Ask Brandy Ellen - 1 Mom's Point of View

I just love watching TV and seeing those live children's events or shows where you see the children and their parents smiling, clapping, laughing along with the characters on stage. Those families always look so happy, I honestly never thought I would be one of those families. Why? Quite simply because with the cost of gas prices rises, the cost of living on the rise and of course the cost of the shows themselves being an "extra" our budget didn't seem to find room for.

Well I just about dropped to the floor when Amy from Resourceful Mommy emailed me on May 27th to tell me that I was the proud winner of the tickets to see Bob the Builder LIVE in NYC. You can read more about my trip here and here. Although I didn't really care for the city life, a bit too high paced for me, I did love the show and so did the kiddos!

I am so happy that having a blog has opened the doors to new and exciting opportunities as well as great connections. I must say I am thankful for a lot of my new Twitter friends, bloggy friends and Facebook friends. Thanks to everyone I am heading with my family to see Thomas The Tank in real life, we will be riding a real train for 25 minutes. I am excited because it is a lot closer to home than the NYC trip was, and the kids will have so much fun.

AJ has grown very fond of Thomas the Train ever since we received a free book from WIC at our last recertification visit.

To see a list of events for Bob the Builder, and Thomas the Train please click here and see if there will be a show or event local to you.

I will be posting an update for our trip, but we are not going until July and you will need to be a subscriber to Happily Blended in order to read the update as that is where I will have the update featured.

So what are you doing? Head on over to PBS Sprout For Parents now to see a list of current and upcoming tours! Oh and while there, remember to enter the PBS Sprouts Dancing with the Dad's Sweepstakes - enter your dance link on my blog post here and have a chance for an extra special gift only for my blog readers!

Happy Day to ya,

As the days move forward my son, AJ, seems to be not sleeping very well. My husband and I have been able to get our sweet AJ on a bedtime routine that works.

1. Pajama's on
2. Brush Teeth
3. Read a bedtime story on couch.
4. Go to bed, read a second story on bed.
5. Get tucked in.
6. Go to sleep.

He has done this routine every night with one exception, occasionally he does take melatonin. We do not give him this medicine every night because he seems to only thrive on it for a few nights, then it does nothing for him. He wakes during the night moaning and groaning and so we stop the medicine for a few nights to see how it goes.

After two nights now of AJ having trouble sleeping we decided we would stop the melatonin again for a while. Well he will not go to sleep, no matter how hard I try he will stay in his room, on his bed, but he will NOT go to sleep. The poor boy was up most of last night moaning and groaning and was so miserable today he barely napped an hour. AJ was punching his brother, being mean to me and just had a really bad, rough day.

I am frustrated as a mom, sleep deprived for sure and starting to have bouts of depression. WHY? Well because the lack of sleep is making my mind not think straight, I am taking this stress out on my husband who isn't getting anymore sleep than me and working 10 hours in a factory job as a machinist but isn't being mean to us. I personally would rather my husband be home with me, and we live off the bit of money I make from my virtual assistant business and go open a computer shop because honestly I can't deal with this sleep deprivation any longer. I know him losing his job would create a stressful situation in some ways - mainly financially - but it seems we do our best when working from home together.

I just do not like having no support system to lean on, it's hard. And when we take AJ to the doctors they simply say we are doing something wrong - or tell us to follow a routine - seriously .. did the doctor not get the memo of our routine we do EVERY night and have since the day this boy was in a toddler bed?! I mean really, come up with a better solution.

Luckily we do have an appointment with neurology for AJ but that's not until end of June. I can't wait, I can't do this anymore and all I see is my poor, sweet 2 year old falling apart, not to mention my other two children are certainly not getting the best of Mama because Mama is plain on vacation in her head - stressed and sleep deprived.

I am uncertain what to do, but will try to keep my head up, focus on any positive that will come out of this and lend advice to others when we do figure out a resolution. I hope for the sake of my little boy and my personal sanity someone will help us with AJ. I hate that he is not getting enough sleep, my poor sweet AJ.


Oh and don't mind this post if it's a bit "off" as I am writing it around 10:35pm while I listen to AJ in his bed not sleeping still....and my hubby is snoring on the couch ... must admit I am a bit jealous that hubs can sleep through ANYTHING and EVERYTHING!

I am back and ready to start blogging at Ask Brandy Ellen. I will be completing product reviews, and maybe even hosting giveaways. I will lend advice, and talk the talk!

I look forward to providing you tips here as well as over on Happily Blended.

Keep your eyes out for more posts to come tomorrow,

I am taking a break from writing here at Ask Brandy Ellen due to my virtual assistant business being a huge focus and my blog Writings of a WAHM is a bit more of my "passion".

So feel free to read my old posts but for now I may not be doing anymore writing on Ask Brandy Ellen.

Here are the places you can find me:

TypeAMom - Blended Families Category

Writings of a WAHM - daily reviews, giveaways, tips, advice and much more. Doing breastfeeding blog & vlog series march 2009 - May 2009! With free e-book for download on Mothers Day 09!

Brandy Ellen's Business Solutions - virtual assistant and unique marketing services. If you are looking for some help - please visit my site to learn how I can be your virtual secretary and help you with networking & marketing.

For now...I am off...hope to see you on my Writings of a WAHM blog with some comments! Giveaway happening within the hour - ChicBuds!

Hugs to all my loyal readers,

OK moms, how many of you have been all caught up in being "mommy" and/or "wifee"? I know it's easy to do, it happens..that is life. BUT I am here to write a bit about what you can do to reconnect with YOU. Again I am no professional, this is an opinion only blog and this is my strict opinion on what I think will help YOU reconnect with who you are aside from MOM and WIFE.

I recently had a friend and well yeah ME TOO, get lost. I am still a bit "lost" but I plan on finding direction again. I have looked into what I loved before I was mom and wife. Really I didn't "love" a whole lot, I became mom at age 20 almost 21. SO I have to really look back and honestly those are my "high school years". I was not such a great high school daughter. I did great in school with my honor roll status, but I did like to party. I partied A LOT more than I would ever wish my children do. So it was hard for me to look back and find passion in something other than partying. All of a sudden I realized what my true life long passion has always been but was lost; writing and helping others.

No matter how lost I have been, no matter how rebellious I seemed one thing I always took time to do was to write a poem, a letter or a short {very short} story. I have started many "books" and they never went passed chapter 2, gosh I don't even know if I have a trace of them anywhere. I do, however, have all my poems I have written in my life from age 13 and up. They are mostly depressing, but they are MINE, they are something I am PASSIONATE about.

So my goal this week is to get re-connected with my passion for WRITING, whether it mean I write good articles on both my blogs and over at typeamom or I just sit and start the book I have been long thinking about starting...I will focus on re-connecting with my passion for writing.

I would love to have other moms reconnect with themselves too...what is your passion? Did you lose site of what you are passionate about after you became mom and/or wife? What will you do to reconnect with YOU?

Looking forward to your comments and stories,

What a great way to add to my post from yesterday. It seems that the girl needs some time to herself, she needs to get out. The only problem is, this girl has no local friends. Every friend of hers that she would LOVE to go out and have one night a week with lives in another state, and not just the next state over, but they are located all over the United States. Lately this girl feels like she wishes she could just take off and fly once a month, how cool would that be? She would be able to get away and meet her long time virtual friends?! In all reality that will not happen for this girl, so I propose this, having a girls night out locally!

Even if this girl needs to go out on her own and watch a movie, eat dinner, etc etc, she needs to get out. She has overwhelmed her life with being a mother and a wife. She has tried to accept that she is a mom and a wife. She has given and given but not taken for herself. We all need time alone, time away. Her husband often tells her that even though he gets away for work, at least he "gets out". Even if he is "working" he is getting away. Which I think is what this girl needs, time to get away. I wonder though, if she can have a girls night out, with few local friends and most of which are in their own relationships with their own family, can she really do a girls night out?

I wonder, how does a girl who wants so badly to feel the love she had for her husband and herself again get out .. and find herself so to speak?! She is looking on cafemom and other networks to find local people, mainly girls or moms, that she can propose a girls night out too. I wonder where do you go to find local girlfriends? What advice would you give this girl to help her find a way to have a night out alone or with friends?

I fear if this girl goes out alone, being a bit shy, she would not have fun and would just worry about her kids all night or just be sad because again, she is alone. I think a weekly time out for herself, low cost fun, would be the answer to solve most of her problems. What do you think?

I have many mom friends, most of which are states away from me, but some are local. I often find myself and others are questioning things that occur in their relationship or marriage. It's so hard to keep true to your vows when your life long soul mate refuses to give you what you need.

Here's a story that is based loosely on real events but is a fictional story.

This young single mother finds herself alone, pregnant with her second child and after leaving her almost 3 year position of being an office worker she now finds herself financially unable to keep up with house payments and other important bills. She files for state assistance and gets some help, but her pride hates being on assistance and she plans to work herself up to be financially free on her own. Yes she plans on being a single mom to two children, she is strong, she can handle this. What she did NOT expect to happen was to "fall in love". She fell head over heels for this guy who had been a friend for a bit, they talked hours on the phone and it seemed he was "Mr Right". During their friendship and "dating time" he paid not only his own bills but hers too. He was paying for his apartment and her house payment.

There were some issues in the beginning a couple of deceits but she forgave him and understood where he was coming from, even if she didn't agree with the lying. They moved on from this situation, but she wondered if she would ever fully trust him again. Lying was one thing that really got under this girls skin!!

Six months into their friendship/dating this man moved into her home. By now the second child had been born, so there were two children in the home with them. She enjoyed that he was laid back, easy going and a great "father" type figure to have in the home. Things seemed to be falling into place, they could almost finish each others sentences, they got along great and about a year into the relationship they were married in a small wedding at their home with close friends and family to witness. Their wedding day was bliss, talk about perma-grin, no one could wipe the smiles off their faces, it was a day of joy for them and they were so in love everyone could see it!

Now this girl finds herself about three years into their relationship and is not sure where it is going. Did this girl do what she always does, fall head over heels too fast and rush a situation? Did she mistake "true love" for "infatuation"? She is so unsure what to do it is driving her crazy!

This girl is not one to be quiet when things are on her mind, she believes in communication. She discussed her feelings with her husband for the past year, she figured it was just because she was pregnant with their child and her emotions were running wild. They both talked and figured that they would cross this bridge and discuss further if she found her feelings were the same after the baby was born. After all, he did adopt her second born child shortly after his first birthday and took on a lot for this woman he loved so dearly. Could he really be 'so wrong' for this girl, after they went through 'so much' together?

Here it is almost 7 months after the baby is born and she is lonelier than ever. While her husband works long hours, six days a week, she is home with two children while one is at school, she tries to work from home, she blogs, she talks on the phone, anything to get her mind off of the fact that she is ready to give up. She has told her husband over and over how she feels, that they need to work on this, that she is lonely, all she needs is to feel adequate in the marriage. All she needs is her "husband" back. He appears to listen to her, he seems to care, when the subject of her leaving him comes up you can almost see tears in his eyes. She wonders, is that what it will take to make things work? Her leaving? Will she have to literally walk out on the "love of her life" to prove a point? To her that seems like a silly trick, a game almost. She has given up, and is now living content in a situation that she feels is her raising three children with a best friend. She doesn't want to walk out, she would not live financially, she would not make it without his little support of taking care of their two busy boys, she fears she would just fall to pieces if he was not here in her life, but at the same time she is at her wits end and no longer has the strength to fight for what she loves. She doesn't even know if she loves him like she should, she goes out grocery shopping and sees all the men stare at her, they look at her the way she wants her husband to look at her....why can't he just give her what she needs? Why can't he just "try" a bit harder...why is this loving mother of three in this situation?

Now tell me...what would you do if you were her?