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  • Bloggity Blog Blog

    Another thirty-something mama writing about my three and a half year old daughter, my one year old daughter, breastfeeding, birth, car seat safety, motherhood, photography and family. Come see what's going on.

Anecdote from the Grocery Store

Today I was at the grocery store in what I thought was the quickest line of the available checkout lanes. In front of me was a family buying groceries and when it came time to pay they took out their LINK card (Illinois’s welfare system debit card) to pay. It took three attempts at manually entering the card numbers before it went through and, as it turned out, the card did not have enough money on it to cover all of their groceries. When they asked to put a few things back the cashier said that if they took anything off they’d have to start over with entering the card again. The man checking out said he had some cash in the car and ran off to go get it.

In the meantime, the woman behind me is on her cell phone complaining about this and that. From my five minutes in line with her I got the impression that she could easily find something to complain about in any given situation. When it became apparent that the line wasn’t moving at all she asked me if I knew was going on. I told her that they were short on grocery money and needed to get more from the car.

She looked as shocked as if I had told her they were holding up the bank for more cash.

“They don’t have enough MONEY?”, she said. “I can’t believe it. I’m moving to a different line, this is ridiculous, how can they not have enough…”

I cut her off in mid complaint, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Hey. I’m just thankful that I have more than enough money for my groceries today”.

Yeah. That shut her up.

And I do feel thankful. It’s so easy to be in a line like that and just get impatient and annoyed but I decided to take a more zen approach and choose thankfulness.

One of my good friends has a daughter a few months younger than Q and she has reminded me several times that we need to do our best to be the type of women that our daughters will be proud of. I aspire to that every day.

 

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Brian E - February 8, 2012 - 10:26 PM

Good on you. Sometimes people at the grocery can be so rude.

52 Week Project: Week 3

This week we had the second snow of winter. The snow from last week only lasted about a day before it all melted. So, we decided to try the snow again since it was the weekend and we could all be together. Things went much more smoothly this time. She wasn’t excited at first, especially when we tried to get her to do a snow angel, but once she realized that she could pick it up and drop it and play with it, she started to enjoy it. 

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52 Week Project: Week 2

This winter has been unseasonably warm and we’ve been making the most of it by getting outside as much as possible. I get totally stir crazy when Q and I are trapped inside. This week we got a bunch of snow though so we decided to go outside and play in it. Q really was not a fan but we got a few cute shots of us together on the steps to our house and I love her expression when she first looks out at the snow. How adorable does she look in her snow gear? Miss Pink. I swore I wasn’t going to go pink crazy with my daughter… whoops!

What the….. what?

“All done!”

 Love my girl so much!

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52 Week Project: Week 1

Happy New Year. This is the time of year when 365 (or this year, 366) photo projects take off and I know myself well enough to know that starting a 365 project would be setting myself up to fail! So, this year I’m going for a 52 week project. This means I will be sharing at least one photo, usually more, from each week of the year. They may not be physically uploaded in that week but they will make it to my site eventually. My goal is to be in a photo with Q in at least half of the posts. I got a camera remote for Christmas and my husband is pretty handy with the camera as well so no excuses!

Without further ado. The Cranes 52 Week Project: Week 1

Winter time indoors.


See you next week!

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Dear Q – 18 months

Dear Q,

Wow. Today you are 18 months old and, per usual, I have no idea where the time as gone. It’s the middle of winter but it just got cold. I think that’s messing with my sense of time a little bit. We had a busy Christmas were we got to see lots of family and you got a ton of presents. You didn’t care about the unwrapping part but you really enjoyed the presents once they were open!

At 18 months you are a trip. You’re a great walker and you’re starting to try to run. Your vocabulary exploded a few months back and you’re still spouting out new words every day. You still sign a lot as well and it’s so fun to see your signs turn into spoken words. In just 4 days at Grammie’s house you started verbalizing your signs for More, All Done, Milk and Bath!

Speaking of baths, you now ask to take a bath at the end of every meal. It cracks me up every time. You’ve obviously picked up on the fact that bath time comes after dinner time but have taken it to the next level. You really would love a bath three times a day if we let you!

I think the bathroom may be your favorite room in the house, actually. Not only does it have the bathtub but it has the Potty!! You love all things about the potty, except for sitting on it. Sitting on the potty completely terrifies you! Any time you see a bathroom (in a house or in public) you gleefully yell “potTAY! potTAY!”, do the sign for potty, and try to go inside. Once you get in there you like to lift your Bjorn potty seat and set it on the potty. You then want to fast forward to your favorite part which is waving and yelling “Buh-BYE!!” when the potty flushes. We then wash hands (another favorite part) and then march out the door saying & signing “All Done”. You then close the door behind you. You think it’s just fun but it’s really to keep you from hanging out in the bathroom 24/7. I’m looking forward to the day you’ll sit on the potty yourself but I’m not going to push it!

You’re a careful and cautious little girl. You like to investigate situations before you relax and let your guard down. Just today Papa asked me if he should take it personally or if it’s just your personality. I assured him that it’s just how you are. Once relaxed you flirt and talk and explore. Sometimes it takes a lot of reassurance but sometimes you warm up almost right away. Now that you know how to express when you’ve had enough of something you are not hesitant to share your view. Yesterday while grocery shopping you decided you were ‘all done’ about halfway through and you didn’t understand why we couldn’t leave right then. When you decide that it’s time to go or you hear someone else winding down to leave and you go around saying “buh-BYYYEEE!!!” to everyone. The “bye” sounds more like “boy” and you wave at everyone and I crack up every time.

You are sweet and sassy. You love to wear hats and necklaces and you will turn things into hats and necklaces if the real thing isn’t available. Once you accessorize you’ll go look at yourself in the full length mirror and beam at yourself. You LOOOOVE your reflection! You also love phones, or should I say, you’re OBSESSED with phones! We gave you my old iPhone as your own but you still prefer the real thing because you want to call people. If given the opportunity you can and will make phone calls from an iPhone and when someone answers you’ll say “Hi, hi, hi” in your husky breathy voice. I now have to password protect my phone so you won’t steal it and call everyone!

We are still going strong with breastfeeding although some days we only nurse 3-4 times a day instead of the usual 5-8. I don’t see you giving that up any time soon. I still enjoy it as well.

Every time we make progress with sleep something happens to mess it up again so it’s a constant work in progress. Someday you’ll sleep. Someday.

I want to write down every single amazing, funny, cute thing you do and record every word you say but that would make this the longest blog post in history so I’m going to hold back. Let’s just say that you keep me very well entertained and I enjoy my days with you so much!

You are a blessing in my life. You give me purpose and joy. Now quit growing up so fast, ok?? 🙂

Love you forever and ever,

Mommy

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