See this?  I freakin’ made it ya’ll!  I am not a photographer, nor a graphic designer.  I’m just a mom trying to be all DIY and not to spend so much on the birthday party this year.  Last year I shelled it out for gorgeous 1st birthday invitations online.

This year I lined up Charlotte’s favorite toys and took several shots after the dog licked the toddler and knocked over Burt.  I’m proud to say I was able to crop Cookie Monster and Ernie back where they belong.  I’m also proud to say my child’s smile is real, and not edited.

As proud as I was of these, after I printed them all off I noticed I probably should have said “Can you tell me how to get to Charlotte’s 2nd Birthday Party?” instead of just “Birthday.”  It makes more sense.  Then I noticed my epic fail of an incomplete sentence when I wrote “This party brought to you by the letter C and the number 2.” instead of “This party is  brought to you by the letter C and the number 2.”  After printing, I lost the will to go back and correct it.  Our guests will just have to deal with my poor grammar.  Oh!  I also failed to put RSVP info on there.  But, hey, there is a Sesame Street sign with my kid’s name on it.  Isn’t that what’s important?

I won’t lie, this shindig will be a straight-up Pinterest fest.  Show me a child’s party that isn’t these days.

Enjoy the outtakes.  It shows the extent of my work.  Tell me what you think of my invites.  Happy party planning!

This was me today. It was the kind of Tuesday where I answered work emails from my phone as the doctor at Urgent Care told me to “Get over yourself and go home. You’re not going to work today. You’re running a fever.” So I sucked down soup and Airborne with no makeup, glasses, and tissues always in tow. Between naps I watched episodes of “Arrested Development” on Netflix. Laughing at the shenanigans of Gob, Buster, and Tobias made me forget about the body aches and runny nose.

This affliction came to be thanks to my daughter. My poor girl had a double ear infection with a virus on top. She had a fever from Thursday through Sunday. I worry she had it before that and we didn’t notice it.

When my fever from the virus started I felt terrible! This had me wondering. Was she starting to feel bad before we noticed it? Could her tantrums be because she didn’t feel well and couldn’t tell us? We can see when she is lethargic. Like any kid, she cries when she bumps her head or smashes her finger, but what about when she’s starting to feel ill? She can tell me when she has a boo-boo, but it’s not like she can say, “Mama, I feel like I might be coming down with something,” or “Daddy, I think my lymph nodes are swollen and my throat hurts.”

I Googled “When can a child tell you they are sick,” but I didn’t get the answers I was looking for. How old will she be when she can say, “I feel sick”? The mothering instinct has served me well so far, but I’m not gonna lie. It would be really nice for her to tell me when something is wrong.

How did you get your child to tell you something is wrong? When were they able to do that? I figure if I get some advance warning of her sickness, I may be able to keep myself healthier too.

On the way home today I sneezed in the car. From the backseat I heard, “Bless you, Mommy!”

I laughed and cried and thanked my little girl.

I am blessed, baby. Over and over everyday. By you. You blessed me the moment you were born, you just made it official today.

Maybe I’ll welcome the fall allergy season this year, just to hear little blessings.

This weekend our friends Erin and Billy came to Raleigh to visit.  They moved to Charlotte about six months ago.  It has confused their 3 1/2 year-old son that he now lives in the city of Charlotte and that is different from his little friend.  When Will walked in the door, I couldn’t believe the tall, lean, little boy he had become.  Will always called our daughter “Baby Charlotte.”  He obviously couldn’t call her that now.  He looked at the toddler before him in slight disbelief before the two took off to play.  I got to snuggle their newborn son, Nate.  It was a great time.

Erin and I are lifelong friends.  Kindergarten was when we began our storied friendship.  I’m sort of in love with these pictures I snapped of Charlotte and Will together.  When I look at them I see their mothers.  The young friends we were are echoed in the faces of our babies.

I hope your Labor Day was this happy.

Look at these knees. Scabbed and bruised. A year ago I would have doctored up those bumps and fretted over their healing. That of course, was when I was the mother of a baby.

This year I’m the mother of a toddler. In the past two weeks we’ve rarely had a day where I didn’t get a call from Charlotte’s school telling me about some accident or another that skinned her knee, or left a mark on her forehead. It’s always the same, “Weellll…Charlotte is okay, but we just wanted to make you aware of a little incident.” At first we were alarmed and upset that somehow she was being less supervised than we like. But, I’ve noticed even under our stringent parental supervision, she’s a force to be reckoned with.

And I mean force. We have witnessed our child barrel head-first into the side of furniture, rub her bumped noggin, and run right back into it again because she thinks it’s funny. (I told Greyson that is surely a quirk inherited from him.) We’ve seen her fall flat on her face, trip over the dog, and tumble off the couch. That was just this past weekend.

Ooph! My heart feels like it’s plunging into my gut when this happens. My Mama Bear instincts send me running to my cub to scoop her up. I’ve learned that 9 times out of 10, she’s just fine.

Greyson and I laugh when we hear someone say something like, “Our little guy is crazy! He’s all boy!” They of course, are speaking of their son. We just look at each other and shake our heads.

Don’t let the precious pigtails fool you. Behind the baby blues and frilly dresses is a spirit that we have trouble taming. She has the scars to prove it.

I’m the mother of a toddler now. I’m a little more battle-hardened and so are my child’s knees. Of course I want her scrapes to heal up, but deep down, I’m proud of them. She’s fearless and strong. “She’s all girl!”

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