Happy New Year! An End To 2010

I feel like 2010 just began and here we are at the end of another year. 2010 is coming to a close and in less than 12 hours. New years to me means new beginnings; new growth; a fresh chance to start over.

As with any new year, I come up with my list of New Years resolutions. (Which I'm sure you have to). Instead of coming up with a huge list that I know I'm never going to accomplish in the next 365 days, I'm just going to have a few on my list: (1) Mail birthday cards to my nieces and nephews (2) Lose weight, and continue down my road of being healthy. I have my sister in law's wedding in May and want to look nice and feel good about myself too. We've certainly had an amazing year. Some tough times, but overall the majority of the year was truly an amazing and a blessed one. It had to be a great year because I'm still here!

I took some time to find out what I am truly grateful for from this year:

(In no particular order)

1. My wonderful, loving, handsome, helpful, supportive, kind husband, Jeremy
2. My adorable Madore-ables, Samantha & Sarah
3. My family (Sims & Thompson side)
4. My in-law family (Madore, Burnham & Ramsden)
5. My faith
6. Sarah's Occupational Therapist coming to the house once a week for therapy
7. Free early intervention programs for Sarah
8. No more early intervention needed for Sarah
9. No more trips to Boston Children's Hospital for Sarah
10. The girls saying "please" and "thank you"
11. My friends
12. New friends
13. Old friends
14. My blog
15. Netflix
16. Pandora
17. Wii Fit
18. My weight loss
19. Being introduced to my friends on the Charlie's Angels walking team
20. My weight loss
21. Being able to get rid of a ton of my "old" clothing as a result of my weight loss
22. Friends becoming engaged
23. Friends becoming married
24. Family members becoming parents again
25. Friends becoming parents
26. My part time job
27. Having some extra income coming into the house
28. Having a savings account at our bank for the first time in six years
29. Our new flat screen t.v
30. My new stock pot from my Mom
31. Asking to be Matron of Honor in my sister in law's wedding in May
32. Sarah expanding her vocabulary by the day
33. The success of our photography business
34. Library story time
35. FCC children's programming
36. A working vehicle
37. All the Freecycle items we've obtained...especially the girls clothing
38. All the Freecycle items we've disposed of. Love cleaning my house!
39. One of our student loans has such a low balance, we can use our 2010 tax return to pay it off!
40. Finally finding an great fantastic amazing wonderful awesome babysitter for our Madore-ables!

Here are some of my favorite photos of the Madore-ables from 2010

So, I hope this year you have had fun reading up on our Madore-able adventures. Only because I have received so much positive feedback (and also, because I enjoy writing these blog entries) I'll continue the blog for next year too ; ) For now, I do have to tell you that this is the official last blog entry for 2010...plenty of new adventures of the Madore's and the Madore-ables coming up for 2011.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!!!!!

Welcome 2011!!!!

Reflections Of Being A Mommy

..."But there never seems to be enough time, to do the things you want to do once you find them. I've looked around enough to know, you're the one I want to go through time with."
- Jim Croce "Time In A Bottle"

I've been doing a lot of reflecting since this past Saturday, which marked the 9th anniversary of September 11th. I've been thinking of what I was doing that particular day. I've been thinking of how my life has changed in 9 years. I've been thinking about the different responsibilities I had then and now. I can't tell you what I had for dinner last week, but I can tell you exactly what I was doing on that day 9 years ago.

Nine years ago, I was a senior in college. I had just bought my first car and life was awesome. Fast forward nine years and life is more than awesome...it's just about perfect. I have a hard working husband who would do just about anything and everything for me and our Madore-ables. He works his tail off so I can stay at home with our girls so we don't have to worry about daycare costs, or who's taking care of them. We have two healthy, beautiful girls who keep us so very entertained and on our toes each day.

Being a stay at home Mom is fun, and a lot of work rolled into one. There are days where I feel like I need to take what I like to call a "mommy time-out". When would I need to take a "mommy time-out" you ask? Well, hypothetically after a bowl of yogurt is thrown all over a nice clean kitchen floor, or just when I'm about to leave for a doctor's appointment a diaper needs to be changed. But, of course you need to take the good with the bad. I melt when I hear "I love you Mummy" or "You're my best friend Mummy". I smile when I see Sarah blowing kisses at me, and listening to Sarah "sing" her ABC's. "Mummy, will you come snuggle with me?" *Sigh* I love those moments.

I found the following video while I was doing my usual morning blog reading. I was teary eyed after 30 seconds of watching it...so be warned :)

It Has To Be A Monkey Thing

One of my biggest pet peeves, is parents who don't discipline their children in public. I'm sure you've seen it all: the child who's running around the store and the mother is nowhere to be found; children acting out in the restaurant when you're trying to have a quiet relaxing dinner; or the child who tries to be the bully on the playground and the mother doesn't speak a word.

While I'm home with the Madore-ables, I try to limit their intake of television. They have so many toys, and there's so many activities to do outside, there's just no time for the tube. Although, once in awhile we'll sit down and relax and watch some PBS. One of the Madore-ables favorite shows is Curious George. We bought Samantha a DVD with 7 or 8 CG shows on one movie. Whenever Sarah hears the theme song, if she's playing with something else in the other room, she'll come running in. It's really cute. But, it seems that the more I watch this brown, curious, 4-legged Mammal, the more I'm horrified by his outrageous behavior. I know, I know, he's curious, he's supposed to get into trouble you say, but the fact that the Man In the Yellow Hat doesn't do anything to curb his little monkey's behavior is just plain wrong! Watching the show causes me to think of some things:

1. Leaving your monkey alone and saying "Now be a good little monkey" before you leave is not a good way of disciplining. Come on Man, let's kick up the monkey discipline a little!


2. Another thing, why hasn't DSS been called in? Clearly, George can't take care of himself, and the Man In the Yellow Hat can't be responsible for taking care of George.


3. Something else I have pondered is, what would you call George's master? Last name: Hat. First name, Comma Man In The Yellow? Man? Yellow hat man? I digress.

Every night, bedtime ritual is bottles of milk and some story time. One of the books that's on the agenda is Steve Haskamp's illustrated story of "Eight Silly Monkeys". I'm sure you've heard the story:

Eight silly monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bumped his head. Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, "No more monkeys jumping off the bed!"

The story proceeds with the other seven monkeys all creating some kind of shenanigan, falling off the bed, and Mama calling the doctor. Now my girls are sitting there happily drinking their milk, and relaxing with a cute, funny story. However, I'm sitting there again, questioning several things:

1. After the first monkey falling off the bed and bumping his head, why didn't the mother monkey just tell the other 7 to not jump otherwise they'll hurt themselves like their brother/sister?


2. Why is the mother so calm? All she does is call the doctor. If I had 8 monkeys running around my house, I would not be so calm.


3. Why would you need a pediatrician to tell you that monkeys shouldn't jump on the bed?


4. I don't know about you, but if I were the pediatrician, and I received 8 phone calls from the same mother saying that my children were jumping on the bed, by the 3rd phone call, I would have again called the authorities and reported that monkey mommy for neglect.
   

So moral of the story is: if you want to get away with things, you need to be a monkey!