Posted by Laurie | November 5th, 2009

I have had my blog for quite some time, starting with a blogger blog, importing the posts to a free wordpress blog, then switching over to a self-hosted wordpress blog on the domain mobilemommy.me domain. After a lot of thought, I finally decided to name my blog Mobile Mommy and bought the mobilemommy.me domain, but due to my lack of experience have put off actually setting the blog properly up under the mobilemommy domain. I’ve just used a re-direct so that I could use mobilemommy.me when commenting or whatever, but people still ended up on mobilemommy.me.

So, I’m getting ready to move domains, finally! I’m more than a little nervous about it but I have found a reasonably good sounding description of how to do this and I would love to say I managed it on my own (of course I may screw it all up, ack!)

Wish me luck and if you notice anything wonky you know why! And if you have tips or suggestions before I tackle this (hopefully by this weekend!) I would certainly appreciate it.

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Posted by Laurie | November 5th, 2009

Yep, I’m pretty sure my kids have/had H1N1. No, I haven’t had them tested just to be sure. It is sweeping across their school (and many other Canadian schools too) and they have the symptoms. Well, currently LittleBoy has the symptoms the worst, BigBoy is already on his way to recovery. Cough + two days of high fever and fatigue, then two days of still feeling fatigued and now, mostly better. Today is day 1 of fever for LittleBoy. BabyBoy should have it by the weekend I’m thinking.

So why is this important to me? Because, as I suspected, I no longer need to even think about getting my boys immunized with the H1N1 vaccine. And that is a relief to me, as I truly didn’t want to do it, and I know for sure now there would have been no point – it simply wasn’t available in time for us (given when they finally started making it available and how long it takes to truly provide protection). But I’ve read so many posts on the topic recently, trying to make sure if I was making the right choice, it’s nice to have it out of my hands now.

And much as I’d love to talk even more about the “swine” flu, I must go take care of LittleBoy!

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Posted by Laurie | November 3rd, 2009

Today was “my” day. The day I have no kids in the house for 7 hours. Except I did, because BigBoy was sick and stayed home with me. He was quiet and I barely noticed him in all honesty. He watched tv in our upstairs tv room with a water bottle to keep him hydrated. I asked him several times if he was hungry but he really didn’t have any appetite.

Still, it wasn’t the day I was looking forward to at all. The last four weeks I had volunteered on my free day in BigBoy’s classroom while they took skating lessons. It left me some time to get some work done, but none of the free time I so long for. Especially with DH working away I feel the weight of my responsibilities weighing me down. My free day is supposed to be the one day in a week when I can feel free for a little while. Free to go to the library alone, or to do some window shopping or maybe even get my hair done. Little things really – I have simple dreams!

So tonight I feel the weight almost crushing me. I’m the mom, I have to be here, I have to take care of them, especially when they are sick or tired or hungry or thirsty or just in need of hugs. But I haven’t had any time to take care of me it seemed and since the lovely time change has made BabyBoy decide to wake up at 5 am I was extra tired and cranky by the time 6pm rolled around. After yet another spilled cup of milk and a cranky baby screeching at me when I told him no, I ran and hid. Literally. I snuck to the basement stairs and closed the door behind me, knowing BabyBoy couldn’t open it. I went and folded a load of laundry (I know – what a rebel I am!), all the while listening to BabyBoy howl for me. He cannot stand when he can’t see me. And I didn’t want to go back up. How sad is that.

Thankfully they are all in bed and tonight the BigBoy has only a mild fever so I should be able to rest easier. Last night he was hovering close to 105 degrees and I was terrified. I put him in my bed to sleep so I could check his head regularly – he started to cool off in the wee morning hours, you know, just before BabyBoy woke me up for good Now it is quiet and peaceful for a few rare moments and I think I should get off this laptop and actually go enjoy them!

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Posted by Laurie | November 1st, 2009

Don’t they look sweeet? Probably not the look they were going for, lol. They are tough guys you know!

So Halloween is over, the money is spent, the costumes are worn and too much candy has been consumed. It was fun, but not too long-lasting really. In my neighborhood the kids started coming around 6pm and very few showed up after 7pm. My own boys were only out trick-or-treating for about 35 minutes, the last five of that filled with complaints of cold and tired. I suspect a desire to get home and eat some candy was a big part of that.

This year was actually one of the warmest Halloweens I can recall. I was  able to just add sweaters under their costumes to keep them warm; many years you can barely glimpse costumes under the snowpants, coats and boots that kids have to don. We had a little snow on Friday morning, but it melted by Friday night and yesterday was a balmy 7 degrees or so, although it definitely was cooling off fast once the dark descended.

Now it’s November, hard to believe 2009 is already almost over. The time change also took place last night and while we’re not feeling the effects yet, I am hoping that this week isn’t too rough. Sometimes the time change really messes the kiddos up, especially the baby. Thankfully after this full week of school, next week we start the kids’ fall break and we’ll all (hopefully) get plenty of rest. No school for almost a full week this year – usually fall break is just a 4-day weekend, but they popped the November PD day onto one end and Remembrance Day gives a day off at the beginning of the break.

Hope everyone else had a happy Halloween!

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Posted by Laurie | October 30th, 2009

A decade ago I married the wonderful love of my life, my handsome husband. We were both 24 years old, and it was a cold crisp autumn day. So cold that it snowed the next day and a couple of our poor little flower girls were just freezing during the outdoor photos, so they wore sweaters over their pretty little dresses. Thankfully I was no bridezilla, and I didn’t worry about that!

Our ceremony was perfect. I put the whole thing together myself, as we had a marriage commissioner perform the ceremony. Actually, the marriage commissioner was one of the best parts of the whole ceremony – my mom got a special one day license and performed it for us!

We actually had thought about eloping in Vegas or Mexico. A beach wedding was my idea of heaven, but circumstances dictated that might not be the wisest path (aka MIL drama). I am so glad actually though that we had a more traditional event, as sharing the day with our family and friends was wonderful.

And now, ten years have passed. We’ve gone from being a young couple in love with 3 dogs to being a slightly older couple still very much in love with 3 kids. And apparently we now suck at getting good family shots, because this is the best I could find laying around, from a family reunion this summer. We so need to get some proper ones done soon!

How do you reflect on ten years of marriage exactly? And there were four years of dating before the wedding, so together I’ve spent close to half my life with my husband (okay, I’m 34, not 28 – close enough!)  There have been amazing times and some pretty awful times.  Marriage is definitely like a roller coaster in my opinion – ups and downs, twists and turns. In the time we’ve been married we’ve seen friends meet people, get married and divorced. We’ve had our three boys and lived through a miscarriage. We’ve taken trips and buried our dogs. Ups and downs for sure.

You know what I can say with certainty after all these years? Marriage is work. It’s a lifelong commitment and you have to really work at appreciating one another, understanding one another and telling each other what you need. I wonder what new lessons I’ll learn when another ten years have gone by?!

And handsome, if you read this, Happy Anniversary!!

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Posted by Laurie | October 25th, 2009

It’s almost Halloween Week – time for scary stuff! Well, ok, really my scary stuff this week is doing some real thinking about my business and considering a suggestion made by a client. It’s something I’ve considered on my own anyway, but I feel like I need to maybe move ahead sooner than I had ever thought to.

You see, right now my business is still growing, and not that quickly in general. But if I go in a certain direction a client may be able to direct some more business my way. So I have to start deciding if I want to have a team working with me and how exactly that would all work. It’s kind of exciting and kind of daunting – as it’s fairly different from where I am now – able to still fit my business in pretty much around my personal life. Even one or two more of my regular (and lovely!) type of clients will mean I have to really start buckling down and being in my home office a lot more than I am now. Good thing my amazing hubby just bought me a netbook – I can access my work while still being on the go, at least somewhat!

It’s crazy how much thinking about my work has consumed me this weekend – and of course nothing may come of it all anyway! Still, it’s important to start planning and preparing I think. Despite some rough days where I wonder what on earth I am doing trying to be an entrepreneur, I love my little business and I want to keep growing it.

Okay – now time for the other type of scary stuff – getting ready for Halloween! There is another pumpkin to carve, treat bags to assemble and parties to attend. Fun, fun, fun! Oh and I think I’m going to write a post over at Type A Mom about the costs of Halloween this year-one more item on my to-do list.

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Posted by Laurie | October 19th, 2009

After You by Julie Buxbaum

It’s interesting to me that my synopsis of this lovely book by Julie Buxbaum doesn’t really match what is on her own website! Does that mean I’m “wrong” or just that we all see things so differently and get different things from books? Well, that is how I see it anyway!

To me, After You is about loss and the incredible journey one must undertake to move past a particularly significant or tragic loss. Loss can be a very hard topic to read about – if you are particularly sensitive right now in your life I don’t actually know if I’d recommend the book, although otherwise I absolutely do. It is a really wonderful book with a compelling main character in Ellie.

Loss is so personal. We all experience it at some point and we all hurt. But there is so much expectation around losses – you should feel this way, for this long and then you should be ready to “move on”. Of course it doesn’t work that way for so many of us. Maybe I’ll need two years to recover from something that you adjusted to in only six months. Maybe I’ll cry and rant and rage and maybe you’ll turn inwards and quiet.

In After You, Ellie has been trying to move on from her own personal loss for awhile, when another tragedy strikes in her life. Her best friend Lucy loses her life in a public murder, right in front of Lucy’s young daughter, Sophie. Sophie has a very difficult road ahead of her coping with losing her mother so violently and Ellie temporarily moves from the US to the UK to help Sophie.

Other than a slightly predictable ending, I really enjoyed the whole story in After You and I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Hope you enjoy it too!

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