I’m running a contest for the month of June over at the Nook.

Here are some details:

The Nook Scrap Off!

Here is your chance for fame and fortune (and when we say fame, we mean 15 minutes, and by fortune we refer to a $75 Nook gift certificate). All you have to do is play along in our Scrap Off!

How it works:

To begin:

1. Please register in our forum and gallery between May 18th and 31st.

2. Then upload your favorite All about Me layout to the gallery (new or old- we just want to see you).

3. Link this LO and a brief introduction to this forum: http://www.myscrapbooknook.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=134426#134426

June 1st the contest will begin as our DT will issue challenges. All challenges will be for points. There will be one large point challenge per week. Only the top five entries to the challenges will earn points. (The DT will adjudicate the contest). Other smaller challenges throughout the weeks will be set up so everyone wins points. This way everyone has a fighting chance even if they miss a week or lose their mojo for a few days. Talent is great to have, but determination is just as valuable! There will also be RAK opportunities, so even if you miss the big prize- you could still walk away with something nifty.

The contest will run through June, and at the end of the month we will add it up and discover who wins the $75 gift certificate.

Www.myscrapbooknook.com

So if you would like to hang with me on the message board, get inspired and crank out some great work all for the chance of winning a shopping spree, go sign up! It should be tons of fun!

This book is a fabulous collection of essays on motherhood filled with wit, insight, and a realistic approach that will make every reader happy. Author Anna Johnson’s take on keeping the mama sane, happy, healthy and attractive go so far beyond the usual books like this. Not once will you be subjected to the ubiquitous call to “have it all, balance it all, and be perfect.” Instead, it inspires you to be better, and gives you the tools you need to get there.

I expected this book to be more along the lines of a snooty fashion/make-up book, and although it has tips in those areas (although never snooty), most of the ideas in this book are practical, down to Earth, affordable, and although many focus on the outward Mummy, the best essays focus on the inward. There is a satisfied contentedness running through this book, and although I did not agree with every philosophy the author holds, I perfectly agree with her call for mothers to be themselves, be happy, and embrace motherhood while still wearing your own shoes, be them kitten heels or birkenstocks. It is an excellent read for the new mother, or the mother in the throes of it all.

Jonas was channeling the exorcist this afternoon as we ran some errands, and when we arrived home, he was immediately sent to bed where he slept for about four hours. Then he woke up and spent two hours being ugly. My eyebrows were so furrowed I thought they were going to permanently attach to my nose.

And then he found the park ranger uniform he got for Christmas last year and has never worn. He put it on. He then spent an hour proudly cleaning his room and doing good deeds around the house. He is loving. He is wise. He is acting like an eight year old. And. . .he is calling himself “The Stranger” and is freaking hilarious.

“The Stranger” has an egg timer (mine). “The Stranger” needs to ask highly scientific questions about river otters. “The Stranger” kisses his mother. “The Stranger” begs to vacuum his suddenly immaculate room at 11pm. “The Stranger” has moved half of his sister’s errant toys out of their room and into mine because: “Park Ranger Strangers From Space don’t need toys.” I informed him that Little Sisters do.

Every time I am ready to throw in the towel with Jonas something new and odd happens to gain full control of my curiosity and force me to forgive the really horrific moments. I like “The Stranger”. I hope he sticks around for a few days.

I am hunkered down in the trenches here, engaged in a battle to the death with the stubbornest three year old I’ve ever met. She has given a peace offering and acquiesced to my demands that she pee in the potty, but she is holding out for her right to mess a perfectly good diaper with the dreaded Number Two.

I am not an uncompromising enemy. I have offered many gifts, freedoms and a fair share in the spoils of war if she will make stinkers in the potty even one time. There is a princess doll taped to the towel rack. She knows she gets a trip to the Disney Store complete with new shoes and a Tinkerbell toy just for surrendering one bowel movement to the toilet.

We took her to the bathroom several times at the mall last night, my forces braving the germ factor of the public bathroom in an attempt to align her will with the poop and promise of free toys from the store below. Finally, the mall closed and we returned home, our enemy screaming all the way about the “SHOOOOOOOES and the Tinkerbeeeeeeel TOOOOY.” We negotiated terms. We resisted her cunning plot to restructure our terms to include toys for number one. We’ve already fought and bought that battle. It is down to the poop.

She woke up three times last night screaming about the toy and the shoes. We countered again with the poop bargain. No dice. It’s getting to be a long battle, but even in the throes of enemy sleep torture, I will not relent.

This morning all we hear about is going to the store and getting the toy. All she hears back is, “Pleeeease, please poop on the potty and then we will take you to the store, buy you sparkly shoes and fancy Tinkerbell toys, and this can end.” She shakes her head as if to say, “Dear woman, you just don’t understand. Life, liberty and the pursuit of poop on my terms are the goals, and I am prepared to make these sacrifices.

I fight dirty and take her diaper off so she has no choice but to hold it or go outside a diaper. She never misses the potty with number one, but as before she can hold two until she is doubled over in pain, until she finds her zen-place where the poop no longer matters, until she falls asleep five hours later and then her body relaxes enough to eliminate. It has been an ugly battle, one that has caused me to retreat on many occasions. I came prepared this time. In my arsenal is a bottle of prune juice. She WILL poop.

I am confident that if she can get over this hurdle even once, she will gain enough courage to keep it up. She loves to sit on the potty, loves to flush, but is completely freaked out by the actual elimination process. The first few times she peed, she screamed the entire time, then, upon finding herself alive afterward, laughed, wiped and flushed. It only took a few times, and now she’s confident. So really, just one good poop could be the key to my victory.

I must sign off for now, as the battle requires my attention.

It seems like so much longer, as if I have been doing this married two-step for decades.

I am grateful to be doing it. I am grateful that people grow and change during a marriage, a life. I’m grateful that no matter who we become, we choose each other to spend that time with. I’m grateful that we treat marriage as something solid and permanent, and not as something that is easily thrown away and given up on. We see value in our tandem ride through life; there is fulfillment in serving each other as equals. There is joy in parenting together, even amid the sleepless nights and screaming tantrums. There is wholeness in the sacrifice that brings ahusband and wife together.

Yes, we are very different. Yes, we are both at once stupid and wise, and we both suffer at the hand of the other’s shortcomings. Yes, we are not the same people we married. But that is the eloquence of marriage. To look at the seasons and know that you did them together as one. To know that you were chosen, despite your imperfections, for an eternity of growing alongside someone who loves you, and whom you choose to love. Thank heaven we change. I watched in awe the day I saw my husband become a father. I’ve stepped back in admiration and humility as I’ve seen him rise to many occasions, both happy and sad, and with each one become a new and better man for it. What a brilliant plan for a husband and wife to experience mortality together, finding moments of perfection in the solidity of their union, and being given the blessing of time to mold them as one. It is truly divine.

Clorox recently redesigned their Disinfecting Wipes to be stronger and also to come in a pleasant lavender scent. I was asked to review them and sent a package of the new design, and I’m actually very happy with these! The original design seemed a bit flimsy to me, and I often needed two or three to wipe down my bathroom counter, but the new thicker version let me clean the entire thing (toothpaste splatters and all) with just one! I was also really pleased with the new scent. I’m allergic to many scented products, and cleaning product in particular can be nauseating and headache inducing, but this was fairly mild, and the lavender scent was nice. My favorite use for these: wiping up little boy “misses” at the base of the toilet seat.

I have a passion for jellyfish. There are few creations in nature that inspire me to such wonder as this amazing combonation of beauty and deadliness. Soft, supple, lovely, self sustaining and silently, methodically viscious when the occasion calls for it. Independent, but at home in a family. My favorites are the ones that are lit from within, tempting and warning, on fire with the majesty of their innate sovereignty. I think I’ll be a jellyfish today.

Chris took these shots this week when we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of our family’s favorite places. It always takes my breath away.