Typically these people are older than me. They are amazing and intelligent people. Yet, I am always getting the feeling that they need you to practically fawn over them for them to share their knowledge.

It is like I don’t deserve their input unless I worship them first.

Can’t we both just be adults? Can you accept that I appreciate your experience and wisdom (I wouldn’t be asking you for input if I didn’t) without all that extra fluff? And, please don’t be rude to me if I choose not to do the worship thing!

I have enough on my hands maintaining my own weak self-esteem, I don’t really have to bolster yours too, do I?

I hope in 20 years I am more adjusted than you are now. (Actually I think I just might already be…)

Sooooo much has been happening over the past month.
I have tons of re-caps….

4 month old well baby visit and immunizations. Zoe was super healthy and growing like a weed. 75th percentile in height, 60th in weight and 50th in head size….reaching beyond expectation in strength and capability…

Zoe had her first sicky. She still is a little congested. She was never full on sick and never needed to go to the doctor, but she got her first cough from her daddy and got congested. She never seemed fussy about it.

We went to Chicago for a cubs game a few weekends ago. The in-laws were in town and came with us. Zoe got to meet her grandpa(daddy side) for the first time. Zoe was a trouper and we had a great time with the BEST pizza from Gino’s East. Last year we had Giradanos and Ginos was just sooo much better for some reason.



Zoe visited the woods twice. She met my good friend Rosa.

My sister sang the National Anthem at the Indianapolis 500 race this past sunday. Nadie and I got to go to the race with my family. My cousin watched the Zerker. We had a great time, but I missed my baby.

This past week the Zerker seems to be teething very hard. Friday was the fussiest day of her life…I hate to see her in pain. I can feel teeth poking through, but I feel like there is very little I can do. I give her cool teething rings, frozen wash cloths, anything to get her through the worst of it.

In sad news, Zerker’s awesome caregiver on the days of the week that I go into the office has some other important priorities that mean that she can’t watch her anymore. We visited the daycare and made a deposit. Their are pros and cons to it. It is much closer to our house. It will give her a chance to socialize with other babies. But, it felt a lot more institutional than I would prefer. She will be exposed to a lot more germs. We have to get special Drs orders to keep her on the same formula. We tried her out on the kind that they give in the daycare and it seemed really make her tummy hurt. She will not get so much individual care. We can always switch to a different place or a home care if it doesn’t work.

She is getting SOOO big and SOOO strong. She can sit up by herself for several seconds now. She is trying new things out all the time. I am so impressed with her. She has gone to two baseball games (one was a minor league) and managed really well.

I love her so much it hurts. I saw my niece Bree graduate last weekend. It was sort of surreal. Bree was the first baby that I was around and babysat. The years fly and I am so scared that I will blink and it will be the Zerker in a cap and gown. On the otherhand…I am loving watching her grow and learn…So happy…

So back to the point…she references how places have a word that defines them, and goes on to say that people have a word that defines them. The word can change with what they are going through, but it should encompass the point of the journey they are on. While she is in Rome she is told by a friend that Rome’s word is ‘Sex.’

So this got me thinking about what my word is right now. My first thought was ‘create,’ but maybe it is ‘kaleidoscope.’

I know that the first year of motherhood can be stressful. I understand that I need to be patient with myself. Over the past few months I have oscillated from deliriously happy to extremely unstable and worried. I know a lot has to do with hormones, but it is also just part of the transition.

I did go back to therapy – because I believe it is my responsibility to work through things rather than just suffering. I will not live like chicken little! The sky is NOT falling!

Still, I do not just wake up one morning and become a different person. It is a process. And at first it was making me kooky, then I suppose I started moving to the next phase. Oh, but I AM becoming a different person. Not entirely someone else…just more than who I was.

I like it.
Actually, I love it.

My job is moving into this new phase where I get to be uber creative. Okay, so it is uber geeky creative – but not in the ‘look-at-this-cool-formula-i-built-in-excel’ or the ‘i-just-spent-35-hours-writing-specs-about-site-security’ or the ‘look-at-my-fancy-SQL-query’…it is a clean slate. It is starting at ground zero and designing something new.
I have spent all of my working life inside a box…a specific platform…going from supporting to training to implementing to managing that platform…but it has always been within that platform. There is creativity there, but mostly creativity with bandaids…doing what we can within the confines of what exists, the path of least resistance…

and now we are making a transition to get away from that box….and it is a paradigm shift for me…but it is fracking cool…

and oh the baby girl…the amazing Zerker…she makes me want to be creative…assuming a new role in life…becoming the momma…means i have to change my view…so if I am changing, I had better know what stays and what goes…

reinvention of self…reclaiming what is me and adding to it…it is awesome.

– I installed Gimp and Inkscape (Free photo editing and illustrating software) and am teaching myself how to use them.
– I played around with scrapblog one weekend (hence the new header for the blog).
– I made a new lanyard for my work ID badge out of girlie ribbon belts.
– I got some cool new shoes (they match my new lanyard – haha).
– I made a notebook by covering the binding of a scrapbook paper tablet with a brown paper bag and am using it to take notes at the office.
– I cut bangs in my hair! I have been thinking about this since december.
– I bought a bass guitar and I am learning to play it so I can play bass when I jam with some friends next month. I am a singer and I have ‘talked’ about getting a bass guitar for ten years. I had guitar lessons in college and used to play in church. My bachelors is in Math and Music…I am not getting any younger. I really want to do it. I think it would be k*ck*ss if I played bass and sang in a band. We will see if the band happens. We WILL jam though, and that will be fun.

All of these mods…I keep feeling like a Kaleidoscope. Like things are switching to a new cool view…they may change again..but I am holding the lense and watching things as they change…it is beautiful.

The lense is my marriage. The lense is my daughter. The lense is my vocation.
And it shifts and it brings different colors. Not everything is easy, but it IS beautiful.

I keep thinking of this song:
My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the everchanging view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
Tapestry – Carole King

And I made this with Gimp….

As for a little bit about myself and where I am on the journey….

I am married – almost 4 years. I affectionately refer to DH as Nadie.

I have PCOS. We tried to concieve for three years, one of them with medical help before getting PG. I blogged during our TTC time at http://unsimpleprocreation.blogspot.com.

We now have a 3.5 month old little girl. I call her the Zerker. She is freaking amazing.

This blog is about my life unfolding…assuming the role of a mother, loving and caring for my husband, moving into new areas of work, my relationships, spirituality, things i find interesting, basically whatever I feel like…welcome to my world!

Beebles is a nickname some of my friends gave me in college. My email address was bbell for a long time (until I got married and my name changed!) and it was way more fun to say beebles.

I have a post forming in my head about kaleidescopes and the space I am in right now…will try to post by the end of the week.

Now I gotta get to work…

C and I went to see Brandi Carlile tonight. I saw that she was coming into town and I had to go. I told her and she agreed to come, even though she doesn’t even listen to you.

so, tonight nadie watched the zerker…
i almost backed out of it because i couldn’t stand being away from the zerker…and nadie was going to take her and pick her up, but I couldn’t NOT see her in the evening, so I picked the Zerker up, fed her and nadie came home and her…
and i went to a concert
it was awesome
it was brandi carlile
and i loved it
totally my music
but the wierdest thing….
for the past two weeks i have had a song in my head
i know for a fact that during my monday devel meeting i typed the words to ‘creep’ out on my blackberry during my notes….i really couldn’t tell you why…i wasn’t feeling outcasted…and i do love that song…but i even thought my need to expell the lyrics was wierd…i remember wanting to type it last week…and i was singing it this morning…i am pretty sure i can get the guy in the office next to me to vouch for me here….

and then she sang it….and i was totally weirded out…it was fracking awesome…i really do feel like i was intuiting that she was going to perform it….i really had no fracking idea and was blown away

Another wierd thing…this past saturday a random thought about a girl that I went to school with came into my head. Specifically it I thought about her and her sister (who was older than us but really popular). I was not really great friends with her, but she popped into my head, along with her sister and their relationship for some random reason. Where am I going with this??? When I came back to my seat at the conference the group of people asked me if I was a ‘INSERT MAIDEN NAME’…they were from my hometown (an hour and a half away)…and they recognized me. I looked over and the girl’s sister was in the group of people. It was fracking crazy. Then C told me that she and her sister (C’s sister) talked about the same sisters within the past month – these are people we barely have any connection to and don’t really affect our lives. It is like we both had a premonition that we would be seeing that girl’s sister at the concert….

it made me glad that i went…because i felt like i was supposed to go…i needed some C time…

Is there such a thing as mom-insomnia? If so, I think I have it. The zerker is sleeping pretty solidly from 9:30pm-ish to 5:30-6:30am-ish, I on the otherhand am waking up pretty much every hour. I know it is part fallout from waking up with her over the past three months and part from constantly feeling the need to make sure she is breathing, but it is going to have to give soon enough. I am sleeping, it is just not good sleep, and I wake up feeling tired still.

I haven’t been working out like I should either. It is really hard to find a good time to get to the gym. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her with the caretakers there, since we did that once and the caretaker consisted of one teenager standing in the midst of 15 screaming kids of all ages. Let’s just say it was very hard for me to make it through the 25 minute walk on the treadmill watching the girl carry the zerker around admist chaos. I think it would have been fine if she had left her in the carrier. I am sure she thought ‘Oohh! Cute baby! I must hold!’, but um…it scared me.

So I am looking forward to warmer weather so I can go to the park and walk in the mornings with Nadie, the Zerker and the dogs. The dogs will definitely appreciate it. The winter is so tough for them because they don’t get near the excercise they need. Me too dogs, me too…. (notice adorable rainbow baby legs and fact that dog becomes baby couch…)

Fear and Loathing in My Head

And then I have this underlying sense of dread/unsteadiness/insecurity at the pit of my stomach. It isn’t about anything in particular. We are doing ok, jobs, house, baby…all is fine and if it isn’t i know we will get through whatever…so that isn’t the stress….it is bigger than that (if that is possible)…like a weight above me…I feel like chicken little and the sky is falling. When I get like this I end up muttering negative things about myself under my breath. And then I forcibly stop myself and mutter positive things to myself and look like a crazy lady. I already have the random hairs from PCOS, so I could be approaching the crazy bearded lady that pushes a cart down the street in a mumu.

At 4am this morning I thought three things…1. I need to work out. 2. I need to consider seeing that therapist again. 3. Maybe I would benefit from medication. It isn’t affecting my job or my marriage or my kid, but I don’t want to risk it. And, it is affecting my quality of life. And, I am so blessed…I really want to enjoy my blessings to the fullest. Ugh.

Bracketology.

If Michigan State beats Louisville (they are playing right now) I could win my work pool. Nifty. I only picked Michigan State because: they were seeded No. 2, I didn’t want to put all the no.1 seeds in the final four, and they are a Big Ten School. Go Spartans.

Elipses…

If you are regular reader of my blog you know that I love the elipse…well you might not have thought about it…but I do….and sometimes I will add an extra period in for good measure…

Zerker Update
This week Zerker was especially cute (well, she always is…but I am biased….) She has really started noticing her hands, so I went and got some dangling rings and a gym to over her. She already had one at her caregiver’s house, but we didn’t have one at home. She started with swatting and has already progressed to grabbing and pulling. I am so proud of her.

Also, the zerker is fantabulous about sleeping. I still really haven’t put her on a schedule. I just listen for her cues. She definitely gives the cues and is content to be put in her carrier with a pacifier and her blanket where she soothes herself to sleep.

She is such a smiley happy baby. I am so amazed by her. We went to a baby shower this weekend for one of my college friends(It was GREAT to see everyone and I am so excited for the newbie on its way!) and she was happy to be passed along…as long as the people passing didn’t mind a little spitup here and there…

Oh the little monkey….:)

PS notice that I changed my blogger profile name and picture…if you are used to me commenting on your blogs I will show up as beebles now….it is a nickname from college…

After tonight the only thing that will come is re-runs and maybe a mini-series, spin-off, or movie – I have no idea if any of these will happen, but a girl can hope, can’t she?

I ate ramen noodles today for the first time in ten years. I now remember why I haven’t eaten ramen noodles in ten years.

This week was great. I finally feel like I am really getting back into work. I was able to dig in and work really well both work from home days with the Zerker. She was not worse for the wear (except I did forget to nurse the second time on the day when I was working 12 hours to get a document done….oops).

After taking several videos, this is my favorite…Zerker loves her blankey…she puts herself to sleep with it every night….

And Nana…here is a few pictures of the zerker wearing the 0-3 month outfit you sent from FL….too cute!

I also forgot to dress the Zerker in her cute St. Patty’s Outfit I bought a month ago. I put it on her tonight and took some pictures. Without further ado….

Ha Ha Mom! I don’t want a beer!

You could give me a green bottle….

When Irish eyes are smiling…it’s like a morn in spring…

I’ll give Darby O’Gill a run for his money!

Where was that pot o’gold?

My Guiness, My Goodness!

Come on and kiss me, I’m Irish!

I know the captions are cheesy…:)
Happy St. Patricks Day! Luck of the Irish to you!

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rains fall soft upon your fields,
And, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

I started blogging during our primary struggle with infertility. Since we now have a healthy seven week old little girl, I think it is time to move on to a blog that is not geared specifically to one aspect of my life. When we try for #2, I may go back to the old blog….until then this is where we roll.

My goal is to NOT make this blog a specific type of blog – like a family blog or a mommy blog or an infertility blog…this is a place where I can say what is going on in my life. It will include information about my little girl, my hubby, my job, and pretty much any part of my life….

So here we have the Blue Gingham Jumpers blog! A BGJ is what Dorothy wore in the Wizard of Oz. I have had a connection to Dorothy Gale and the Oz stories since I was a little girl. I sang ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ in a blue gingham jumper when I was seven. I was in the WOZ as a munchkin when I was six, a munchkin and a poppy when I was ten, the scarecrow and the student director when I was fourteen, and finally Dorothy in the Wiz in college….

Today is important. I have turned over a new leaf, or perhaps old leaf. I have begun excercising again. I have sworn off some of the bad things that I took back up. I am embarrassed that I was even doing them. I am going to try with all my heart to become someone that my daughter will be proud of….and someone that will be here for a long time to enjoy life with my Zerker (Daughter) and Nadie (hubby).