Monday Randoms

~I swear that Cooper eats more than Garrett does at most meals. Tonight's supper for instance: Garrett had a chicken leg, a couple bites of cottage cheese, and 3 strawberries (weird combo, I know, it was grocery day, so I just throw stuff together for dinner on Mondays). Cooper had at least the equivalent of a chicken leg's worth of shredded chicken meat from the breast, a jar of apple chunks (it's Gerber's toddler apples. He can feed them to himself, but they're softer than if I was to simply cut up an apple and give it to him), and a half of a slice of homemade bread.

~I relished in the 2 and a half hours I spent at the hair salon on Saturday morning. When I called my girl to make an appointment, she was pretty full on Saturday morning but she worked me in. I knew I would be there longer than normal because of that, so I brought a book and just enjoyed sitting there and reading without either of my children present. Ladies, if you don't go to an actual hair salon to get your hair done (or if you color your own hair) please take the time to find a great stylist and let her work her magic on you! You are so worth the time and money spent to make yourself feel good about how you look. Even though my gray is minimal at this point, I love knowing that it's nicely hidden under a good dose of haircolor (I just use the closest thing to my natural hair color with no highlights so it's hard to tell I have anything done, unless you're on speaking terms with my gray hair. And in choosing my natural hair color, I really have no "roots" to speak of except for my handful of gray. So I can go longer between colorings.) I waited an extra 15 minutes in order for the wax to heat up so I could get my eyebrows waxed while I was there. It was so worth it! I told Mistie that it doesn't matter how long I've been tweezing/waxing my eyebrows, I could still grow 2 wooly worms on my face if I did nothing to tame them. Yet there are people out there who actually have to pencil in their brows! I'm so jealous.

~I'm having a hard time deciding on Cooper's 1st birthday party theme. For Garrett's first birthday, we did John Deere tractors as our theme because that was his nursery theme. It's Cooper's nursery theme too, but I don't want to repeat any party themes that Garrett has had. I've contemplated doing Veggie Tales. We really love them at our house, but I never could find any party favors when I was planning Garrett's 2nd birthday (which was when I considered that as the theme). I'm not sure if I could find them now, but I would assume somewhere on the internet, they probably exist. The downside to this is that Cooper hasn't really shown much of an interest towards them when they're on TV. He does seem to like our "Ultimate Silly Songs" DVD, but no more than his ridiculous "Singing Babies" DVD (that one is so weird, but he loves it). I've considered Elmo or a more broad Sesame Street theme. Cooper really watches when the Elmo's World portion of Sesame Street is on. But he hates our Tickle Me Elmo, so I don't know if he watches him on TV out of love or out of scared fascination.

~Whether or not you're a fan of country music, please listen to the song "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert (if you click that, it will take you to the music video for the song). It is such a good song, full of nostalgia. She performed the song on the country music awards last night and I was full-blown crying by the time it was over. I've heard the song before, but it just hit me harder listening to her sing it live.

~I started reading Beth Moore's book "So Long Insecurity" yesterday. It's really good so far. I believe I'm on chapter 6 right now. One of my favorite parts has been her pointing out how that having kids only magnifies your insecurities (so true! Garrett constantly tells me "Momma, my belly is almost as big as yours!"). And how hard it is to know that your child is dealing with an insecurity, even a minor one. She talks about when her oldest daughter got her driver's license (she's now my age) and started driving herself to school. She told her mom that she needed parking lessons because her friends were making fun of her crooked parking. So for the next several days, Beth would drive herself to the school parking lot and straighten Amanda's car for her in the parking space so her friends wouldn't tease her. Amanda had no idea she was doing this. But I can totally understand where Beth is coming from and if there's ever an instance where I could do something like this for my boys in order to minimize insecurity, I would do it in a heartbeat. Even if you don't think of yourself as being insecure, or maybe you're a man and think this book doesn't apply to you, you should still read it. We all have insecurities. As Beth points out, the woman who looks the most put together and who we would all assume to be the most secure person, is probably the least secure of anyone. If nothing else, she has a lot to lose, should her life come crashing down around her. And men, reading a book like this will open the window inside the mind of a woman more than you probably realize. Many of you complain that you don't know what makes women tick, read this book and solve part of the mystery. I'll let you know once I've finished and what my thoughts are on the complete book.