The Mommy Blog Written by a Real Mom
So my first post about this was all about destroying or gutting the basement. This house was built in 1959 and I swear to God that the basement had not been updated since then.
Well now that the basement is gutted, we have begun to form an image of what it may look like. I don’t know what happens to men when they start talking finished basements. All of a sudden we’re getting speakers built into walls and a wet bar, when all I wanted were cream walls and a light floor. I mean if this was the house we were going to live in for the rest of our lives (that’s another blog post in itself) then, i really would let him do what he wanted. But this is what he’s shown me so far:
And:
And:
Now I had to remind him that we’re building a basement, not an office space. And I’m not putting black on the walls or rocks on the floor, and by no means are we going to have fake palm tree’s. I don’t mind the last one, and we’ll just replace the Crown with wine
But I digress…
This is what I want:

And:

So you see our dilemma. It’s a little hard to compromise when you see the difference in vision here. Now i’ve got him to budge on the black walls and rocks, we just have to see how much more I can get him to budge… Any suggestions??
It only took him 10 months 3 weeks and 5 days to do it, but he’s finally mobile.
He has been pulling himself up on every and anything for the past 2 months but now, he is on the move. Mind you he still doesn’t like it. I think he’d prefer to walk. Get gets in a downward dog facing position and tries to push himself up. He also squats and tries to push himself up that way.
So we had to finally get gates. I know I won’t get any sympathy from mom’s who had babies that have crawled early, and I’m not asking for any, but I’m kind of at a loss. We have not baby proofed at all. No wait, I lie… we put those plastic things in the outlet’s.
Now we decided we need to contain him. Maybe that was the first mistake. We bought a gated yard thing. Which makes me feel like he’s in a pig pen. I’m sure he feels the same way, cause he pulls himself up on it and cries instead of playing within it. I have tried sitting in there with him and playing with his toys but he just wants to climb on top of me. I think i’ll unfold it and put it against the electronic stuff. There are just so many wires from all of the “toys” we have that it’s just not safe to let him roam. Once the basement is done, things will be much better, but the basement won’t be done until June. So back to square one.
He is also going after anything that is NOT his toy. This is driving me absolutely bonkers because we have mountains of toys.
But YAY (please detect the sarcasm) he’s crawling. But look, in the picture the kids are HAPPY to be there! I bet they took that photo within the first 30 seconds of those kids being in there to get a happy look in their face:
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Now that we have a son, I thought it would be nice if he “made” something for his daddy on his birthday. I had a wonderful Idea while i was at Walmart in the baby section (of all places, don’t even get me started on how much I hate Walmart.)
I saw a baby hand imprinting kit that is a photo frame, and thought.. Perfect! Yes, it would have been if I wasn’t the worlds worst crafty person. I mean my MIL is fantastic, she makes beautiful hand made cards, handmade gifts for all her kids each year and is an all around very talented craftswoman. I also have friends who scrapbook and knit or something to that effect, but i’d rather write a blog post, or update a website, or play video games, or cook (ok I’d rather do anything) to get out of doing something crafty.
Its not that I don’t like to do crafty things. I’m just not that organized to make it go really well. I seem to always forget to read some instruction and let’s face it I’m not a perfectionist so what I make usually looks like a 5 year old did it.
Now this is what the hand imprint is supposed to look like:
And this is what it does look like:
I also wish I wrapped presents like this:
But they always come out like this:
Why? Because I simply do not care to try to make it look nice. It’s just not a priority for me. I envy those who take pride our of their craftiness, and find joy in doing something pretty. For me, it’s a burden. I’m also not one of those who will go have someone wrap stuff for me, I do it all last minute. So really I only have myself to blame. My husband however wraps like this:
But it takes an hour for him to wrap one present.
I would also not recommend doing the imprint thing on your own, I had plaster everywhere. I followed instructions had warm soapy water to wash his hand off afterwards, I put petroleum jelly on his hand before etc. But we managed to get it all over his clothes, on the floor, on me (and I mean in my hair, on my face, and on the table. It was a freaking mess. Not only was it a mess, he kept digging his fingers in the plaster and messing up the “perfect” hand I was hell bent on capturing.
Exhibit A:
Oh well. Maybe i’ll attempt it again, with his foot. Or when he’s sleeping. But next time i’ll get help from someone!
While some people have been planning this day for months now, I find myself procrastinating. Do I not want him to be one? No.. But I’m just not keen on throwing a huge bash for a one year old. ![]()
Yes i’m the granola mother who makes all her food for her baby–although I think that will be the benefit of being the first child, I will probably not do that for number two. He’s never had vaccinations (my family is still not happy about that). I am still breastfeeding, and have just now introduced formula because I’m not producing enough milk to feed him at night. I plan on giving him goats milk and not cows milk. He’s never had meat (we are partly vegetarians) and he’s huge! Yes I’m granola. But I think that’s my husbands fault.
I would have never gone to this much “trouble” to feed my baby if he hadn’t had a role in it. He was raised on homemade food (thanks to my MIL I have big shoes to fill), goats milk, no meat, no vaccinations and constant attention. There were many a times where I wanted to throw in the towel! Now part of me wants to make a cake that’s sugar free, how fun is that? It’s not, and no one will want to eat my cake.. So I’m left with two choices. Let go of my irrational thoughts about sugar or just let him have the damn cake.
I’m sure my family thinks I’m crazy. I made my own oatmeal, I never used the infant cereals (yes I know all about depleting iron stores ), my husband went with me to the store before we started solids and I asked his opinion about which cereal I should buy-first mistake.. So he looked at the choices (Nestle or Heinz) and said this, “Humm, cereal from the ketchup company or the chocolate shake company,” and then I just couldn’t do it-he’d ruined it for me. My son’s doctor didn’t even know why I wanted to make baby food, when it was already prepared in the stores lol. I swaddled until he was 10 months, despite all of our family thinking we were crazy and despite all of my craziness, he’s a well adjusted happy baby who on top of it all is healthy.
Now i’m sure some of you are thinking that because this is my first i’m paranoid. And I can assure you i’m not. I don’t freak out when the soother drops, i’m not a germ-a-phobe, and I don’t think that people who raise their children differently then me are horrible parents. I just do what works for me, i’m not here to judge anyone!
There are some sugar free cake recipes out there that I may try, and maybe I’ll just make him a little cake and everyone else can have the sugar filled delicious cake-or maybe i’ll just give in and give him regular cake. I mean I survived on Kraft Dinner, fish sticks, hot dogs and Kool-aid.
But I digress, I really should start planning this “party” for everyone, *sigh* how I hate planning parties lol
So I was in the process of taking pictures and videos off of our camera today and I thought I’d see what was on there for this month. Well low and behold there were two video’s that I didn’t take.
Video number 1-Dad lets our son climb stairs. I mean this is a relatively new task he’s learned so he’s not a pro at it yet. And yes there are only two stairs but that’s enough for him to hurt himself.
Video number 2, is about a minute of our child eating the camera. I mean I’m all for a new camera but until I get another one, letting my son put electrical toys in his mouth is probably not a good idea.
I guess it’s a good thing that I’m the one home with him during the day. The 10 minutes I leave these two alone, “interesting” stuff happens. Anyways at the end of the climbing stairs video, I gasped out loud as I’m sure many of you moms who watch this did lol Oh the joys of stuff to come!
Erin Carrasco (Real Tech Mom) is a mom of a beautiful baby boy born in March. She also looks after her other two kids (Mia and Keely, her two cats) and her wonderful husband of four years. It has taken some time getting used to not being at home every day, but being a mom is a different type of job and I admire the moms who get to be with their kids every day!
Moms like me know that just because everyone says you should do it, or not do it does not make it set in stone. For us dinner is never the same time every night and because of my husband’s job, our lives are ruled by overtime, extra overtime, travel and the crack blackberry. I am not only a mom, I’m a woman and human being. Believe it or not I do enjoy a lot more than just being a mom! Some of my passions are a little geeky but still they’re me none the less.