Graceful Pathways ... : April 2013

Friday, April 26, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Friend

"No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.

Unscripted. Unedited. Real."

Prompt Word: Friend

That person you reach for when your emotions run high.

The phone call you can make anytime day or night.

The comfort of knowing that someone cares unconditionally.

That person who chooses to be there for you time after time, even when they can see that your going to crash and burn.

That person who could be family if the genetics lotto had chosen people who were always meant to support each other to be family.

A Friend.

This is the person I am missing in my life, that female friend I can tell anything too. That woman who cares for me past her own involvement in my life. The one who wants the details. That wants to hang out, get my phone call, support and be supported. That woman who has my back aways.

Someone who puts me first in her friendship line.

Someone to watch girly movies, drink wine and eat ice cream with when things go wrong. Or sit and have coffee with when a problem needs working out. Or connect over cocktails and celebrate together in any number of ways the milestones of our lives.

Birthdays, Holidays, Vacations, Girls Nights Out, secrets shared and histories swapped.

But, somehow in twenty six years this female best friend has eluted me. Sure I’ve had female friends, and I was even lucky to once have a male best friend (till the end of high school), but none of my friendships with women have been lasting committed relationships

... none of them has wanted or needed a best-friend.

And me, I’m getting to the point of loosing hope that I will find a female friend or even a small group of women to fill these needs. I desperately want to be this friend for someone and have the love I am willing to share be returned.

I’m searching and waiting, but like with all things in my life not very patiently, to build a true friendship. For a woman who wants someone to be their best friend to come into my life and stay.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Jump

So I'm going to try something new. I'm going to try writing for the sake of writing here on the blog as an out let, no information or guidance today, just raw unfiltered emotion.

The Deal:

One of my favorite bloggers is Lisa-Jo Baker and one of my favorite things to read is her real raw unedited posts Five Minute Fridays. So this week I "jumped" in and am starting to participate. I felt that the prompt today was just what I needed to remind me of what I need to do if I want to change where I am and the rut I was letting myself get stuck in.

So here it is just like she says;

"No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation.

Unscripted. Unedited. Real."

Prompt Word: Jump

Live life to the fullest, don’t look just jump.

Sure it’s scary as hell when you know you have a plan and want to stick to it but, if you don’t take the risk of a fall then you don’t take the opportunity to receive reward. We can plan to our hearts content, but if we don’t take the chance and jump into actual action we will never truly move forward. Never see where our planning could go, never reap any of the possibilities we have sown.

Life is scary. Life is hard. But when you leap into the unknown and embrace the rush, this is life. This is living. Take the chance. Act like you have no one else to think about and jump into the world of possibilities. Show your passion for living. Allow no others to hold you back and keep you where you are. Life and living is about going forward, not just looking there but going, doing, being a part of today and tomorrow.

Have you been stuck? If so jump. Take action. Move. Change.

It’s not easy to jump but it is something we all need to do from time to time to keep us moving forward in life. If we don’t jump forward with gusto every once in a while we get stuck in the past and not enough in the right now.

So jump friends, jump with your whole heart and embrace the possibility of the fall.

And with that action you just may find that you fly.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Pregnancy: Second Trimester Tips and Tricks

As promised a post on the second trimester.

Second Trimester tips and tricks.

Please remember that these are all things that worked for me but, may not work for you.

All medical and health advice should be run past your health care professional of choice.

So this is the trimester of real change. Your body starts to show others that your really on this journey and you will have a lot of decisions to make.

This trimester necessitated the buying of some new (to me) clothing. But, I was at a loss as to what I would really need. Sure there are all kinds of lists out there that tell you what you "must have", but I didn't have the budget or the fashion savvy to really get a lot of high end maternity stuff that I may or may not ever wear after this pregnancy.

My solution was to find a wonderful second hand maternity and baby store and learn a few tricks. I then picked up a short list of items to get me started. Then I picked up the rest of what I needed over time as I realized I needed them. I also continued to pull whatever I could from my previous closet for as long as I could.

My overall list at the end of the second and start of the third trimester looked like this.

Maternity clothing

Black sweater (second hand store)

Purple sweater (second hand store)

Green sweater (from previous closet)

Black cardigan (from previous closet)

Long sleeve white tee (Target maternity section)

Black v neck tee (borrowed from sister)

Black polo tee (second hand store)

Purple crew neck tee (second hand store)

Graphic tropical tee (second hand store)

Teal tunic tee (from previous closet)

Gray pattern tunic tee (from previous closet)

Multi colored tunic tee (from previous closet)

Black dress pants (second hand store)

Black leggings (Target, one size up from normal)

Maternity jeans (bought online Motherhood Maternity)

Teal print dress (from previous closet)

Sweat suit (already had as gift from husband)

Soft night shirt (already had as gift to self)

La Leche League nursing bras. One sleep, one not (bought on sale through Zulily)

6 pairs of large soft stretchy boy-short underwear (Walmart, originally bought for hiking)

The only thing I would not buy again is the black polo tee, I never wear it and it just hangs there sadly. I always think I'm going to like a polo shirt but never really wear them. Lesson learned going forward I guess. Biggest things I wish I had is a nice white button down, a little black dress, and maybe a green tee instead of the black polo. Oh and more underwear, it is hard to get to the end of the wash week with what I have.

The next big to do was figuring out some parenting decisions and setting up (one or more) registries.

For us we have made what I keep referring to as "the big three" parenting decisions early. To me the big three choices you must make are:

"Feeding Choice, Waste Management, Sleeping Arrangements."

Once these are made you can start deciding what you need for baby and where you want to get them.

Our personal decisions are that we want to try and go with:

Breastfeeding, Cloth/G Diapers, and (at first) a bassinet.

We ended up registering in two places for the convenance of other people.

We chose Amazon and Babies R Us.

While there are tons of lists and guides to help with figuring out what you need for baby and how much gear to get we found that we wanted minimal amounts of things and did not want a lot of stuff taking over our house and limited vehicle space when we travel. We also found lots of lists and lots of tips as we tried to condense things into a minimal amount of new baby stuff for a diaper bag as well.

So "our minimal" baby preparedness registry looks like this.