432 Months Old....

So today I am 432 months old. I know, time flies right?

When I started this blog, I was only 316 months old!

Back then, I never thought I'd drive a minivan. I drove a silver VW Jetta and it was AWESOME. I only had one child and he was still in utero. He was never going to eat candy, especially not pixie sticks, or play video games where you have to shoot things. He was also going to be a girl named Maddy.

Oops.

Back then, I also had an actual, paying job. I'm not sure how I kept said job, seeing as how, toward the end of my tenure, I mostly just worked on this blog, (which way back in the day, was called "I Have to Push What out of Where?") while simultaneously obsessively googling questions about pregnancy and childbirth.

HA!

A decade later, I'm an unemployed,  professional soccer-mom Honda Odyssey taxi driver. It's very possible that, in a pinch, I could safely deliver your baby in an elevator just with the sheer amount of information my ocd has driven me to acquire over ten years and three pregnancies. Yes, I have tripled my number of offspring, and they are, in fact, all boys. Maddy never came. Those boys play all kinds of crazy video games and eat more than their fair share of candy --  although pixie sticks are still off limits.  Basically, the only thing that has stayed consistent in the last ten years is this blog... and my haircut.

Anyway, so a lot of months have passed.

I'm not sure what milestones a 432-month-old should be expected to have hit, but here are some of the things I have learned this past 12 months on the earth.

* First and foremost,  I've narrowed down the meaning of life to the following -- We are put on this earth to connect with and take care of others using the gifts God gave us. If one of those gifts is that you can make people laugh and encourage them through goofy statuses on Facebook every morning while they drink their coffee, then run with that.

* You really can make a difference in the world one person at a time, one interaction at a time. I used to feel like making a difference was an overwhelming concept and wondered how anything I could do could possibly leave any kind of lasting impact on the world. I don't feel that way anymore. I really believe the biggest impacts are made by the ripple effect of people being kind to people they come into contact with. Pay it forward, and all that...

* Take risks and put yourself out there. Pursue people you think are interesting.  You just might find a new friend in an unlikely place. You also might be a giant pain in the ass; BUT you'll never know unless you try.

* This one kind of goes hand in hand with the previous one : Making snap judgements about people is a good way to miss out on a person who might be nice to know. I consider myself a pretty intuitive person... a people reader.  But sometimes, I'll admit, I pass judgement on someone for one dumb thing they said or did, thinking I could never hang out with them or be friends with them for one stupid reason or another... mostly due to my own issues... and then I get to know them later on and find out they are wonderful people. I have had to learn this lesson over and over and over again. One day, maybe I'll remember it.

* Don't worry quite so much about what other people think. This is a constant struggle for me. But I keep learning over and over again that if I'm honest, genuine and kind, it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. True friends will emerge. Haters always gonna hate, so to speak.

* My sense of justice will never be satiated, so I should stop hoping it will. It's also what gets me in trouble a lot because I can't stop running my mouth when I feel like I or someone I know has been wronged. There are always going to be nasty, hateful people in this world. There will always be little poops who are going to be mean to my kids. There will always be people who are going to judge me or my family.  There will always be spiteful and jealous people out there. And there will ALWAYS be that idiot in the sports car who is going pass me going 80mph on Dulaney Valley Road... (wth?!)  It's just the way the world is and I can't fix it and can't change it. I can only control how I react to it and try to cancel it out by putting as much goodness, kindness, patience, and positivity out there as I can muster.

* I'm never going to like flying. No matter how many times I do or how much I learn about the physics and mechanics of it,  I'm pretty sure I will never be able to wrap my head around or enjoy the idea of flying 500mph 30,000 feet off the ground in a metal tube. But I WILL face my fear again, get on that airplane in August and have a good time with my kids in Disney. Even if it kills me ... which it could because OMG planes crash sometimes, ya'll.

* Re: the above... Embrace your quirks and your fears and the stuff that makes you different from everyone else. Don't hide it and pretend it's not there. All that weird stuff is what makes you special. Everyone has their own collection of weirdness and you can make other people feel better by letting your own weirdness shine. ;)

* It's no joke --  time really does fly.

* Kneecaps sag with age. I once read in a Redbook magazine that your best kneecap years are between like 18-24... after that it's all downhill. This year, I noticed kneecap sag. So yeah, it's true.

And lastly, in the last 12 months:
* I learned how to make really awesome iced cookies. Finally! It only took 36 years. ;)


There are probably more... but those are the biggies ones off the top of my head.

P.S. Here's my 348-months-old post... yes, I ripped off my own joke. Also? Apparently not much has changed in my life... and I still have the same haircut. ;)