Gardening

I don't have a garden. I don't actually have a yard at all. We live in a third floor condo so we have a small balcony off our living room & the balcony is covered & faces East which has always made it difficult for me to grow plants out there. One year I fell in love with Gerber Daisies & decided to ignore the "full sun" requirement of the tag & just go for it. Within a week they were dead.
The next year I went shopping with my mom & grandma & my mom suggested that I try a window box, so I did. I put some petunias in it because I have grown them before & they are relatively easy to maintain. They thrived in the little rectangular window box hanging over the side of our railing & I think they did so because they were pushed onto the other side of the roof of our balcony.

I decided to do it again this year, since it makes me feel good to have something green & pretty outside my door. We went shopping on Monday for flowers & Pierce was SO interested in all the flowers & plants everywhere. He wanted to touch them all & we kept having to remind him, "Be nice to the flowers!" (this is how we taught him to pet the cat nicely). So I thought it would be fun to have Pierce help me out with transferring the flowers I bought into the window box & it turned out to be a hilarious experience.

Walking out to the balcony. The cat, George, decided to help us, too.

Of course, the first thing Pierce goes for is the dirt.

Which he then, naturally, places in his mouth.

There was something important happening across the street for him to show me.

At this point, I had to explain to him that toys don't grow like that.

Here he is petting the flowers & I am trying to encourage him to be nice.

Yes, I used Pierce's toy shovel. Problem?

This picture does not do justice to the dirt that was on the bottom of his feet by the time we made it inside.

Love the expression on his face here!

It was all worth it in the end...the flowers turned out so pretty.

In Two Days I Will Be a Working Momma

Please excuse me while I go throw up now.

In all seriousness, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I feel like getting out of the house, meeting new people & having some adult conversation will be good for me. I am hoping I will feel refreshed after getting out of the house rather than staring at the same 4 walls all day long. And I think that will make me a better, more patient mom.

At least, that is how I foresee it going. I am sure that when Andrew drops me off (we only have the one car) at work on Friday morning (who starts work on a Friday?!) that I will tear up when I say good bye to that little boy who has only known his Momma as "Momma" since his little life started almost 20 short months ago. I will feel awful getting out of the car & walking away, picturing him in my mind watching my back as I walk away from the car & wondering where his Momma is going.

I know that this experience will be good for both of us. It will be good for me to finally go back to work & feel as though I'm contributing more to the household. (side note: I have been applying for jobs since before Christmas & this is the only position I have ever been offered. Who was it that said the recession was over?) It will be good for Pierce to realize that Momma can't always be with him & he will be okay on his own for a little while. & also that his Momma will always come back.

But it is still scary for me. & I wish I could explain it to Pierce or even just let him know that on Friday I won't be there during the day, because I'm sure that watching me walk away from him on Friday morning will be scary for him as well.

Why I Haven't Been Around

I am so sorry that I haven't been around lately.

To be honest, I just needed to pull back from the blog a little. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to share freely about my experience with postpartum depression. I really really wanted to vomit on the pages of this blog about how, more than once, I would put Pierce in his crib & get in the shower with the water on full blast so that I could no longer hear his screams. How I would sit there & cry wishing that I could be the type of mother he needed me to be. But just as his cries terrified me, so did sharing those moments here. I was terrified to hear that I was a bad mom & there are some people that read this blog who I wasn't ready to share that information with. (Hi Mom!)

The fact that I was unable to share as candidly as I wanted to was the reason that I needed to take a step back from the blog. I wanted my voice to help bring light to the subject & make other women who were suffering in silence feel more comfortable about getting help for themselves. The reason I got help was because another blogger started posting about her experience with Postpartum Depression & because I saw her participating in #ppdchat on Twitter (Mondays at 1pm & 8:30pm EST) and joined in. So I wanted to pay it forward to other women.

But not feeling safe enough to post what I wanted to post made me feel like crap. So I had to stop posting altogether because I needed to find ways to strengthen my feelings towards myself. I already had enough reasons to feel like crap & if I could eliminate any of them, I was going to.

So, I am sorry that I have been gone for so long, but I am happy to say that I am feeling more like myself lately & that is without the assistance of medication. And I am happy to get back to posting more often!