It’s been too long. Embarrassingly long. Kinda of like that person whose number you got and said you would call and then forgot, and then kept forgetting. And you forgot for so long, that even when you remembered you were supposed to call you were too embarrassed to pick up the phone?

Yeah, it was kind of like that. I stopped blogging last June when I took a part time job working as my husband’s marketing director. It sounded like a great idea–kinda of. But I knew the stress I already felt as a mother of two busy boys, and while the idea of “working” from home sounded great, the reality was a lot less work and a lot more stress.

After a few months I found myself responding to every voicemail and e-mail with the words, “I am sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you…” That’s never a good feeling.

So to make a long story short, I gave him my two weeks. And now I am home with my boys, rather than writing delayed e-mails to potentially frustrated people.

Anyway, that is what has kept me away from my blog for so long. Well…that and laziness, embarrassment, and that sorta thing.

Regardless, whatever the cause of my disappearance, here are some posts I would have written had I the time, the energy, the words, and the brain to remember.

1. Garden Update:

Remember that garden I started? Yeah, that was awesome. For a while. And then it just kept growing. Here was our harvest:

One watermelon, two sunflowers, three tiny early-plucked Butternut squashes, five blueberries, three blackberries, ten strawberries, a handful of cucumbers, dozens of deformed carrots , plenty of delicious Ace tomatoes, and a bagillion sweet cherry tomatoes. (And some grapes that are still in my freezer waiting to be dealt with.) All in all it was a good experience, though not so good as to desire a repeat. Still undecided about the garden this year.

 

 

Bribery Works:

Some may call it bribery, some rewards. When I am feeling like a good mother, I call it “rewards,” and when I feel slightly out of control, I think of it as bribery. Whatever the case here, it was a great motivator. Within seconds of saying the words “Lightning McQueen Airplane” to my three year old son and “poop on the potty” in the same sentence, he ripped off his pants and ran into the bathroom like, well, a bolt of lightning.

I’ll save you the back story and tell you that  in the end, it worked. After months of battling and ignoring, he is finally going poopy on the potty. Thanks to the marketing geniuses over at Disney. I’d be more sarcastic about it if I wasn’t truly grateful for the fire it put under my child’s pants. Or out of it, whichever.

Learning the Hard Way:

Life lesson #4678. Don’t pull a boy’s pants up while he is peeing. Even if he is peeing next to the duck pond in a local park with dozens of onlookers. The pulling up of the pants does not solve the issue. It’s not like an on/off switch. The pants may be up, but the pee keeps coming out.

That’s all. Thankfully, I don’t have a picture of this one.

The Runaway Ring Bearer:

This past Christmas I had the pleasure of being in my cousin’s wedding. So did my son, Jacob. He was the ring bearer. Though I am not really sure he saw it as a pleasure, or an honor, or even a responsibility, which of course it was. But I can’t blame him too much. The lack of sleep the day before, the strange people, strange places. So instead of walking down the aisle hand in hand with the beautiful little flower girl, he stuck his thumb in his mouth and ran down the aisle and grabbed on to my legs. At least the congregation had a sense of humor. They laughed.