Hello May!
I realized with all the insanity that was my April that I totally forgot to mention that April 4th marked a year since I quit my job.
Best year of my life, might I add.
I only planned to really stay home from work through the summer so it’s been awesome to be off this long. By the time I start my new job at the church in the fall it would have been a year and a half of not working and that makes me happy. I wish I could stay home and not work forever but I enjoy doing things like eating and having AC in the summer so working part time with perfect hours will be just what we need.
And so it’s May and I’m happy. May is really when summer starts here for us. We don’t really have much of a spring or fall. It’s just summer and, like, kind of winter here. So summer is here and my thoughts have shifted to the beach and the pool and crawfish boils.
We’ve been cooking out the past couple months almost every Sunday. The Man grills steaks and we sit on the patio drinking beer and watching the kids play. I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I was just telling The Man as I sat out there yesterday that it’s going to be too hot soon to really enjoy sitting outside. Then I decided that actually, it’s already kind of too hot and that I dread our sauna of a summer here. Then again, last summer was the worst one Houston has seen since 1914 and I loved every second of it, disgustingly hot or not.
So I say yay to May and bring it, Mother Nature. I’m mostly sure I don’t care what kind of summer we have as long as the hurricanes stay away and the Sundays on the patio continue.
Even if our mosquitos are the size of pigeons and I sweat the second I walk out there.
So I DID make sure that I took some pictures this weekend because I’m a slacker and I hate it when I slack. I never regret taking photos. I do regret when I don’t. I am a self saboteur…I should just take pictures all the time so I won’t be mad at myself later.
I also should stop blogging random thoughts so much.
She looked so cute sitting there with that volleyball.
The moment quickly ended after I took these because she almost knocked down everything on our mantle. 3 year olds and volleyballs inside the house don’t mix, FYI.
But this? This is golden. She told me she wanted to watch The Princess and Frog upstairs after we turned on one of our shows downstairs. It was a little too quiet and I found her like this. As I’ve said before, I can never EVER have too many sleeping kid pictures.
Side note: I can’t take away her paci just yet. I realize that she’s 3 and it’s ridiculous that she has one…but she’s my baby y’all. And while I’m sure I’ll be mad at myself later when her dental bills are insane, I just can’t do it yet. I vowed to take it this summer before school starts because she’s already the only kid who has a paci still in school. And I will take it the same way I took her bottle and potty trained her. Baby steps…it’s the only way I can let go of her being my baby. My last baby.
Speaking of, something that kind of sucked but was mostly good that I did this weekend was give away my crib. We were given a crib when Hannah was born from The Man’s stepmom and Hannah never slept in it. When I was pregnant with Livie I was determined to eventually transition her to a crib unlike her older sister so my mother in law and step mother in law pitched in and got me a gorgeous crib. Then I had Livie and she was so tiny at 5 lbs 13 oz and I took one look at that crib and cried. I knew that it was going to stay beautiful and perfect because there was no way my tiny baby girl would ever sleep in it. She never did. In fact, she’s still in our bed. I don’t know why I thought that we would change our minds about co-sleeping since we did it with Hannah but we never did change our minds. 3 years later Livie is still in our bed and the crib is brand new. Finally someone I know is pregnant and needs a crib so on Saturday she came to get it. I won’t lie and say it didn’t make my heart ache just a little. I packed up the bedding and even threw in the infant seat because I don’t need that anymore either. We are sure we are done having kids. I like having just 2 kids and I look forward to family trips without diaper bags and bottles and babies. I look forward to moving on with our family life together, just the 4 of us. But, as most women can relate, making the final choice and doing something massive like giving away the crib, even though she never slept in it, is sad. It’s final.
The crib is gone and Livie’s room has toys where her crib was. She played in it all weekend. “I love my room!!” she said. Yup, we are moving right along.
Instagram block:
I’m @TheBecksB on there if you want to follow me!
Hannah gets out of school in 3 weeks. Livie’s last week is next week. All of us are looking forward to beach days and pool days and I can’t believe that it’s already about to be my second summer off work and home doing fun things with the kids all summer.
Happy May!
The topper to my April
I can remember being in 10th grade hearing my Bible teacher say “You reap what you sow” about 576 times that year. I guess his method of drilling it into our heads worked because even now 15 years later I think of him saying that whenever a series of bad events happen to me. I’ll sit and think hm, what have I done lately to deserve this? What did I sow that I’m now reaping?
Sounds screwed up but hey, it was the way I was raised for 18 years of my life and some stuff just sticks with you. I call it sowing/reaping…you may call it Karma. Whatever you call it though, I think we can all agree that whatever you put out comes back to you.
Unless it’s REALLY bad stuff like cancer or something equally as terrible. That shit just happens and it sucks and you can’t control it.
April was a stupid month, really. It started with lice. My fridge sucks. I found out my aunt has cancer. I am STILL getting over one of the worst colds I’ve ever had which brought on one of the worst cases of laryngitis I’ve ever had.
And my cat is pissing me off. I know that seems trivial but it’s true. And annoying.
I DID have fun in Ohio, so fine it wasn’t ALL stupid.
The topper to my stupid month began Sunday night. The Man and I have a very strict Sunday ritual. We have a couple TV shows we watch on Sunday nights. When one ends, another one begins. They’re all cable shows usually on HBO, Showtime, or Starz so we’re never without a Sunday night show. We put the girls to bed. We let a bottle of wine breathe for a good 30 minutes. And at about 9:45 or 10 we pour our glasses and start our shows. So it’s about 8:30 on Sunday and the girls are fresh out of the tub waiting for bed time at 9 when The Man’s cell phone rings. He hands it to me saying it was the debit card people calling about verifying some charges. This wasn’t something new. Every now and then if I spend money at a lot of different places in one day they’ll call to make sure it’s me. The lady rattled off some of the places I had been and what I spent and I told her yes, that’s me. Yes, that was me. Uh huh, me. Until she said “I have one for 53.99 for iTunes.” I said “Um, no that was not me. I did buy something in a game for my daughter earlier but that was for 5.00″. She then proceeded to rattle off 3 more iTunes charges that in the end totaled $300. I looked at Hannah immediately and asked her if she had pressed any buttons after I had purchased something for her because I knew the password stays active for 15 minutes and I’ve told her repeatedly that she was to NEVER press “buy” to anything without asking. Hannah said she didn’t and I told the lady on the phone that no, it wasn’t us.
It was then that I had a massive meltdown. She put a hold on our card and told us to contact the bank in the morning about getting new cards and getting our money back. I was livid. I knew it was just an iTunes issue since the charges were all iTunes and nowhere else. After I calmed down The Man reminded me that we’d get it back and the bank will handle it and to relax. I tried to but that was a lot of our grocery money for the week and with it gone our account was pretty much wiped out.
It was at that moment that I thought to myself, ok…apparently I’ve been reading too many smutty books lately. I’ve been swearing a lot more than I should and I’ve been talking about so and so too much behind her back and now it’s all coming back to me. I’m getting what I deserve. Suck it up, Becks. It’ll be ok. Quit gossiping and reading smut for 13 hours a day. (That is not an exaggeration. It’s either read for 13 hours or watch TV for that long because it’s already kind of too hot to be outside. Kind of. Actually, I just like to read something racy every now and then so yeah.)
So, I took the kids to bed, opened our bottle of wine, and got comfortable on the couch. That lasted 3 whole minutes before I got a text from Hannah saying something along the lines of “It’s all my fault. I think I bought extra stuff on my game without knowing it.” After a little chat with her it turns out SHE spent the $300.
SHE SPENT THE $300!!!!!
I wanted to vomit. I wanted to faint. I knew I wouldn’t be getting the money back from the bank now and that the money was just gone. I was so angry with her for lying after I asked her if she did that. I know she didn’t know she spent that much. For one, she has no concept of money and for another, when all you’re doing is pressing “buy” and there isn’t an actual exchange of cash, to a kid, that means nothing. She knew she wasn’t supposed to. She did it anyway. And then she lied to be about it. And now we were out $300.
At this point I said screw it, I’m reading all the smut I want and drinking my wine because the shit storm that had been brewing just unleashed on us and I was just done. I started to tweet about it. I messaged a couple girlfriends about it. I put it on Instagram. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when about 10 people told me that the same thing happened to them and that Apple refunded their money.
There was hope.
After a few emails to Apple and a VERY nice woman on the other end of those emails, within 12 hours I was told I’d be refunded the money within 5-7 business days.
The money was there the next morning.
I will NEVER tell Hannah that we got it back.
She is grounded. She is also my new maid for 2 weeks. Her phone is hidden and locked down tighter than Fort Knox. (After all this happened I looked into the restrictions more and found all kinds of cool things like locking in app purchases and making the password expire immediately instead of after 15 minutes…you know, all things I wish I had seen BEFORE this happened.) The biggest thing though is that after I explained it 5 different ways about just HOW severe what she did was she finally gets it and feels awful. I think this is the easiest punishment I’ve ever dished out because she feels THAT bad…and she should.
At the end of the day that whole little situation worked out. I may have wrecked my blood pressure even more and stressed myself entirely too much BUT we got our money back and I’m relieved it wasn’t a stranger who hacked into our account. I wish I had known that before I changed all of our passwords on everything which took a long time and before I put a hold on our card and had to fix that the next morning. Minor though, yes.
So that was the second to last day of April for me. Like I said, April was stupid.
An Instragram block which is also the only pictures I took this week because hi, did you read all that up there? I didn’t even think about picking up my camera.
I’m @TheBecksB if you want to follow me.
Hello, May. I love you.
Also, I love Apple.
Wednesday quickie
I am flying out SUPER early tomorrow morning for my sister’s wedding in Ohio so I thought I’d put a blog post together really quick before I leave and don’t blog again for a week!
We finished our Easter weekend off nicely with an egg hunt in our backyard.
Hannah got a very special present from the Easter bunny this year. She got Cutie.
She’s been begging for a guinea pig for months now and I finally caved.
A mini Instagram block:
I’m @TheBecksB if you want to follow me on there. I’ll probably be posting a lot of pictures throughout the weekend to IG so stay tuned 
See you next week!
Friday Random
I think I have about 6 or 28 posts titled “Friday Random” but that’s okay. Fridays are meant for random and simple blog posts. So here goes.
It rained all day today. It was the kind of rain that was misty and annoying. When I woke up and saw that I immediately thought “Man, I’m so glad it was so perfect for the first part of the week.” We may have not done much with the awesome weather earlier this week but I appreciated it just the same.
We did, however, spend some time outside at Nana’s.
Livie probably said 100 times ” MAMA!! Look at the roses! They’re SOOOO pretty!” Know what else she did 100 times? Use the potty. Our baby is almost done potty training.
The girls rode Hannah’s go kart…VERY slowly.
The kids played hide and seek.
Although mainly it was the 2 big kids hiding from Livie. When she found them? They ran to hide at the next spot.
I got Mr. Mans back yesterday after 2 weeks of not having him. His mom was on vacation and when she walked in the door with him…his smile said it all. He missed me.
I’ve had him for almost 9 months now and he’s definitely helped me handle the fact that we’re done having kids a lot easier than I would have without him. Sweet, tiny man he is.
Instagram block:
We have a yucky, rainy weekend ahead for us. I do have a wedding tomorrow night that I’m looking forward to. Other than that? Lots of cuddling ahead. Happy weekend!
But, I did bake bread
I’m starting off this post with an Instagram block because we took Hannah to the rodeo Sunday to see Big Time Rush and if you’re from Houston or from anywhere around here or if you know me you know that the rodeo is a big deal every year here. I used to only care about going for whatever concert was that night but the past couple years I’ve actually enjoyed watching the bull riding and the barrel racing…all the activities really because Hannah swears she’s going to be in the rodeo one day and I believe her. So I didn’t bring my camera but I DID take pictures on my phone and they’re in this block. Side note: Big Time Rush pretty much sucks and makes me miss NKOTB even more.
I’m @TheBecksB on there if you want to follow my addiction.
Since quitting my job 11 months ago life has taken a major change of pace for me. I thought that I’d get up and get ready early and have my whole day to run errands or spend time outside. Some days I do this. Most I don’t. Instead I drag myself out of bed like I always did, get Hannah (or both girls on Tuesdays and Thursdays) off to school, take my time drinking coffee on the couch and make sure that whatever I have planned for the day doesn’t start til at least 10 am.
That is Hannah right before school. 2 things about this picture. 1. I took it BEFORE 10 am which is a stretch for me lately. 2. Look at her. Takes my breath away when I see pictures of her. Looking at her in person compared to looking at pictures is different for me. She looks so grown up. She THINKS she’s grown up half the time but in this moment where she was just writing in her journal until I said it was time to go? Priceless.
It just so happens that on a sunny day right at about 10 am the sun shines through the living room so perfectly that I get amazing photos. It’s even better when Livie is on the couch and the sun shines through that amazing hair of hers. I take pictures of it any time I can.
I had plans yesterday to change it up. I may not have gotten up earlier than necessary or got ready before 10 BUT I was going to do 2 important things with my day. I was going to take Livie to the park because the skies were clear and it was a perfect 75 degrees.
That didn’t happen.
I was going to start potty training Livie. Again.
That mostly happened.
First this happened.
We had to deal with a you-can’t-have-a-Sharpie meltdown first. Then? Smooth sailing.
She only had 2 accidents yesterday. She’s at school today and the latest report from Nana (her teacher) is that she’s had no accidents today. I am so proud of my baby girl and I’m REALLY hoping and praying this is it and that she’ll be potty trained. I wasn’t in a rush for her to be trained but after buying diapers last week on a limited budget I thought ok, enough is enough. She’s 3 and these freakin things cost me $40 a month. Updates on this later this week.
So we didn’t make it to the park BUT, and that is a big but, I did bake bread.
Never in my life did I think I’d ever say those words. I only knew how to bake things out of a box or package. To bake something totally from scratch, bread no less, was never my cup of tea.
Until last week.
My mother in law insisted it was easy with our Deep Covered Baker from Pampered Chef (that I’m super obsessed with btw) so I baked a loaf last week. I made dough and let it rise and baked it and out came pure bread awesomeness.
I ate the whole thing by myself. I wish I was kidding.
So I baked more yesterday and this time I’m sharing it with The Man and other family. Let’s just say it’s the most delicious bread ever and I may or may not slather it in REAL butter.
I also may or may not have gained 3 pounds because of this bread.
Oh and 1 more quick thing before I go finish the Lifetime movie I’m watching…also not kidding about that either….
My baby trees we planted in the summer are getting new leaves!!!! I almost screamed when I noticed this the other day. I watered the crap out of those trees this summer and if you have been reading my blog for a while you know I babied those trees. It paid off. They made it through a season of losing their leaves and now they have buds and new leaves. So happy!
I’m off to finish that movie.
I’m ok with this because I DID go to the store today AND I baked bread. Twice.
(If you want the recipe for the bread email me at becky@lifeoutoffocus.com)
Friday random
After editing the pictures for this post I realized I only had one picture of Hannah and it’s not even one from my camera but an Instagram one. I hate that when I have an abundance of pictures of one kid and not the other. I feel like I’m favoring one over the other and that makes me feel awful and yet it kind of accurately portrays our week. Hannah spends more and more time in her room watching her shows or reading books or playing on her DSi while Livie is always around me. Plus she’s only in school 2 days a week vs. Hannah’s 5. Anyway, after realizing that a few minutes ago I’ll make sure to get more pictures of Hannah this week even if she protests because trust me, picture protesting goes on a lot from both girls. Livie’s just easier to bribe.
I’ll start the random off with more OCD-ness going on.
This is probably the last time I’ll post about this for a while cause I know y’all are all “Ok Becky. We get it. Livie has an obsession with lining her toys up.” Needless to say, it still brings me much amusement and I’ll probably keep taking pictures of it even if I don’t post them here.
I still have coffee with my mother in law every day except now we moved our coffee date to my house twice a week. It’s a nice little change of venue and while we still love going to Nana’s the other days, it’s nice to have Nana come over our house twice a week.
Watching Livie drawing has occupied my time more lately because I’m always curious to see which hand she’s holding her pen in. Sometimes it’s the right. Sometimes it’s the left. I know as time goes it’ll be more left and less right so I keep watching to see when that happens.
Watching her do anything though…kind of my obsession.
There will come a time like with Hannah when if I stare a little too long she’ll give me an annoyed look and say “What, Mom?” so I take advantage of longer glances now while I can.
But, Hannah doesn’t know that I stare a little longer when she’s not looking.
She loves make up.
This morning I finished a compact of powder so I let her have it with a make up sponge and I can’t even tell you in words that do it justice how excited she was. She kept saying things like “MAMA! I look SO pretty!” and “Oooh look! I love make up!” She walked around all day today with that empty compact patting her face with that sponge and talking about how pretty she looked.
Who know an empty compact would be so thrilling?
Friday Instagram:
I’m @TheBecksB on there if you want to follow me.
Lastly, this song. I am obsessed with it and have played it about 100 times today. Do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
Have a fantastic weekend!
Random motherhood ramblings
It’s safe to say that I lose count after about the 4 times a day that I have to yell at the girls to stop fighting. I also admit that when the baby comes to me crying about something Hannah did or Hannah comes running to tattle on something Livie did I stand there and half listen/half get angry. I know they will fight. It’s a rite of passage. And I guess it’s a rite of passage for me as mother to deal with their fighting. However, I’m not “that” kind of mom. I will never grab the 2 of them and sit them down and ask what the problem is, think of a fair solution, hug it out, and send them off to play. It’s just never going to happen. It’s more of a “Y’ALL KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW!” kind of handling I do and I’m ok with that. It doesn’t fix anything but it actually usually does work.
So the fighting has increased the older Livie gets and the more she knows what she wants, who she is, and HOW she wants to play. It’s not just let-Hannah-decide kind of play like it used to be which results in Hannah getting mad because for 3 years she’s been the boss and Livie’s mad because she wants to be the boss. It all has my head spinning, let that be known.
Motherhood takes its toll on me a lot. The nights that The Man works late it’s not above me to send him a “when you get home, I’m running away” text from time to time. I’ve never actually ran away…but I’ve wanted to.
More than once.
I’m not really sure why I’m saying this all except to say that being a mom that doesn’t work has it’s own set of challenges different (and some alike) from putting in a 12 hour work day and THEN coming home and handling fighting kids. I’ve done both kinds of mothering now and I gotta say, neither one is easier than the other. I still want to run away some days. I still cry and feel defeated some days. Most days are good. Some can be insane. All are part of being a mother and I embrace them all, trying or not.
These constant arguments the girls have brought to me lately have definitely challenged me in new ways and I’ve learned that I am way more capable as a mother than I ever thought I’d be. Handling Hannah entering the tween years was the tip of the iceburg as I now I have an almost tween and a toddler who is losing more and more of the baby-ness about her and is gaining more and more independence and individual thoughts. Being a mom is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I realize that is one of the most cliche sentences ever written but it’s true. I’m 30 and I look back wondering how the heck I got here so fast. I’m no longer a young adult barely in her 20s with opinions that older adults wrote off as “immature” or “silly.” I don’t hear anyone tell me anymore “Just wait until you’re older and you’ll realize yadda yadda.” Instead I’m the one saying this to my younger sister or sister in law or cousins. A lot of growing up happens from 20 to 30. When I think about all that I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown as a mother in the past 9 years I’ve been one…well, it’s a lot. I think it’d be different if I became a mom at 30 and then looked back from 40…I feel like once you hit your 30s you’re pretty settled on WHO you are and HOW you’ll be in regards to life and its decisions. But from 20 to 30? SO different.
Maybe I’m the only person who feels this way?
I don’t know why I just typed this all out. Every now and then I start to ramble about something totally different than what I intended to post but it turns out to be something that I probably needed to get out and so there it is. Being a mother in my 30s is going to present many new challeges as I’ll be raising TWO teenage girls through them but I feel so much more grounded and solid in my beliefs and ideas as a mom and I feel like I’m way better equipped to handle it now than I was when I first held Hannah at the young age of 21.
Today as I broke up yet another fight between the girls as Livie cried to me and pointed to Hannah I remembered I took these on Friday.
I still pray to God that my girls will always get along and have a strong sister relationship despite their age difference because there’s something about being siblings together as kids and growing up together in the same house with the same parents that bonds you. I may not be super close to my sisters but whenever one of them calls me and says “You know how such and such was back then” or “Rememeber when we did this and went there?” or “Remember when Mom said this and Dad said that?” I can say “Yes! I totally remember that!” when no one else can because we’re sisters and we were together all the time. I want that for them…I want more for them actually.
I literally pray about that for these two because it’s THAT important to me and really, anything that is important to me I try to pray about often. The life I have now? I prayed for it. That’s a whole other story meant for another day but yes, I pray my girls get along always and stay close and have inside jokes and take trips together and their kids be best friends. Big dreams, yes. Can they come true? Absolutely.
Instagram block:
A long winded, all over the place post from me. How Monday-ish, huh?
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