Heather Armstrong of Dooce.com, is my idol, my inspiration and the reason why I blog at all. I’ve been reading her blog for about 4 years now. I will never achieve her level of success – few will — but I really admire what she has created. This is a great article about her in the WSJ. Congratulations Heather! You deserve it!

Me: Lucy, what do you want to do when you grow up?
Lucy: bake cakes
Me: Really? What kind of cakes?
Lucy: Merry cakes
Me: Hmm, like birthday cakes or wedding cakes?
Lucy: Tall cakes
Me: I see
David: Max, did you say you want to move to Alaska and hunt wild bear?
Max: Uh-huh

I’ve realized that I have become a lazy parent. Something happens to you when you have your second child. You realize that all those things that you thought were SOOO IMPORTANT in your first child now seem strangely optional.

I was quite the schedule Nazi with Lucy. Breakfast was at 7:00, nap was at 1:00, snack was at 3:00, dinner was at 5:30 and bed time at 8:00. And woe is he/she who tried to disrupt my schedule. The funny thing about this is that Lucy did well with this because well, she’s her mother. A type-A, OCD, structured, rule-following project management type who falls into hysterics if anybody messes with the repetition of her life. My mother actually wrote in my baby book “likes routine and would wear the same clothes everyday if allowed.” I think the line in Lucy’s baby book will be “loves routine and would eat the same food everyday if allowed.”

Max is different. And so I find myself letting things “go” that I never would have allowed with Lucy. First and foremost is bed time. Somehow between David working late and daylight savings time the kids bedtime has gone from 8:00 to 9:00. I’ve always insisted that Lucy sleep in her own bed but now she comes into bed with us every night at 1:00 a.m. and sleeps there the rest of the night.

The mommy-diet has kicked in as well. Now, I find myself eating leftover strawberries, green beans, PB&J sandwiches, and macaroni and cheese as I clear the table. In fact, I’ve stopped making my own lunch and just eat off the kids plates.

The list really just goes on from there. They don’t brush their teeth everyday, they don’t ALWAYS wash their hands, I let them eat food off the floor, Max frequently spends the day with a variety of food and snot on his face. And yes, I buy them an ICEE at Target EVERY TIME we go.

This is the thing though, once Max came along I had to really decide how I wanted to spend my energy and arguing over an hour difference in bedtime and wiping snot off Max’s face just no longer seemed crucial. Lord! I hope nobody reports me to CPS.

I cannot grow anything. My history of plant life carnage is long and torrid. I kill absolutely everything. I’m incapable of keeping a plant alive. The last plant that flourished at my hands was some kind of fern that I had in my dorm room in college and I think that was because I had it sitting on top of the heater next to a window. It received a magical combination of constant warmth, sun and beer. On our first year anniversary David and I bought a rubber plant as a symbol of our growing and eternal love for each other. I killed it within two years. I’m glad to report that our marriage has fared much better. I love to cook and so have been determined to grow my own herbs. I’m on my seventh year of trying and I still have not managed to keep any herb plants alive past June. Suffice it to say I am to plants what Britney Spears is to good mothering.

This year I wanted the kids to have the joy of growing their own food. I tried to set expectations very low by explaining that plants take a very, very long time to grow and sometimes we never actually get any food out of them. So, I stuck to things that I thought would be easy. We planted strawberries, tomatoes, basil and cilantro. (That’s right, still trying to grow my own herbs.) Things started strong and then we got a late-spring freeze that I wasn’t expecting and my basil leaves turned black and my tomato leaves got a wee bit brown. I soldiered on and surprisingly one day we found A singular strawberry growing. Well, we have vigilantly watched, protected and nursed that one wee strawberry along and finally today it seemed ripe for the pickin’. Lucy proudly picked the strawberry, we washed the strawberry and we ate the strawberry. It was tart. I would like to exclaim to the world that I, Beth Morley, can indeed grow something!

Maggie Mason, from Mighty Girl, has been posting the top 100 scenes she wants to see flash before her eyes as she dies. Scenes from her life that mattered most. I’ve been thinking about this and so I thought I’d like to start my own list. I encourage you to add your own scenes via comments.

1.) Waking up Christmas morning to my very own Snoopy doll
2.) Sitting on the back of Papa’s old green pick-up truck that was rusted and filled with metal rods and other “treasures”.
3.) Drinking sweet iced tea on the back porch of my grandparents farmhouse
4.) Looking into David’s big blue eyes for the first time and realizing that this was the man I was going to spend my life with
5.) Seeing the pregnancy test turn positive for the first time.
6.) Hearing my name called at my graduation from graduate school
7.) Sitting on the deck of a steakhouse at the base of the London bridge in the UK as the royal navy passed by. The portabella mushroom soup was warm and the air was wet and cold.
8.) Watching the Mardi Gras parade pass by in Nashville TN after having only one too many drinks.
9.) David and I walking into our first house for the first time knowing that it was ours.
10.) Closing the last page of Jane Erye with tears streaming down my face at the bittersweet happiness of Jane.

Much like Maggie, I’m sure I will add to this list, but this is my start. And you?

I have fallen in love with my iPhone. The only other electronic items that I love more than my iPhone is my dishwasher. There is no way I can possibly capture the awesomeness of the iPhone. The only thing that could possibly make it better is if it could take a picture of itself so I could post it here. Here are some of my favorite features:

1. I can take a picture with my iPhone and instantly email it to my friends and family. This is especially important with 2 sets of long distance grandparents.
2. A calculator that does not rely on sunlight to operate and has large enough buttons that I don’t have to be a child to use it. This seems like a silly function but to a teacher it is essential that I always have one with me
3. I always have a GPS system with me. I don’t travel around as much as I used to, but even then it’s nice to know that I have that with me. I’ve already used it twice and it was very nice to have it.

I have to admit that it has already increased my “cool-factor” with my students and the white case David bought makes me feel incredibly hip for a mom. I may drive a mini-van but I’m stylin’ with my iPhone.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done an installment in favorites so here it goes…..

First, are these monkey plates.

Every holiday or season Target offers up seasonal plastic plates for kids and they are always so cute that I wish I could eat off of them. I have to admit that I am a sucker for these plates and we now have quite the collection of Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day and now monkey plates. They are SOOO cute though that they make me want to squeal every time I look at them.

My next favorite item is Oxi-Clean. Yes, that same product that that guy screams at you about on TV and that you swear you will never buy because that guy is so obnoxious. Well, this stuff has gotten rid of the most amazing stains. Recently, Lucy came back from Easter egg-dying with purple egg dye all over her pink shorts. I assumed I’d have to throw them away. WELL, I just tossed them in a tub of cold water with a scoop of this stuff and let them soak for about an hour or two and voila the stain was gone. (Yes, I sound like an absurd commercial from 1950, but hey, the stuff really works). I don’t know what is in this stuff, acid, tiny gnomes, magical beads of cleaning goodness – I don’t know but I do know it works miracles.

I know I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the funny and sometimes annoying things my children do – because after all misery does love company. But tonight I was putting the kids to bed and I took this photo.

This is my whole world. I looked at what was lying in that bed and couldn’t help but think “I could care less about everything else in the world but these two things right now.” The irony of this sweet moment is that as I am trying to type this Max is running out of bed every two minutes and giggling in the door way and I’m being forced to bark “back to bed Max!” This is completely defeating my purpose of being sweet and romantic about my kids. But even then, I can’t help secretly be glad that he is coming out just to see my face.