Cold outside

It's very cold outside today. My friends were inviting me to go out with them at the mall but I am tired and lazy to go out. I might go out with them tomorrow at Southwest Mall.

I've been there twice only and always wanted to come back but my hubby find it too far to drive. But Glenndel's husband is willing to drive us there so I am going with them!

I need to shop more for my husband's Christmas presents.

Water Challenge

I'm always hearing in the news, from doctors and even my own husband about how drinking water is good for me. Recently I gave birth to my third son. When I started nursing him, I was incredibly thirsty each time he would feed.

So, I drank TONS of water – on average 80 to 100 oz of water a day. I also dropped weight fast those first 6 weeks. Now granted, some of that is just losing the fluids my body retained during pregnancy but I do believe my body functioned better with having more water.

Lately, as I have begun to chase a toddler around, clean house again and take care of my youngest, I have stopped drinking the water. Instead of feeding my son in a quiet room with a glass of water on hand, I’ve found myself trying to feed while getting other errands done. (This is quite a challenge.

With the help of a sling, I have even managed to fix my hair with my son attached!) As soon as I’m finished nursing, there is always something to attend to thanks to my curious two year old, usually involving a mop or towel of some kind. Breakfast has resorted to whatever my toddler didn’t eat on his plate and showers are more of a luxury. So, making sure I drink water has really fallen to the bottom of the list.

In the spirit of this blog, I’ve decided to give myself a 'water challenge'. I vow to add water back into my daily routine as a part of the balance we need as women. For the next two weeks, after my morning coffee I will drink water instead of grabbing a soda when I’m thirsty. My goal is to drink at least 64 oz of water daily.

I'll post periodically how I'm doing with keeping up my challenge, as well as how I believe it is affecting me. I also challenge any other women or moms reading this to take better care of themselves by drinking more water as well.

I’m leaving now to get my first glass of the day. Bottoms up!

My awakening

I call the year I turned 30, the year of awakening. Something about turning 30 and becoming pregnant with my third child ‘birthed’ a realization that my entire life up to that point had mostly been lived with the purpose of pleasing others. Every decision I made, every turn in the road I had taken, for the most part, had either been chosen within the framework of what would make others pleased with me or what was the ‘safest’ choice, the one less prone for risks or errors.I realized it wasn’t the way I wanted to live the rest of my life.

In fact, if my teenage self could see how I had behaved after high school she would have been surprised. I was the bohemian, artsy girl in class; the girl who wore bell-bottoms when no one else did and expressed herself with jaded, dark poetry and quite talented sketches, considering I had never taken art at that point.

But somewhere in the twists and turns of life, I had gotten married, gotten pregnant and gotten married again and realized I had lost myself in the process. I lost myself somewhere in my college years. I never realized my dream of an art degree at NYU. I had not yet written the many books I had planned.

Basically, I had stopped living creatively. I had stopped being true to the spirit of who I was and had started worrying more about how I appeared to others. And like all moms and most wives, I had stopped caring for myself and had focused solely on the existence and care of others.

I had accomplished quite a bit in those years between 18 and 30. I earned my Masters, owned my own business and even taught for a short while at a local college. I volunteered in the projects of Texarkana, hoping to be an inspiration to a child who might otherwise have none.

But along the way, I had stopped being the girl who lived for expression, who became misty-eyed in a museum while looking at a Van Gogh, who wrote poetry and composed music. I had stopped being the ‘full’ me.

Since turning 30, I have attempted to live my life differently. It hasn’t been an overnight 180 degree turnaround. But I have attempted to live life in a fuller, more abundant way. Before the awakening, I was a programmer. I was a good programmer. I also owned a business with my husband where we designed websites and created Internet marketing plans. (More about this experience later.) I even started a grassroots club in the good ol’ Bible Belt of America working to accomplish change in things that I truly cared about, such as health care and education.

But with recent life changes (a major move cross-country to Silicon Valley and the birth of my third child), I realized it was time, risk or no risk, to start living the way I always dreamed of living – the life of a writer.

Through all the phases of my life, and there have been many, the one consistency has been my desire to write. So, I’m breaking out the pencils and going to work. I hope you find something here that will bring you back and my writing will be worthy of your intentions.

Welcome

I'm a woman like many other women. I work hard to maintain a balance between my family and career. Somewhere along the way, I began to lose a sense of myself. It was this realization that became the inspiration for starting this blog. I had a desire to share my struggles, triumphs and ‘lessons-learned’ with other women, while doing what I’m extremely passionate about - write.

Over the next days and months, I will post ideas, tips and resources I have found to be helpful. Feel free to grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair and join in on the conversation. If you have something you feel useful, please feel free to email me or add your comments. This website is for you.