A Dreamer's Wife

I’m exhausted! It has been a long and kind of crazy day, but I’ll be darned if I don’t post for the final day of the 7 Posts in 7 Days challenge with Jen of Conversion Diary! With the Oscars in the background, I’m going to recap another blessed day in the life of this mommy and her two little daughters! Even though there so many times when I’m like, “Are you serious?”, I’m thankful for every moment!

I took the girls to Mass this morning by myself since Adam had to work today. (Also, the only reason I’m able to watch the Oscars tonight is because he’s not here! Of course, I’d rather have him home, but I like watching award shows once in awhile!) Fortunately, the girls behaved pretty well, although we still have to camp out in the family room each Sunday because Adri (my youngest) has the worst timing when she likes to say (loudly) things like “stinky” and “Are we done yet?” And, yes, both of those were said today. I really hate sitting in the family room, but it’s better than feeling like I’m going to pop a vein due to my impulsive two-year-old!

Anyway, all was well until nap time, when Adri decided that she would take her time falling asleep (unbeknownst to me) and started crying a half hour later just as I was entering through the gates of dreamland. Fortunately, she went to sleep after checking in on her. My oldest hadn’t fallen asleep yet, so this put a wrench in our own naps since Carmen couldn’t get back to sleep after this interruption. I was really looking forward to a nap today, but it wasn’t meant to be!

Apparently, my four-year-old turned into a teenage boy this afternoon, because she about ate me out of house and home! It was like the lunch that would never end! “Mommy, I’m still hungry.” Mommy, I’m still hungry.” “Mommy, I’m stiiiillll hungry.” Yeah…

Meanwhile, Adri was practicing her newly acquired cutting skills at the table. With her little red and blue safety scissors she sure made lots of confetti! I’m pretty sure I swept up a couple hundred pieces of paper over the course of the afternoon! At least it is one activity that she can focus on for more than 2.5 seconds!

In between folding towels and socks, we squeezed in a little dance party in the kitchen while my favorite Pandora station played on the iPad. It’s fun moments like this that make being a mom of girls such a blast! I can try out all the wicked dance moves I want and don’t have to be self-conscious! If only I could spin in endless circles like they can!

I knew it was only a matter of time before my nap-less daughter started acting like she didn’t have a nap today. All of a sudden every little thing became a crisis around dinnertime. It was a good thing that a storm rolled through at that time, because the sound of thunder magically transformed her attitude. It was the perfect distraction! Oh, and turning on Sprout doesn’t hurt either!

I forgot to mention that Carmen has entered that fascination stage with “potty” words and name calling. So all day I’m hearing variations of “Booty Butt”, “Booty Boo”, “Boo Boo”, and so on. Hope this little phase doesn’t last too long! Oh, and sprinkle in lots of “Moooooommmmmyyyyyyy” throughout the day, too! Somehow a couple extra syllables get thrown in whenever my two-year-old draws it out extra slowly, and extra irritatingly.

Pajama time, clean-up, and the whole bedtime routine went well tonight. My four-year-old inspected the job that her younger sister and I did putting away the toys in the basement. She stated, “You didn’t clean up like I wanted you to, so I organized them.” Yep, that’s Carmen for ya!

This 7 Posts, 7 Days thing has caught up with me, so I’m ready for bed. Have a great week, everyone! We made it!

Tags: family

When referring to my girls on this blog (currently ages 4 and 2), I’ve been pretty hesitant to use their full names. I know that’s a little odd for a Catholic blogger, but I just don’t feel quite comfortable with plastering photos of them with the possibility of being seen by some random crazy person browsing the internet! Maybe I’m being a little paranoid, but today I’m making an exception! I’m linking up with Kathryn of Team Whitaker to talk about the stories behind our girls’ names! {Congratulations, Kathryn, on your new baby!}

Carmen Sofia 

Let me just say that I had no idea how incredibly difficult it would be for us to agree on a name for our first born daughter! I felt like 99% of my name ideas were rejected by my husband. To be fair, I rejected most of the name ideas that he had!

About a year before we even knew we were pregnant, Adam co-wrote a song titled, “Sophia,” that was a beautiful lullaby-type song from a father to his daughter. He really liked this name and we thought that it would be neat to name her after this song. However, it was a very popular name especially a few years ago, and as one of three “Stephanies” in my elementary class I did not want her to have such a common name. We decided to keep this name as a middle name and change the “ph” to “f” since that is how my name (Stefanie) is spelled. Bonus: Sofia means wisdom, so that can’t hurt, right?!

Carmen was a name that I had liked for awhile. Once I discovered that it meant “song” in Latin, I think that sealed the deal for Adam and me! I liked that it was a fairly uncommon name- at least among white Americans! I’m sure there are several women with the name Carmen Sofia all over South America and Spain!

When we started telling people what her name would be, a couple responses I heard were, “Is that a family name?” and “Are you going to call her Sofia?” Basically that meant, “Why on earth would you name your child Carmen?”  I loved her name, though, and it didn’t affect our final decision, obviously!

Adriana Grace

This time around, I made sure that we found out the gender before we even began discussing baby names. I figured it would cut our arguments discussions in half!

Since we went with a music theme with our first daughter, we wanted to incorporate that in some way for our second girl. One of Adam’s favorite musicians is Vince Gill. He always loved the song “Pretty Little Adriana.” I thought this was a beautiful name and had ear-marked it in the back of my mind.

We did consider her first name to be Grace with Anna as a middle name, but her initials would have been GAS, and I wasn’t going to do that! So, we settled on Grace as her middle name! All in all, we spent about one evening seriously discussing her name before deciding! It was much easier than the first time!

Carmen meeting Adriana for the first time! She couldn’t get enough of her!

This is Day 4 of the 7 Posts in 7 Days Challenge with Jennifer Fulwiler of Conversion Diary! I’m over halfway done now! Woohoo!

Tags: family