hollywood housewife

{giveaway} stella and dot sierra necklace

**This giveaway is closed!  Winner is announced at the bottom**

I love a statement necklace.  When I was trying to define my signature style, I knew that oversized and dramatic pieces of jewelry was part of my look. 

So when I got a chance to preview the new Stella & Dot Spring collection, I was giddy to see that there were some major neck pieces.  Here's where I confess that I chose two things for myself for Valentines Day (the Indira necklace and the jade Serenity Stone earrings, if you must know).  My husband breathed a huge sigh of relief and I cannot wait for them to come in. 

sleeping arrangements

Welcome to Mommy Mondays, where parenting is the most important thing you'll ever do. And also not a big deal.

Pirate is three months old and at night he sleeps swaddled in a co-sleeper bassinet about two feet from my face.  I like it this way.  I like to hear him breathe.  I like that big sigh babies make when they're drifting off into a deeper sleep.  I like rolling over in the morning and seeing his sweet little eyes blinking back at me.  He doesn't cry when he wakes, so I never know how long he's been staring at the bed or the ceiling, waiting for one of us to look at him.

I feel like I could comfortably sleep with my baby within arms reach until the end of time.  The Gorilla, however, is ready to move him on down the all.  Federal Express, no signature needed.  I understand his point, especially now that Pirate is sleeping through the night, from about 11pm to 8am.  The reasoning for keeping him in the room with us at all was to make night feedings more convenient.  And now there are no more night feedings.  But I'm not ready.

We moved Pigtail to the big crib when she was even younger than Pirate is now.  She wasn't even sleeping through the night yet, and I was definitely happy to reclaim our adult space.  But with Pirate, I know it just may be the last time that there is a sleeping baby's breath so close to me in the wee hours.  Maybe not, but maybe.  Probably. 

There are so many things that are precious and monumental about your first child, things that might get lost with the second one.  Unless the second one is also your last.  And then a whole different set of things seem precious and monumental. 

Pigtail has taken to her big girl bed in her big girl room like a champ.  So now, there truly is no reason for Pirate not to follow her down the hall.  Except for my wimpy heart.  I know it's got to happen soon.  But I plan to keep begging The Gorilla for just a few more days...

have faith, part VII and epilogue

...continued from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, and Part VI.

It wasn’t true, you know.  I did care what the Bible said.  But I had believed for so long - and verbally espoused - certain views about homosexuality and now they were being challenged. 

Because when my dear friend told me he was gay, I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t his choice.

And if I didn’t believe that one thing about my faith, what else didn’t I believe?  The girl from another denomination who told me I was going to hell, the boyfriend who tried to pray my personality into more submission, the Christian boss who tried to enforce a bedtime...it was too much.  Once I started I couldn’t stop giving voice to the hundreds of doubts and inconsistencies I saw in my religion.

And so I pressed pause. 

A year or so went by.  I didn’t think about the hard stuff.  I decided that no part of me believed that my friend who was born gay and my friend who was born Jewish was doomed to burn in eternal hell.  Now that that was out of the way, I pressed pause again. 

I married the kindest and most generous man I’ve ever met, something that most people find hard to believe because everyone knows Jesus doesn’t approve of potty humor. 

When I was early married, I tried a church in my neighborhood that was known to be fairly liberal in its teachings, but a young-ish guy came up and tried to welcome me.  I hated that so I never went back.
If it seems like I’m skimming over years here, it’s because I am.  “Pause” lasted for a long time. 

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I realized that some of the sadness I was feeling wasn’t just hormonal, but part of the ache of missing my faith.  My spiritual pause hadn’t been barren, I never felt separate from my God.  I still prayed a little.  But I was no longer sure of how realistic it was to have a personal relationship with the Creator.  A Lord who granted parking spaces and favored certain nations and sports teams seemed ludicrous to me now. 

Then a couple of things happened.  One of the most beautifully faithful people I know told me that she believed our friend was born gay, too.  Another friend of seemingly unshakable beliefs told me that she thought women were meant to teach in the Church.  I stumbled across a few blogs and then whole books written by people about my age who loved Jesus, but were having a hard time reconciling what we know in 2012 with the intricacies of an infallible Bible.  I wasn’t alone.

Hiding my head in the sand about my doubts had made me think that everyone else was still operating with their youth group faith.  I hadn’t give people enough credit to see that everyone, by my age, had experienced doubts and hurts.  It was freeing, finally, to see the gray.

friday links - mommy shorts edition

It has been quite a week. 

Thank you to everyone who has been following along with my Have Faith story.  It has been the hardest and most emotional thing I've ever written for public eyes.  Maybe you can't tell by the words, but rehashing all the emotions and then presenting something so personal has been exhausting.  I'm really glad I've done it, though.  Check back this afternoon for the final installment, and the epilogue.

(And if you're new here, I hope you know that things aren't usually quite so serious.)

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I first started following Mommy Shorts because Ilana is a fellow Typepad blogger and I really liked the look and function of her blog.  But then I started giggling at her HILARIOUS caption contests.  And I liked her stories.  A lot.  Here's a list of her most popular posts and here's one of my personal favorites. 

Okay, now I'm going to say something I probably shouldn't say.  But that's the theme of the week, so here goes: I don't read many mommy blogs.  But Mommy Shorts - though almost entirely about kids and mommydom - is an exception for me.  Because it's funny.  And, in my world, funny covers most things.   

You know I like to pass along my blog crushes.

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For your weekend reading pleasure:

Do you watch Rachel Zoe?  Or It's a Brad, Brad World?  Here's a video of Brad Goreski talking about his split with RZ.  It makes a lot of sense and kinda makes me like him even more.  Once I saw Rachel Zoe walking down Beverly Boulevard in a ginormous fur coat.  It was very LA. (Buss Buss)

And speaking of very LA, this Sh*t People Say In LA video has had me laughing all week.  It almost has a million hits on YouTube already and I bet 500 of those are me.  Listen, this is pretty inside-jokey, so I won't blame you if you stare at the screen puzzled.  But you know how the funniest things in life are true?  Yeah. 

Moving on, is this not one of the best "About Me" pages you've ever read?  Such a powerful mission statement for her blog.  (Le Musings of Moi)

Stitching Your Handwriting.  I've sketched a pretty similar idea to this, so it was fun to see this put in action.  Now I just need to take my idea and make it a reality.  (Freckled Nest)

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Shameless Self-Promotion:

I got new "About Me" photos on the blog.  My friend Greer shot them and I love her style!  She posted about her session with me here.

I wrote an article for Blogher this week about Why No One In Hollywood Actually Goes To the Movies. 

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Our February schedule is beyond nuts, so this is our last weekend for a little bit without a full agenda.  I'm looking forward to it.

Happy Weekend, HH readers!

Subscribe to HH and get my posts in your email inbox or feed reader.  More the facebook type?  "Like" HH on FB and get my posts and more original content in your live stream. 

have faith, part VI

...continued from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Towards the end of college, I fell in love with someone who did not share my adoration of Jesus.  This was the first time that had happened.  Subconsciously I was probably looking for someone who would give my heart a rest, but at the time he seemed to come out of nowhere. 

I loved him, and I think he loved me back, and we talked too much about our differences while heralding the ways in which we were the same.  He felt like a fit for where I was going, literally.

After my Europe experience, I was itching to move just as soon as I got my diploma.  I told anyone who would listen that Oklahoma was no longer for me.  I had friends who expressed interest, and the boy was on board, and we all had very grand plans.

Until he dumped me.

have faith, part V

I'm telling a story this week.  I promise I only do this a couple of times a year.  The topic was picked my the HH facebook members and it is the backstory of my faith.  You can read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

*

“If you feel it pressing on your heart, sign up for our mission trip this summer.”

But I don’t want to go to a third world country, even in the name of the Lord.

“God just laid it on my heart that you’ve been spending time with the wrong kinds of people.”

But these people are good, strong of character, and they’re teaching me about life in a way I needed to learn.

“You can’t associate with him outside of this space because he’s a man (leader) and you’re a woman (follower).”

We were just talking.  I swear.

My parents had worried I would get liberal ideas from my english and philosophy professors, but my need to explore another way of thinking came not from the classroom but from people I knew.  My world had become so one-note, with strange sets of rules that didn’t seem cultural or Biblical, that I felt like I was suffocating.

I sought out worship with strangers, driving an hour to go to church in my jeans.  I wanted to learn new things and unlearn everything I was discovering all at the same time.

Somewhere along the way I fell madly in love with a man who was called to be a preacher.  But I didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife, and marriage was the only direction we were headed, so I broke our hearts with a finality that left us both limping for a long time afterwards.

have faith, part IV

...continued from Part I, Part II, and Part III

In my hometown, I was never made to feel shame because my family didn’t attend church and I did.  I knew it was different, but most people knew my family and it was accepted as factual.  My parents were more conservative than almost all of the other families I knew, both politically and in their actions.  They didn’t keep alcohol in our home, and I could count on two fingers the times I had heard either of them swear or use crude language in any way.

In my late teenage years, and especially once I got to college, I began to feel differently about this family dynamic.  As people discovered this part of my faith, I started to feel pressure to convert my family or to take a stand in some way.  For a time, I even used it as a badge of honor.  Solemnly, “Yes, I chose this on my own,” implying my spiritual superiority over the sheep who had been born into Christian families. 

Over the years I had developed staunch opinions on what it means to have a different belief system than loved ones, but suddenly I was challenged and defensive.  I was no longer a child, in a situation out of my control.  As an adult, I was now - some people expressed - in a position to change my family.   

I did not want to change my family.

have faith, part III

A few times a year I tell a story.  This years topic was chosen by the HH FB members, and it's some insight into my personal faith.  You can read Part I and Part II.

In my high school, the Bible Beaters were hardly the nerdiest kids in class.  We weren’t the most popular, either, but there were so many of us that I never felt shunned for my beliefs.  I had wonderful friends, and several serious boyfriends, and we were all as socially active as the next group. 

Our high school was medium-sized, and our town was small enough that a lot of us knew one another from elementary school through graduation, so this could have helped or hurt as people naturally fractured into social cliches.  Even if there was some judgment on both sides, I remained classroom friends with many who chose to do something riskier on the weekends. 
 
It never appealed to me to go out drinking by the lake, or even to engage in normal boundary-testing teenage behavior.  I made decent grades, spent my Friday nights in a drill team uniform, and attended church events with multiple denominations around town.  Wednesday nights were big for the Bible Beater scene, and I made the rounds between the very active youth group on one side of the town, the less inclusive group where one of my best friends attended, and my own Community church that hosted smaller but meaningful outings.

have faith, part II

...continued from Have Faith, part I

Attending Community Church became something I did every week, twice on Sundays and again on Wednesday night.  It went quickly from being Melanie’s church to being My church.  I felt, instinctively then and definitively later, that this was the perfect place for someone like me.  There was no pity that I was attending alone.  Any family there schooched down the aisle to make room for one more, passing me a piece of gum or patting my shoulder in welcome.

have faith, part I

I'm telling a story this week.  I promise this only happens a couple of times a year.

Some people would say that eight years old is too young for a salvation story, but I was there and I know it in my heart to be true.  It was summertime, my hair was permed, and I was sitting on someone’s lap when I said my first real prayer.