My First Learning Circle

After stumbling on the Power of Moms website a few years ago, I couldn't wait for my own child to be old enough to implement some of the ideas.  I also couldn't wait to participate in a Learning Circle.  After much waiting and anticipation, that time has finally come!

Tonight, I hosted my first Learning Circle with four other moms (all resident wives) in our humble apartment.  It was so awesome!  I got so many ideas from other veteran moms and also got a chance to realize I'm not alone.  This motherhood thing isn't easy and what I sometimes feel is not abnormal.  It was a great sense of support, collaboration, and brainstorming.  Now, I want to go get a sign made that says "Excuse our mess, we are building a family."  We went over two articles from September and October with one about trying to stay sane amidst the mess our children create and how to involve them, and the other about fun traditions to establish in our families.  It helps that the stuff we read was amazing, but the conversation to get us thinking and applying what we read was great too.  All of us have  

I encourage every mom to join the Power of Moms if they haven't already!  There are free articles, webcasts, and tools to help you be a more positive and deliberate mother.  If you have moms around you and want to start a Learning Circle of your own, do it!

New Music Jordan

Jordan loves Gangnam Style.  If you've heard the song, you can understand why it was so crucial for me to get him into something else.

After a lot of coaxing from Jordan for me to play it, I finally gave up and bought it on iTunes for $1.99
Apparently, this is when he no longer cared.  I made a playlist from iCloud (did you know it can pull all the music you've EVER purchased on iTunes?!) on our iPad with these few songs:

Young Folks - Peter, Bjorn and Paul
Impossible - Shout Out Louds (probably one of my all time favorite bands)
Kids - MGMT
Young Blood - The Naked and Famous
Naive - The Kooks
DANCE - Justice
PSY - Gangnam Style

Guess what song Mom can skip over without him even caring?  Of course the one she bought for $1.99.  He'll jam to any of the other songs.  It only took $1.99 to get him there.

It's like when you bought him the Cars toy from Costco for $25.99 that he really loved at his buddy Finn's house... but once you got it for him, he could care less at home.  Things are always cooler at other people's homes.  Songs are always cooler when you don't own them.

Mom is learning.  

Good Perspectives

There are days when I think how easy it'd be to be back at the Firm instead of at home.  Here, I have to be the creative juice, the CEO, COO, executive assistant, administrator, ops manager, disciplinary executor, cook, maid, and housekeeper.  At times like these, it helps to reach out to my old buddies at the Firm who had been through the mom thing.

One wise mom and old co-worker gave me the following advice, and I loved it so much.. I just had to share it.

"As far as being a new mom/working mom/stay-at-home mom, it's all pretty challenging, right? Everyday I'm amazed I made it through, and my children seem to be doing all right. Maybe I have substandard expectations :-) My best advice is to stay confident in your choices, whatever they are. Even if you make a mistake, at least you know you've tried it and you had the best of intentions. I know we can be a bowl full of self-doubt and it sometimes doesn't do us any good! People who have worked at [the Firm] are generally passionate, all or nothing die hards. So it's hard to live a life where you have to start compromising your expectations, time, output, etc. But that's what parenting is about - it mellows you out! Or wears you down...whatever."

I love the part about being a bowl of self-doubt, glad I'm not alone.  And yes, I'm definitely more mellow now than I was a year ago.  I'm confident it has indeed wore me down a bit, and I'm only at one.  

Chick Fl ick Kinda Girl

Some days, I don't have anything important to blog about or I'm too lazy to pull out photos and recount our fun vacation.  Instead, I just want to talk about these three movies I really want to see.

PITCH PERFECT

I have a feeling we should kiss.  

I sometimes have a feeling I should do crystal meth, but then I think hmmm better not.  

HAHAHA.  

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

Be aggressive, passive aggressive!!

I didn't think anyone noticed me.  

I cry everytime I watch the trailer!

POST-GRAD

Everyone say, "Overpriced Education!"

This one is from 2009 I'm not sure how I'll get it.  We don't Netflix.

Big Boy Bed = Parent's Bed

Jordan learned how to climb out of his crib the other day which prompted us to remove the front of his crib, catapulting Jordan into toddler bed status at 17 months.  This basically means he fights when we put him to bed and then sleeps for about 4-5 hours before walking over to mom and dad's room to spend the rest of the night in our comfortable and large adult bed.  But some cute things have happened from his fights.

Yesterday, he would scream and fight and then cross his arms, as if to motion it's time to pray.  After I would say a short prayer, he would resume kicking and yelling, pleading to be released.  After about three prayers, I refused to say another prayer.  At this point in time, Jordan began to say the prayer in his broken jibberish of a language.

Last night, I patted his stomach until he fell asleep.  As I began to get up, thinking he was asleep now, his eyes stayed closed, but his hands searched around for mine, grabbed hold of them, and put them back on his stomach as if to communicate he needed that stomach caressing just a bit longer please.

Today, we returned from a fun play date from his favorite little buddy's house (Finn who is two) and exhausted and completely full of grapes, muffins, and chips as well as pooping right before we left, he zonked out in the car, still clutching onto his pretzel stick, and then transferred perfectly to his big boy bed.    

Excited for the Elections!

I think this is the most excited I have ever been for an election.  To say I was politically invested in the past is to lie.  To say I was politically indifferent is more like it.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm older or that I have a family now (or that my husband's family is into politics), but I can't genuinely say I cared much before.  Sure, in college I went to go listen to John Edwards tell us why he was the best and four years prior to that, I witnessed my two good friends (one super liberal, the other super conservative) and the drama with Gore winning, then losing, and baby Bush eventually winning.... but most of those things only happened because when you go to a small liberal arts college where everyone is very politically involved and charged, that's just what you do even if you don't care!  Now, I actually do care.

Over the years, my votes have wavered from the Democratic party to no party to the Republican party, and it wasn't recently that I actually felt confident registering as part of the elephant crew.  I think it's because despite how many conservatives I know, there's this thing that most (not all) liberals do on facebook and in real life that make me feel like valuing the conservative social and fiscal policies are outrageous.  It always feels like when family values are emphasized by the Republican party, they get mocked by the Democratic party.  The backlash from liberals about Romney's comments about how he got more women to work for him (by being flexible with them and desires to go home to family) is shocking when it's the truth and personally, as a woman who had to make the decision of family over career, I agree with what he said and praise him for getting it.  People are outraged, oh so basically Romney wants to let women go home to cook and clean, is what I heard.  Umm.. really?!  Figure it out people.  The other thing I know I'm up against is all the people who believe I should in fact align myself with the Democrats because I am a minority Asian.  Did you know that Stacy Dash (the actress who is famous for playing Cher in Clueless) had people saying she wasn't black and was a traitor to her people because she said Team Romney on Twitter?!  Wow.

I know that's not a fair categorization of the left but for the most part, that's how this more middle-ish right person feels.  I also do NOT believe in affirmative action (but if you're going to say let's do that, why then do Asians not get the benefit of this when they are in fact a minority?... and why not in sports where it's pretty imbalanced there!).  I DO believe in working hard to become part of the upper class and once I'm there, I don't believe that qualifies me to pay more taxes, simply because I made it and you didn't.  We are all subject to the same tax rules, have equal opportunity for the same tax loopholes, and unless we have something like a straight 10% that is taxed, people will still find ways to shield their income from being taxed.

I also don't believe the government should run my life, tell me what kind of foods I should eat or tell me I cannot circumcise my son or buy him fast food when I want.  I believe I should make that decision as the parent.  I should be a good parent who balances his diet and teaches him respect for healthy vegetables and fruits as well as fatty fried foods and over the top desserts.  While I think the idea of Planned Parenthood is great for those who do not have parents to educate them, I also believe they should be educating on the value of abstinence instead of seemingly advocating that casual premarital sex is okay by making it a part of their mission statement to help enhance understanding of the societal implications of human sexuality.

Despite all that I believe, I think it's a pretty simple equation when it comes to the elections this time around.  Regardless of the fact that I think Romney is more handsome and has better hair than Obama, just looking at their on-paper qualities shows that Obama has failed for four years as a President while Romney has succeeded as a Governor.  One can argue that Bush left a mess for Obama to clean up but I remember him having quite a bit of Democrat support those first two years.  I also cannot ignore the rising price of gas and wonder what the heck Obama is doing.  I'm quite sure Obama is probably just smoking, running on the treadmill, letting his teenager daughters go to Hawaii with friends (unchaperoned), and reminding us how underprivileged he was despite going to one of the most expensive private schools in Hawaii.  But then again, Romney put a dog cruelly on the roof of his car for a family trip (so they could take it along with him), and apparently bullied some kid when he was younger and when asked, said he was immature and stupid without as my left friends will complain, a genuine apology to the kid he bullied.  Oh wait, and let's not forgot he's Mormon.  Shocking!  Inexcusable!  In all seriousness, I was excited for Obama during the prior elections.  I even got an Obama button in the mail.  Sadly, he has not lived up to my expectations.

If you're as excited as me.. you should watch this video.  It's fun.

The Infamous Nike Employee Store Visit

We got the unique opportunity to visit the Nike Employee Store while in Portland, Oregon.  It's a highly coveted, very insider type of occasion as you can only gain entry if an employee gets you a guest pass (they are given only a few each year).  One of my college buddies offered to get us in from his aunt's employment with Nike Taiwan but we never received confirmation.  Despite that being the case, we went ahead and planned the detour (our trip was to Canada) in honor of large amazing discounts that simultaneously coincided with Andy's birthday (or an excuse for excessive purchases).  Note there are only a few stores that make my husband so school girl bright eyed excited and the Nike Store is one of them.  My insider flaked but my father-in-law was so clutch with an insider of his own that he called up very last minute (it pays to know important people like my father-in-law!)  He would later jokingly regret this decision (we spent a lot of money there), but man was it exciting.  My husband is still dancing silly from it.  

At first, only the men went in.  The women stayed back with child for the first part, but eventually... we all made our way into the store (technically spouses are allowed but we didn't want to push our luck as we weren't sure if the men even got onto the list so last minute, entering with five people would have been pushing it...) and 2.5 hours later, we left with a lot of Nike loot.  That is an understatement.  I only left with one very expensive winter jacket that my husband repeatedly convinced me to get, but let it be known I had grand plans to spend a lot more at first.  You see, my husband had informed me that everything was 50% off in the store.  What he hadn't informed me was the prices were all marked already.  So here I was, prancing around the store, thinking work out pants were $15 and running shoes were $26.50.  I pulled a TON of stuff into our cart and was so giddy with excitement at all the savings I was going to have.  I didn't even need new workout pants (and this wasn't even Lululemon) nor did I need new shoes (my TJMaxx ones for < $20 worked just fine) but still, what a steal... who could pass up this deal?  And then as we were going through our things, Andy advised me that the prices marked were 50% off.  What?!  There's not an additional 50% off of that price?!  ... No way Jose!

Shocked, I removed everything from our cart.  And then I watched Andy who kept explaining It's just like Christmas! over and over as he walked around the store with way too much energy and excitement.  He left with the most loot, mostly for his birthday, some for Christmas and some just purchases he knew would be worth it (like the three pairs of golf gloves he would eventually use).  What a time.  I learned I can be extremely cheap with stuff I don't care for the same and that my husband, always quite the frugal man, can be quite willing to spend if for the right things.  He kept explaining how much we saved versus how much we spent (confessions of a shopaholic) but I'm just glad we balance each other out in the Nike Store.  Twas a grand time. Andy is still screaming, "It was awesome!"  Over and over again.