Photos of the Week: Personality

Recently, Heidi and I looked at a webpage through Facebook that claimed to match you to the type of animal you are based on your Myers-Briggs personality test results.  For those of you who aren't familiar with that test, you might want to check it out here.

Anyway, Heidi got a lion, and reading the description, it was no big surprise.

Which brings me to my own results.

I got......wait for it.....the meerkat.  That's right, the partner of the big, proud, fearsome lion is this little cuddly thing that was the model for Timon in The Lion King.

Photo from disney.com

Exciting Day for the Blog

As I've been pondering what I'm thankful for, with Thanksgiving approaching, I happened to check the blog's stats page and realized we have surpassed 100,000 page views (and counting)! I know that's nowhere near close to viral, but for a little blog written by a random person who's not well known, I think that's pretty darn good.

I am grateful to have readers in various countries around the world who, for whatever reason, think what we have to say is interesting. I never imagined that possibility when I started MLWP back in June of 2011. I always wanted to be a writer, and even though that's not my profession, I love having this opportunity to be a blogger, even just for fun. I'm proud of this blog and I hope it continues to be something you enjoy reading.

Thank you to all of you for checking us out!

Friday Fun/Photo of the Week: "Luuuuuuccccy!"

Heidi and I rarely get out.  So our recent opportunity to go to a Halloween costume party for the first time in years was exciting!

For this week's Friday entertainment, I'll share a photo of our costume efforts:

Is that Vitameatavegimin in that cup?!

This Is Really the Last of the 5 Best Decisions, I Swear

Two days ago, I started what has turned out to be this little series, exploring the family and career choices I have made over the years that have given me the life I have today.  One of the reasons I decided to write about this topic is that it can be uplifting to focus on the positive in a world that often focuses on the negative. Sometimes we just need a reminder. I have really enjoyed the chance to take a few moments to reflect on all that I have to be grateful for.

Today I conclude my series with the immortal words of Diana Ross:

I'm coming out

I want the world to know

Got to let it show....

--"I'm Coming Out"

5.  Coming out

I have written before about my struggles of self-acceptance as a gay person, and some of the challenges of my journey. Today, I have a life I never dreamed was possible when I was a frightened 14 year old starting to deal with this issue. Today, we are fortunate to live in a society where acceptance of gay people is more prevalent than ever before, and where we are finally being afforded the legal rights and protections everyone else has.

Although we still have a long way to go, it's remarkable.

Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images

More of the 5 Best Decisions I've Ever Made

Yesterday I began to share with you what I feel are the 5 best decisions I ever made and why, which I'll continue today. Try to think of your own best decisions sometime - it will really make you feel good. And hopefully less inclined to focus on the not-so-great decisions.

3.  Going to Law School

Like beginning a relationship with Heidi brought me two daughters to love, going to law school brought Heidi into my life.  Which, if I'm being honest, is probably the main reason I'm glad I went.

This is truly an "everything happens for a reason" story.  I had been a paralegal, which I loved, but I had reached the limit of promotability and professional development.  There was nowhere else to go but lawyer if I was going to stay in this field.

Photo from www.associatesmind.com

The 5 Best Decisions I've Ever Made

When I was driving home from work the other day, I thought, as I often do, about how I couldn't wait to see Anna.  And how I hoped she would behave! LOL.  Then I thought about how lucky I am to have her to come home to....and how I never imagined I'd have a kid at home waiting for me.

Now, I've made plenty of stupid, poor, or just plain bad decisions in my life.  And it seems to me that I dwell on them and punish myself for them way more than I dwell on the positive things that have happened for me as a result of decisions I made.  And I'm not sure why.

And that's just sad.

Guess you never know what will happen.....

My Kid, the Lawyer

Often, parents say they would like to see their children follow in their footsteps in terms of career choices. Whether it's continuing a lineage of public service, running the store that's been in the family for generations or joining the military, some people fervently wish for their kids to take the same path they did.

Well, not me.

See, my kid is already on the same path I chose.  I'm a lawyer.  When I was a child, my parents said I should be a lawyer....but I don't believe they meant it as a compliment.  They meant I was argumentative and wouldn't give up.  I suppose they thought those attributes made for a good lawyer, but one heck of an obnoxious kid.

I wanted to give orders, not take them!

It's Okay to Screw Up

The title is self-explanatory.  But the emotion behind it is more complicated.

See, lately I've been struggling with Parenting Perfectionism.  It's capitalized because it is, in fact, a thing. And it's not a good thing. 

Don't get me wrong, it's great to want to do the best job possible for your child.  In fact, if you didn't want that for him or her, there might be something really wrong with you.

Great job! (Playing our ABC game)

But I am learning that there's a difference between wanting to do the best you can as a parent, and pursuing goals that are unrealistic, which sets you up for failure.  And feeling like you're a lousy parent isn't good for you OR your child.

Happy Halloween!

In honor of Halloween, I will post a photo of Anna's prize pumpkin, which she named Herbert.  We picked him out on our recent pumpkin wagon ride for "Me and You Day."

I hope all of you readers have a fabulous and spooky Halloween and enjoy trick-or-treating with your kiddos tonight!  Be safe and have fun.  And if some evil person out there decides to be the "candy police" for your kid (see yesterday's post)....tell them exactly what you think!

The Candy Police?

I am now interrupting the regularly scheduled post I planned to write to bring you some Halloween-themed ridiculousness that I just encountered online.

Picture it: Halloween night.  Adorable children are in their costumes, gleefully skipping from house to house saying, "Trick or Treat!" and filling their baskets with yummy candy. Except, when they say "Trick or Treat," they don't actually expect a trick.  Particularly not as nasty a "trick" as this one employed by a heartless woman in North Dakota.

Photo from www.today.com

That's right, folks, some wonderful lady decided to help kids celebrate Halloween by telling them they're fat.

A nasty trick, indeed.

Photo of the Week: Science Humor

This week's Photo of the Week is dedicated to all you science geeks out there. :)

LOL. If you have any funny kid-related cartoons that you'd like to share, email them to us at mylifewithpie@gmail.com and we will post them!

Friday Fun: We've All Been There

Happy Friday!  Today I will share with you an image that has been popular on my Facebook page.  I am sure all of you parents can relate!

I don't know where this came from, but I know this is SO my life. :)

Have a great weekend, all you multitasking parents!

Firsts.

Sometimes I miss those little baby days of firsts.  First real food, first words, first crawling, first steps, first running....so many things. The growth is constantly visible and occurs so quickly it can be mind-boggling.

At one month old, everything is new and exciting!

Then, after a couple of years, the pace seems a little slower for some reason.  To be sure, there are still milestones - words turn into sentence fragments that turn into sentences, scribbles turn into letters that turn into written words, doodles turn into amorphous shapes that turn into stick figures.  The evolution is more reasonably paced - so much so that you might not even realize it's happening until it does.

Which is probably why, in these last few months, the several "firsts" we've experienced with Anna seem so striking.

This may be Anna's first real character drawing - "It's a minion giving another minion a haircut, mom!"

Thank You for Being a Friend, Part 2: The Wedding

Yesterday, I shared with you all the story of the chaos that our family experienced mere days before Heidi and I were to be married.  I had started to think all sorts of self-pitying thoughts:  why me?  Why now? What if we have to cancel our wedding?  I realize these are not, in the universal scheme of things, terrible problems.  Many people have it much, much worse than we did.

But in my little world, at the time, things felt like they were falling apart.  We didn't want to cancel the ceremony because we wouldn't be able to afford to arrange it all again. We had rented tables, chairs, fancy port-a-potties with sinks, all sorts of things we needed to make this farm wedding perfect.  More importantly to me, some of my closest friends were coming from hundreds of miles away. They would have to cancel their travel plans at the last minute. Or maybe they would get here only to learn of the cancellation. 

Photo by Kaitlin Jarry Photography

Thank You for Being a Friend, Part 1: The Hospital

Thank you for being a friend

Traveled down the road and back again

Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidant

--Andrew Gold, "Thank You for Being a Friend" 

Well, I can certainly say the past few months have brought with them their share of challenges - but also much joy.  I meant to write this sooner while events were fresher in my mind....but given that I was recovering from surgery and still shrugging off the haze of anesthesia and pain medication, I can't really say they were all that fresh anyway!

I wanted to share this with you, though, because what I went through around the time of my surgery really drove home for me how blessed we are to have such amazing friends in our lives.  People who, when it comes down to it, are more like family than friends.

Friday Fun in Photos

Happy Friday!  Today I want to share some photos I've come across recently in the hopes that they'll make you smile too. :)

First of all:

Photos of the Week: Sooo Not Ready for This!

Sometimes love blossoms at weddings.  Guests get caught up in the feeling of the moment, maybe they dance together, it's all very sweet..... (sound of record coming to a screeching halt) unless, however, the "lovebirds" are your young children.

Then, well, you just try not to freak out.

Psychology of the Claw

Have you ever tried to win something from one of those machines with the claw?  Doesn't it get infuriating sometimes?

I gave up on those efforts years ago because, try as I might, I just didn't win anything.  I'd rather get candy from a quarter machine - you know, something that's a sure bet.  But unfortunately, at our local grocery store, there is a claw machine right by the exit after you check out. Anna always wants to look at it, and sometimes we do, and I always tell her I'm not even going to try to win a toy because it's futile.

Photo from www.geekation.com

That is, until The Minion came along.

Bliss.

Our family has been through a lot lately with my health and wedding preparations - and for awhile, we didn't even know if the wedding would happen as planned because I had emergency surgery.  We'll talk about this in a future post, but for now I wanted to thank all of you for hanging in there with me and I also wanted to share a photo from our wedding day - a photo I had started to doubt would be possible just 48 hours before.

Here's to love and perseverance!

Photo by Mini-Me Photography

The Proud Moments of Grownups

Glory days, well they'll pass you by, 

Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye,

Glory days, glory days...

Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture

A little of the glory of, well time slips away 

And leaves you with nothing mister, but

Boring stories of glory days.

-- "Glory Days," Bruce Springsteen

When we're young, it seems that moments of pride are in abundance.  Our first A on a school assignment. Our first real hit in baseball.  A trophy that we won.  A ribbon for being a good citizen.  A prize that we got for doing something good.

Why can't adulthood be like that?

My little league baseball card. 

Photo of the Week: Best. Gift. Idea. Ever.

Most of the time, I use this feature of MLWP to show off sweet and amusing pics of my baby girl.  But sometimes, a photo comes along that, for whatever reason, grabs me in some way and basically compels me to post it.

Hence the Photo of the Week.  This one's for all you easy listening and 80s music lovers out there.  I hope Lionel Richie has a great sense of humor if he ever sees these in a store.

Sorry, Lionel, but this rocks.

And if you're contemplating potential Christmas gifts for me, well, look no further. ;)

Hating Jane Eyre

So it turns out that choosing readings for your wedding can be difficult.  Especially when you are two busy lawyers raising a preschooler and therefore lacking the copious hours apparently necessary to find that “perfect” thing.  You want the right level of sentiment, but not too much.  It needs to be touching, but not cheesy; relevant but not cliché. 

Where does one venture to find something like that?

If only it were that simple... (image from wantist.com)

Friday Fun: Ode to Vacation!

I can hardly believe it's already August.  I'm fighting the temptation to feel like summer is just about over. So, in an effort to boost my spirits (and because it seemed WAY too short), I'm posting the following photographic reminders of our awesome lake vacation in July. Wish we could go back and do it all over again!

I want one of these log benches for our yard!

The Most Important Purchase of My Life.

We all have our own favorite things to buy.  Heidi is a shoe lover.  I love buying jeans.  Uncle Keith loves anything made by Apple.  For some of us, it’s gadgets.  For others, (with bank accounts WAY larger than mine!) it’s cars.  But recently, on the Macy’s website, I just may have made the most important purchase of my life.   

What’s that, you may be wondering?

Bath towels.

Through Her Eyes

I often listen to the things Anna says and chuckle, sometimes wistfully.  And sometimes, she really makes me stop in my tracks and think.  Those moments take my breath away.  There is a part of me that wishes I could really remember what it felt like to view the world as simply and beautifully as a child does.

What kind of people would all of us be if we had the innocent, sweet perspective that our kids do?

Recently, I have been blessed with two experiences that helped me remember....and one of them made me wish I was as consciously kind and caring a person as my child is.

I'm always looking at things in a really cool way!

Photo of the Week: Bike Ride!

Anna was very excited last night to go on her first ever bike ride beyond the confines of our driveway!  She even took along her binoculars for whatever adventure might find us.

Nothing's gonna stop me now!

I predict it won't be long before the training wheels come off altogether!  I hope you get to enjoy some summer bike rides with your kids too!

All For One and One For...What, Exactly?

One thing we pride ourselves on as Americans is our "rugged individualism." We came, we saw, we conquered. (Never mind the consequences.) We work hard - maybe too hard. We can accomplish anything if we really go for it. After all, this is the land where dreams can come true, isn't it?

Or does it depend on who is dreaming those dreams?

Photo from www.guardian.co.uk

Friday Fun: Storytime with Anna

Happy Friday! And now, without further delay, I present a story created by my daughter. She claims this was a dream, but as she recounted it, I think she started to make it up/ imbellish as she went along.

We hope you enjoy this foray into the mind of a four year old.

You won't believe the stuff I come up with!

How Do You Know If Your Child Has ADHD?

This question has been occupying our minds for some time now.  One thing we love about Anna is her boundless enthusiasm and energy. But at some point, we've noticed that she seems to have a LOT of energy, and restlessness as well. Like way more than that of an average preschooler.

One reason we've probably seen this increase is that, at our pediatrician's recommendation, we've started giving her melatonin at bedtime to help her relax. It's been a true godsend to have drastically shortened the bedtime routine and made it way easier. But the flip side is that, now that Anna's getting a full night's sleep on a consistent basis, we are seeing her at maximum energy capacity during the day. And it's simply astounding.

But we're not just talking about energy. It's also the ease with which she becomes distracted, the length of time it takes her to finish a meal because she's constantly up and down from the table, her rapid movement from activity to activity without finishing prior activities, her incredible restlessness even when she IS focused on a task....you get the picture.

Beyond the Rainbow

Once upon a time, once when you were mine,

I remember skies reflected in your eyes.

I wonder where you are, I wonder if you think about me

Once upon a time… in your wildest dreams.

“Your Wildest Dreams” – The Moody Blues

I heard the song the other day as I was driving on the highway. As I’ve mentioned, I spend a lot of time in my car these days going on what I have unfortunately dubbed the foreclosure tour of my state. I travel to do trials and I log a lot of time behind the wheel.

That means I listen to a lot of music.

Now, that's usually a good thing, because I love music and I often find it to be energizing and inspiring when I need it to be, but also relaxing and calming when I need it to be.

Yet still, there are those days were the specter of grief pops into my mind out of nowhere and I think about my best friend and how much I miss him. It's amazing how powerful those emotions are. He's been gone for almost three years now, which I can hardly believe, and still in a random moment when I least expect it, I feel his presence – or, rather, the lack of his presence – and it overwhelms me. 

Snapshots: Catching Up!

Now that I'm getting back into this, I thought that before tackling some of the topics I want to discuss - fun stuff like ADHD, crazy sports parents, and gun control - I'd at least fill you in on what we've been up to these last few months while I've been out of commission in the blogging world.

Earlier last year, I already wrote about some of the great things that happened to us in 2012:  Anna's adoption being finalized, her first braids, my job change, etc. But we've had a lot of fun since then too!

And because it's more fun this way, I thought we'd catch up in snapshots, so here goes.

Friday Fun: My Little Gymnast!

Happy Friday!

Does your child leap recklessly off of furniture? Attempt somersaults in the living room?

I Heart My iPhone

Greetings. I am back from the "undead." Which is translation for, I have felt like a total zombie for months and am finally starting to reenter the land of the living. I hope!

I feel as though I have missed so much these last few months as I have adjusted to the routine of waking early, traveling all over the state for trials, coming home to take care of my baby and our house, and then settling down for a long winter's nap before I do it all again. Rinse, lather, repeat. But now I think I have gotten the hang of it, at least to the largest degree possible, so I am going to make a valiant effort to reclaim some time and space in my life for things I enjoy, this blog being near the top of that list.

To that end, today I am pausing to reflect on and enjoy a moment of gratitude for my iPhone.

Photo from www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi