sea's 3rd birthday

i can't believe my little baby bunny is 3 years old today! and her little brother will be 5 months old on sunday, the day of her birthday party at the beach. this photo was taken last year at the same beach. i'm inviting two pretty large playgroups in addition to the same people from last year (over 60 came) so i'm expecting a pretty large turn out! i am considering asking some people to bring a snack or drink to be sure we have enough food...if you are reading this and haven't rsvped...please do so we'll have enough favors and cupcakes...sea has plenty of "stuff" in her life so please don't feel like you need to bring a gift (or anything for that matter...we'll just be happy to have you be a part of our special day).

so my mom is in town and i have so much to do...i'm going to go to a mommy and me yoga class with story this morning and feel a little bit guilty about it since it is sea's birthday but she will love hanging out with my mom. my mom taught first grade for 30+ years and is great about engaging her with stories and activities. after class i hope to swing by a children's boutique called "so childish" to look for a few gifts. then i need to go to a party store to get "#3" balloons (i loved having these in the back of the photos from last year), target to look for sand toys/pails, tj maxx to look for random things...oh, i need to stop listing and start doing since it is almost 10 and we haven't had breakfast.

just wanted to say "happy birthday sea" and hope you can come to her party...don't forget to rsvp or e-mail me if you haven't gotten the evite and want to come...

more tonight after we celebrate sea as a family.

love, mommy

the blogging conundrum

so i've been involved in so many things recently...actually been motivated to clean and run errands and do whatever i needed to get done so i could be involved in two different coop preschools (more on these later). but today i am just lagging...there are so many e-mails about past and future preschool days and i need to mail out sea's bday party invites and buy that car warranty and clean the house before i leave for my mom's house for the weekend...but photos keep beckoning me to just jot down a quick blog...so here goes...first of all, thanks for your support/understanding about my last blog about feeling left out. my friend actually called me yesterday to address/apologize about the playgroup so that issue got resolved and i was glad she was the one who initiated it since i am usually very non-confrontational. this morning as i have all these ideas in my head, i walked past this violet in my hall window:
it was a gift to me from another mommy when she came by with food for our family just after story was born and even though this isn't a great photo, i was touched by it reblooming and it brought simple joy to me so i'm sharing this with you in hopes you'll notice those little things around your own house that do the same...

this next photo is pretty typical of what sea looks like almost every morning playing by herself. she role plays with all her little animals and has them doing all sorts of things that are often what we have just done together or going to do...here they are all lined up getting ready to go to a restaurant:


this photo was taken from the second coop preschool i am part of. sea is making a "family tree":
and here is said family tree:

i'm hoping to frame this...i love it both in concept and it is just simply lovely...

so i have gotten my blogging fix and feel somewhat relieved to have these ideas out there but now the conundrum is this was done at the expense of living in the real world where there is way too much stuff everywhere that needs to be dealt with...i'm off while story still sleeps...

no sleep, coop preschool, feeling left out

so i went to bed at almost 2 and then by 4:30 story woke up with a gas bubble and sea wanted to nurse and after nursing both of them on and off while trying to soothe the other by 5:15 i was UP and unable to go back to sleep...i've been online replying to e-mails, checking my evite for sea's 3rd bday party (surprisingly no one rsvped between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m.?!), posting to an organic coop i am the spreadsheet supervisor for, posting to a coop preschool i've been asked to join and then posting to a second coop preschool a friend of mine is initiating but i set up a yahoo group for...so yeah, with no "career" or job other than stay-at-home mommy, i have kept myself very busy. i left out that i try to maintain a mac website with photos, this blog and just managing all the photos i take daily (plus weddings, vacation, etc.). then on top of that i always have little side projects for all these photos...wedding albums, photos from birthday parties and showers that end up being the gift i give...now to get them done...

ok, so this leads me to the last topic in this blog's subject "feeling left out". i definitely have childhood issues with rejection and/or feeling left out. i was always a very social child and liked to be the life of the party. i would often impose myself on others and feel rejected when they didn't share my enthusiasm or find me as entertaining and exciting as i found myself. i always had plenty of friends and every year of elementary had someone i considered my "best" friend. this is what got me in to even more trouble. inevitably one of these friends would want to be friends or at least best friends with someone else. so we were always keeping track of who our best friend was and this didn't always correspond with what that said friend thought their best friend was. so say i'm person A and i think person B is my best friend but she considers person C to be her best friend and really wants to be best friends with person D etc.

somehow when i was young it was really important to keep track of these things and know who your best friend was at any given time and i often felt very rejected and hurt when my best friend would leave me for a new best friend. in fact, in doing some reflection, this may explain why my husband was also my first boyfriend...i always felt like i was in a committed relationship with all of these girlfriends and it required so much work and pain that i had no desire for that with a boyfriend in high school or college.

but i grew up and matured some and was able to maintain several friendships at once and not rank them and many of these people didn't get their feeelings hurt if i spent time with the other friends, etc. but somehow even today as an adult with children forming their own friendships, i still have all kinds of issues with these things! i found out one of my closest friends has been getting together with two of my other friends in a regular weekly playgroup for about 3 months and i haven't been invited to bring sea. so immediately i felt this surge of rejection like i used to experience as a child and all the worst case scenarios started going through my mind "why am i not a good enough friend to be included? is it me? do they not like sea? what have i done wrong? what do i need to do to be a good enough friend to be included? have i offended them somehow? did they just not think of me or did they actually decide not to include me?" etc.

remember i am setting this blog up with a description of my childhood issues as a foundation and disclaimer to how silly this all is...i am aware on a rational level that people just get busy and the invite/lack of invite could be as simple as they ran in to that person and decided to get together or live right around the block and it was easy or last minute, etc. etc. but i got my feelings hurt or felt left out because this group continued to meet for several weeks without ever including me. is that unreasonable? i'd really like comments on this topic because i know i can be very irrational in this area and a lot of it is coming from childhood issues i want to shield sea from if i can get in touch with it myself...i should add that i was very premenstrual yesterday when i learned this so the whacked out hormones didn't help my reasonability. (my spell checker is telling me this isn't a word but i'm ignoring it because i'm on a roll and need to get these ideas off my chest)

so i shared these feelings with the friend who had informed me about the group getting together for a playgroup (and i should make a note to myself here that if she really didn't want me to be a part of this, why would she have even mentioned that they had been getting together?) and she felt badly. i didn't mean to make her feel badly, i just wanted her to know how i felt so i wouldn't be passive aggressive or internalize my frustration or obsess over this but not talk about it, etc. non-healthy ways i have dealt with these things in the past. she was glad i told her and i was glad she called me back and wanted to talk about it instead of avoiding or minimizing the issue. she didn't really have an explanation for why i wasn't invited but i'm not sure that i necessarily needed one? or do i? i'm really torn on how much i want to analyze this and figure out the "whys"...maybe it is better to focus on the conflict resolution and dealing with these issues to improve them...i still feel like i need to talk to the other friend about it because i already feel like i make more effort with her than she makes with me. sometimes i find myself ranking these things in my head...i guess i'd rather be the friend who invites others more, tries to reach out, stays in touch, etc. than the one who isn't coming through as much but it is another level of rejection when you keep calling to check on someone, invite them places, etc. and they keep turning you down or don't call back or i guess initiate on their end. i don't want to keep track of these things, i really don't. but they build up so when something like this playgroup meeting without inviting me happens i feel like "why is she able to get together with other friends but not me?"

PLEASE comment as i'm feeling so juvenile right now. i'm going to talk to this other friend this week. i know it really isn't personal. she gets busy, works in the home, doesn't have as much free time as me, isn't naturally as desperately needing social networks as me, etc.

i'm getting bored with this topic so i want to move on to the other related issue weighing on my mind...the coop preschools i've joined. i've been wanting to form one of these for so long and have so many friends i have told this to and would want to include. but now two separate friends have started them and though they are open to including others, i am limited by size constraints and the agendas of the other members. so i just wanted to let any of my readers know that i am still thinking of you for this coop and if you are interested in joining, let me know and i'll talk to both group "leaders" to see if you can fit in to either the tues or thurs group and if not there are 3 other days of the week i can work with you on to try and include anyone interested so no one else has to feel left out like i did yesterday...

why do my posts always feel so dramatic? manuel commends me for putting myself out there in such a vulnerable way but gets a little nervous for me at the same time. i'm nervous for myself being so vulnerable and posting about such personal issues but i'm grateful to have such a great network of friends that care about me and each other that i think this can be productive for everyone.

oh, if you live locally and want to come to sea's birthday party, post a comment and i'll send you the evite...that is one more thing i don't want anyone to feel left out about.

i'm exhausted dealing with all this. but it is now 7:30 and my family is just about to wake up just as i'm just about ready to go to sleep. i guess i'll get ready to go to coop preschool and update you how this is all playing out as it unfolds. i welcome your comments...sincerely, denise

facebook, lists, random, sea'sbirthday, no sleep

so i've been composing about 7 different potential blogs in my head that haven't happened (mostly due to lack of sleep and whatever issues were preventing me from sleeping) so this is going to be a hodgepodge of ideas...it is motivated by adding a "my blogs" application to my facebook profile which will allow people on facebook to see new topics i've blogged about and go directly to my blog from the link. this is just one step more intimidating than having the blog url posted there. but it is also liberating to put myself out there and be ok with who i am and what is important to me in a public diary of sorts.

sea's 3rd birthday is in a couple of weeks. her birthday party will be on july 27 but i have many things to do before then:

1. create evite
2. create shutterfly birthday card with the past year's photos
3. order party supplies
4. finish all thank yous from gifts received for story
5. mail story's birth announcement (yes he is almost 5 months old and these have not been mailed out yet) in either birthday card or thank you card --or both--
6. organize/reply to preschool coop
7. buy an extended warranty on our odyssey
8. buy a king sized mattress
9. figure out how to stay within budget for sea's birthday party

which leads me to one of the blogs i was going to write...how to stay within a $300 budget with over 60 people likely to come to sea's party at the beach...first of all we will have cheap food (haystacks...chips, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomato...hopefully some rice, maybe enchiladas and guacamole if i can work them in...watermelon...waters, juice for the kids, some other adult drinks...and manuel has volunteered to make the cupcakes--sea's favorite part--in fact, this seems like a good time to add a photo from last year's birthday party at the same place):

i will probably spend the most money (1/3 of my budget) just on creating the birthday cards on shutterfly...but this seems worth it as it is a photo collage with the first photo being from her 2nd birthday party (maybe the one posted here) and the last photo one of the most recent ones with representative photos from the past year around the circumference of the card. the center will say "sea's 3rd birthday". this is a way for me to reflect back on the most memorable aspects of her and her life and actually helps me focus on what is important now or in the future. and i don't have to send updated photos to friends and family all year because they get one summary collage once a year. i did this same thing last year. any readers who received one should give me feedback on whether you liked this or you think it is worth the money...photos are such a huge part of my life it is just good to get them off my computer and used in some way...

so that leaves decorations and favors...last year i tried too hard to get too many of both of these and really the beach is so lovely it doesn't need to be "decorated" so i'll just have some colorful tablecloths and mixed colored balloons with the number "3" on them (see the photo with the "2" in the background) and assume the kids don't need to take a lot home with them...some options for favors are sandpails and toys, mixed beachy beads that can be strung onto a chunky necklace of sorts, beachy stuffed animals like a crab, dolphin, fish, etc....hmm... that is all i can think of right now...oh, there were some rubber duckies with party hats on their heads...i'm trying to come up with something age appropriate that kids would actually like and use without spending too much money.

i'm bored with this post...it has helped me to write down some of the things that i need to do but really i'm just procrastinating and need to do them. those of you who have 3 year olds (or anyone who has suggestions) send me some comments or advice on what has worked for your parties or those you have attended. i should mention there is the beach (waves, sand, etc.) a playground and a grassy area by the picnic tables we will be reserving--la jolla shores beach for those of you who are local--ok...that is all for now...d

supporting a family and local music TONIGHT

i'm not sure if i have blogged about how much i value a yahoo group i joined with parents committed to attachment parenting but perhaps equally important they are committed to being there for one another. one mom from this group recently posted about her family's struggles after her husband was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease. there will be a benefit concert tonight to help them with the medical expenses. it is at the casbah which is literally blocks from our house (those of you who live locally should definitely go...tickets are on sale at the door and you can stop by before or after):

http://casbahmusic.com/schedule.php

for more details about this story, you can read a local article written in city beat:

http://sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/all_that_is_night/7085/

$18,000 just for one dose of medicine?! this blog could also be on the travesty of our current health care system...but i digress...

anyway, you can also help by just donating directly here:

http://www.roseredcreative.com/donations.html

this is definitely a worthy cause and so i'm trying to do all i can to help out. i know these moms (and dads) would do the same for me even though many of us have only chatted online. thank you for helping however you can.

harmony

no representative photo. no disclaimer about the 14 days of road trip yet to record. just a short note about harmony...and how happy i am that i have it with manuel.

we are singing along with "lurgee" by radiohead and hit the same notes of harmony or sometimes entirely different ones...but they still work or blend or relate or are in harmony with one another. i love that we hear the same thing and can communicate through music...

"i feel better...i feel better now you've gone...

...tell me something...tell me something i don't know...tell me one thing...let it go...i've got something heaven knows...i've got something...i don't know..."