away. So by changing up Christmas that will create another wedge, something else that we don’t do together (meaning my extended family).

So I must ask, does getting married mean that you need to change the traditions that you have known your entire life? Even if it’s what may make your nuclear families life easier on the day of, or to start a new tradition? How do you change things up with out affecting other people in your family and their feelings? My Grandmother would be crushed, my brother – who is in his 20′s, would have a big change on his day, what about my parents and all they’ve ever known since they were married back in 1973? Whose house do they go to? I know they want to see their Grandson’s open gifts just like my Grandma watched my brother and I. We each have our duties that morning and expectations.

If a spouse comes along and wants to change it up, is that fair to everyone else? And if not, how do you get your spouse to see why it’s important to you when they are seeing things from their point of view that are important from their perspective for their children and starting their own traditions (since they have no ties to the childhood ones that you grew up with?)

About two weeks back now I got into some trouble with my local mommy list serv group. There are almost 600 families on the list serv and some became so upset because I asked for recommendations about what areas outside the city to move to, that they want to have me removed from the list serv. Granted they wanted to that more so after I continued to post questions, but I never saw the post from the administrator asking me to stop posting those type of questions.

It’s unfortunate that the experience turned out the way that it did for both the list serv and myself, and that’s because I am now the holder of some wonderful recommendations that people sent to me and you can tell that they spent a lot of time writing their thoughts to me. I feel that someday there will be other families on the list serv who will need to move out of Baltimore for some reason but will have no idea where to go and I could help them. That concept had my husband mentioning to me one night that I should start a blog about moving so people can post their own thoughts and not be ridiculed for doing so. The blog idea could still happen, but it ended up expanding to do a wiki instead so there is not one webmaster. I love the idea! Life is busy and I’m not great at keeping up my blog, so having people add their thoughts and do the other advantages that a wiki has to offer is appealing to me.

So I have spent a few days now trying to get a wiki started on BoltWire because it gives you all these things that you can do for free, you just have to do a little work. I’m not scared of the technical work, I enjoy learning new things, however I am not able to wrap my mind around some important things that they are telling me to do. And there is no offer of any tips or places to go for help in each section. Like they assume that you know what they are saying and meaning.

I put out something about on my Facebook status and got some suggestions to try and some suggestions for other sites. I have looked into the other sites but they either want money or they don’t allow me to use my own domain. And that is a problem to me. How is Google going to pick it up if I don’t have a domain? To me it would look awful to advertise a long web address that will take someone inside a hosted site. Blogs come up and they appear on their own but they are not, but they are accepted that way. I don’t know enough about wiki’s to know if they are accepted that way. But regardless, when you sign up for a blog you know what your web address is going to be, I’m not getting that impression with the hosts that I’ve looked into.

So I am left with an idea that could help others through their recommendations. I wanted to called it MarylandInfo. And it wouldn’t be just about moving, but that is what I would have used to start it. From there I would have created a web of all kinds of questions involving the neighborhoods I’m looking into and what restaurants are there (for example). So eventually there would be more questions out there with opinions or recommendations and it would have grown, I just know it.

I am still curious as to whether I’d have to do advertising for it or if word of mouth and Google searches would have found it. But I would have signed it up with AdSense and tried to make some money from it. I am about to have a 2nd baby and I won’t be working any longer, so any added income could help.

WordPress is my comfort zone and would like to start a blog, and perhaps someday figure out how to move it to WordPress.org so I can have paid advertisements (hopefully!). But would the style of a blog be helpful enough to others. Can I have open access to writers? Can others ask questions and receive all kind of opinions or recommendations? Could a blog take on a life of it’s own without a main web master to post something every day? Decisions, decisions.

There are times when something comes along that no matter how you may actually think on a subject, for some reason it still seems to pester you or fester in your mind. No matter how you try to reason with yourself based on what your actual beliefs are, you can not seem to reason with the thoughts that won’t let you – let it go.

A few years back I read a book by Melody Beattie called “The Language of Letting Go”. I read it for trying to help me let go of a relationship, but I think it’s time to pull it out again. I know my troubling thoughts will pass in a few days, but just the fact that they became so prevalent in my mind and have now disturbed my mood for a few days, I think it’s worth flipping through the book again so the next time I can breeze through incidences that make me uncomfortable a bit easier.

For those of you who know the city of Baltimore, there are some great neighborhoods within the city line and other great ones just over the county line. Then there are all the neighborhoods that surround the city. Despite Baltimore not being a tiny town, great public transportation is one of our lacking points. So if you live outside the city, it’s not like you can commute easily by train. We have trains, but don’t vision living outside of DC and having all these train choices. So when you live out side the city and work in the city of Baltimore, you could be facing a boring commute everyday to only go a few miles. To me, nothing is that far away from each other in this area, it just feels like it due to the routes or the traffic.

So my husband and I are going to literally check out what feels like a million communities over the city/county line and surrounding the city. Then take into fact the schools first then commute, and third if there is anywhere to walk to do your errands. Living in the city, I’ve gotten use to doing that.

So today I think I’ve printed out at least a 100 Google map pages of areas around the city. It’s not suppose to be that great of a weekend weather wise, so we figured we scoop out our future.

Now if Baltimore didn’t have such high property taxes, I probably would not have to start this process that is going to ultimately change many aspects of my life.

“Oh, boy. You can handle it! That is why we are moms.” This was said to me from a friend in response to my status today on Facebook. It was in response to me mentioning that my son was still sick but doing much better, and that my dog had surgery today from under her chin to between her legs in search of what was causing her not to be able to keep food or water down.

It’s been a long couple of days being couped up in the house with a sick baby boy, a dog who keeps throwing up and a ton of work to do. I am really warn out. I have company coming tomorrow and so much crud built up on my wood floors that I may need to clean them by hand. I haven’t worked yet today so I have that to look forward to after my son goes to sleep.

My arms feel so heavy I’m not sure I can do much else then to work on my computer, zone out in front of the tv, or to just go to bed.

I will start my 3rd trimester this week. Am I ready? Can I handle being a mom to two boys, two cats and a dog? Can I handle being a wife, care taker, and majority of the time the house cleaner?? I will say at least I’m lucky enough to have a husband who does the cooking and does his own laundry!! He will even help with all of the above. I love him so much.

Ok, gotta go. My son is screaming so hard right now that he is making himself sick. I think it’s just to get my attention.

… A couple of hours later… I did it! I vacuumed a ton, I mopped a ton, I cleaned a toilet, a sink a mirror, and I even took the Magic Eraser over a ton of tiny little finger prints! I am officially whooped but I feel satisfied that I got started on a task that seemed a like HUGE mountain and now I am actually energized and my husband made me stop cleaning because I was becoming obsessive.

Thanks for the encourage words that kept me going!!!

Night

My 16-month old son has throat ulcers!The technical name is “Coxsackie Virus”. They are red around the edges with white inside (I think that’s how his doctor described it). It sounds gross! I guess this past Monday she saw her first one this week and by 5:00 that day she had 5 kids come in with it and has been bombarded with cases all week. It’s contagious so my son probably picked it up at his play group on Wednesday, and may have given it to someone this morning at the gym’s Kids Club. Great. So for the next 3-5 days we will have this little bugger who is dealing with a fever and has little energy. Today was the first day that I’ve really dealt with him being sick. He did throw up his morning milk (all he at all day until we gave him ice cream for dinner). The milk was curdled! The doctor wasn’t sure why he threw up because that’s not a symptom, but I had just given him Motrin. She also said that it could have been sitting in stomach wrong due to the fever and that’s why it was curdled. Yuck!

As my husband said, he now understands why his parents took it so hard when he got sick as a youngster. You want to help them but there isn’t anything you can do but just be there for them.

As for my husband and I, he’s in sales and was able to come home today to be with my son and I. Love the fact that he was able to! But I must say for some reason we were sick of each other by the end of the day! You’d think we weren’t attached at the hip most of the time. But for some reason today as the day wore on we got on eachother’s nerves. I am very thankful that tomorrow is Saturday and I will have my husband home to help for the next two days, but being that we can’t go anywhere and it’s really hot outside these days, it could turn out to be a long weekend! An extra benefit in my favor is that on the weekends it’s my husband’s turn for having the monitor (Fri night, Sat, and Tues), so yippy! Of course I’ll be getting up too, but I won’t have that “on call” feeling.

I woke up today full of energy. If you read my previous post, you’ll see that b/t my attempt at cleaning the kitchen floor and my son wanting my attention, I became very tired. I never recovered! I will start my 3rd trimester next week so perhaps the stages of being in the third trimester are showing their signs, but seriously I feel like I am moving through mud! Every little movement is a huge effort! I tried to walk to the grocery story today, about a mile from my house and something I do often and I couldn’t even keep my arms up to push my son’s stroller. My legs were barely moving and I was huffing and puffing by the time I turned around about 3 blocks from my house. My house has never seemed so far away before! I am mentally shot as well. The wheels take forever before a though will really process.

Luckily today while my son slept work didn’t need anything that was urgent so I put it off and shut my eyes for a few. It didn’t really help much, but tomorrow I need to be more productive in general. It’s hard to make important phone calls when your mind is sluggish!

Cleaning my house has always been a challenge for me, even when I was single. It’s just something that I hate to do. I work from home while my son is napping, so if I’m busy with work I have never found a ton of time to clean. But now that my son is only taking 1 nap a day and I try my best to get us out of the house for most of the mornings, cleaning is now left to the evenings and weekends and they don’t always leave time for it either!

So today I figured that it wouldn’t be that hard to at least vacuum the kitchen and do a quick mop. An hour and half later, I was dead tired and my feet were killing. Granted I’m 6 months pregnant so I have that affecting things too, but my son would not give me 5 minutes!

So again I ask, how does a Mom get the chance to clean?!

During my second pregnancy I promise I will work out more, eat better, sleep more, indulge more in me.

I really do have high hopes for these goals.