Saturday Playdate - Karen At Home

Welcome to another fun Saturday here at The Life of Rylie...and Bryce too! Today's playdate is with Karen from Karen At Home. Karen is an absolute sweetheart who I have had the pleasure of meeting through this blogging addiction of mine. She has an adorable little girl named Jillian, who always looks so happy in all of the pictures I see of her. When she isn't taking care of her sweet little girl or working her part time accountant job, she is decorating their beautiful home. She has some mad decorating skills! I think know I need her to come help me decorate my bare walls.

When you're done reading her post over here, go check out Karen's blog. Leave her some comment love, and give her a follow if you like what you see (and I think you will). For now, though, let's get on with this playdate and have some fun!

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I have had the pleasure lately in getting to know LeeAnn over at The Life of Rylie...and Bryce too. She is such a sweetheart and the Mom of two adorable kids. She is also the host of the "Saturday Playdate" series where I love reading about other amazing Mommy Bloggers. I also realized after reading one of her Saturday playdate posts that I have never been on a playdate before, real or virtual!!!! So I got up the nerve to ask LeeAnn and here we are!

I am so excited that we are actually having this playdate at LeeAnn's house. She lives in Florida and I couldn't be happier spending my Saturday in The South where the weather is always sunny and warm!!! I have brought my homemade salsa and chips along with a pack of Corona Lights and some limes. I thought a cold and refreshing Corona would be perfect for a sunny afternoon in Florida!

Let me start by introducing myself, my name is Karen. I have been married to my wonderful husband, Jeff, for almost five years. We have actually known each other for ten years and met sitting across the corporate cubicle wall from each other. We are both number crunchers and work for the same company today, just in different buildings. We live in Cleveland, Ohio and just welcomed our beautiful daughter, Jillian, into the world in December 2009. Our daughter is the reason that I believe in miracles. We endured a long journey of infertility and miscarriages. There was a time where I never thought I was going to be a Mommy and had given up hope many times. We are just so blessed to have her in our lives. She has given us so much joy and hope. We just couldn't be more blessed. I am loving life right now as a new Mom and love sharing her cute face with my readers!

I have been blogging since September 2006. At that time, my husband and I had just begun our journey in starting a family. We were also currently on the hunt for a new home and I thought what a better time to document all of the exciting changes that lay ahead of us. I never realized what a fun and exciting world of blogging was until I started to receive comments on my posts. I would click on the comment which would bring me to a new blog. I would read a post on that blog and find even more bloggers through that post from those comments made. One click on those comments leads you to other blogs. You start to see familiar faces after awhile, who is following who, and who knows who. It's rather quite addicting! I meet new people every day who I would have never met if I had never created my blog.

Now that you know a little about me and what brought me to this playdate, I want to write about something that I am extremely insecure about and that I am sure would be rearing it's ugly head if this were a real life playdate. I have never really admitted this before on my blog so here it goes. I am insecure about my age. I am a first time Mom at the age of 35. Being a first time Mom and talking with other first time Moms is a constant reminder of our age difference. Most women are experiencing the first joys of motherhood in their late twenties/early thirties where at 35 I should be on child number two or three. It is very rare that I find someone in their mid-thirties who just had their first baby. I try not to get caught up in the age difference so much but it's hard not to. When I meet a new Mom, I instantly feel myself wondering how old she is. Will they still think I am cool and want to hang out with me knowing that I am 35? Is that nuts? What goes through your head when you meet other Moms? What are your insecurities? I am sure we all have them and that one is mine. Now that I put myself out there, hopefully you still think I am cool and will want to come back and play with us!

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