Introductions

Blame the fact that I'm starting a blog on the fact that I don't have a dishwasher.  As I stand in front of a basin full of hot sudsy water, my mind usually has nothing better to do than to pick apart various encounters, interactions, and introspections that I've had recently, which leads to mostly developed arguments and opinions that sit in my brain and fester until some unlucky soul runs into me on the street and gives me the opportunity to turn the conversation.  Either that or a loop of the chorus to Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time"...

So in the spirit of creating a forum for my own meandering thought-trains (and after a night of next to no sleep because of them), I've decided to take the first step and introduce myself to this "Sphere of Blogs" I hear so much about.

First the basics: my name is Toni and I'm a 23 year old woman from California living in New York because my stupid husband from Idaho (whom I love very much) dragged me here.  With a BA in Art History and zero opportunity for career advancement in the two short years we plan on being in Ithaca, I had nothing better to do than to have a kid :)  Little Liam was born on mother's day of this year, and as much as we joke that he was a product of boredom, an accident of irregular birth control on the 5 day trek over here,  and the end of our youth, he is in reality the perfectly timed and welcome beginning to our large family, which we have always wanted to start early so we can kick those suckers out in time to enjoy our retirement!

It is this last joke/question of youth vs. parenthood that prompts the title of this blog.  Although I do play poker from 1-3 times a week, I don't imagine I will be doing many play-by-play accounts of the grind at local free poker leagues.  Instead, here poker is a representation of the kinds of activities and interactions most people in America associate with being a young twenty-something, which one must give up once he or she has a child.  My husband and I, on the other hand, have always firmly asserted that rather than stealing your youth, kids keep you young, and having a child does not mean that you have to give up the person you were before. At nearly 7 months into this, we have found this hypothesis to have evolved into a theory, which we will continue to put to the test through more adventures in young parenting.  And while I hope this doesn't turn into a run-of-the-mill-mommy-blog, I cannot extricate myself from being a parent, and I'm sure that many of my posts will involve my progressive-ish opinions on having and raising kids in America.  

So strap in Sportsfans, because I hold the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States dear to my heart, and plan on unleashing this mess on the unsuspecting internets.