One prince for seven princesses...

Eliza's been asking for a prince to join her prince into her princess figurine toy collection. So... we got one today, and the following video shows what ensued. It's not pretty...

I did not anticipate that Eliza understood the concept of human jealousy to this extent!

I want to talk about...

Eliza and I had a fun week. We got to fit in some fun spring break activities despite my heavy study regiment.Here are some snapshots from our week:

Eliza was in rare form tonight during bath time.
She was not happy after I poured water on her head, and she started sniffing and saying, "Mommy, I can't smell!"
I said, "You mean, you can't see? Do you want a towel?"
Eliza: "No, I can't SMELL!" and she continued to sniff.
I chuckled and asked her what she couldn't smell.
Eliza: "I can't smell my cupcakes!"
Me: "Cupcakes? Where do you have cupcakes?"
Eliza: "On my head!"
Me: "Why do you have cupcakes on your head?"
Eliza: "Because people like them, and they like me too," she said as reached up to touch her head. I think that perhaps she got her compound words mixed up and was trying to say pigtails? If you think about it from a 2 yr old's perspective, having pigs' tails on your head might seem just as random as having cupcakes on your head!

Then a few minutes later, Eliza stood up in her bath so I could get her all soaped up, and she announced, "Mommy, you're my favorite person in the whole wide world!"
Me: "Eliza you're MY favorite person in the whole wide world!"
Then Eliza reached over and gave me a big, wet, soapy hug!
Totally worth the dampness!

I was telling Eliza about how we were going to go somewhere, and Eliza grasped her hands together and said, "Oh! That is WONDERFUL!"The other day, Eliza and I were by a fountain, and she wanted to throw in a penny and make a wish. I asked her what her wish was, and she said that she wished for her daddy, "with all my heart!" It's so funny to me that she picks up those phrases!
Eliza and I met friends at the zoo today and had a lot of fun, even though Eliza was a little grumpy. As Eliza and I drove home, I gave her some chips, and a couple minutes later she said, "Mommy, I want to send Sophia (her friend) a message."
Me: "Oh yeah? What type of message do you want to give her?"
Eliza: "I want to send her a chip message!"

I guess she was enjoying her chips so much she wanted to share it with her friend!(This was a statue of a baby gorilla at the zoo that Eliza and her friend were IN LOVE with. It took a lot of convincing to get them to say goodbye to it.)

Eliza is currently obsessed with bats and bugs! She's finally moved on a bit from asking WHY about EVERYTHING we say. Now she will tell me, "Mommy, I want to talk about ...." Insert topic. Like bugs that bite, or animal babies that are born in eggs vs. born alive, germs, strangers, heaven and Heavenly Father, what her friends are doing, what she was like when she was a baby, etc.

I love these little conversations we have together! She's really able to have substantial conversations these days, which is amazing to me! I've really wanted to take a video of her playing pretend, but she gets mad when I pull out the camera. :( So maybe someday.

My big news, though, is that I passed my social work, masters level Licensure Exam on Friday morning!! I spent this week studying like a madwoman, taking lots of lots of practice exams to prepare to take the 170 question test on Friday morning!

And I PASSED!!!

I am soo excited and relieved. This means that when I walk across the stage on May 8th, I won't just have my degree, but I will be a Licensed Clinical Social Worker- an LMSW!!! Woohoo!

Now I just need to get through 5 weeks of classes, papers, and projects, and I'll be home free!! CAN'T WAIT!!!!

Beware: Marathon post!

To all my (2?) devoted readers,

My posting continues to decrease in frequency and for that I apologize.

(Eliza took this picture! Impressive, right?)

I have thought on why I have failed to update this blog more and came up with a few excuses/reasons.

• Obvious: I am in grad school. I write a lot EVERY DAY and usually stay up writing a lot EVERY NIGHT. I should be writing grad school stuff right now but the PsycInfo database was struggling to load, so I took a break. That's right, folks. I'm swamped.

But it's more than that. I unfortunately am a time waster and procrastinate by spending time on such curious sites like facebook, etc., so it's not like I don't have ANY time. So other things I realized that were keeping me from writing more on here are:

• I'm different. I feel like I don't have people I can relate to or relate to me. I used to blog and blog-stock CONSTANTLY. Now my Google Reader always has about 100 unread posts in it. But before when I blogged, I was a full-time mom who worked part time. There were a lot of people on the blog-o-sphere who were in a similar enough situations to me that I felt like a part of things. Now I'm a single mom who lives with her parents, works as a therapist, is a grad student, has a 2 1/2 year old daughter, is getting divorced, and straddling this world of mommy-hood and single-dom. It's a really bizarre place. I'm not trying to say that I only want to read about people who are EXACTLY like me, though, b/c that would be boring, but... it's different.
• I think in some ways my life is a LOT more stimulating than it was. Getting to be at work doing fascinating stuff with people who are in need and being challenged academically-- it's exhilarating and fulfilling for me in a way that being a mostly stay-at-home mom never was for me. I still am home with Eliza 3.5 days out of the week, but it's really different than when I only worked one or two evenings a week from 3:30pm to midnight. So the allure of fulfillment and stimulation that blogging seemed to offer before is not there as much anymore.
• A lot of the work I do that I find fascinating is confidential and would be inappropriate to share about on a blog. I have a LOT of sad stories that are shared with me on an almost daily basis. And the stories that aren't sad/confidential usually seem like they would bore most people who I think read this blog.
• A lot of my feelings about my family and my divorce would be inappropriate and much too personal to share on this venue too. And honestly, I am careful who I share stuff with. There seem to be so many people who are morbidly curious for details about my divorce! I feel like they want to ask me about it in the same way that they kreen their necks to get a glimpse of a bloody accident on the side of the road. And YES, I realize that it seems like a lot of 20-something's are getting divorced these days and so that seems statistically significant and interesting to you, but I DON'T CARE. If you want to talk about that, go talk about it with your spouse or married friends- haha. I am just myself and don't care to be used as a vignette in a sunday school lesson on marriages that didn't make it. ***NOTE: If you want to talk to me about the many happy and interesting things that are going on in my life, though, I would LOVE to chat/talk, though! I am not my divorce-- that is not my defining feature, and I don't want to be treated like it is. Then if that substantive conversation turns to us talking about other things, then that's great too! I'm actually a pretty open person.
• That leads to my next reason- I worry that people will find my honest expressions or thoughts as angry or bitter. Anger and bitterness are easier emotions to deal with than sadness and fear, so many divorcees are angry and bitter. It's just part of the healing process, I think. But I get concerned about distressing others and being judged sometimes. We'll stick with Eliza pictures on those weeks! hehe.
• Eliza is often VERY resistant to getting her picture taken! Less cute pictures of Eliza = not as cool of a blog here! I'm pretty sure that those are what keep people coming back to this site most of at all.

(She was happy before and after I had the camera-- I swear!)

• I started this blog when I lived farther away from my parents and siblings. Now Robby's the only one in my immediate family that lives far away. I love knowing that my West Coast family can know some of what's going on here, though! :D
• I want my posts to be "perfect" and ever-so-clever and gripping-- and usually I don't have much of that to divulge!

So anyways! I hope I didn't scare everyone away with that! Thanks a bunch to those of you who comment-- it cheers up my day!

Some updates that people might not be aware of:

• I got a job!!!!!!! They asked me to stay on as a therapist at my internship at The Nurturing Center! I'll be working about 30 hours a week, and be able to do some of my work from home, so I'll still have lots of time with Eliza! I LOVE the work I get to do there even though it's pretty intense at times!
• I'm pretty sure we're going to start Eliza at a Montessori preschool soon! I'll share more updates on that later.
• Eliza has now moved into her new GORGEOUS big girl room! It took some adjustments, but it's great for her room to be right next mine, instead of up two flights of stairs! I'll try to take some pictures soon because Mom, Dad, and Tim Strickland did an AMAZING job on making it the perfect room for a little princess!

(Eliza told me to take this picture of her reading the BoM by herself)

• Eliza has morbid curiousity with death. She likes to act out that she's my dead dog, Mika, and we'll say, "Mom, you be Heavenly Father, and I'll be Mika, who's dead." And then I have to say, "Oh, Mika, it's so good to see you. I missed you while you were on earth." And Eliza pretends to pant.

(This is Eliza's Mika doll- she likes to take him most places)

• Other times she just has me act like Heavenly Father and asks me what he says, or Daniel and she's the lions in the den, or the hunter who almost stabs Snow White and she's Snow White. This girl LOVES to play pretend. We have some simpler ones like I'm Cinderella and she's the fairy god mother or vice-versa. Sometimes she likes to pretend to be Reuben and Aunt Katy too- FUNNY! Or when mom went out of town to help Robby with his knee surgery, Eliza had me pretend to be Robby with a hurt knee and hobble around while she was Oma who helped him feel better.

• Eliza is newly obsessed with Bats, bugs that eat you, her tummy being sick (hypochondriasis?), sippy cups with dogs on them, jewelry, reading about the Lamanites who fight people in the Book of Mormon stories. She'll tell me, "I want to read the mean ones!" I worry about what the scriptures are REALLY teaching my child? Alma and Almulek seeing the children and women burned? Abinadi? King Noah? The crucifiction? Any story involving Moroni... haha.
• Eliza loves playing with my camera and can actually take pictures some of the time. I think it was pointing the wrong way this time:

• Princesses are still a huge part of our every day life!

(Did not want to be interupted from her movie to take a pic)

Take Care, Friends!