Picture of the Day

Anna loves to read.  I am very excited that she does because both Eric and I are readers.  I spent wayyy too much time as a teen just reading.  First I read a ton of science fiction/fantasy books.  Then I got hooked on romance novels.  I love living in a different world while reading books.  Anna will pretend to read books herself now, which is absolutely adorable.  Or she will bring every book in her collection to me to read to her OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.  There has always been a part of me that cannot wait for when my kids are in school- the helping with homework while dinner is cooking, talking about what they learned and what they are curious about, and watching them learn about things that I don't even know/remember- this is a dream that I've had long before we even got married.  I knew I wanted to be a momma and that is the part of being a mother that most appeals to me.  The nourishing of a young mind...  and the connection to another little person and later, an adult, who is equal parts me and my husband.

Friends

Later tonight we have two wonderful couples coming over for dinner.  I am so looking forward to relaxing this Friday evening!  I will have to hustle and bustle a bit right when I get home and I'm not looking forward to Anna whining while I busily sweep, dust, and pick up before company arrives.  She always seems to be bent on disrupting my plans to clean the house.  Her naps are always too short and she'll only sit in front of the t.v. (I'm a bad mom and turn on Baby Einsteins) for so long.  Anyway, I'm sure that part, the part when I'm running around like a lunatic for the hour and a half I have between work and company, won't be that much fun but the rest of the evening should be! 

We are having roast beef sandwhichs, potatoes, green beans, salad, dessert, and wine.  Our one friend, Danielle, is pregnant and can't contribute to the wine-drinking, but I know that Sam and I can drink as I am definitely NOT PREGNANT as of this moment and I don't think she is either.  I don't drink much, anyway.  I'm a one-glass-of-wine kind of girl.  Sam's husband's name is Eric, which makes it somewhat confusing for us as my husband's name is Eric.  But somehow we don't get confused.  David (Danielle's hubby) and Eric and Eric go wayyy back to high school.  Sam and I went to college together and Danielle has become a great friend in the past few years since she married David.  I will post later this weekend, which happens to be very busy with family in town and my grandma's birthday party on Sunday.  I look forward to being so busy on weekends, but I also need to slow down at some point and catch up on some much need R&R. 

The Happy Family

This is me.  See Anna crawling in the background?  It only seems fitting that the daughter of my heart should appear in every picture of me, even when I wasn't intending on taking a mother-daughter pose!

This is Anna.  She loves wearing hats like her daddy...

Eric was actually re-enacting an old picture of his great-grandfather? standing with a pitchfork in front of the cows. 

Pretty good job right?

Introspective Thursday

I've mentioned that my life is pretty usual.  I might even ponder using the word "simple."  But the honest truth is that whose personality is ever simple?  A single person can spend their entire life analyzing their own mind only to find doors that still remain closed. 

I've spent my entire life struggling to grow up.  Again, not unusual.  And now that I am the age of 25, which is such a young number but feels significant to me, I finally feel grown up.  I have a job that I've retained for over three years now, a husband whom I've been married to for three years as well, and a daughter that I've nurtured for well over a year.  But have I really grown up?

During the course of a conversation with my dear husband, he pointed out the root of my growing up problems ("now don't get mad") that I tend to skip from one thing to the next.  He summarized the root of my problem, not knowing that it would stimulate all of this deep thinking, by saying that I get bored or tired off repetitive things.  Now that is certainly true of my teen years and I can still see it today.  I easily tire of the daily grind.  I constantly want new and exciting projects to keep me busy.  There is a fair amount of repitition in being a mother- feeding, changing diaper, feeding, bathing, repeat.  There is also a lot of repitition in keeping a house with sweeping (I loathe sweeping because it needs to be done so often!), cooking, washing, folding...  Get up and get ready for work, work, come home, dinner, bath for baby, bedtime.  Sure there's a lot of stuff in between that varies from day to day, but sometimes I go out of my way more than I should to find a distraction from the daily chores.

Farming is a lot of repitition.  I honestly think that it suits my husband well.  He takes pleasure in simply doing what he has done for most of his life and will probably continue doing for the rest of his life.  Growing up, I hated doing barn chores because it was always the same thing, sometimes done in a slightly different order but usually not.  Milking was the worst!  Sure the cows are living beings and will always through you a loop, but there is always the repeat repeat repeat.  But I think he likes having the constant daily list of things to be done.  He knows what to expect and appreciates that.

I wish I could be so easily content.  My job has the advantage of never being the same each day.  I work with people, and people (did I mention already?) are never simple, nor are they ever boring.  But I do miss my daughter, who I must admit does add a fair amount of spice to my life! 

So maybe I haven't gotten the hang of blogging yet because this is turning into a novel of self-analysis that anyone else reading will probably find pretty boring...  But like I said, this blog is probably 90% for me!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!

Or should I say, welcome to myself to the world of blogging... since I'm the only reading it right now.

Let me start off by saying that my life isn't very unusual.  It's pretty typical.  I am a young, 25-year-old wife and mother.  My husband is Eric and my daughter, currently 14 months old is Anna.  I work full-time as an educator and generally love what I do.  I don't love being away from my peanut, who is constantly doing something fun and new at this age. 

Oh, and we live on a farm.  Family and friends reading this blog (some day) will know what that means.  For everyone else, suffice it to say that my husband and immediate family is super busy day in and day out.  Farming is challenging, and the type of farming we do (dairy) is a 7 days a week, long hours a day, kind of job.  But Eric loves it, and I love the lifestyle having grown up with it.  And I hope that Anna will love it too one day, although I am sure she will hate it at times when the farm interferes with her busy social schedule.

So why write a blog?  I've been reading a few blogs here and there and I enjoy learning from another person's perspective.  I hope that you will find it interesting, too.  I am also thinking that a blog will be therapeutic and invigorating for me.  Somewhere to put my thoughts down and hone my sense of direction. 

So welcome, friends!  I think that this blog is probably 90% for me and 10% for you, but you are welcome to a glimpse of my ordinary life...