Homegirl Quel (kel) in Austin

I'm a Blogalicious 2009 Ambassador!

This weekend I received the news that I have been selected to be an ambassador for Blogalicious 2009, a fabulous conference for female bloggers of color to be held in Atlanta on October 9-11. I'm beyond excited and honored to be on board! Please show some love to the other lovely members of the Blogalicious 2009 team. I'm SO looking forward to working with these ladies to help make the first ever Blogalicious conference simply awesome.

If you haven't registered for the conference yet, be sure to do on or before July 12 to get the early bird special. Get more details about the conference and register <<HERE.>> I'll be hosting an Austin Blogalicious event too, so ATX bloggeristas, stay tuned...

And speaking of blogger conferences, if you're one of those lucky ladies who got tickets to the Blogher Conference in Chicago--and even if you didn't---you do not want to miss the private soiree hosted by Lush Cosmetics @ Macy's just for Blogalicious Divas. If you're in Chicago on July 24th, you should attend The Lush Experience. RSVP now, because space is limited.

Madsen Cycles

I don't currently own a bike, but I would LOVE to start with this one. Everything in my neighborhood is walking/biking distance...Target, the grocery store, the park, the pool, Walgreen's, Starbucks. I'd even consider biking to the gym on non-squats and lunges days.

How cute would I be rolling through my hood in one of these retro-chic cycles?!

I found out about them when somebody posted it on twitter. They're giving away 2 on July 15th, so I'm upping my chances of winning by telling you guys about it. By telling you guys that, i probably just decreased my odds of winning, but I want to give you a chance to enter too. Getting my good karma on. It'll come back to me.

My Favorite Michael Jackson Video: Rock With You

He looks so handsome an so happy in this video. I'll try to remember him like this.

I think I witnessed community service/hard labor today

It was the strangest thing. I was at the park with Zack this morning and a Parks & Recreation truck rolled up and parked near the play scape. This older, overweight woman gets out of the passenger side, dressed in her own clothes--no neon orange vest or anything--holding a bright blue plastic bag and one of those poles with a spike at the end for picking up trash without bending over.  It was such a strange sight, this older woman, struggling in the heat to even walk, picking up trash on the playground, while the P&R guy leaned on his truck, smoking a cigarette and later kind of hovering over her while she searched around for trash to pick up. As I watched them, I tried to imagine what crime that woman could have committed to land her here. Whatever it was, she was definitely paying for it--at 9AM it was already like 90 degrees out and she did not look comfortable. 

Caught

And having a ball.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

I've read this book to my 16 month old son since he was weeks old. It was a gift from my sister. It's been wonderful to watch him fall in love with it. I posted this pic of him handing me the book and asking me to "reat! reat!" in my Daily Photo album back when he was 11 months old. After we had read it for the third or fourth time this morning, he hugged it. My baby hugged a book. It made my heart smile.

It occurred to me how educational The Very Hungry Caterpillar is after had I read through it the first time. It covers a little of everything, science (it follows the morph cycle of caterpillar into butterfly), health and nutrition (it covers healthy food choices, the importance of food for growth and the consequences of overeating), math and sequencing, colors, basic vocabulary--this book is packed with lots of little lessons and has such an exciting ending for little ones. When the caterpillar turns into a butterfly at the end, Zack insists on holding the book and flapping it closed and open to make the butterfly flutter.

And the artwork. Eric Carle's illustrations (in this book and all the others) could not be any more perfect for children...and adults. I resist the urge to frame his pieces and hang them in Zack's play area because if I do, it will become Eric Carle land--which wouldn't be a bad thing, but I want to keep Zack's exposure to art eclectic (but that's another post). I have this book in Spanish too, because it's also a wonderful primer for early Spanish vocabulary building.

This is one of those old classics that I'm positive my great great grandchildren will still be reading. Nothing like the classics. 

Giveaway! Suave Skin and Holly Robinson Peete want you to "Shower Yourself Beautiful"

You SO love the folks over at Suave, because not only are they going to give one lucky HomeGirl reader a gift bag containing everything needed for a luxurious shower experience but all of you guys have a chance to enter to win The Ultimate At-Home Shower for yourself and your girlfriends!

The gift bag contains the following New Suave products:

• 12 oz. bottle of Naturals Wild Cherry Blossom indulgent body wash infused with cherry blossom extract,
  
• 12 oz. bottle of Apricot Exfoliating body wash infused with apricot and coconut extracts and
• 18 oz. bottle of their New Advanced Therapy Moisturizer,
• with a shower scrunchy tossed in, because what's all that body wash without a scrunchy?

TO ENTER , here's what you need to do:

A Breather

Zack taking in the views from the bottom while taking a break from trying to climb back up the slide. He never made it back up there that way, but doggone it if he didn't try.

Creme of Nature Giveaway Winners!

Thanks to the good folks over at Creme of Nature, they will each receive a full size bottle of Creme of  Red Clover & Aloe shampoo for dry hair and scalp and a full size tube of Jojoba & Olive Oil Moisture-Active Deep Conditioning Treatment for Dehydrated Hair.

Entrants were asked to submit hair treatment tips.  I have used the two best tips during my hair conditioning challenge and will be feature their tips in my Challenge Updates as well.

Congratulations to the following two lucky HomeGirl readers--the WINNERS of my first ever blog giveaway are:

Blackform who wrote: "One deep condition that I like to do is a oil treatment, but I do it over night. It leaves my hair and scalp feeling nice. The last time I did it I used my version of Mo's grow oil, it left my hair feeling so soft. I kept feeling it and wandering how come after a week or two my hair still felt nice and wasn't dry."

and

Reese who wrote: "My only tip concerning how to moisturize hair is...don't wash.EVER. I "conditioner wash" my hair every couple of days and that keeps it healthy and strong.. I use aphogee conditioner."
(The Red Clove & Aloe shampoo if very moisturizing and will hopefully make a shampooer out of you.)

Honorable Mentions!

I appreciate all the wonderful entries I received, but I have to shout-out to these HomeGirl readers, who offered up some really AWESOME tips:

In case y'all were wondering how to gross me out...

Try sitting in an upholstered armchair at Barne's and Noble after riding in on a bike, dripping sweat, then getting up after about a half-hour of thumbing your sweating fingers through a magazine that somebody is probably going to buy and leaving a big wet-spot where your sweaty booty was. And on top of that, he looked like Professor Snape from Harry Potter. Gross.

Why The Lakers Are Winning

My husband wears his Kobe jersey during every game and sends them awesome juju. The dogs, clearly, are not fans.

Picture taken with my Blackberry--camera wasn't handy.

My clever boy

Right after this happened, I texted it to Zack's dad, aunts, uncle, grandparents, friends, etc. Shortly after, I decided to share it with you guys.

So I'm in the kitchen making myself a snack. Across the island, I'm watching Zack, my 15 month-old who is sitting on the floor in the living room, fill an empty bulk baby food box with giant Leggos and dump them out again onto the floor. He likes noise the blocks make as they crash against the wood floor. He looks up and sees the open and abandoned laptop on the ottoman in front of the sofa. I see him toss his box and Leggos aside, stand up and run towards the laptop.

He's always trying to get to that laptop whether I'm on it or not...especially when I'm not on it and he thinks I'm not looking.

Anyway, so I see what's about to happen, but am too far away from him to stop it. Just as he's about to bang on the keyboard, I yell, "Ay!"

He's use to me yelling, "Ay!" It's my standby when I can't reach him to stop the long list of things his busy little toddler hands get into. He knows what it means and usually complies with his toddler version of well-it-was-worth-a-try shoulder shrug and walks away swinging his arms headed for his next project.

So I yell out. Then he, right arm stretched straight overhead, fingers squished together pointing downward looking like a basketball player following through after a free-throw shot, poised to do some serious keyboard pecking, freezes and turns to look at me. With wide eyes and a sneaky smile-smirk on his face and yells, "B!"Then turns away from the laptop, with his toddler version of well-it-was-worth-a-try shoulder shrug and walks away swinging his arms headed for his next project.

Yellow Metal Folding Chair

I met an old coworker for lunch last week and this is a chair from the patio there. Actually all the chairs were on the patio because it's a walk-up taco shack. Very cute and very Austin. They didn't have diet Coke though, so I had to drink diet Pepsi, which is NOT an awesome substitute for diet Coke.

My friend had to get back to work, so she left us there and Zack and I spent another hour out on the patio enjoying the breeze, the Christmas lights above and watching the birds and buses and trucks go by.

What a difference a year makes...or not.

I was going through some old posts of mine and decided to look at my posts from this time last year to see where my head was at. When I got to this post, "She only drinks coffee at midnight when the moment is not right...", from June 8, 2008, about a typical day at home with my son, I realized that with a few changes, I could totally write the same post today, June 8, 2009. Of course I'm not nursing anymore and my son is sleeping through the night and Lipstick Jungle is canceled, but I still get most of my doing done after he's asleep, I'm still drinking coffee (and now tea) at night, and the Lakers are, once again, playing basketball on my TV pretty often these days. One very important thing that has changed since this day last year is that I have much smaller boobs now. That is very important.

What surprised me the most was my reaction while reading about a normal day back when Zack was brand new---I'm really looking forward to doing it again, and soon. I love being a mom. I use to say that working at Starbuck's was my favorite job and the only one of my jobs I'd ever go back to, but this mom gig is way more fun. I'm looking forward to being mom to some more folks over the next few years. It's very challenging work being a full-time mom. Actually it's challenging being a mom in general. I imagine if I worked outside my home, I'd be dealing with a different set of challenges. I use to complain about the work and being tired all the time, but eventually I realized that the work and fatigue weren't going anywhere, complaints or none, so I've focused on the awesomeness of it all and really started enjoying myself.

I've completely given myself over to it--motherhood, you know? Like, I'm not as concerned now, as I once was, about when or how I'll re-enter the job market. A friend of mine who is also a stay at home mom said something a few months ago, that I'm totally feeling right now. She said something like, "This is my mom season. I'm going to enjoy my family and be the best mom I can be. My kids are my life and they're only kids for a while and I'm enjoying this gift of time to focus on them." I feel her words so hard right now. I did college. I did wife. Now I'm doing wife and mom. I'm going to have my babies and enjoy them. And when mom season is over and my babies become school kids, I can put more energy into whatever comes next. But what is now, is Mom Season. This is where life has me right now. I'm a wife and a mom to a baby boy. That's it. And that's actually awesome. 

 

Downward Facing Baby

Zack is checking out his new shoes from "Ganmama" on Mother's Day.

*I posted this as a comment, then decided to add it here.* My mom is responsible for the shoes. I just decided to play along with the old school outfit and knee-socks. I'm from Memphis, and I don't know what it is about these old shoes, which are the SAME ones I wore growing up btw, but everybody knows about Jackson Shoes, and when your baby starts walking, you better have a pair of cork-bottom high-tops to put on his feet or the old folks will swear the ankles won't develop properly. LOL. I love that they are throwbacks though. This pic could totally be of my brother back in the 70's.

I totally WON!

I recently entered a giveaway over at Nerdlike.com and got an email today that I won! My swag?

A piece of clothing from the Spring 2009 line of Parish Nation! Yes, it's menswear, so HAPPY EARLY FATHER'S DAY BILLY!

I've had some pretty good e-luck lately with winning the Clinique Insider video contest and the nomination in the Momversation.com video contest. Maybe I should learn how to play the lottery--get a scratch off card or something.(I am SO serious about that.)

And speaking of contests, enter my Creme of Nature giveaway. One or two winner every month for the rest of the year!

Try Again

This is the fourth orchid I've been gifted over the past few years. All the other ones have not survived. I got this one on Mother's Day and so far it's still with me. I think I have found the perfect spot and am watering it according to directions. All I need to do now is get the orchid plant food recommended on the tag and this one should live for years. *Fingers crossed*