I am nearly 26 years old. I work from home, have a fantastic husband and a smart, funny and cuddly daughter.

And I have grown complacent. I feel like I should be a little more “together” by now. I have kept up my fitness and weight loss goals (almost 20 pounds gone, just over 15 to go), but all of my other goals have fallen by the wayside.

This year, I wanted to finish at least one novel. I also wanted to get our finances in order, and build my business. I am not even close to any of these goals. I’ve gotten off track somewhere, and I need to fix that. I need to work a little more, and work on building my career. If I’m bringing in extra money, it will be easier to get the finances settled. I need to start training and learning again. I have over a dozen books sitting on my bookshelf, bought for work purposes, that I have not read yet. It’s time to get with it.

I have a couple projects in the works, and I have a plan to get everything under control. I just need to actually get out there, and get this stuff done. I am going to relaunch my career, my goals, my life. And I’m going to be doing it Rockstar style.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Central NY is having a heat wave, and we celebrated by heading to Syracuse for the day. We were about half way there when Becca started coughing, and then she started throwing up. We cleaned her up, and kept driving. She didn’t have a fever, and hadn’t been acting sick. I think it was just motion sickness.

One of the parks had an Easter egg hunt, so we headed their first. It was crazy. There were hundreds of people, all mashed together in a small area. Trying to get through the crowd to get Becca up in the front for her turn to gather a couple eggs took 5 minutes. And then the kids get 60 seconds to grab some eggs. Parents aren’t supposed to help but, of course, most do. And then, you get to go back through the same crowd to turn the eggs in. All of the kids got the same little bag of candy, whether they gathered 20 eggs or two. Becca had a lot of fun, but we probably won’t go again next year.

After that, we headed to the zoo. There were special Easter enrichment programs with a lot of the animals all day. Becca enjoyed seeing all of the animals. Most of the animals were sleeping, though. It was right around noon, it was hot, and it must have been nap time. We saw the elephants get their Easter baskets (watermelons and bunny peep marshmallows).

We finished up the zoo, and started on our way home. Becca was asleep before we were out of the city, and was out until we got to the grocery store back in town. Mark and Becca ended up meeting his mom at a park for a couple hours while I worked, and then we colored eggs later in the evening. Becca was a little hard on them– we had several crushed, thanks to her enthusiasm.

This morning, we went for breakfast with my mom and sisters, and now, I’m waiting for the potatoes to cool off so I can make potato rolls for dinner tonight. I have to get my marmalade glaze for the ham together soon, too.We still haven’t decided on a dessert for tonight. I’m debating between putting a little effort into it, and making a lemon meringue pie, or cheating and popping open the can of orange rolls. I don’t want too many more sweets around the house than necessary. Maybe cookies? And then I can freeze most of them. I’m thinking lemon cookies with white chocolate chunks. Yum.

Sometime in mid-February, as I was giving Becca a bath, Mark surprised me by coming home early. Very early. He had injured himself at work, and had just gotten back from the hospital. At the time, they thought he had just pulled a muscle in his shoulder. A few days of heat, pain pills, and rest, and he’d be good to go back, albeit with a much lighter work load.

Except, the pain didn’t go away. It got worse. So, two weeks later, Mark was told that he was out of work until April. Four weeks, with an MRI and a few more doctor’s visits scheduled. His doctor thought that it might be a torn rotator cuff (it wasn’t), and then maybe just swelling (maybe). The new theory is a possible slipped disk in his upper spine.

I’ll admit it. I panicked at first. Like many married couples, Mark and I tend to fuss and fight regularly. Always over stupid little things, but still fights. And these fights always seemed worse on the weekends, when we were stuck together for 2-3 days. So four whole weeks seemed like a horrible idea. I figured there was a decent chance that we’d either be on the verge of calling it quits by the end of the month, or one of us would have to smother the other with a pillow. I love my husband, but that’s 31 days, people.

The first day was kind of nice. I worked, he relaxed and watched Becca. A couple days went by, and things were going pretty well. Then we started playing games almost every night. Uno, Skip-bo, Yahtzee… We’d sit around the dining room table, and laugh and talk for a couple hours a night. We were really enjoying spending time together. We began trying harder again, doing nice things. I even got a foot massage. We took a few day trips to Ithaca and Syracuse as a family, rented movies once or twice a week..

The month passed much quicker than I thought it would. He goes back to work today, working from noon to 8:00, Monday through Friday. And I am really going to miss him.

Unfortunately, with him going back to work, this does mean that our vacation has come to an end, and he won’t have more time off until some point next year, as the company he works for has employees use up their vacation time before they’ll switch to worker’s comp. So, no trip to Alex Bay this summer. But I’m okay with that.

If you had told me, back at the beginning of the month, that these four weeks were going to make our marriage a lot stronger, I probably would have laughed at you. While we were definitely happy together, we had lost some of the connection we once had. I am thrilled to say that the connection is back. And it’s a really good feeling.

Valentine’s Day was fantastic. Mark made fettuccine Alfredo with spinach noodles and scallops, Becca slept through dinner so we could eat alone. A short while later, we opened a bottle of wine (Chocolate Lab, a local variety), and sliced up some strawberries and cheese. I picked up some Strawberry Chardonnay cheese earlier in the day. Yum.

We enjoyed some wine, played with Becca, and then watched Joe Black. I watched most of it alone, because Mark thought it was depressing. Finally, we put Becca to bed, and I fell asleep. Mark watched a little more TV, then he went to bed too.

At 6:00, we were awoken by a beeping noise. It would go off every ten seconds or so. Mark wandered out to see what it was. Our CO2 detector was going off, but by the time I got out of bed, it had stopped.

We stood there a moment, and nothing happened. Mark checked the stove, and then we headed back into the bedroom. I hopped on the computer to see what could be going on. If it was actually CO2, it wouldn’t stop beeping, right?

It started again, and then stopped. And then started again. We bundled up Becca (who had still been sleeping), called the fire department, and went outside to wait. Two firetrucks pulled up outside a short while later, minus the lights and sirens. I was starting to worry about our neighbors. Should we have woken them? What if there was a leak upstairs, and everyone else was dead? My imagination was getting away from me. It was really early, and I was tired.

The firemen went into the apartment, and then called us in. The detector had stopped going off, and there was no CO2. They waited a minute, and then two of them left. The third was starting to head out, too, when it started beeping again. So, back we went to the kitchen. Still no CO2.

All of that excitement for a faulty CO2 detector.

Three or four weeks ago, we finally made that magical trip to Wally-World. We wandered through the clothing section, and back to the children’s area. I had a list in my hands with a half dozen necessities on it, a very excited toddler in the cart, and a husband who was tagging along for the ride.

We had scouted out the chair we wanted a week before. It was pink, and could be used as an insert for the regular toilet, or as a chair on its own. I pointed to it, and Becca let out an excited squeal. “Potty!”We also picked up some Pull-Ups and a step stool to make it easier to reach the sink. Then we navigated over to the party supplies. Two packages of Mickey Mouse stickers for decorations.

We got home, and Becca and I immediately ran into the bathroom to set everything up. Mark took care of the last of the groceries, and then he joined us. We all sat down and started applying stickers. Now decorated, the potty was ready for it’s maiden voyage. Off came the diaper, and Becca sat down. We sang, we played games and we waited. After a few minutes, she had her first success. I don’t know who was more excited– her or us. We called all of the grandparents, and a few of the aunts. Our adventures in potty training had officially begun.

Fast forward a few weeks. Becca does very well with BMs. She very rarely misses one, partially because poopy=two hearts on the reward chart and a small piece of chocolate.

She does still have a lot of wet pull-ups, though. I think we’re picking up some “big girl panties” this weekend, to try to speed that part of the process along. She doesn’t make much of an effort to get to the potty on time, and we’ve been going through a ton of pull-ups and diapers (still used at nights). We’ll also get one of the purse-sized portable potty seats, so we can start training away from home, too. I’ll be getting a bigger bag, to hold everything while we’re out and about.

The only thing I’m concerned about is choosing to train away from home too soon. I’ll probably give it a week or two after we start with the actual panties, just so she can really get used to it. I’m okay with this taking a while, as long as we get there eventually. Becca’s doing really, really well with all of it, so I don’t think it will take too much longer. She’s very excited about no more diapers, and more than ready to do the work to give them up.