Just the babies and me...

My heart is aching...

2011-03-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

Thursday was a rough day. Nothing seemed to go the way I wanted it to. I put the kids to bed early and was relishing some time watching some TV I had taped while doing some work on the computer and enjoying a delicious sushi dinner. I spent a few minutes wallowing in the long hard day that I'd had. Children who didn't nap, taxes that took to long to complete and to top it off, cleaning up a bunch of poop. I realized how blessed I was that after such a rough day the kids had gone to bed early. I was heading there myself.

And then it happened. My day got worse. Very quickly. The news of the 7.9 quake in Japan (which was quickly elevated to 8.9) was bad enough. Watching the devastation and the fear and imminent deaths there broke my heart. But a large earthquake like that means a lot more to me now that it affects me personally. An earthquake that size most definitely means a Tsunami is likely. And considering that I can see the water from my living room window, I couldn't spend a lot of time sitting around and doing nothing.

That brings me to another reason why being a military family is different from being a normal civilian family. When you grow up in Nebraska, you hear the civil defense sirens and know that a tornado is threatening your county. That is, unless it happened to be 10:00 AM on Wednesday. When you're a military family and you move thousands of miles, the shortlist of natural disasters changes with each move. The ones you're used to really don't apply in each place. On the east coast you worry about hurricanes. The west coast has wildfires and earthquakes. And apparently, an island in the middle of the pacific has issues with volcanoes, sulfur dioxide air, and the aftermath of major earthquakes all along the ring of fire - Tsunamis. The thing is that when you grow up in an area you learn to stop being afraid of the natural disasters that are common in your area. You get used to the sirens, warnings and know that you're relatively safe even if the disaster threatens to strike. But when you move to new areas, you have to learn to cope with new, scary things that you aren't used to.

I am truly, TRULY blessed to live in a very close-knit community. We all watch out for each other's children and talk almost daily. If we don't see someone for a while, we check to ensure that things are okay. And because of this, even when my best friend is thousands of miles away, I have people I can lean on. People who have in just a few short months have become family. And so, when the earthquake hit in Japan, the word was passed quickly throughout the neighborhood. We all know that earthquakes, though far away can directly impact our area. When the tsunami watch was issued, we all talked and knew that should it become a warning, we would go somewhere together. When civil defense said it was "highly likely" the watch was going to become a warning, we had decided to get ready. So that if it became a warning we would be able to leave ahead of everyone else and avoid traffic. So, fifteen minutes before the first siren, we were already packing up, planning to go somewhere together, in the middle of the night, with all of our children. And when the siren sounded we were already well on our way to seeking safety.

My heart is aching for those in Japan who are dealing with the tragedy. But my heart is also aching with gratitude for a Great God who helped to place my family in this home. Aching with love for my neighbors who have stepped in to watch my children when others had to be rushed to the emergency room. We may not live in a brand new house, but we have a roof, walls and plenty of room. We have a view of the water in a wonderful area of the world where the weather is almost always amazing. We have friends for the kids to play with (and get hurt with). We have block pot-lucks and birthday parties. We have a community that is hard to find. So it was with great relief that Friday morning, when the all-clear was sounded that we returned to our homes. But the relief was not because our houses and our things were in tact, it was because our neighborhood family was.

Apple TV. Seriously?!

2011-02-06T01:18:00.000-08:00

Have you heard about this thing? I was very skeptical. Any time Daddy comes home with some new-fangled gadget, I want to know how much it costs and why we really need it. (I'm not sure exactly when I went from being excited about the new gadgets to exasperated. I am not sure I'm happy about this shift, either.)

Then, my sister sent me a YouTube video of my sweet baby nephew Bear. Oh, how I miss those CHUNKY, chunky thighs. His solid frame, and his sweet contagious smile. I watched the video on my phone. And then I thought I should watch it on a bigger screen. My iPad! I was watching it when Little Monster came around and wanted to know what I was watching. And why did that sound like Auntie on the iPad?!

I noticed this little odd thing on the bottom of the screen and clicked it. And it gave me an option for watching the video on Apple TV. After only a few minutes of input juggling, there was Bear! Bigger than life Bear! Being the goof that he is on the big TV. Monkey and Monster just sat and watched Bear over and over.

And now I find myself anxiously awaiting the newest Bear video to be uploaded. I haven't seen a new one in a long time. Despite the fact that I've posted a few videos of Monkey and Monster since then. But you know sisters. They are busy. Oh, and they are in the mid-west and trying to dig out from about a gazillion feet of snow. I guess I'll give her a break.

But what I was originally trying to say is that Apple TV -- it's totally sold on me. I love watching Bear on the Big Screen! And now that Daddy is busy, I'm sure the kids are going to love watching him read good night books there too!

And so it goes...

2011-02-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

Or rather he...

Daddy has returned to the daily grind of sea duty, and with that the return to a lonely life of being a married single parent. We have been truly blessed and spoiled in the past few years having him home every night, in time for dinner too!

My lack of blogging here hasn't had anything to do with anything other than a lack of time to sit and do it while the children are quiet. I have continued to blog. In my brain. As I am vacuuming or preparing breakfast, folding laundry and going about my daily tasks blog posts arrive in my head. But I haven't been putting down the vacuum, waffles, or towels in order to blog at all.

Turns out, when you do that your house stays clean longer than thirty minutes. It might also have something to do with our wonderful neighborhood in which at 3:00 in the afternoon the children are set free while the adults chat and supervise the chaos. It isn't chaos. That isn't fair. There are many days where the children play in orderly groups in their games. They organize duck duck goose, hide and seek, some sort of medieval knight game that involves foam swords, shields and bicycles, and a myriad of other things. Some days, though, they look like a bunch of free electrons buzzing around the street and the cul-de-sac.

I can't believe how blessed we are to have such a wonderful place to live, with wonderful neighbors and the opportunity to enjoy it all -- even if Daddy isn't here to enjoy it with us.

We made it!

2010-12-29T02:13:00.000-08:00

It may have been by the skin of our teeth, seconds before the planes were stopped for wind and snow. Or maybe it only seemed that way as we were leaving as the temperature dropped and the winds picked up. But after 12 hours on an airplane, no one getting to nap, and a 70 degree temperature shift, we all arrived in paradise on schedule.

Daddy was there to pick us up, and take us to our new home. I was a bit worried about the house, but quickly learned to have more faith in Daddy's ability to get something I'll like. We are all on one level, in a gated community, a block from the pool and shaded with Plumeria trees. I love that I can hear birds singing and kids playing outside, rather than the freeway which is close to many of the other housing communities available to us, and we are pretty central on the island.

It has been a few weeks, but we are getting settled. We are missing lots of old friends but excited for the possibilities that lay before us as we begin to make new friendships and discover the things that are going on out here in the middle of the ocean.

We arrived in the middle of the rainy season, so we've seen lots of monsoon type rain, with a few sun breaks, but I am having a hard time complaining when the East coast is buried under feet of snow and it's 80+ degrees here.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and wish you a Happy and Blessed New Year!

And it begins!

2010-12-09T12:17:00.001-08:00

This weekend I will be dragging my children halfway around the world to our new home in paradise island. Where I have been told that the cockroaches are the size of rats and the geckos are smaller than the mice and are all over your house pooping on your window sills.

But as we are leaving tomorrow, likely in freezing rain and snow, I'll be grateful to be headed somewhere where the definition of "cold" is still at least thirty degrees above the freezing mark.

That is, of course if I can get through TSA without some sort of craziness. And if the plane takes off despite the freezing rain and snow. And if our connecting flight from Denver leaves.

I didn't think I'd be so sad to leave Nebraska in the middle of December for somewhere tropical. But Little Monster has a knack of finding good friends with wonderful mommies. And we've had a good time spending our short time with them.

My next post will be from somewhere greener and warmer friends!

It's about the little stuff...

2010-12-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

I was truly blessed today to spend the afternoon with a friend.

Little Monster has been talking about spending some time with his friend who lives in Frank forever. Every since he started at this preschool, he has been asking to spend the afternoon with him. As in, asking every day. So, when I met his mom last week at a field trip, I was ecstatic when we planned a play date for the boys.

Today was the much anticipated day. We marked it on the calendar, a big old E right on today. This morning there was no argument about why he couldn't wear his pajamas all day. There was less argument about getting shoes on and getting in the car.

We met at a local fast food joint with a play land and followed up at "Frank's" house. The kids had a great time. There were sword fights, a few punches over lights being turned off or on. One big crash sound that ended up being nothing and a bathroom and Little Monster covered in poo. A tiny baby boy cooed and nursed while Butterball tried to be his mommy. I think that I enjoyed my afternoon (except for the poop incident) as much as Little Monster did. Frank's mom is a sweet, sweet woman who amazes me. And I am sad that I won't get to know her more.

I love when afternoons turn out as nice as this one did and can't wait for the next one.

The spanking girl

2010-11-23T21:56:00.000-08:00

Before I tell you this story, I must preface it with the fact that Little Monster is every bit a four year old boy. He talks. And talks. And talks. The other night while with my mom the child talked for five and a half hours. Without a break. Without a pause for someone to answer the billions of questions he was asking. He just talked. It wouldn't be so bad if the child would use some punctuation when he spoke - -but often one sentence just rambles into another. Sometimes he forgets spaces for his wordsandtheyendupsoundingmuchlikethislooks.

I know. You all think, eh. Typical four year old. I'm not sure. I think he talks more than most four year olds, but maybe that's because I'm with him constantly.

By the end of the night, my mom and I just stared at each other, mouths agape in horror at the fact that he hadn't passed out from lack of oxygen. And then he went to bed and I watched Elf. It's not a masterpiece of the arts by any means, but after the day I'd had with Little Monster, it was downright hilarious in parts. Elf was Little Monster. Little Monster was Elf.

But now we need to get back to the original story. This evening it happened again. Non-stop talking. Running up and down the aisles at Michael's, while bouncing all over the place. I'd put him in "time-out" touching the cart, but it wasn't working. My patience was getting worn out. As we were in line checking out, he started to act up again. (Act up is probably a bit harsh. He was really just being a bit loud and asking questions I was too tired to answer and I didn't want to sound like a grouch around all of the other people in line). I didn't have much left for it. He had worn me out during the day with all "his friend who lives in Frank in the white house, and to get there you turn left and left then right and can we go over to his house after school his telephone number is 4" talk.

So, as we were standing there, and was tempted to issue an empty threat for a spanking, it came out of my mouth without thinking.

Little Monster. Did you know that there is a lady who spanks naughty kids in stores?

What? There was. That one lady. That one time. You don't remember?? Read This. Yeah, see. I didn't lie.

I thought it might squelch the very minor attitude and get him to be quiet for a minute. I was wrong. It just brought on more questions.

Mom, that girl that spanks naughty kids -- where is she?

I don't know. She could be anywhere! (Now I know she WAS in Ohio, but I don't know where she is right now.)

Mom is she here now?

I don't know honey.

MOOOooom. You're just joking. Right?!

Cue the guy who is standing in front of me with his young wife (who is giggling uncontrollably).

"No! I've heard about her!!"

At that moment you could see all of the color drain out of poor Little Monster's face as his jaw dropped down. We all stood around discussing whether it was possible if she was in the store the poor kid started to get scared. That some mythical woman might jump out between the checkout lanes and swap him in the butt for being naughty in the yarn section of Michael's. And the more we talked about it, the harder it was to contain my seriousness. The lady in front of us (young wife) was crying she was laughing so hard. She literally HID her face in her coat at one point because she didn't want to ruin the moment.

I may or may not have mentioned that if this mythical lady has to come out to spank you, she immediately calls Santa and puts you on the naughty list.

I'm not terribly proud of my momentary lapse in parental judgement. But I might just use it to my advantage. After all, I don't know where that lady is at any given time, and she could be anywhere, ready to spank my naughty children for me since I'm not willing to do it in public myself. But at least I'm not duct taping him to walls. Yet.

Instead of protesting a protest...

2010-11-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's because all of the pain is so new, so fresh. My Dad's funeral was only three months ago. Perhaps, it's just because I'm a human being who has a bit of empathy and I can't imagine what it would have been like to be so sad, to have lost so much, and be mourning the lost of a dear loved one, only to see picketers outside the funeral home or church. Whatever the reason, I am not alone when I say that the Westboro Baptist Church is way WAY out of line.

I'm not out to take away any one's right to a peaceful gathering, to take away their free speech. I don't follow my husband half way around the world every month so that he can protect those rights for nothing. I hold those rights near and dear to my heart. And so does he. We've talked about it, and he would not stop an anti-military protest. He refuses to say anything to anti-war or anti-military picketers on the street. Because they have the right to air their opinion in a peaceful manner.

I think, that if the group doing the picketing in this case were any group of people without ties to a Christian organization, I would feel much differently. I might not be as upset. I might not feel like it was as vitriolic, as disgusting. But then, maybe not. I think it is a violation of humanity to stage a picket line, a protest at someone's funeral. Turning an entirely somber affair designed to allow family and friends to say goodbye to a loved one into a political statement is entirely wrong. I don't know how. I can't give you a biblical example of why it is wrong to do this to people at a funeral, but I'm pretty sure it is. It goes against so many things that Jesus taught. It breaks my heart that the organization doing this comes in His name. It makes me want to scream and cry and try to stop it all at once.

Would God really use a teacher's car accident to make a statement against the way the public school is run? This church claims that the reason this teacher died was because the public schools teach rebellion. I think it's a little bit ironic, because wasn't that was Jesus was? A rebel? Didn't he fight the church leaders left and right? One of the things He came here to teach us was that sometimes a little rebellion isn't a bad thing. Jesus defied all sorts of social standards, liturgical laws, and rebelled against the sinful and unholy way the Pharisees were running the temples.

Why does it bother me so much that people are protesting at funerals? Maybe it's partly because of what my husband does for a living and this church is known for protesting at military funerals. Mostly it's because it's a church. It's a group of people associating themselves with MY faith and MY God. Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong simply because I am holding them to a higher standard than I would any other group or organization. Very often, I'm too judgemental of other people, especially Christians. I expect Christians to live a life with a higher moral standard, to be nicer to people, and to be law abiding citizens. But that's wrong, perhaps even hypocritical. I break the law, I'm not always nice to people, and I'm a Christian. I dare you to catch me on a bad day. Heck, let me catch you texting and driving, and you'll see the Christian fall off of me faster than a Maserati on the Autobahn. So, when I see a Christian failing my high expectations, I need to remember to pray and remember that I too, fall short. I too, sin. Most of the time it works.

But not tonight. I'm tired. Tired of hearing about these funeral protests. I'm tired of hearing about people showing up with signs that say that God hates Fags, and that all of our problems in this country are because God is somehow judging our nation for supporting a 'homosexual agenda' or fighting an unjust war or whatever else we do that could anger Our Father.

I'm tired of hearing about how much "God hates fags." That isn't true. Not in the least. God hates sin. God hates the behavior that often happens on earth as a result of humans having free will. God, however does not HATE any one. Be they a fag, a christian fundamentalist extremist, a tax collector, a murderer, even pedophiles. God doesn't hate human beings. God loves us. All of us. It is for that reason that He sent Jesus to die for our indiscretions. He sent his only Son to DIE so that we could have life. What is it that we don't get about that? It doesn't matter what we do, or what we don't do. The only thing that matters is what we believe. We don't earn an entrance into Heaven.

If God hates homosexuals because they engage in a sinful behavior (because again, God hates behavior and sin, NOT the being itself), then he must hate me too. Because I engage in sinful behavior every day. Just the other day my four year old had to remind me that the "f" word wasn't a very nice word. I told some girl to drive, rather than text with her "f"ing phone in a rather loud and mean voice. I sinned. I KNOWINGLY and consciously engaged in a sinful behavior. I think about doing BAD things all the time. I want to HURT people who stand outside of funerals with signs claiming that "God Hates (anyone)." God is love. And something that embodies love cannot hate anything but the thing that would destroy that love.

People don't die because of God's judgement. People die because their bodies wear out. People die because we were given free will from the beginning of time, and that free will sometimes leads us into bad decisions. People die because people die. It's bigger than a stupid church or a military policy on sexual orientation, or whether our schools are teaching the wrong things. The reasons for death are so deep and that I can't even wrap my entire mind around it or explain it in an angry blog post, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. Death is just the beginning for Christians. Without death we wouldn't have life.

This church believes that protesting at a funeral is a Christian act. It isn't friends. It just plain isn't. As Christians we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And believe it or not, the word "neighbor" doesn't limit us to loving those people living in residences directly adjacent to our own. Neighbor here means a fellow human being. A fellow sinner. Whether homosexual, soldier, civilian, criminal, or regular old Joe Schmoe just trying to live his life. If we love our neighbors, we certainly aren't going to choose one of worst moments for a family to stage a political protest.

On some crazy level, I do understand where this church is coming from. I know what they are trying to accomplish, but the way they are going about it is all wrong. If you're mad at the government, protest at the federal building. Or the state building. You think the way the curriculum in the public schools is wrong? Join the PTA. Make changes. Home school your kids, or send them to a private school. Picket outside the Department of Education. VOTE to change the government and it's policies. It's your right. However, standing outside of a teachers' funeral claiming that she died because our schools teach rebellion doesn't change anything. It sends the wrong message. It tells people that Christians are hateful, spiteful, hypocritical human beings.

My message to a church that would send such a message to the world:

A Christian's first mission is to bring people to God. By sending such a hateful message in the name of God, surely you are turning people away from Him. And a back turned from God is a face turned towards sin.

What does the Bible say about Christians who lead people into sin?

Matthew 18:6 (NIV) But if anyone causes one of these little ones who
believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung
around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Mark 9:42 (NKJV) But whoever causes one of these little ones who
believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung
around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.

Luke 17:2 (NIV) It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea
with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these
little ones to sin.

Not once, not twice, but THREE times it's mentioned. Three is an important number, and if you're a Christian, you know that. It's not an accident.

I could go on forever talking about how God loves everyone, regardless of their sins (He really does), how He wants us all to repent and believe so that we can go to Heaven (He really does), how He sent his Son to die so that we didn't have to pay the price for our sins (He really did) because He loves us so much, or how we can't get into heaven by doing (or not doing) anything (we really can't) and how it all hinges on what we believe.

I could, but it's late. And I'm sure I'm rambling by now. So instead, I will pray for this church. Because that is what I do when I'm angry with someone. I will pray that they will see how horrible, how AWFUL they are being by using a painful time in people's lives to make a political statement, turning what should be a sad but beautiful last moment in someones earthly journey into a media circus. I will pray that that the family will be protected from seeing the whole ordeal as they grieve. And lastly, I will pray that these events will cause people to question what the true God would say, and what He really says about moments like this so that they will come to know how much He loves us all -- no matter who we are or what we do.

Time to spray for bugs...

2010-10-24T22:15:00.001-07:00

Basements anywhere seem to be plagued with bugs. Spiders, earwigs, just gross bugs. But lately, being at Mom's house (no offense!) has been like a trip to the insectatorium. Or whatever. The bug section at the Zoo. Whatever you want to call it.

It all started a few weeks ago when Daddy was here. Mom and I were getting ready to go somewhere when we saw something scurry across the garage floor. It was large enough we thought it was a mouse. Mom jumped into her car and we yelled for Grant. Who informed us that it was a spider. A very large spider. So large, that when he stepped on it, guts spilled out at made him slip so much that he almost ended up doing the splits and going to the hospital.

Fast forward a few days. A spider was on the lamp. A big spider. I went to get it and it fell to the floor. After I caught it I went to kill it. And I squeezed. And squeezed. And squeezed. And after I actually gave force, it popped. I tried not to barf. It makes me shiver just thinking about it.

Fast forward a few more days. We had been outside grilling and I ate a burnt hot dog. This is a bit relevant, I swear. The kids were nuts that night, and I was out of my mind by the time they went to bed. I went to bed and woke up and as I was in the bathroom, I looked at my teeth. You know how you look in the mirror and run your tongue along your teeth in the morning. Between my teeth I saw a LOT of black stuff. Since we've had so many spiders, the thought of that email from forever ago claiming that we eat 8 spiders a year in our sleep (totally false, by the way) came across my mind. Instantly I felt nauseous. I was certain that I had eaten a giant disgusting spider in my sleep and the stuff between my peg laterals was chunks of spider leg. Then I remembered that we had eaten burnt hot dogs -- and maybe I had forgotten to brush my teeth before bed. I'm going to believe that's what it was. I really am.

And then there was last night. Last night when I was sitting innocently in bed and felt a tickle. In a sort of odd place. In the spot between my girls on the front. I said it. I figured it was a hair or something and went to scratch it. Only I felt something in there. Something like a stick. No worries. I had been crawling around outside all day. It was possible that it had been there for a while but I hadn't noticed it. Right? So I grabbed the stick and and pulled it out of my shirt.

Do you want to see the stick?

Are you sure?

Here it is!!

Do you SEE that?! That is NOT a stick or a hair or anything! THAT WAS CRAWLING ON ME! THERE!

We sprayed the house for bugs. And I feel a little guilty for killing that bug. It suffered a little bit. But then I still get a bit creeped out every time a hair touches me now. I can only wonder how interesting it will be when I get to the Island and have geckos and all kinds of crazy bugs and exotic 'pests' running around!

...problem solved...

2010-10-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

For the past six months my mother has had little Internet. Downloads were minimal. Uploads pretty near impossible. We've been blaming the "bad cable" in the attic.

A few weeks ago my dearest husband and some very good family friends moved the cable feed from the attic to the basement. And in moving the feed, removed about 3 splits and splices. The Internet got better immediately. As did the cable signal in the house. BUT it wasn't perfect.

After troubleshooting the router, and the cable modem, and seeing that the digital signal is still shoddy on occasion, I called Time Warner out to take a look. The guy who came out was actually VERY knowledgeable about what he was doing! It was amazing! He came, replaced some ends, I told him the whole long drama of Internet dis-connectivity and skipping cables, re-wiring and troubleshooting, restarting and rebooting, flashing lights and frustration. So he ran a speed test. It worked. No surprise. The speed tests often work and say that nothing is wrong. So then I said, let me show you. The speed test takes about 1 minute. The Internet craps out after about 3 to 4. Forget the speed test. I don't sit around running speed tests. Try to download the iTunes update! Try to download virus definitions! Try to download anything over 10MB!

So we did. And it failed. And it failed again. After troubleshooting, we came to the conclusion that we were fighting two problems. An indoor cable splice being used outdoors, AND a faulty router. Which is why the problem was so inconsistent and bothersome. No one wanted to take the blame.

Today we both did. New cable has been purchased. New cable will be run into the house using outdoor splicers. A new router has been purchased and set up. And now, my friends, my wonderful friends. We have a home full of computers with the latest virus definitions. And software updates. And skype works again!

I almost forgot what it was like to have real Internet!! ;)

Redneck vs. The Red Box.

2010-10-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

Friday night. 8:00. Kids are in bed, too late to call a sitter. Not that we wanted to anyway. I was dressed in sweats and wanting to get snuggled up on the couch with a bowl of something chocolate and a good movie. But there wasn't anything we'd not seen or cared to see from On Demand. Blockbuster seemed far away and expensive.

But there is an alternative! The Red Box! Daddy and I had been using Red Boxes all over Rhode Island. We even used one at the base in Florida! No problems. Super easy. $1 per movie. I mean, how hard can it be -- You push the GIANT button that says RENT if you want to RENT a movie. And RETURN if you are bringing one back. Then you use the menu to pick out the movie you want. There is a picture menu next to the screen to show you what is available. You type in the title, swipe your card, and the box ejects a perfect red box containing the movie of your choice.

I got to the WALMARTS to get my red box, a little crabby and tired from a long day of fighting with small children who either can't or won't listen to a word I say. I have to admit that I may have appeared christian on the outside, but the thoughts going through my mind as I walked up to that Redneck vs. Red Box battle were anything but. These were the type of rednecks that were proud of it. "Big Papa" had a beer gut about four feet wide and he was donning the dirty holey jeans and a T-shirt that had a list of reasons why he was in fact a red neck. "Big Mama" was wearing a sweat suit too. Only hers was the same size I was wearing. And three of me could have fit into her. Their kids were wreaking havoc on the entry way, opening the doors and letting them shut. Open door. Shut. Open door. Shut. Run around and scream. "Big Mama" was trying to 'figgure it out and wudja knock off all this rukkis!!!" After about ten minutes, the man in front of me, but immediately after the red-necks looked at me and we shared the same thought. "Oh My LORD!" The kids were screaming (rednecks, not mine or the other guy whose child was patiently sitting in the cart) about wanting to watch some movie that the box probably didn't have. Through the whole ordeal I managed to stand there, quiet, without even mumbling things under my breath. I think fifteen minutes had gone by. Maybe not, but it felt like it.

At about this point, I was frustrated. Furiously frustrated. I was thinking VERY mean and VERY un-Christian things. But then I looked down, and realized I was dressed very much like a redneck in my sweat outfit. And if my kids had been there, the situation could have gone either way. They could have been angels or I could have been ripping my hair out too (although it is rare for my kids to be out and about after 8:30). The poor redneck mama was furiously getting frazzled. And the guy in front of me said "It's no fun when they don't have what you want, huh?" And the crazy redneck family left. Three minutes later, both I and the man in front of me had selected our choices, paid and received our movies.

I guess it was just a case of Red box vs. The Redneck. The red box won. And I hope that the next time I won't be so nasty and judgemental. Even if it was only in my head. And even if red box is set up to be easy enough for my three year old to do it.

August. September. October.

2010-10-19T21:32:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it's hard to write things because it all seems so trivial. So silly. But maybe that is a good thing. If we focus on the trivial and the silly, then the serious and sad don't seem so big.

The past few months have been a blur. And for good reason. We have flown to Nebraska and back to Rhode Island. We have packed up our house and vehicle and shipped them off to a tiny Island somewhere in the pacific. We drove from Rhode Island to Florida for a week, and then drove back to Nebraska. During the week my husband was here in Nebraska, we sold a truck and our RV -- the one home that hasn't changed in the past three years. We saw Daddy off to the Island where he checked in and has been busy working on getting us into a house. We have wavered back and forth on whether we will be able to keep our beloved pet. All while dealing with the loss of one of the greatest people I've ever known.

We have done quite a bit since visiting Nebraska. Although Little Monster is sad that we weren't able to visit the "Pumpkin Patch of Blood." Some imaginary place he made up that he thought existed near Indian Caves State Park here. Between the Monster and the Monkey, I've been busy. Monkey is climbing onto table tops, running around and bashing her head into everything she can find. I know the whole "duct taping your children" got a bad rep, especially here in Nebraska. And I WOULD NEVER DO THAT!! But I can totally understand why someone might consider it. Anyone who couldn't, either doesn't have children, or their children are miracle angels that don't spend their days dismantling cabinets, moving furniture, and figuring out the child-proof locks that cause most adults grief.

I am looking forward to Monster's birthday party, and spending some time with family before we head off to the middle of the ocean. And then, I'm sure, things around here will get interesting.

Originally written 8/7/2010.

2010-08-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

Last night it didn't seem possible.

This morning it all seems surreal. Sitting in my living room, which I had begun to stage for a move, but is now staged for a trip.

I've written about him a few times. I wish I had told you all more about the man that came to be my Daddy. He was my daddy. Since my biological one disappeared from our lives, my mom always told me that anyone could be a Father, but it takes someone special to be a Daddy.

He was special. He wasn't my father at birth, but he treated me as if he had been. There have been many times in my life where I've felt left out, like the "step" daughter who didn't belong, but NEVER, N.E.V.E.R. was he the cause of that feeling. I was never introduced as his step-daughter. Only as his daughter.

I know my kids won't mourn his loss, but I will mourn for them. I will mourn that they will not get to know this man, who though not grandfather by blood, was grandfather anyway. I

He wasn't one for many words, but the man showed his love for you by what he did for you. And with his great hugs. I will miss those hugs.

I can't imagine the earth without him here. I can't begin to imagine what my mother is going through. The worst part, for me, these past few hours, has been being so far away from the rest of my family. And knowing that I'm moving so far away in a short period of time.

It's suddenly clear to me now

2010-08-06T19:50:00.001-07:00

I remember lots of jokes as a kid about toddlers, VCRs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I'm here to tell you now that those were not jokes. Jeff Foxworthy was not kidding when he spoke about the number of raisin boxes you can fit into a VCR. He knew. From experience.

We still own one of those archaic pieces of equipment and apparently Butterball has decided that it is her personal treasure box.

Tonight, in an operation that resembled one of those third world, fake, "no instrument" surgeries I pulled the following items out of the VCR:

2 nerf darts
1 Lego
1 outlet cover
2 extra long Lincoln logs
6 MORE nerf darts
1 something indistinguishable that may or may not have a part still in there

At least nothing was sticky and gooey. She won't be allowed to walk around with PB&Js or boxes of raisins for a while. At least not until this fascination with cramming strange things into odd hiding places passes.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

MilSpouse Fill in #7

2010-08-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Another MilSpouse Fill-in thanks to Wife of a Sailor. :) This week's questions:

What is something you wished you’d learned to do earlier in life?
Be organized. This is no fault of my parents. My mom is desperately clean and organized, but somehow my house is in a constant state of chaos. We aren't hoarders, but toys are always scattered around the house, and there is generally a heap of papers on the desk. Every time I lose something, I can hear my mom's voice from when I was ten "If you'd put it where it goes, you'd be able to find it." Maybe it's nature that I'm organizationally challenged, rather than nurture? Who knows. I would love to have a house where everything is in its place. Maybe if we didn't move so often, things would be a bit better. Maybe they'll get better in our new Island Paradise? We'll see!

What is your biggest pet peeve with the military?
I am having a hard time answering this question. My answer changes based on where we are. Right now, my biggest pet peeve is all of the paperwork and craziness that go along with moving. And that even though THEY tell us to move, we have to provide several people within the military the proof that they've asked us to move, and get everything started ourselves. It seems like they should be able to just look up all that stuff in some central computer. Ask me about my pet peeve in six months, and it will be work-ups, and something dealing with the ship, I'm sure.

What tourist attraction near you have you never seen?
Right now we're in New England. We've been here twice, and somehow we've skipped visiting Block Island, Martha's Vineyard, haven't spent much time in Boston or on Cape Cod, and we didn't get to visit Six Flags. Oh well. Life is life, right? I'm sure we'll be back here again at some point!

What are you avoiding doing right now?
See Question 1. There are toys scattered all over. I've got a move-out inspection tomorrow. I really, REALLY need to get stuff cleaned and organized for tomorrow morning. But, I don't feel up to it. Maybe because it's 1000% humidity outside and our wimpy window a/c's can't cut it without bringing the temperature down to sub-zero. And none of that is good for my cold. blah. Anyone want to come clean up my trash heap of a house!?

Wine, beer or liquor?
This totally depends on the day. I can usually do a little Zin or Shiraz with dark chocolate. I don't care about wine pairings, I just eat them together and try to not to die from the loveliness. Or, Kahlua, which is really doesn't fit in either of those categories. But really, one of those two. I'll do a Corona on occasion, or sometimes a pale ale. But we really don't drink all that often. In fact, only the other day did I find out what the heck getting "iced" was, and why I should be carrying a container in my diaper bag.

The day from -- well, one of two places.

2010-08-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm still trying to decide who was messing with me today.

It started at 3:00AM when I began coughing. And coughing. And coughing. And truth be told, I hadn't slept well before then either. But I finally fell asleep around 6:30AM. And then I got up coughing again at 7:00, decided sleep wasn't going to happen and got into the shower.

After I got out of the shower, I noticed a little more morning junk in my eye than normal, and it seemed red. So I called the Dr to get an appointment. This cough and sick stuff has been taking over my house for several days. The Butterball has had green stuff oozing out of her eyes since Thursday (Note, I had called the Dr. Sunday night, and was assured it wasn't pink eye) and has been coughing a bit -- especially at night. It is 7:34 AM

I called the doctor, and got an appointment for Butterball close to lunchtime, and one for myself later in the afternoon. The problem with my appointment was that they could not address BOTH the possible pink eye AND the possible bronchitis. I had to pick an ailment to create the appointment for. Seriously. I had to choose breathing or seeing. I figured since Butterball was being seen, I'd know if it was actually pink eye by the time I got to my appointment and chose to fix my cough and breathing problem. 7:45AM

Little Monster woke up and wanted something for breakfast. And by something, I mean something in some language I don't understand. Something Kai eats, he says. Who is Kai? I have no idea. Probably his imaginary friend. The kid has a knack for stories. 8:07AM

While the kids were quiet I took a second to look at my phone and see what I had in front of me for the day. There were approximately 3,934 emails and notifications having to do with things with our house in Virginia that we are trying to sell. The power had been turned off, rather than transferred. However, since the power had previously been in Daddy's name, I couldn't turn it back on without an extended credit check, blah blah blah. There were several more emails and items dealing with our house that needed to be taken care of right away as well. I texted Daddy with the number, hoping he'd have a few seconds to wait on hold for hours to deal with the power company. 8:27AM

By this point in the morning, I was already frustrated. I walked into the kitchen to find Little Monster attempting to dismantle the camcorder. While covered in syrup from his pancakes. I lost it my friends. Lost is so bad that I smacked my hand into something and popped a blood vessel in my finger. And then I really lost it. The fact that I thought we all were going to get pink eye because I'd let stuff ooze out of Butterball's eyes for days thinking it was just part of her cold, the pain in my finger, the lack of caring on the part of the bureaucracy that deals with my health care, all of the jerks who have screwed their spouses over meaning I couldn't start power in my husband's name. It all hit me at once. 8:43 AM

My mom started her day with a nice little phone call from a grown-up kid sobbing like a baby. It was only 7:43 AM for her. It was great.

Can you sense the sarcasm?

The day did seem to get better. I, sick as I was, had to run an errand and decided to stop and buy a little gift for Daddy. And I did. Because I love him, and after a morning of temper tantrums, lost tempers and things spiralling out of my control, I needed something nice. Even if it was just doing something nice for someone else.

I ran my errand, and headed to base to get my fake Starbucks coffee, and get Butterball to the doctor. As I approached the gate, I went to grab my military ID out of my wallet.

And then when it wasn't in the slot where it goes, I passed the gate and went straight home. And I searched my diaper bag. And my house. And my car. I tore apart my wallet. I tore apart the diaper bag again. I tore apart my wallet. I searched in all kinds of odd places a baby girl could have possibly hidden the spoils of an earlier diaper bag and/or wallet dismantling.

I didn't find the ID, so I called the doctor. They cancelled my appointment. Butterball's eyes were pretty clear all morning anyway. No big deal. We came inside for lunch. We were out of milk. And bread. And pretty much EVERYTHING you need to make children some sort of lunch.

Off to Burger King we went like a herd of sick and hungry, whining turtles. Butterball's eyes had surged back into full oozing weeping disgustingness. Of course. As I leaned over the seat in the drive-thru so many prayers of the morning were answered. I could see approximately 1/50th of the ID card I'd spent all morning tearing everything apart looking for. It had fallen between the center console and the passenger seat. At least I'd be able to make it to my Doctor's appointment that promised to cure half of what ailed me. It was the turning point of the day. Surely things had to start getting better right? I know that about ninety percent of the problems from today stemmed from the days and days of coughing and nights and nights of no sleep.

I showed up to the doctor's appointment not expecting a whole lot. It was one time today, when my expectations were wrong. I don't know if the doctor could sense my desperation or if she could see the lack of sleep and sick crawling all over me. As Butterball sat in my lap, oozing from her eyes, she asked who the appointment was for. I explained that it was for me and told her about the loss of ID leading to the cancellation of her appointment for earlier in the day. (I had already rescheduled the appointment for the next day.)

Butterball was on my lap, and as the doctor looked in my ears, and listened to my lungs, she also did a quick 'once-over' of Butterball. Which turned up an ear infection. And this angel of a doctor, figured out a way to take care of not only MY pink eye (nothing), MY chest congestion, but she also took care of my baby. They dug and dug through their computers, trying to find an appointment time to slip Butterball into so that the doctor could prescribe the medicine that would fix Butterball's ear infection. And they cancelled the appointment we had scheduled for tomorrow. Because they were angels. And probably mothers who could read the look on my face.

I almost cried for the second time today. Only this time the tears would have been tears of gratitude.

And so, tonight when Butterball stood in the tub and let feces fall from her behind, I was able to laugh. Because, how else should my day end but with a tub full of poop?

The beginning...

2010-08-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

We've begun the moving mayhem around here. Notice has been given, things are getting lined up for a very large, complicated move. Shipments going with different companies at different times to different places. It should be fun. Seriously.

Meanwhile, we are all trying not to die from whatever microbial organism that has decided to take up residence in my lungs. I'm not super happy about being kept up at night by an ugly green mucus monster. I've got two much cuter monsters who enjoy keeping me up nights without a third one moving into my body and making me sound like someone who has been smoking for 80 years.

Speaking of smoking -- it isn't fair. I smoked for a small period of time a long time ago, in a land far, far away. And I enjoyed smoking. Yes I did. It kept me skinny, because I was never hungry. Ah, nicotine. And while I didn't enjoy the residual smell, there was something in the initial scent of the cigarette first being lit that still gets me. If, somehow, I could have all of that without the stink that gets all over everything, and you know, the total destruction of your lungs, I'd probably think about smoking again. At least if I smoked, I'd have a reason to sound like I do.

In the meantime, I'm busy trying to de-clutter and organize our household. I'm trying to enjoy the last few weeks I have in New England, and the last few weeks I have with friends here (No thanks to the Mucinex Monster in my chest).

I hate this part of moving -- the organizing, the packing, the leaving, the un-doing of everything. I keep going with a smile on my face because I know in a few weeks a new adventure will start. In a short while I will be in the middle of my favorite part of moving -- the unpacking, organizing and setting up of our new household. I am trying to picture our new house, how our life will be when we get there. And that's what keeps me from curling up into a ball and hiding from all of the things that need to be done.

MilSpouse Fill-In!

2010-07-30T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm totally lazy today. You can check out the whole deal here at Wife of a Sailor

1.What is your spouse’s best feature?
His pale blue eyes. Eyes so blue that the sky itself can barely compare. Of course, those pale blue eyes are flawed in that they flake pigment. And I guess that can lead to glaucoma. Nice, huh?

2.Mild, Medium or Hot sauce?
None, thank you. I would like some mild pico-de-gallo though. Or some guacamole from Chipolte.

3.What is the worst uniform you had to wear for a job?
The worst "uniform" I've ever been forced to wear wasn't even really a uniform. It was just a sexist requirement that all women were required to wear a skirt. I bought the longest skirts I could find, and all in the material sweat pants are made out of. It was a ridiculous excuse for a uniform that was more so that he could look at the ladies legs.

4.You have invisible powers… where is the first place you would go?
Hmm... I really don't know. I think it changes based on the day. At this point in time, I'd probably visit the summer camp my son used to go to and see what goes on when parents aren't around and see how well the kids are actually being supervised.

5.What’s left on your “to do” list for this summer?
Sort through every.single.thing.we.own. To find out what is coming with us across the Pacific to Vacation Wonderland, and what is getting shipped to my parents house. And a ton of stuff to do for my bible study group that will begin again in September. And move. *sigh*. Move.

Moving -- Showing up and Setting Up!

2010-07-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most exciting parts about being in the military is getting to a new duty station. I love getting to a new place, especially the first morning if we've arrived late at night -- which is usually the case. It feels like Christmas! That's not to say that there aren't a lot things to do to get set up in a new place.

Just like in any civilian move, we have to find a place to live. You can sometimes get into housing. But, generally the waiting lists are ridiculous. Some places it can take years to get into a house on base housing. It used to be that housing kept a ton of houses available for incoming members, but it isn't the case anymore. Housing pretty much everywhere (at least in the US) has been privatized to try to save money. I'm not exactly sure how much money the military is actually saving by leasing the land to a third party, and then paying all military members the housing allowance, but it has made life a bit more difficult when you're trying to get into base housing in some places.

Housing Allowance? What? We get a certain amount of money for housing costs based on where we live. Everyone in the military gets paid the same based on their rank and time in service. BUT if they didn't give a housing allowance, people in some areas would effectively get paid more than others. Someone living in Omaha, Nebraska would be making a ton more than someone stationed in San Diego CA, if they didn't change the rate for housing based on where we live.

One of the first places you visit when you get to your new station is the housing office. Now that it has been privatized, it's kind of a mixed bag. It used to be that you visited a place on base, and you got a house if one was available, based on the active duty member's rank and the number and age of their dependents. Now that it has been privatized, though, some places are wonderful to work with, and others are a nightmare. When we visited the housing office in California we were offered an old, dilapidated looking home with two bedrooms, one bathroom, no washer dryer hookups, and a driveway that was to be shared with five other families and a broken fence. All for the low cost of our entire housing allowance. Seven miles away we were offered a very new three bedroom house with a two-stall garage, a driveway we shared with one family. And the fence wasn't falling down. How much was the newer house? The same amount as the first place. Which house would you choose? I wasn't exactly hip on paying to live in a shack where I'd have to visit the laundry-mat with a toddler every week. The problem wasn't even the lack of available decent houses. The issue we had was more in the way we were treated. When we arrived, we waited around to talk to someone about what we would be offered. The two housing offices played against each other, and if we hadn't been smart about the way we were accepted and offered our lists, we would have had to wait an additional 30 days to even see what was available. We felt like we were looked upon second-class people getting a free handout from the government, rather than a renter who was paying $3000 per month for rent. It was completely obvious that the civilians that were running the housing office despised the military and the people who showed up to rent from them. It seemed odd. That isn't always the case, though. When we applied for housing in New England, we expected to show up and have the same situation. We called to find out where the office was to meet our agent, and she instead had us meet her at our house. She was incredibly friendly, and as has been the case here, that everyone is happy to help with most everything. (Except for the speeders the race through the neighborhood, but that has nothing to do with the military). I've already talked about the differences between the two houses, so I won't go there, but I'm much happier here where I don't feel as if the people at the office despise us because we are getting "free" housing that we are actually paying for.

If you look for a house out in town, it's the same as civilian life, with one exception -- you HAVE to have a military clause in your lease. Orders change. Orders can, and do change mid-tour. So, you have to have a clause exempting you from the lease termination fee should you need to move out early because of a change in orders. In some places, you'll be treated like crap whether you're leasing in town or from the housing office because of that termination exemption. The housing office usually has a list of "black-listed" agencies and complexes that you shouldn't rent from, because they are notorious for being unfair and mistreating the military members when they need to use the military clause in their leases, sometimes even refusing to honor it.

Once you've found your house, vacation is over. You get in and you call the moving company to tell them your new address. You can update your address with the post office, hopefully get caught up on any bills and obligations you've had to put off while you were "homeless" between addresses. In housing, generally your basic utilities are automatically put in your name, while out in town you have to arrange all of that yourself, just like everyone else. If you're in housing you have to figure out cable and Internet. Cable and Internet is one major bonus to privatized housing. When housing wasn't privatized, the civilian cable companies didn't have cable run to the houses, so you couldn't get 'normal' cable, and getting any kind of high speed Internet was next to impossible. Some places, (ahem, where we used to live) the privatized companies didn't deem cable and Internet as "necessary" utilities. So, they simply didn't pay the companies to come in and install any hubs or lines to the neighborhoods because they were too cheap. At our last house, we didn't have any option other than satellite for TV. After the digital conversion, we couldn't even get over the air channels because the TV stations were too far away and there were too many hills around to get a signal except for in one bedroom upstairs -- and even then you had to be standing on your head, touching your nose and sticking your tongue out just so to get the one channel that would come in. As for Internet, we were lucky that they did have "high speed" (IE, barely faster than dial up) Internet set up, but it was still incredibly slow, worked about 1/2 of the time and cost twice as much as anything else we could have gotten anywhere else.

If you're lucky, and moving somewhere in the US, you can usually have your stuff within a couple of weeks of getting into your house. We have had it take a full month before, though. Your stuff has been shipped across the country, and has probably been put into storage if you didn't fly from one place to the other, or drive like a crazy maniac trucker or stop and visit family on the way. In our experience, when your stuff goes into storage it gets broken. The movers treat your stuff a bit differently when you're watching them. Have you ever watched how the luggage handlers at the airport treat your bags? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's the same deal at the storage facility.

In my experience the movers who offload our stuff whine a lot less than the ones that pack it and load it. I think that's because most of the time they aren't doing quite as much work since they're not unpacking. Yes, you have the option of having them unpack for you. However, while they will take the stuff off of the shelves and put it into a box, they won't take it out of the box and put it onto a shelf. You have to put your dishes into the cabinets, your clothes into your dressers, and your books on your shelves. So, unless you have eight arms, no children and can be in three places at once, it's much easier to unpack at your own pace.

A military family learns to unpack quickly too. Since we move so often, we don't have much time to waste unpacking. If we spent months unpacking our boxes, we'd be living out of boxes our whole lives. Our last move, it took us one week to have our house completely set up and unpacked. However, there always seem to be a few boxes of miscellaneous stuff that don't get completely unpacked. Those are the boxes that never seem to get unpacked and they seem to multiply with every move.

As you're unpacking you will most likely, find broken things. Because, like I mentioned earlier, your stuff has been moved without you around. The moving company (if you've paid for the replacement insurance -- we always do--out of pocket) will pay to repair and replace any broken items, but it's often a pain to get all of that sorted out. And how do you really replace stuff that is irreplaceable -- you can't find some things again.

Remember the lamps we got rid of at the last place because the entire house had lighting in the ceiling and you didn't have an affordable option for storage? Too bad. So you're out buying lamps. And new curtains because the windows that were 84" above the floor in California are only 65" off the ground in New England. This is something that happens no matter who you are and you move, but it all adds up when you move every year. The last house you lived in was built in 2004, so it had network cable in the walls and electrical outlets (or several) on every wall. This house, however was built in 1950. When you plugged in a lamp and a TV. So there is about 3 plugs in every room. So you have to buy extension cords.

Most of that stuff I had to give away at the last place, because the movers couldn't move it will have to be replaced. Every year or so I've had to replace my entire kitchen cabinets with new spices and cleaners. Not a big deal, really, except that it can get expensive. And it's really annoying when you get to the new place and go to cook something, and What do you MEAN we don't have any garlic powder, vinegar or baking powder? Didn't I JUST buy that the other day? Yes, but the other day was in our last house.

Luckily, some things have gotten easier recently. It used to be that if you were a military spouse, even though you moved on military orders, you became a resident of the state you moved to. So you had to change your driver's license right away too. If you were smart, you'd leave your car titled only in the military member's name because otherwise you were required to change the plates on it to a new state every time as well. Sometimes, it's better to change the plates. We do if we are going to be in one place for a long period of time and the cost is reasonable in the new state. For the past few decades, they have been trying to pass a bill so that military dependents can keep the same state of residence even while moving around. It passed this year, which is wonderful. It makes the whole "arriving" in a new place a bit easier. It basically means that we don't have quite as much paperwork to do.

Now that we're here and set up we can begin exploring!

MilSpouse Fill in #5

2010-07-24T11:39:00.000-07:00

Wife of a Sailor's MilSpouse Fill in continues this week! I'm a little late -- as usual, but oh well. It was a rainy day yesterday and we spent all of our money at Target. So I was tired.

1.Besides the horizontal mambo, what do you miss most when your spouse is deployed? I miss our evenings. The first few nights are the worst. When he's gone and you're alone and the kids are in bed, and it's a little too quiet. After the first few nights, I enjoy it just a little bit. But then I settle into being lonely again. He hasn't been gone since we've had kids (at least not long enough to really miss him too much) other than when Little Monster was born, and I lived with my parents. So I know the next time around I'll miss having him around to play with the kids. It's wonderful how much time he spends with them.

2. What do you miss least? Cleaning up after him. Not that he's any messier than anyone else that lives in this house, but I hate cleaning period. So, yeah.

3. You only get three crayons to finish your picture… which three do you choose and why? I pick Red, Yellow and Blue. They are the primary colors, and you can, if you're patient, create almost any other color with them. Without those colors, things would just be shades of grey.

4. If you could have your own fragrance, what would it be called? I kind of do. Only it's my mom's sort of. My mom scent's her own goats milk soap, and she makes one that's called Sea Moss, but it's seriously a clean, yummy, smell that I love. It's earthy without being too dirty, and pretty without being too perfume-y.

5. If the shoes make the man (or woman), what do your shoes say about you right now? This one is funny, because if you go to my profile, it's one of the random questions you could pick to sum yourself up, and it's the one I picked. If I had my way, I would never wear shoes. I am a simple girl, and love the feeling of walking around barefoot (as long as my kitchen floor is reasonably clean). I walk barefoot on the beach, in the grass and anywhere I can get away with it. I was barefoot at our wedding (even though that wasn't the day we got married) under my fancy dress. I walked down the aisle of the church barefoot. Hmm. I wonder if that's blasphemous? Jesus was barefoot a lot too, right?

Moving -- Setting it up and Setting out!

2010-07-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Moving is inevitable when you're in (or married to) the military. Sometimes you know its coming and other times you have no clue. Sometimes you have months to plan, other times you are lucky to get a few weeks. But moving happens. Military jobs have a timeline. You're not in one place for very long but you generally know how long you're going to be at any specific job.

There are many variables, but at some point in time, you know your time is waning at the job you're in, so in some way, shape or form you either pick or get picked to go to your next job. Sometimes you get to pick, other times the government picks for you. That all falls into the whole "government property" thing. At any rate, you are set up for a new job and you have an idea about where you're going next. However, before you can do any planning of any kind you have to wait for orders. Once you have orders, you can begin planning. Most military members know, though, that you shouldn't plan too early if you're lucky enough to get orders a few months out. Because orders can, and often do change.

Before we got married, when I decided to move it was because I couldn't afford rent, wanted a change of scenery, etc. I knew when my lease was up, so I started looking a few months out, put down a deposit on a place and scheduled everything so that I had a few days overlap. One sweaty weekend, a case of beer, a U-haul, some friends and family, and I was in a new place. Now, when I move it's because someone is telling me to. If I'm lucky I get a few months to think about where we're going to move to, but I can't start searching for a new place to live until we have orders. Usually I can't find a new home until after we've already moved to the area.

In order to move, there are several forms to fill out. Just because we're being told to move from Place A to Place B, doesn't mean it all happens automatically. We have to tell someone to schedule the moving trucks, packers and loaders. We have to tell someone to arrange for our travel, especially if travelling requires airline reservations.

After you fill out all of the forms, which can take hours and sometimes days, letting everyone know that you're moving, where to, and when you'd like to have it all arranged, you are told when everything will actually happen. Sometimes it is when you want it to happen, other times, not so much.

Sometimes you can visit your new destination ahead of time to find a place to live, but most of the time it is expensive and you're moving too far away for any kind of real house hunting. Leaving one house before you find a new address can create problems. Technically when we're between houses, we're homeless. We don't have an address to put down on any forms. We can't fill out a mail forward until we know the new address, so we have our mail forwarded to family or friends nearby temporarily, but that isn't always an option. So you're stuck using your last address and hoping that no one is going to try to mail anything important to you. It's especially difficult to explain to utility companies that you don't have a forwarding address for the final bill. They don't quite get it sometimes.

Once you've gotten everything "scheduled" you have to prepare your house. One nice thing about military moves is that if you choose, someone will actually come pack up your stuff for you. (You can also pack your stuff and move yourself. But with a military spouse who is lucky to get time off for dinner, it's hard to arrange a move on your own without it turning into a nightmare. If you can, though, the military will pay you part of what they'd pay the movers to do all of that work.) That doesn't mean everything is easy, though. They don't move some things. All those cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink? Can't be moved. Do you have anything flammable such as propane canisters, spray paint, any aerosol products? Nope, they can't come. Open boxes of cereal? Nope. Ketchup in the fridge? Sorry. Pretty much anything that is perishable or open is garbage. It can't be moved.

What do you do with all of that stuff? Most of the time I try to donate stuff to neighbors or the homeless, etc. However, most of the food that can't be moved is open. And the homeless shelters won't take open food items. I get the reasons for it, but if you're neighbors have all moved before you, or can't take any more free stuff (because their fridges and pantries are stuffed from everyone else moving ahead of you), you're pretty much throwing away a bunch of perfectly good food.

There are pests in some parts of the country and the world that are dangerous to the environment in other places. One example, the gypsy moth. If you are lucky enough to get stationed somewhere that the gypsy moth lives, you have to inspect every single thing that has ever been outside for larvae to ensure that you're not going to single-handedly kill off the endangered species that live ONLY on one island in the entire world. If you don't find it, and the movers or customs finds it, it's a whole lot of fun trying to get your shipment without a bunch of red tape.

Have pets? Travelling with pets in CONUS isn't a big deal. You just cram them into the car with the travel high chair, pack and play and your kids. Moving OCONUS (outside of the continental US)? Good Luck. You have to fill out several pages of paperwork, have blood drawn, and pay close to a thousand dollars out of pocket between vet bills, paperwork and plane tickets to get your pet from Place A to Place B. And if one thing goes wrong, you're looking at thousands of dollars for the quarantine period.

The date arrives, and the movers are supposed to show up to pack your stuff at 8:00. You've sorted out all of the "un-movables" that you can find early, but know that they will tell you that they can't move some things this time, even though they did last time. You get the kids up and ready, everyone is dressed, donuts and coffee for the packers have been purchased. 9:00 arrives and no movers. 10:00, and 11:00 and noon. At 1:00 they show up to pack. And then they spend the entire day whining about how much stuff you have. How many movies and books to you really need? Do you really have to have so many pictures to load? What about all those toys? Do your kids really need that? Your furniture sure is heavy! And you have a lot of it! Never mind that you only own 6,000 pounds worth of stuff and you're authorized twice that. I forgot to mention that. We can only own so much stuff. It's not based on the number of people in your family, just on rank. Everything is finally packed at around midnight.

The truck is supposed to arrive tomorrow. At 8:00. So, you get up at 6:00 in the morning, get the kids ready to go, buy donuts and coffee for the loading crew, and get to your house at 7:45 to make sure the place is ready to go. 9:00 arrives and no truck. And it's 10:00, 11:00, noon and 1:00. The truck shows up at 4:00. You've been sitting at a house where everything is packed, waiting for several hours for the truck to show up. When they show up there is the whining again. Do your kids really need all of those outdoor toys? Your furniture sure is heavy! And you have a lot of it! How many boxes do you have to load? The truck is finally loaded at midnight. If you're lucky, your spouse is around so one of you can return to the hotel with your children before they reach critical mass and explode.

Once the truck has pulled away, you ensure that you've gotten everything packed. Everything you need for the next two months is loaded into your cars. You need two months worth of stuff, because moving is about the only time you get to visit family. And because most of the time you haven't found a house ahead of time, you don't have an address to give to the moving company. Your stuff goes into storage. And you have to wait your turn to get stuff out of storage and into your house. Which sometimes takes a month or more. If you're brave, you drive across the country, small children in tow. You have to drive yourself because the military won't pay for shipment of vehicles. (The exception is if you're travelling over seas and lucky enough to be moving somewhere where you're authorized to move a vehicle, but even that isn't easy. If you are having a vehicle shipped, you often have to drive it several hundred miles to a drop off point -- they will NOT pick it up at your house and send it from there.) If you have small children who don't do well in the car, you have to have vehicles shipped on your own dime, and fly from one place to another. Many families have one parent travel with children by air, while the other drives a vehicle packed to the brim.

These few days between houses can be incredibly irritating or wonderfully amazing. I love it when we're between homes. We always drive if we're travelling in the CONUS (Military speak for Continental United States). We don't have any responsibilities other ensuring that we're to our destination on time. We usually attempt to turn our moves into an adventure. Not quite a vacation, because we're usually on a tight schedule and can't afford long stops in many places, but we try to have fun anyway. Even with all of the reality checks, problems and pains that go along with moving, it's always exciting. It's fun to live with the anticipation of a new place. Those few days between duty stations are like the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is a buzz in the air that can't be contained. I often hope I get to our new destination in the dark. That way, it's like Christmas to wake up in a new place that you haven't seen in the light and go exploring -- only Santa has delivered a new start in a new place. What an adventure!

What's next? Getting to your new place!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-07-21T04:55:00.000-07:00

Does this still go on? I don't know. I've been so out of the blogosphere and in my own world lately. All of this move stuff.

These photos were the result of a magical summer evening. We had gone to a hibachi place for dinner, eaten ice cream and then headed home to ride bikes and hang out. Yes, there was even genuine smiles from the Daddy!

Eight Years, Eight Seconds?

2010-07-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

Eight years have gone by since we said "I do." We won't talk about the word "trust" and how that was more stuttered than stated.

It's hard to believe that this was us eight years ago:

Look how tall he is! And how short I am? (I'm standing a full two steps higher than him, in heels.) Look how skinny I was! And he has HAIR!

Why no dress? Where's the tux? One of the great things about military life is that in order to get a place to live, we had to get married. A full two weeks before our wedding. We weren't given the option of being a runaway bride or a missing groom. It made for a great wedding day with no pressure at all. What's that? The pastor tried to burn the church down during the ceremony? Eh, we're already married. What's that? It's 106 and ninety percent humidity? The reception is outside? Eh, we're already married.

We had a blast at our wedding. It was easily one of the best days of my life at the time. I say at the time because so many days after that have become the best day of my life. Two kids, several moves, a few more pounds, a little less hair, and I can't wait to see what else life has in store for us!

Military Life. Part One.

2010-07-18T10:52:00.001-07:00

I started writing and realized what a big undertaking this series is going to be. I am still writing and thinking and considering all of the aspects of my life and how different it would be if I wasn't married to someone in the military.

I've narrowed everything down to two main "causes."

1. Moving. We move. A LOT. And by a lot, I mean usually once every year or so. Sometimes more often. Sometimes we're only in a place for six months.
2. At least one person is literally "property of the US government." Doubt me? I wouldn't. It means that the government can -- and will use the person where it is best for the government. Usually there is some consideration for the families, but leave and liberty are always privileges -- not rights. (Leave is like vacation, and liberty is getting to leave the base for any reason at any time -- like to go home for the night, etc.)

Unless I'm totally overlooking something, every single thing in our lives revolves around those two things. Where we live, what we eat, where our kids go to school and for how long. We as military members and their dependents have little control of many aspects of our lives. And those aspects that we don't have control over are often what civilians consider part of their identity. So what is our identity? We are in the military. Our lives are different. Most of us embrace the differences, dealing with them day-by-day.

Things I think about that you don't have to.

2010-07-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

The other day a good friend and I were talking about different groups we've joined trying to get social interaction for both ourselves and our preschool children. She had joined a group that was designed specifically for mothers who have children who are too young to go to school. I'm not going to name names, but you should be able to figure it out. She mentioned that the specific group she joined touted their 'welcoming attitude' toward military families. Then, she mentioned how when she joined, she was surrounded by a bunch of ladies who had all grown up in the area, never moved, and hadn't been very friendly to her. They weren't mean, but they weren't friendly either.

I know -- why do you care? Well, because this is something that most people don't get about being a military family. We have almost an entire culture to ourselves, because of the differences in our lives that regular people don't have to put up with. So many things that most people don't put up with we do without blinking an eye, or even thinking about. Most of them, in fact, we don't even notice after a few years. Ever since having that conversation about how she got the cold shoulder, I've been thinking about how different our lives must be, and how we don't even notice until we are confronted with it.

So I'm going to try something. I'm going to start telling you the ways that my life is different than the 'average' citizen of the country. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure I will be adding to it as we go. I don't want anyone to think I'm whining or complaining -- I'm not. I accept all of the parts of military life as just that -- part of our lives. This is a topic I've tried to write about multiple times, but haven't ever posted because I didn't want anyone to think I'm a whiner. Well, I am, but I don't like to whine when it comes to aspects of military life. I married into it knowing all of the ups and downs that were going to come along with it.

To the other military spouses -- leave a post in the comments about the things you notice about your life being different than the civilians you live near and around. And if I can, I'll try to post about it. Non-Military spouses, ask questions -- what do you want to know?!

MilSpouse Fill-In!

2010-07-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Oh how I love Fridays now. I never have to worry about what I'm going to write. Wife of a Sailor hosts such a good party!

This week's Questions and answers!

What food reminds you of your spouse? Stuffed Crust Pepperoni and Mushroom pizza. It's a pizza that he loves, that I wouldn't normally order, but always do when he's around.

Who would you rather sit next to in a cross-country plane ride: an irritating non-stop talker, or a quiet stare-er? Hmm.. What if I am the talker? Okay, maybe I'm not so bad. I don't generally talk non-stop. But I gave birth to a talker, so would it be wrong to hope I get sat next to a grandma who loves talking to little boys with superhero verbal dysentery? That's what I'd like. And then I'd like for Butterball to take a nap. And I can read a book. That would be amazing. I am betting it won't be so grand when we fly to vacation paradise in a few months.

What are your best tips on how to save money? Stay. Home. As in, don't leave the house for any reason at all. If I leave the house, I'm spending money somewhere. Going to pick up the kid? Starbucks is on the way? There went $5 (or more). Stopping at Target to pick up diapers? There went the cash for the diapers. And several things out of the dollar bins at the front. And probably a pair of shoes. And that thing we've been meaning to get but kept forgetting about. And maybe another guitar so we can play dueling guitars on Rock Band.

What is your favorite summer memory? I realize this is totally lame, but my favorite summer memory is just plain ol' summer. We are making some great memories this year. Our last little trip was a great time, even (or maybe especially) when you consider how it nearly didn't happen. Little Monster loved riding his bike. Taking the kids to the pool this summer has been a heap of fun. But I sincerely loved spending every weekend camping with my family at the water ski lakes we visited. Each water ski tournament/weekend was a visit with friends that were so close they were like extended family. But I was also married in the middle of summer. And the guys tried to douse my husband with a water cooler like you do the winning coach. But he's tall. And they weren't, so they missed. And got his great-aunt instead. She was in her eighties. And we thought that they might have killed her. But they didn't and it turned out to be great fun instead. Summer really, sincerely is filled with so many memories that I can't pick out just one. Maybe that's why I love summer so much. Give me heat and sunshine, and I can make a good memory out of it!

Do you believe in ghosts? Yes. And no. It's complicated and it's not. I'm not sure I want to go into it here. Or now, so I won't. But yes. And no.

Another reason why I'm old.

2010-07-16T02:12:00.000-07:00

I have a 13 month old daughter whose favorite thing in the entire world -- besides demanding that I put on her pretty pink sandals -- is to give me a serious case of myocardial infarction. Seriously. It means heart attack.

The child goes out of the front door, and unless some odd wet substance is falling from the sky, runs immediately for the street. No joke.

It really shouldn't be that big of a deal. We live in base housing. The speed limit is 15mph. The neighborhood is pretty small. However, we are also a "convenient" cut through for the main road. But the people who see it as such fail to realize that there are a bazillion stop signs. And a bazillion speed bumps. And if they don't miss those (I recommend slowing down for the bumps unless you want to lose your oil pan), they definitely miss the speed limit. Most of them double it.

I've called police and complained to the neighborhood association. But short of putting out tack strips activated by vehicles going over 20mph (see that? I'm giving you an extra 5mph), there is no easy, cheap or effective way of stopping it.

So, for now, when you go buzzing past my house faster than I perceive is safe, be wary of the crazy lady with a broom and camera. I'm getting your license plates. And yes, I'm going to make an idiot of myself and scream at you. And flail my arms. And be totally obnoxious. Especially if you drive a giant, old, white, station wagon with an odd rack on top. You speed by EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. You don't live in my neighborhood and you act like I'm the crazy one when I scream at you because you come flying around that corner, skipping stop signs as I whisk up my child.

SLOW. DOWN.

Or I'm going to have to get the ninjas to come after you.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

PrompTuesday #114

2010-07-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

Check out San
Diego Momma's site for more information!

As usual, I'm a day (or three) late and a dollar (or several) short.
But at any rate. This week was about lists, so here goes.

Odd things that live in my house. I should probably contact pest
control.

1. The un-pack rat. The "un-pack" rat is small in stature, but busy in nature. It finds its way into small spaces, removing all items so that it can create a nest inside the area. It especially enjoys areas such as under-sink cabinets in the bathroom and kitchen and the pantry. If any items in such areas are dangerous, you will surely find this unpack rat attempting to see exactly how dangerous it could be. Most likely by ingesting. The un-pack rat loves to find areas that are neatly organized and un-do any sense of organization that could be found. Laundry baskets and dresser drawers full of neatly folded clothing are a favorite target. The un-pack rat also
loves to have a soft cushy place to walk, partially because it is not very nimble and falls onto it's bottomus maximus quite often. In order to maintain a soft landing pad for accidents the un-pack rat will take all items found on it's "unpacking" adventures and spread them out around it's habitat, creating a type of carpet. Unfortunately for the un-pack rat, it doesn't pay heed to what items will actually create a soft landing surface for its eventual falls. Everything gets spread around, whether it would be a comfortable landing pad or not. The un-pack rat is not nocturnal, but it tries to be and when it fails at staying up at night, it keeps everyone up with it.
Most people assume that the un-pack rat would be homely, however, it is very cute and manages to fool almost everyone into thinking that it is a harmless creature. Watch out, for
the few teeth the un-pack rat has are sharp, and the un-pack rat can be dangerous if not treated properly. However, if you treat this un-pack rat well fed with goldfish crackers and milk, and keep it supplied with the proper type of foot protection on its feet or in its vicinity you will be rewarded with lots of snuggles and loves.

2. The leaping, lumbering, lowing leopard. It is important to note that while this animal is a leopard, it is not one of the more agile creatures you see on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel. This species is very rare, and not much is known about the creature. Like the un-pack rat, this creature tries to be nocturnal and punishes everything around it when it is unable to remain awake during the night hours. It wants to spend much of its time watching a box that emits pictures and sounds that are obnoxious to almost every other living thing. Often, this box will be found chanting "I'M THE MAP" over and over again until any functioning animate being would do almost anything to destroy it before the sounds that are emitted turn cranial matter into useless goo. Somehow this leopard species is immune from the effects of the
box. The leopard likes to think it is agile, quick and strong, however, it often falls when leaping
from one object to another (objects, it should not be on or jumping around in the first place) breaking things near it, or injuring innocent by-standers. The leopard can be very dangerous in that it is strong, but doesn't know its own strength, and often tries to pretend to be other animals with different abilities. Should you try to catch this leopard while it is pretending it is something else and mistakenly call it by its name it will ignore you until you guess which animal it is pretending to be at that moment. The leopard will always howl and make sounds indicating that it has been starved its entire life. When you try to feed the leopard, however, it
will turn its nose up at any fare offered unless it is fried fast food and fizzy drinks. When the leopard is tired, rather than laying down to sleep, it will try to fend off sleep by running around and leaping even more clumsily than normal. The leopard is incredibly intelligent and will repeat anything you say at the most inconvenient of times. The leopard will randomly emit sounds that make no sense at inappropriate times. Most of the downfalls of
this leaped are made up for in that the leaped tells very entertaining nonsense stories. And if you can keep up with it's imagination you won't ever be bored.

3. The Mommy Grizzly Bear. This bear is dangerous for many reasons. This bear has not
been able to enter into a real hibernation in years and is very cranky most of the time. If you are lucky you might find this bear on a day when it's recently caught it's favorite beverage consisting of water filtered through ground beans and poured onto milk. That is the best time to
come into contact with this bear. The worst times to come into contact would be early in the morning, late in the evening and any time in the night, as well as during the day. The bear strives for order but the cave is often a mess, because it is filled with un-pack rats and the lowing, lumbering leopards. After several hours of attempting to create order in the cave, the grizzly often gives up and lets the wild beasts who have taken over the cave have their way. This usually means ground up food and a carpet of odd things strewn around. The grizzly, although
often irritated by these little pests in the home, is fiercely protective of them as well. The grizzly will do anything to stop harm to the little creatures and knows that eventually they will go away
on their own, leaving the cave empty and clean, but altogether too quiet.

4. The LION This animal prowls around the house, often early in the morning and late at
night, after spending the day collecting food and comfort items for the cave and the tenants. Like the grizzly, it is often annoyed by the pests that roam about, but is fiercely protective of them. The Lion and the Grizzly somehow live together in one cave despite their differences. You might even say that they tolerate each other. The Lion does everything it can to keep the motley pride of animals living in its cave from clawing each other apart while attempting to provide the necessary items for sustaining life. Unlike most species of Lion, this lion is not deterred by fire, but instead likes to create it for the amusement of those around it, as well as to roast food. This
Lion also enjoys dragging the creatures out of the cave in an attempt at getting rid of a few of them. Unfortunately for the Lion, usually the excursions end up only enhancing the bonds between the cave dwelling creatures and extending the time that they swarm around him. After a few hours (or sometimes minutes) of the swarming, the Lion will let out a roar, sending all of the cave dwelling creatures (except the un-pack rat, which is undeterred) scattering away to leave the Lion to his own business.

5. The canine jackus russelus terror. This is probably the most civilized creature that lives in the cave. It patiently waits for permission to leave the cave in order to do his "business." It also patiently waits for food and water, and occasionally a frolic. This creature spends most of its time confined (of its own free will) to an interior portion of the cave, waiting. The creature thoroughly enjoys chasing small furry animals and will often sit near the Leopard and un-pack rat waiting for rejected food. This creature is impervious to the loud sounds and precarious lumbering of the other inhabitants of the cave.

I really do think I need to get some sort of pest or exterminating service involved. These animals have taken over my house and won't leave. Oh well, hopefully it will all be back in control in a few months when we head off for our island paradise.

Look first, then pitch. But look again. Just in case.

2010-07-14T07:12:00.001-07:00

The other day we got a letter from Chrysler -- Schmitty's momma -- admitting that they put less than quality brakes and rotors on their cars. Brakes and rotors that wear out before they should -- like at 16,000 miles. Just a few miles and a few months outside of their warranty.

Of course, we knew all of that. I called them and complained about the whole thing a year or so ago when we had 16,000 miles on our minivan, but the brakes were funky. They finally conceded to paying labor, but we had to pay for parts. And then the dealer found the same problem on the back brakes and fixed those too.

Fast forward to this weekend when we got the letter. I threw the letter in the trash, convinced that there was no way we had kept the receipt for that work, (through a cross country move and after a year!?) and therefore wouldn't be compensated for the parts.

Fast forward to today. When I found the receipt. And had to dig the letter out of the trash.

It's covered in some sort of garbage juice. But I hung it up to dry. That letter in conjunction with the newly found receipt is worth some money! If Chrysler doesn't want to get trashed letters they shouldn't put crappy brakes on their cars, right?! Or am I wrong? I have learned my lesson though. I'll at least give a glance for receipts before I go trashing any letters promising a return of my money.

How much cash would prompt you to dig through the trash? How much would NOT be enough?

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Imaginings of a Little Monster

2010-07-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Pssst! Psst!

What was that sound? Did you hear it? Wet's Wook! It was Swiper DA FOX! He wost him goggles and gwoves. And he's wivving in the woods where da bad wolves are! But here comes bumbow bee to wescue him from da bad wolves. And I'm gonna hewp him. Wif my wocket boots. And mine bwoo jet. Mine JET hand! Because I'm a woobot. I'm a GOOD wooobot. And dat was NOT swiper. Swiper is weally in the woods still. AND I'M BATMAN!

Mom -- are dere bad wolves in da woods?

Not much anymore.

Oh.

There are wolves in the woods in other places though.

Oh. Okay... Den dat is where swiper is.

IIIIROOOONNNN MAN! IIIIRROOOON MANN!
WHEN SOMEONE IS IN TWUBBLE,
HE'S ON DA WAY
WHEN SOMEONE NEEDS HELP
HE'LL SAVE DA DAY
IIIROOOONNN MAN! IIIIIROOONNN MAN!
HE FWIIES! HE FWIIEES! HE FWIIIES!

As far as I know he made that song up himself. Unless there's some random Iron Man cartoon that uses that for their theme. Even still, I'm just as impressed that he remembered it.

Happy Birthday.

2010-07-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

I don't want to get too mushy here, especially considering next week we have our eighth anniversary.

But Happy Birthday to one of the greatest men I know.

What do you get for the guy who has everything he ever needed and wanted? What do you get for him when you consider that we are getting ready to move across oceans and we don't want to acquire anything else?

It doesn't seem fair that I don't have much to give you this year, especially since it's a year ending in 5/0. You've given me so much. The best thing is our kids, of course. They are so amazing. And they love you like crazy. The past few nights when you've been working late 'attending to be on a ship' as Little Monster would say, they've been cranky and asked for you often. I don't know what we're going to do when you're not pretending anymore. We've been lucky to have you home for two and a half years.

You saved our lives this weekend. And were the master of fun all weekend long. With your campfires and beach swimming, and bike rides.

There is a reason why every single day Little Monster asks "when am i gonna be big wike mine daddy?" It's because you're an amazing person. We're lucky to have you. And I hope we get to keep you around for a few more decades.

Kids and Bikes and Long, Long Rides

2010-07-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

We like to take bike rides in our family. Well, that is, if we're on a fairly flat path and not a street -- I hate sharing the road with crazy drivers in a car, let alone on a bicycle toting my precious babies.

The past couple of years we've done some biking. And Daddy has tried to induce heart attacks, strokes and the eviction of my lungs through my mouth by taking me on rides up hills. By hills, I mean hills. Hills that would make Lance Armstrong think a bit about how he's going to ride up. A couple of years ago we went for a ride that should have been pretty flat behind our housing community in California. And that "flat" ride turned into a roller coaster ride that we had to power ourselves. It wasn't fun. There was tears and lots and lots of whining. And then Little Monster got tired of riding in the bike trailer and started crying too. Poor Daddy has to put up with a lot.

We found a flat path and rode it after that. But now, just the thought of a hill makes me wince. He mentioned that we should ride our bikes to the pool while visiting his parents, but he warned me of a hill once you leave. I whined and put off the ride and the pool thinking it was going to be something like the roads of California. And then I gave up and we went. And after we'd returned, I asked Daddy where in the world that hill he had talked about was. We decided there was a slight incline in the road for about a block. And it might have been a killer hill when he was ten on a single speed bike, after being in the pool all day. Before he met a real hill.

This past weekend we went up to Maine with the express thought of riding around some of the Rockefeller's Carriage paths on our bikes. We'd walked them a few years back when his frigate pulled into a town in a 'down-east' area with the dogs and had a great time. We have talked about going back several times.

We had seen these bike trailers everywhere that looked amazing. They basically make your bike into a tandem bike so the kids can ride and work, or just hold on and be part of the 'grownup' crowd on the bike ride. Of course, when we went to purchase them we couldn't find one in a store that we could take home to try before heading off on our trip. We ended up ordering one through our Sporting Goods Coop and it arrived the day before we left. As we were packing up the camper to go, we tested it out and set it up so that Little Monster could ride behind Daddy. The first try was really wobbly. We had a hard time convincing Little Monster to get on it after some adjustments. I think we may have even threatened a spanking. Eventually, after getting on the thing, Daddy and Little Monster rode around the block. And then they rode around the block again, per Little Monster's request. And again. And again. He loved it.

When we got there we couldn't park in the lot nearest our planned bike path because it was full, no big deal, we parked at a different spot and adjusted our bike route so that we weren't adding a zillion miles to the ride, considering we weren't sure how Little Monster was going to do on the bike ride. We got about a half mile into the bike ride and realized that "witch hole" meant that it was a witch to get our bikes up and over that hill. I felt like a big sissy whining and crying and trying to cough my lungs out through my mouth. I regretted all of those days I skipped my workout and swore I'd try to be better about remembering to pedal like a fiend on our recumbent bike at home. .

After a very painful 1 1/2 miles, we got to the parking lot where we had planned to start. I seriously considered wimping out and telling Daddy to go get the truck. I was so done. But then I looked back and Butterball was asleep in the chariot, starting to stir because we weren't moving anymore. Little Monster had started whining because we'd stopped long enough to use the bathroom, so I knew he wouldn't be happy if I said we were done and going home. So, I toughed it up and kept going.

I made the right decision. The first hill wiped me out, and I was tired, but once I got my second wind, it was fine. It also helped that the majority of the rest of the ride was gradual uphills and downhills. Little Monster loved passing me on the bike. I can't count the number of times I heard "Ha HA! I'm winning MOMMY! I'm PASSING YOU!" come from his mouth. About 2/3 of the way through the ride we stopped for a picnic. The kids ate better than they have in months. Little Monster was really excited to have a real picnic. Little Monster happily rode the entire 12 miles on the bike, only complaining that he was hungry before we had our lunch.

And then we got to the "witch" hill again. Only this time we were going down. There were caution signs warning about steep grades and sharp curves. The hills going down were no joke. I rode my brakes the entire time. I'm guessing I wasn't as big of a wuss as I imagined. On our way down, we met several people walking their bikes up the hill, just like I did.

The last night of the trip, I snuggled with Little Monster to get him to sleep and we talked about our favorite parts of the trip. He liked swimming in the ocean. And he liked riding his bike around the campground and having the campfire. But he said his favorite part was the bike ride.

Using the bike trailer gave him confidence that he could ride his bike. He hasn't wanted to ride his bicycle since we got it, because he, like me, was scarred by the crazy hills in California. Ever since we went on that bike ride, though, he's been excited about riding his bike and wants to ride all of the time.

The trailer was worth every penny to see the giant smile on Little Monster's face every time he passed me. It was a bonus that he now wants to ride his bicycle everywhere we go "REALLY FAST!"

What is Common Courtesy?

2010-07-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

We were lectured today on our way to Target about our lack of "common courtesy." We were in a left turn-only lane. Someone drove up to us in the "straight only" lane and asked if he could turn in front of us when the lane light changed. I looked at Daddy, and he said no. So, I politely mouthed "He said NO. Sorry!" to the guy.

We joked about how the guy was going to hunt us down in Target, being as it was pretty obvious we were going to the same place. We didn't actually expect this man to speed across several lanes of parking lot at around 30 miles per hour to get to us as we got out of our vehicle. We didn't expect a lecture about "common courtesy" in the Target parking lot. But guess, what. It all happened.

The dictionary.com definition of "courtesy" is as follows:

cour·te·sy (kûr'tĭ-sē)
n. pl. cour·te·sies
1.
a.Polite behavior.

b.A polite gesture or remark.

c.Consent or agreement in spite of fact; indulgence: They call this pond a lake by courtesy only.

d.Willingness or generosity in providing something needed: free advertising through the courtesy of the local newspaper.

So, I want to know -- should we have let the guy cut in front of us, violating traffic laws? Technically, what he expected follows the definition "d." Does "common courtesy" apply here? Should we have expected everyone behind us to wait to let this guy in front of us? And is it really following the laws of "common courtesy" to hunt down the people who think were rude to you just to tell them how rude they were? I mean, really? And what does common courtesy dictate about expecting people to be courteous? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of courtesy? Courtesy is something given that isn't expected. It's like yielding the right-of-way when you're driving. You are supposed to be the person doing the yielding, you're not supposed to expect others to yield and take the right-of-way, it's to be given - not taken?

I honestly think this guy was considering starting a fight with Daddy, but he hadn't expected Daddy to tower over his little white sports car like the Jolly Green Giant towers over his fields. As the guy was lecturing us, we politely explained that he obviously got there at around the same time as we did, so it didn't really matter. He didn't need to hunt us down. Perhaps maybe he should have had the "common courtesy" to follow the traffic laws and pay attention to where he was going, rather than expecting us to inconvenience everyone behind us who had paid attention and gotten into the lane they needed to be in to get where they were going.

I think perhaps people in New England ought to take the "Worst Drivers by State" study seriously and start learning to drive a teeny bit better. If you want to get technical, we have Nebraska plates and learned to drive in Nebraska. Nebraska which is 46 out of 50 in the worst states. Meaning, We are in the top ten states for the BEST drivers!

What do you think? Should we have let him through? Did we violate the laws of "common courtesy?" What should we have done?

MilSpouse Fill In Friday!

2010-07-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

I missed last week's with all the hubbub of getting ready to go on our trip to Maine.

I'll do both weeks this week to make up!

This weeks Questions are:

1.What is your favorite household chore? I love cooking. I want to make sweet treats for my family nonstop. Pies, cookies, cakes, whatever you want, I like to make it. I love watching every one's faces light up when I've made something they really enjoy. It doesn't matter what I'm making -- even if it's just chopping up grapes and strawberries for babies. I just want to make something that tastes good.

2.What is your favorite childhood memory? I don't have one specific memory, really. I have memories! My childhood was wonderful, but the best experiences, by far, that I can remember are spending every weekend camping at the lake and water skiing with my family. We really did camp every weekend. The first couple of times we camped in a tent on cots, and that gradually moved to an old RV, and eventually to a newer one. But going to our "chocolate milk" (it was a mud-bottom) lake and spending hours upon hours in the water playing and running around was the best a kid could ask for.

3. What is your most embarrassing moment? I haven't had it yet. Seriously. Or maybe I've blocked it out of my memory. Or maybe I've been embarrassed so many times that I just can't pick one. Probably a combination of all of them. There was the time I left my lunch in my closet as a kid and it grew into something, well, gross, and my mom decided to tell EVERYONE about it. For the rest of my life. Or that time that I decided to skip class in high school and call myself in. I sound just like my mom on the phone -- foolproof, right? Yeah, except it doesn't work when you call the wrong school. And then your mom tells EVERYONE about it. For the rest of my life. But it's okay. I don't have anything truly embarrassing, not like my husband!

4. What uniform of your husband's is your favorite? Well, if you're talking about military uniforms, probably the dress blues. I kind of like the polyester khaki's too, but they've been pretty much phased out. The dress blues look distinguished and oh-so delicious. If you're talking about the rest of the time, I'd probably say that it is a white under-shirt and jeans with a brown belt. Kind of like the Brawny guy without the flannel shirt. He knows that too, and uses it as a secret weapon.

5. What canceled TV show do I miss the most? Oh man. So many TV shows have come and gone. There was this show called Hidden Hills that was pretty good. But it didn't last long. Friends ranks right up there, but my TRUE honest to goodness favorite was Gilmore Girls. I seriously wanted them to follow that family forever. I wanted to see Rory's children and find out who she married. I wanted to see Loralie have more kids and watch her Inn flourish. I miss Sookie's craziness and even Kirk's odd antics. Heck, sometimes I even miss that stinky, crotchety town manager Taylor. I loved hating him because he really wasn't evil, just obnoxious, irritating and very annoying.

And now for the questions from last week:

1. Tell us about your dream job. One you wouldn't mind doing even without pay. Well, I do lots of things without pay that I enjoy. I enjoy doing the web stuff for the PWOC groups that I've been involved in. But, the best job I've ever had was being a preschool teacher. I want to do that when I grow up. But I want to run the preschool my way, the way that Little Monster's preschool was run.

2. What is your most prized possession (kids and pets don't count!). My most prized material possession is a tie between my laptop, my iPhone and my camera. I can't live without my fantastic Digital Rebel camera. It takes the best pictures without me trying. I can't live without my iPhone because it is the compact way that I keep in touch with my friends and family. I can access Facebook, play Angry Birds and Words with Friends on it. But I can't live without my laptop either. It lets me edit all of those wonderful photos, and sometimes it's nice to be able to view flash websites or just plain websites in full size. It's easier to do some of the things I like to do on the Internet on my laptop. Plus, all of my pictures are on my laptop. It's easy to say the three things are always near each other, easily accessible (even to toddlers, sometimes), and would be ushered out of the house in a fire. Right after the kids. Probably before the dog, but not because I wouldn't try to get him out first, but because the dog would run into the fire in order to get warm. He's weird like that.

3. What was your favorite duty stations and why? As of right now, I don't really have a favorite. We have been stationed in Newport, RI (twice), Norfolk, VA, Bahrain, and Monterey, CA. Each has it's own pluses and minuses. I miss being in a house that I own (Virginia), I love being in New England and all of the people here. Bahrain was fantastic, even though we didn't live there with Daddy, and even though it was the hottest place I've ever experienced, and I'm sure when people described the heat of hell it's because they had visited there. California, though will always hold a special place in my heart. It is the place where I found PWOC. I had more friends in California than is fair. I belonged and felt like one of the 'cool kids.' It is where my daughter was born, and where I felt the most connected. However, I could not stand the politics and did not like that I needed a translator or proficiency in another language to order a pizza.

4. What is your least favorite household chore. Hands down, it's laundry. I hate waiting for it to wash, and dry. I hate that you have to sort it out and fold it immediately or it wrinkles. I hate that the second you finish, you have to start over again.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to a teenager today (not specifically a MilTeen)? Have manners -- don't be one of the cool kids. That's a big order, I know. It includes being honest, kind, fair, and treating others decently, especially the little guy that's always being teased. The movies depicting the "cool" bullies and dorky dorks, they aren't real life. Those dorks are the ones that are going to make it in life. And those "cool" kids who "rule the school" with their stupid rules and mean tricks -- they are going to be despised and hated later in life. Being cool only teaches you how to be a jerk and get away with it. No one likes the jerks. Real life, is a lot like high school, except those dorks, geeks and jerks don't have any quality of life because no one REALLY likes them. They don't have real relationships with real people. Be a dork. It's okay. Someday you'll be grateful you got decent grades and learned how to be nice to people.

P is for Plan. And Pencil

2010-07-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

There is a lot going on over here. There always is within a month or two of a move. And we are getting very close to that time. We knew we were only going to be in New England for a short time, but it seems as if the time is shrinking at an exponential rate of decay. (That was some math talk for the husband.)

I've mentioned all of the things we've been doing in preparation for our move. We are trying to sell our house in Virginia so that we could all move to San Diego as a family. We had a back up plan that I would live with the kids in Virginia if the house didn't sell, refinance it at a lower rate, and move when we got new orders somewhere else, unless the orders were back to Virginia. If we got orders back to Virginia, we'd just hold on until Daddy could join us and beg the Navy to pay us for the move we'd financed ourselves. His job in San Diego meant that the first year we wouldn't see much of each other anyway, so we were all okay with this back up plan.

It's a good thing that Daddy after 13 years (plus college) and I after 8 years have learned that with military life, you need to make all of your plans in pencil. Plans change, orders change, and things don't always work out the way you'd expect.

We've had a few disappointments in the past few months. We tried to find and purchase a new camping trailer that had a garage for the motorcycle and room for the kids and friends. It fell through. This entire time I've had a hard time making plans for our upcoming move and getting excited about where we were going to live. I assumed that part of it was that I didn't know where we were going to be living. I didn't know what to expect -- Virginia or California. Only the Lord knew. No matter what we did, I didn't get that 'rush' that comes with an impending move. Maybe part of it was that this is our eighth move in eight years (two of those were not military). Maybe part of it was that I wasn't so excited about the possibility of living separate from my husband. We do enough of that because he's floating around in a tin can somewhere without doing it to ourselves. I couldn't make plans to find a preschool for Little Monster this fall, or think about where he'd go to school. I couldn't look for houses in San Diego or plan for our cross country trip to drop Daddy off at his new ship.

A little over two weeks ago we got word that we were being given the option of changing our orders. The funny thing is that we had pretty much assumed that his orders were no-change orders. NO one (and I mean NO ONE) really wants to take the crap that he'd taken voluntarily. The other funny thing about the military giving us an "option" was that they really wanted to see how big of a stink Daddy was going to make. If he'd raised a big fuss over the change, they might have bothered themselves to figure something else out. and by "might" I mean we had a 20 percent chance. In our case "option" was really synonymous with "ordered."

So now we've got orders to somewhere we'd never thought we'd get to go. I immediately got the 'rush' I'd been missing about the other places we were going to live. This must be the real thing. I'm excited about going to an island paradise to live for a while. Even if it means wading through pages of paperwork to avoid quarantine for our dog, Little Monster starting preschool late (if at all), and living in a teeny tiny house just like the one we're in now.

Everything is set. We have orders to a beautiful WARM place that we've never been to. We know what we need to do to get there, and there's a ton of work to be done to make it all happen. But for now, until we get a little bit closer to our move, I'm still only planning things in pencil.

A weekend to be grateful for

2010-07-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a "camping" trip in Maine. Maine, oh how I love you in July. I am not sure I'd enjoy you much anytime between November and April, but summer in Maine is absolutely wonderful.

The weekend was absolutely wonderful, but we weren't certain we were going to have a weekend at first. We loaded up the camper (which is why camping is in quotes above -- it doesn't really count as camping) with just what we'd need for a weekend trip on Thursday and Friday Morning. Daddy got home early from work and we headed off.

The trip was slow going, traffic was awful through Massachusetts, which I expected, but Daddy didn't. Then we got to Maine. The traffic cleared up and the road was resurfaced, life was good.

And then they passed us. "They" is a black pickup pulling a very long, fairly old travel trailer camper. We own a fifth wheel, which means it's connected to a large hitch in the bed of our truck. They were towing a travel trailer -- just as long, just as heavy, but on a regular ball hitch on the back of their truck. Travel Trailers are not as safe and steady to drive as a fifth wheel. There is a reason that the big rig Semi's use a fifth wheel hitch to attach their loads.

Back to the story. They passed us. It all happened in a matter of seconds, but it seemed like hours as it was happening. As they passed us they hit the rumble bars. Luckily, Daddy heard that and looked over. As he looked, he noticed that their trailer hit the guard rail on the side of the road. And Daddy hit the brakes enough to allow us to back off.

Thank God for Daddy and his observant Nature.

The man in the truck over corrected as he panicked, sending the trailer swerving back into the lane, and headed into the next one over. The lane we were in. As I watched the back end of his trailer miss the front of our truck by mere inches my heart sunk into my stomach and my stomach jumped into my throat. Daddy backed off even more and hit his hazard lights to alert people behind us.

The man over corrected again, sending his trailer back onto the shoulder, where there was no guard rail this time. And then his trailer swerved back the other direction onto the other trailer. He was out of control. Daddy backed off even more.

We sat there in the cab of our truck watching as this truck and trailer prepared to flip and roll down the freeway. The trailer was swerving uncontrollably. We saw the under carriage of their trailer a few times. At one point in time the truck was sideways in the road. One second it was going one way and the next moment it was facing the other direction. Sparks flew up where the side of the trailer made impact with the asphalt on the freeway. The rear bumper of the trailer ripped off on one end and a sewage hose (just the empty hose) came flying out of the end of the bumper (a common storage place) and rolled down the road. We ran over it. It was at about that moment that I was worried for the driver and anyone inside the truck. We were going to be okay. Daddy was far enough back that we wouldn't hit them or be hurt.

After what seemed like hours, the truck managed to get the trailer back under control. He and the rest of his caravan pulled off to the side of the road. As I watched his wife (I assume that's who it was) get out of her car, I could feel the fear and pain and the beginnings of anger for her. Whatever was in the trailer was ruined. The truck's frame is probably bent. Thousands of dollars worth of damage because there was a small distraction. It could have been much worse. Much, much worse.

We didn't stop because the other vehicle had. Many people think it is safe to travel in a pull-behind trailer as you're driving down the road. I've seen people getting in and out of the things as we've stopped. It isn't safe. I only hope that this family was being cautious and didn't put any living creatures in the trailer, because anything living was most likely injured if they survived being tossed around like that.

It puts things into perspective to watch and be so close to something so scary and dangerous. I know you think I might be exaggerating this incident for the sake of the story, and the blog. But I'm not. In fact, I'm under telling the story. Daddy has seen a lot doing what he does for a living. He's had some exciting moments when waves have been rolling over the bow of his ship. He's looked over to see that his ship has rolled more than it's supposed to without falling apart and sinking into the cold North Atlantic. He has climbed on teeny tiny ladders into a zodiac type boat to rescue people in rough seas from their boat, dead in the water. Even he says that moment goes into his top five list of exciting and scary moments.

We said many prayers of thanks throughout the rest of the weekend. We enjoyed even the small things and some annoyances without as much complaining, because we had been recently reminded how precious life is and how lucky we were to be able to enjoy our weekend. The other family's weekend had been ruined, even though it had almost been much worse than it was. We were able to enjoy our 12 mile bike ride around the park. We were able to enjoy our campfire with giant marshmallows roasting and ever mosquito bite that came along with it. We enjoyed wading in the ocean on the rocky shore and watching Little Monster ride his bike until dark at the campground. We enjoyed watching the last of the coals burn out as the kids slept. We enjoyed fresh lobster at a local lobster pound. Even thought it wasn't the Lobster Pound we wanted to visit, it seems a bit off to whine about the fact that even though their website said they were open EVERY DAY, EVEN HOLIDAYS only to show up at 2:01 on a day when they decided to close at 2:00. It's fine. Another company got our business. We enjoyed ice cream at a small local shop, even though I made a bigger mess with my ice cream than both kids combined. We enjoyed visiting a civil war fort, and watching their cannons go off. Even though it was steaming hot, and the sound of the cannon blast set baby girls to crying and little boys up my skirt, hanging onto my leg as though the end of the world was beginning.

We had a great weekend. I'm sure it would have been wonderful even without the incident, but I'm certainly grateful that we had things put into perspective and were able to enjoy the smaller things.

What did you do over the holiday weekend?

PrompTuesday!!!

2010-06-29T08:17:00.001-07:00

Is it really Number 112? That means it's been going on for over two years. Wow. Wow.

So, this week's theme is Before & After. Click on over to get full instructions and all that jazz.

As I sit here trying to type on my computer the only "Before & After" I can even contemplate is life before and after I had children.

Before I had children, my stomach was flat and stretch mark free. My lady lumps stayed up where they were supposed to and didn't fall out of their boulder holders.
Before I had kids my husband and I lived a never ending "date." Even going to the hardware store was romantic. Before I had children, I slept all weekend long, waking only to cuddle with my husband, go shopping, or eat. Before I had children, my evenings were mine to do with as I pleased. I did crafts, put together puzzles, played with my dogs, savored late night luxurious, slow dinners at fancy restaurants. We went to midnight showings at the movie theater. Almost every weekend. When he had duty on the ship, I'd visit him, a homemade dinner (okay, sometimes it was drive-thru) riding in the backseat.
Before I had kids I could go out of the house at any time without worries that there was snot on my shoulder, banana smashed into my leg and peanut butter on my bottom. My clothes were tidy and I at least tried to be somewhat fashionable. Before I had kids, my house, although slightly cluttered, was usually clean. Before I had kids my conversations were logical, my brain worked in an orderly fashion. I forgot nothing.
Before children, television was all about what I wanted to watch -- grownup TV, news shows, and raunchy night time dramas. Before I had kids I drove faster than the speed limit, worked more than my forty hours a week, trying to please demanding people with an occasional coffee or lunch break thrown in. When we drove long distances we'd drive and drive, only stopping for restroom, gas and food. Often at the same stop. Rock music blared from the speakers, and Yup, life was pretty good before kids.

Before I had children, I hadn't experienced the joy of being woken up at 5:00 by your child with a tackle, a snuggle and maybe even a sloppy kiss. I hadn't seen any ones face light up quite like my kids' do when I walk into the room. And I didn't know how enjoyable kissing those mushy fat cheeks was. I try to kiss those mushy fat cheeks as much as possible before they get to be grown up kid cheeks. My evenings are now filled with chores after the kids go to bed. But I get to watch my kids play in the tub together every night. Giggles fill the bathroom and water sops all over the floor. I get to snuggle a Little Monster every night, watch him learn to say his prayers and hear his thoughts about his day. I rock a baby Monkey girl to sleep at night, holding her close while I still can, because in a few days she'll be too big. And I kiss those mushy baby cheeks one more time. I get to peek in on those same children after they're asleep to see their angelic faces. Before I had kids, and before I "had" to go through this routine every night, my heart almost never felt so full of warm love that I thought it might burst.
Now that I have kids, it's a miracle if we get out of the house on time, all at the same time, all with clean clothes on and each wearing a set of matching shoes. However, that snot that's on my shoulder is because I was the only person who could comfort someones broken heart or physical pain. That banana smashed in my lap is because some little soul wanted to share her breakfast with me. And the peanut butter on my butt -- well, that's probably nothing sweet, but if it comes along with a lunch conversation about how fish sticks grow up into chicken nuggets and when fish sticks grow up into chicken nuggets he'll finally eat them, then I guess it's okay.
Now that I have kids, the conversations that happen in my house make no sense, but they make me laugh daily. Imagination fills our home with Batmen, Supermen and spider men -- all who wear rocket boots (snow boots or rain boots) daily. Capes are donned with our pajamas and some days those pajamas don't come off. It's more fun to wear pajamas all day anyway. I watch my children play together every morning, and again, my heart fills with love and amazement at how much they love each other.
Now that I have kids, the TV pipes Disney and PBS most of the time. But it doesn't matter because now that I have kids I realize how much CRAP is on TV. I drive the speed limit, especially through neighborhoods because I know how fast the kids can get away from even a diligent parent. I spend my days trying to please two very demanding children, but usually their demands are simple. Goldfish crackers, peanut butter sandwiches and milk. Play a game of pretend, and smother with love. I still get an occasional coffee break, but sometimes I have to bounce a baby in my lap or drink it on the run.
Now that we have kids road trips are a little different. There are more stops. And we have to get out of the car at each one, often to change a poop filled diaper. The rock music has turned into something more family friendly (most of the time). And the conversation is often about what rhymes, lives in castles or says MOO. But now the car fills with laughter or tears for silly reasons.
Before kids life was pretty good. Life was predictable and enjoyable. After kids, life is amazing. Everything is an adventure, filled with more love, laughter, tears and emotion than I thought possible. After kids nothing is predictable. If you can figure out how, though, you learn to laugh at the mishaps and circumstances. After kids life is wonderful. I wouldn't go back for anything.

Milspouse Fill in #1

2010-06-25T18:11:00.000-07:00

So, I stumbled upon a new blog today, Wife of a Sailor. One that I think might be okay to read every now and then. Plus, I like to support the other families that are doing the same stuff we do. Her blog is a bit more "navy wife" than mine, but then, We've been on shore duty for a looooooong time! If you have a chance, check it out. Each weeks, she's doing a fill in. So, I figure I'll go with it. At least I'll have something to write every Friday. And I'd have something to write on Tuesdays (PrompTuesdays), too if I wasn't so lazy.

This weeks questions are:

1. How did you and your spouse meet?

2. What is the best thing about being a Mil Spouse?

3. What is the hardest thing about being a Mil Spouse?

4. What is your favorite dish?

5. If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

Here goes nothing! (sorry for those of you in a reader. I know. I'm messing up all over the place this week!)

1. Daddy and I met several times. The first time we met was at a wedding. He purchased a drink or several for me. It was sweet. But then he confused me with someone else. And I tried to stalk him and make him come bowling with us. But he claimed he was too drunk to go bowling. I know. I didn't know that was possible either. But he swears he was, so my friend and I stalked him and his purple truck all over his apartment complex. It took a few more months, some coaxing from friends, a few more beers, and he asked me to the Navy Ball. Of course, that wasn't without the preliminary "do we hate each other" blind date. Or the "omygoshhehasagirlfiendisitreallytrueitcan'tbe!" date to Monster's Ink where all of his friends and sister sat three rows behind us. I guess no one believed he had the guts to ask a girl out? It reminds us of this song:

2. The best thing about being a Mil Spouse is really a whole bunch of things mixed up into one. I love getting to see different areas of the country and meet all kinds of new people. Making new friends has become one of the best parts recently since I found PWOC . I get excited when we move and I can find another chapter and jump in. It makes you feel like you really belong where you're at, even if you're only there for a short while.

3. The hardest thing about being a Mil Spouse is the separation from friends and family. Hands down. Husbands leave for deployments, friends leave for new orders, WE leave for new orders. We've left our families. It's hard to make a new friend that you love and adore, and get close with them and then have to leave them after just a short time. It's extremely hard when you get to a new place, and you haven't found a place to fit in yet, and you don't have any friends. We don't have lives where we make friends who live down the street, and then you're friends with them for life. Your friends are only going to live down the street for a while, and one of you is bound to leave. You don't always have the option of calling up a friend or family member to come over on short notice to come hang out, because sometimes 'coming over' requires plane tickets, days of travel or it's just impossible. When our husbands are gone, things are hard, because we are missing our helpmate. Everything changes when people you want and love can't be near you.

4. My favorite dish. This is so mean. It changes! I've been trying to work out and eat right! What I'd really like to eat right now is some fried zucchini. And not the healthy kind. The kind where you use a whole stick of butter a ton of garlic and just cook the heck out of it. Until the butter is all caramelized and the garlic is one with the squash. mmmmm.

5. For some reason I just got a picture of myself in a ball gown, trying out for "Mrs. DOD spouse." If you're a Mil Spouse, you know all about those surveys they are always harassing you to fill out about the quality of your life. Mix that up with a little Beauty Pageant, and you'd have some ENTERTAINMENT!! ha ha. Okay. I digress. One thing I'd really like to change about the world -- I'd really REALLY like it if people were better about using good manners and sharing. I figure if everyone was polite and shared more, the worlds problems would melt away. If people were to give a little more and take a little less, then -- well, maybe a lot of our husbands would be out of a job! Seriously though. A very good friend once told me that if Saddam's and Adolf's mommies had taught them proper manners (especially how to share) the world would be a very different place right now.

See you next week! And don't forget to visit her blog to let her know you're going to join in the fun if you do!

Let's Pretend...

2010-06-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

Do you remember yesterday when I said I was working on that entry about the deterioration of society in the last 100 years?

I'm still working on it. But it's getting to be a bit too complex and deep for a one blog post, especially on my light-hearted, unheard of "mommy blog." Too many things about society have changed so much and so many events are involved in those changes that it's almost comparing apples and automobiles. The both start with "a" but the similarities end there.

But for now, I want everyone to use their imagination.

Imagine for a second, that we are heading into World War I or II, only with the current times.

Now, remember what people had to sacrifice in World War I or II to keep the troops supplied with food and clothing. People had to ration all kinds of things necessary to their daily lives -- they gave up flour, sugar, anything containing rubber, etc. They dug up their lawns and flower gardens to plant more practical potato and vegetable gardens because the big farms were sending all the food to the troops overseas. They spent their free time sewing and making clothing for the troops. They spent their hard earned money on war bonds -- essentially loaning the government hundreds and thousands of dollars of their income so the government had money to buy those supplies for the troops. These are just a few of the day-to-day sacrifices they had to make.

Now. Think again about how that third world war thing. Would you be willing and able to give up what the people did back then? Would you be willing to stop eating out, buying your fancy coffees and eating your prepackaged foods? Would you dig up your grass and plant your own vegetables? Would you use public transportation and walk to reduce the amount of fuel consumption -- not because prices had become unreasonable, but because the government needed it? Would you be willing to give your life? Would you be willing to reduce all of your greedy consumption in order to supply soldiers in the field? Would you be willing to be patient and wait years for the conflict to be over? Would you be willing to let your sons and daughters go to fight, knowing they would not EVER get leave until the war was over? Would you be willing to raise your neighbor's child while their parents were overseas fighting?

I know I'm asking some hard questions. I don't know that I want to answer yes to all of the questions. I don't know that I can. But I know that people gave all of those things up and more for past conflicts. And it is at least partly because of those sacrifices that the wars ended as quickly as they did. I am not so certain that our society could give those things up without a fight about our "rights" to cheap gas and fast food. What do you think?

A change in plans -- and a tinkle.

2010-06-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

I had planned to write something about the deterioration of society in the last 100 years. But it might be a topic too complex for my little light-hearted Mommy Blog.

Meanwhile, this afternoon as Daddy sat, enjoying his geekTV, Monkey girl, (AKA Butterball) grabbed his hand and pulled him up off of the couch. She then drug him down the hallway and beat on the bathroom door. So, he opened the bathroom door. At about that point, I joined him to see what was going on. We're used to being summoned into the kitchen for a snack, or a drink. Sometimes she'll even demand to go go bed. Once or twice, she's gone to the bathroom and expected a bath (she leans over and beats on the inside of the tub). But this time, she patted the toilet.

So, thinking it was a fluke, I pulled off her diaper and put her on the toilet. She sat there a minute, holding onto the handles. Her eyes gleamed with pride at being such a big girl on the potty. And after a few seconds, she let it loose. The little girl, barely 13 months old, tinkled on the toilet. And then she clapped her hands with us as we praised her.

And then we gave her a cookie.

I'm not giving up on diapers, or even expecting it to amount to much. But could she really be thinking about potty training? She can't pull down her pants or say "potty." That has always been my rule about when to start potty training - -that it was useless if they weren't old enough to do most of it by themselves. But I guess if she's going to drag us to the bathroom when she needs to go, it's one less diaper to change. And it's a start. Although it's a start I'm not sure I'm ready for.

Watch out Canada!

2010-06-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

In hindsight it wasn't a good idea to tease our son. Really, probably not at all. There will probably be a huge reaction from him if we take him across the border to visit our friendly northern neighbor.

It all started out as a funny joke. We get a bit tired of the onslaught of questions every time we go somewhere. So the last time we left the house to run an errand, rather than explain that we were going to visit an endless barage of boring places, I told him we were going to Canada. And that naughty little boys all recieved a spanking upon entry.

"No mommy. We are not going to Canada!"

Yup, we are. So you'd better be good!

"No mommy. YOU'D better be good. YOU are gonna to get a spanking when we get to Canada. A'cuz dey only give spankings to naughty mommies in Canada. And you are a naught mommy. And YOU are gonna get a spanking!!"

Yup. In hindsight, it probably wasn't a good idea to tease my kid with Canadian spankings. Because he's going to be really disappointed if we ever visit niagara falls and there's not a spanking station at the border crossing. Not even for naughty mommies that tell stories to their 3 year olds.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy fathers day

2010-06-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Totally can't express it any better. Just consider it a regift. You can now relive your college years. As a parent.

http://www.suburbansnapshots.com/2010/06/10-reasons-having-toddler-is-like-being.html

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Moments of Hilarity

2010-06-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Is Hilarity a word? Probably not. I don't care. Little Monster has been at his best lately. Here's some little pieces of proof:

Doorbell rings. (It's the pizza delivery gal.)
Daddy attempts to open the door to pay, while holding back both eager children and a crazy dog.
Pizza delivery driver notices Little Monster (wearing his pajamas and his green frog rain boots) and says:
How old are you?
I'm fwee.
Oh, you're three? What's YOUR name?
(In a very serious tone, with the most serious of furrowed brows) I'm ROCKETman! BSSSSSSSSHHHHHH!

Then the child turned around and "blasted off" down the hallway.
Daddy said that he was lucky to get his pizza. The lady laughed so hard she nearly dropped it.

The night was quiet. Daddy and I were enjoying some hard earned TV time, happy the kids had finally gone to sleep.

MOOOoooooooOOOOOOMmm! DAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAADDDDYYYYY! I'm AAAALLLLL WEHHHHTTTT!

We both looked at each other with quizzical expressions, wondering what in the world was going on. We checked on Little Monster to find that his pillow and front of his shirt were wet. I said:

Little Monster, how did everything get all wet? Did you get sick to your stomach?!

NO! The waves just came! They came up and right into my window and got into mine bed. The waves splashed all over me and got me all wet!

We dropped Daddy off at the shop to get the oil changed in Schmitty. Meanwhile, the kids and I walked up to the store. As we were walking, Little Monster yells out "BEEP BEEP! BATMAN COMING FROOO!"

Earlier in the morning, he demanded to be called Superman and told us that his green frog boots were actually red superman boots. He would not respond to anything other than superman. So, I asked him:

I thought you were SUPERMAN!?

MOOOOOoooom!!! I just CHANGED my SUUUUUIIT!

And now I must ask -- how do you break a kid from wearing a dorky pair of frog rain boots a parent may or may not have purchased on a weak day. The child wears them constantly when we are at home. He begs to wear them out of the house. They function as rocket boots, superman boots, batman boots, iron man boots, and pretty much any other kind of boot he thinks he may or may not need. I'm a little bit afraid that his feet are getting sweaty in there and his feet are going to rot off.

You didn't believe me?

2010-06-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Just in case you didn't believe my post yesterday. This afternoon, I was wiping up Little Monster (Did anyone tell you that potty trained does not mean they can wipe themselves? Me neither.). Butterball had just gotten up from a nap. I had given her some juice and was getting ready to prepare her some lunch since she had slept through it. We had already eaten our lunch (hot dogs).

Apparently, I left the package of hot dog rolls (they are called rolls here in New England, and they aren't shaped like hot dog buns -- but that's another post for another day) sitting on the table. When I returned to the kitchen to put them away, they weren't there. I turned around and there was a trail of hot dog buns leading out of the kitchen and down the hallway.

This is what I found:

I wonder where I'm going to find hot dog rolls as I clean the house this week. Anyone care to venture a guess? I am glad VCR's are a thing of the past.

The Land of the lost... things.

2010-06-08T17:54:00.001-07:00

Lately, things around our house have gone missing. Little boys are often blamed, little girls a little bit too. Secretly, though, I fear for my head. Maybe I'm losing my mind?

The other day the ball for my trackball mouse disappeared. I looked all over the house and couldn't find it. So I CLEANED the house. Sparkling clean. Still didn't find the thing. I gave up, tried stealing the trackball from the husband's mouse. It worked as a temporary solution, but he figured it out and demanded it back. I gave it back, don't worry. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that we have different models with different sizes either. Have you ever tried to use a smaller trackball than the mouse takes? It doesn't work very well.

A few days ago, I was at a certain coffee place, trying to get my daily fix of several shots of espresso and couldn't find my debit card. It was found on the floor under the box we set our shoes in by the door. Someone (a one year old girl) had removed it from my wallet and in the clean-up haste, it must have been pushed under.

The iPod that plays lullabies every night and nap time for Butterball disappeared. (It reappeared in a random box of kids books).

Quite often, the remote control goes missing. Quite often it is found in odd places. Like in Butterball's dresser drawers, Little Monster's dresser drawers, the kitchen drawer that houses our baggies, and occasionally the one that holds the oven mitts. Once we found it in the trash can.

Often I'll find her sippy cups and snack traps in odd places. I've purchased many thinking they'd been left in stores or at the park, only to find them among my jeans, under the bathroom sink or in the kitchen drawers.

This morning was the final blow. The kids were playing quietly - -which in hindsight should have been a big clue that something was going on. I found them, and they were being good. However, I noticed that Butterball's little doll stroller was missing the fabric seat. It was now just a dangerous frame of metal rods daring to poke someones eye out.

After searching and searching last week for the trackball, to no avail, I couldn't take it. Little Monster had been the one to remove the seat, and since Butterball has yet to master the art of the English language (outside of Mama, Dada, Up and All-Done), he was responsible for its disappearance.

We tore the house apart. Looked under and in couches, emptied trash cans, dirty laundry bins, dresser drawers, backpacks, diaper pails, file cabinet drawers, coat pockets, closets, and multiple kitchen drawers. We looked in places the children could not have possibly put the thing. And then we looked in all of the places again. And then I dug through the diaper pail. And the outdoor trash can. You know, in case my ONE YEAR OLD managed to escape the house, grow three feet, deposit the fabric, and then come back into the house and return to normal size all without my knowledge. I dug through the diaper pail people. The diaper pail that is full of stinky, nasty, diapers. We did not find the fabric. We did, however, find the trackball for my mouse. In the hat box I keep to put the kids sunhats in near the front door. Where I had looked. At least thirty times last week.

We gave up on the search for the stupid fabric. Which was fine. Little Monster had only been told he'd not be getting his favorite McQueen and The King trailers and cars returned to him until we found it. And at one point the loss of all food until it was found may or may not have been threatened. We left. And got soaking wet since it decided to downpour during the fifteen minutes we were out of the house today.

And when we returned, I was putting my sunglasses on our bookshelf by the door, and happened to look down. Into a 5 inch gun shell that we have. Inside the shell was the fabric for the stroller.

I am pretty sure that we are losing our minds. But it isn't our fault. It isn't our age. It is definitely the fault of two people. One I affectionately call Monster. The other, often goes by Monkey. They think it is great fun to move things to funny places and then watch us go crazy trying to find them. They test us by doing the exact thing we tell them not to right in front of us -- while watching our reaction. They steal things they know they aren't supposed to have. When they are caught they run the other way as fast as their little legs can scramble, shrieking with maniacal laughter.

There is a reason why as children, we think our parents are uptight, unreasonable, unfair and quite often completely insane. It's because they were. And it was our fault. We did it to them. It also explains how they magically regain their sanity after we leave their house.

Parents, I'm sorry. Children, you're going to be too someday.

What?!

2010-06-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

Apparently my Little Monster has a girlfriend. If you asked him, he'd tell you that he has two. TWO girlfriends?! I guess when you're one of four boys in a preschool class of sixteen you are one lucky guy... And when you're one of twelve girls, you do what you have to.

All I've heard about is having a "play over" with this new girlfriend. Girlfriend B to be specific. Girlfriend C is nice, but he wants to go camping with B, and play with her, and do all kinds of things. It isn't just on his end, either. When I talked to his teacher about it today, she said she had assumed that we were all friends outside of school, because of the way the two kids play together. I guess we'll be forced into it for the summer!

The great thing is that I know that both children are enrolled in day camp together over the summer. So even if we don't get to have "play overs" very often, he'll get to spend time with her.

And in another note -- Butterball is now banned from school. I don't think Daddy would like the idea of her having a boyfriend. She's Daddy's girl and I'm not sure he's ready to share yet.

Weaning. Complete.

2010-06-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

Butterball, also known as Monkey, Peanut, and Baby-girl is completely weaned. It's happy and sad all at the same time. I'm glad that I'm not tied down to her. I can go away for the evening and leave her with a babysitter without worries about how she'll get back to sleep without me being around. The other day, she had a hard time getting down for nap, and it had only been a few days since her last nurse. I figured I could try to soothe her if she wanted to. She didn't. She just wanted to be cuddled by Daddy.

This time around weaning was a lot easier than with Little Monster. I got her onto a schedule where she was nursing when she woke up, before her morning and afternoon naps, and then before bed. After a few weeks I took away the first nurse of the day, and eventually took away the nursing before nap time. Those were sort of by accident, as quite often she'd been skipping them anyway as we ran errands during the day. After a couple of weeks when she'd only been nursed at night, I had Daddy help out. He rocked her to sleep with a glass of milk for a few days and it was done.

Just like last time, I miss it occasionally. Weaning just seems like the beginning of the end. She's no longer an infant. She's a toddler. She is pretty good at telling us what she wants, and eats everything she can get her hands on.

I do however enjoy the fact that my body is mine again. I don't need to worry about what I eat, drink, put on my skin. It's nice. Now the question is -- what's new in Bras? I'm afraid I've been wearing the same nursing bras for far too long, and I'm ready to be done with them too.

A lesson in Sharing...

2010-06-03T16:38:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend my grandmother passed away. This is a photo from the last time we were able to visit. (Never mind the evil look -- he was a bit freaked out by all of the tubes.)

It isn't the greatest picture, but it has four generations of my family. I was talking about everything with my husband, and Little Monster wanted to know what we were talking about. After I explained everything to him he thought for a minute, looked out of the corner of his eyes like kids do when they are in the depths of serious contemplation...

"Mommy. It's okay. You can share my grandma."

It's nice of him to think that way. And I don't mind sharing his grandmothers with him. Not even one little bit.

typical evening...

2010-05-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Me: Rambling on about some topic, perhaps reading my blog entry to my husband until, finally -- "Are you EVEN LISTENING TO ME? Did you hear what I SAID?"

Him: Yes. You were talking. About something.

*Sigh*

Do I get to throw one of those temper tantrums now?

Exercise -- it's not for wimps.

2010-05-30T06:39:00.000-07:00

Since my husband has been on the "fat bastard" program the Navy runs, I've felt a little guilty. And I've needed an excuse to use my new (nook) toy. So, I've started working out with him. Well, more like parallel to him.

And then came Wednesday.

To be fair, he had warned me about the horror of his Wednesday workout. I thought he was lying. Or maybe exaggerating, just a little (or a lot). He wasn't.

After doing far too many lunges and squats, my legs still haven't recovered. And I've gone out and bought the book that's the female version of his program. Because I don't want to have thighs as big around as my waist. And if I had to endure one more Wednesday workout on his program -- I'd either be dead because I'd cut off my own legs to alleviate the pain or my kids would starve to death because I wouldn't be able to get out of bed.

I'll be writing again soon. Hopefully.

That is, if I'm not dead from trying to get healthier.

Happy Birthday Butterball!!

2010-05-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

My baby. My last, sweet, little baby girl is turning one today. Has it already been a year since I was so miserable with pregnancy, unable to move without pain, grateful for the contractions that meant that you were coming? Your birth was so overwhelming that for days, I mistakenly thought you were born on the 28th -- and your Daddy won't let me forget it. But it was so worth it. The past year has been amazing.

My fat little cherub has already blossomed into a bossy, sassy little "monkey" girl. No longer the butterball that she once was. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. She is almost completely weaned, now. Walking, talking a bit. She loves to torture her brother, but mostly they play wonderfully together. Chasing each other around the house, erupting into giggles and squeals. Bath time is her favorite. She comes running to the bathroom anytime she hears the tub going. She knows what she wants, and she can pretty much tell you what it is these days. She's persistent and stubborn. She definitely doesn't like to be told "no." She likes to pretend that she doesn't hear the word half the time. If she hears if often enough, she'll rebel by letting out a rebel war cry, going for the forbidden fun that she's so unfairly being denied.

Her hair is growing in, fine and wavy. She's got the longest lashes I've ever seen (on a girl), and blue-grey eyes. The best part of my day these days is going into her room in the morning, seeing her smiling face standing in her crib waiting for me to get her. Then, when I pick her up, she wraps her arms around my neck, squeezes as hard as she can and gets her fingers all tangled in my hair. Most of the time I don't even mind that she's wiping her snotty nose on my shoulder.

The scowls she gives everyone make me laugh. I don't think anyone escapes the furrowed brow and squinty-eyed once over when they meet her. If she recognizes you, she might skip the scowl, and instead point at you as if to say "HEY! I KNOW YOU! COME HERE AND DO MY BIDDING!" And if you're lucky, you'll get the "AAAAAAHH!!" grunt that actually means she expects you to do her bidding.

I love it when she says "ooooOOOOOO" when she sees something she loves. Namely, bananas, or any kind of sweet treat that she's about to be spoiled with.

We are going to miss the baby that's turned into a toddler who is falling in love with ride-on toys, playing in the mud and wrestling like a big kid. We love you Butterball. Don't grow up too fast.

PrompTuesday, Or Friday

2010-05-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

No I didn't forget about it. No, I haven't been ignoring it. Okay, I have been. I just haven't been feeling creative enough to write something, well, creative.

But this week's prompt is something I can handle. PrompTuesday #108

I live in a quiet residential community that happens to back up to a main thoroughfare in my town. The thoroughfare is pretty much the only way to get from the north end to the south end of where I live. And the speed limit is something like 30 or 35 miles per hour. The stop lights are never ending, and the people here in New England really need to revisit that drivers test they should have failed when the turned 16.

There are times during the day when the thoroughfare backs up. And backs up. Like when people are heading home from work. And going to work. And rushing around at lunchtime. I get it. It sucks to be stuck in traffic when you've got somewhere to go. So, you get to thinking, surely there's a way around this major street that is set up to be a minor street. And you make a turn, and another one and you realize that you can cut through this quiet little residential area.

Sure, the speed limit is only 15, and there are a bazillion stop signs and speed bumps. The stop signs -- the ones with the white rims are optional, right? And those speed bumps? Eh.. As long as my car is big enough I can plow on over it, no harm done. Mythbusters even says the ride is better the faster I go over it. They did, right? Oh well.

Right.

That's all well and good. Except that the stop signs? They are NOT optional. The speed limit is NOT a suggestion. Why are there so many stop signs and speed bumps? Because there are a bazillion kids running around in this neighborhood. There is no public easement between the sidewalk and the street, so if I kid ditches on their bike, they're ditching into the street right in front of the car, YOUR car. Not to mention the streets are curvy, narrow, and this is NOT a public thoroughfare!

I've taken to sitting out front and yelling at the cars that whiz past, missing stop signs and catching air over the speed bumps. As a neighborhood, we've complained and complained to the community managers, called the police, and exhausted ourselves trying to get people to slow down. And, you bet that if you drive by my house, in a company vehicle, I'm calling your boss. Especially if you're a cab driver and when I ask you to slow down (because my kids are running around in the front yard near the road you consider to be a race track) and you FLIP ME OFF. YOU FLIPPED ME OFF! Because YOU were breaking the law and I called you on it. In the vehicle you use for work.

Um, this was supposed to be about etiquette. My tip:

It's extremely rude to drive really fast in a residential neighborhood ignoring speed limits and stop signs because you are using it as a detour, short-cut, or escape route from the local police. Even if you are going to go the speed limit, slamming on the brakes at the last second and slamming on the gas to get to the next stop sign a record 2 seconds faster? That's rude too. Also, driving through with your windows down and radio at full blast. Absolutely asinine. My kids don't need to hear about smackin' yo b!tch up. Really.

So, keep to the speed limit. STOP at the stop signs, slow down for the speed bumps. Save yourself some gas by accelerating decently, and if you have to listen to your music crazy loud, roll up the windows.

He gets it!

2010-05-27T18:07:00.001-07:00

So, the other day Little Monster was throwing a fit about not wanting to put his shoes on. Maybe it was about how he didn't want to get into the car, or eat his pop tart, clean up his toys, or do anything either of us wanted him to do. I'm not sure what the tantrum was, exactly.

What I do remember is overhearing my husband say:

"OH NO! If anyone in this family gets to throw a tantrum about having to do things they don't want to do it would be your mom, not you."

Thanks, honey. I love that you get it.

If I tell you -- I have to do it. Right?

2010-05-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been feeling a bit off. Crabby, mean, and just utterly horrid. It's one of the main reasons why I haven't been posting. You know, the whole "If you can't say something nice" saying runs around in my head. Combine the inability to say anything nice about anything and a blog and you end up sounding like some whiny snively spoiled brat. Especially considering that I am positively spoiled beyond belief and have no reason to complain about much of anything.

It isn't anyone else's fault that I've felt this way. It's my own. I get up in the morning, pick up the dirty laundry and throw it in a pile by the laundry room. If I'm lucky I get to wake up the children (rather than the other way around), and get them ready for the day. I send one off to preschool three days a week, two of those three mornings I fill with bible studies (although both have been TERRIBLY neglected lately). Friday mornings are all about me. Or they used to be. But then I decided I should really clean the house on Friday mornings instead. And go to the grocery store so we have food for the weekend.

The afternoons are spent finding activities to keep my busy busy three year old involved in something so that I don't try to strangle him because he seems to be doing everything in his power to wake his little sister up. My evenings are spent, preparing (or more likely driving somewhere and purchasing) dinner, cleaning up from the day, getting kids into bed, arguing with small children about why they need baths and sleep, and finally, FINALLY! quiet time with my husband.

Except that my husband is obese. (well, not really. Not at all, but the military seems to think so.) So he's on the fat boy program and spends his evenings working out in order to keep his job and prove that to be as skinny as they want him he might just wither up and die. So, we watch TV while he works out. And I listen to my one year old, who is in the process of weaning whine and cry 15 minutes at a time while I try to get her to sleep with as little time attached to me as possible.

By the time I actually get to relax, I'm so wired that it takes me hours to wind down. Maybe I should invest in some good wine? And since I'm so "starved" for "me time" I end up staying up far too late watching crap on TV. And then I go to bed. And stare at the ceiling, thinking about all of the things that we have going on. We are selling our house. We are moving in a few months. But where? And for how long? Are we going to end up overseas? Why is Little Monster SOO naughty and defiant these days? By about 3:00 AM I'm finally in good sleep. I get a couple of hours, if I'm lucky before my husband has to get up to workout before work. He tries so hard to be quiet, and he really is. I just sense the stirring and though I try to remain asleep, sometimes I lay there, awake, but not really. Then, Little Monster comes tearing in at 5:30AM demanding breakfast. Pop Tarts. And toast with white butter. Not Peanut BUTTER! WHITE BUTTER! and WHITE MILK! And PLEAAASE! I need breakfast NOW! After arguing with him until 7 o'clock, I finally get up and feed him breakfast.

And now you may return to the beginning. Typical day. Typical week. Sounds like life. And a housewife who is doing a lot of whining, right?

I'm hoping to change it. I'm going to try to QUIT neglecting my bible studies. Because when I neglect them, I cut myself off from God, and when I do that, things don't go well. I lose faith that someone has control of things. It's something I need to believe in order to exist. This world is so crazy -- and I have no control over anything, so as long as someone has control, and someone has a plan I'm fine. I'm happy to know that the Someone I believe is in control of things is a loving, kind Someone who has my best interest at heart.

I am also going to try to start working out. This says the lady who HATES to exercise. It's boring. I hate sweating. Add the two up, and yeah. If I am going to exercise you have to trick me into it -- make me think it's fun. Or, keep my mind off of the exercise by putting something else in front of it. TV doesn't work. It can't keep my interest (except for last night's episode of Grey's Anatomy -- can you say it! AHHH!).

How then, am I going to get my workout in? Easy. I am going to be super selfish. I am going to -- read books for pleasure while I ride the exercise bike. I recently bought a Nook. One of those e-reader gadgets that Barnes&Noble is selling. It's amazing. I can set it on the front of the bike and just read. No worries about losing a page. No having to hold the book open, no having to hold the book. If the text is to small for me to read while I'm bouncing all over on the bike, no biggie. I'll just make the text bigger. And while I'm reading, I'm pedaling. And pedaling. For an hour or every other day. Or when I want to read. It's amazing.

I started this yesterday. I pedaled for a total of an hour -- two thirty minute sessions. All the while reading the newest fiction, that I bought. From my house. And you know what? That being selfish and demanding that my three year old play quietly in his room -- and that my one year old nap quietly in hers while I read a good book. It felt heavenly. I got to do something totally selfish. And I felt better afterward. And I burned calories. So maybe my clothes will fit better. And maybe I'll start to be happier and quit complaining about the fairy tale life that I lead.

I'm counting on you to keep me accountable. Got it? What do you do that keeps you from going insane?

Morning entertainment.

2010-05-04T06:10:00.000-07:00

First thing this morning, in a monotone robot voice (where did he learn that, i wonder):
Inside dis woobot is bumblebee. And inside bumblebee is ocermiss. And inside ocermiss is little monster. We are in dis sceery woobot suit.

The reason why I come to Nebraska without my husband (it's a life preserving tactic for him. He would have died of embarrassment):

The church is silent except for the hymn being sung and the pastor's voice telling each person "this is the body of Christ." The pastor hands me my wafer and skips over Monster in order to give communion to someone else. He will come back with out the wafers to bless the children. And then you hear it:

"HEEEEEeeeey!!!!! I want one!!!!"

As his sister passes by on her way to mischief:

"bye bye alien"

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Who ate the scraps?

2010-05-03T19:09:00.001-07:00

As a parent I often wonder how much of what I teach my child sinks in. How much does he remember. Does he really get it?

Today we visited hobby lobby to get a few things. Not to mention I just love walking around and looking at all the neatly organized yarn, paint and craft projects.

As I was loading his sister into the cart Little Monster walked up to a print they had framed near the carts. He stared at it while I nagged at him not to touch it. I looked at it and noticed that it was a print of the Last Supper. Wondering if he remembered anything (since he seems to forget when I ask him to do anything simple like go potty or get dressed) I asked him what he was looking at.

"MOOooom. I was just wooking at Jesus. Our dog Kweenex is wif him. I fink she's under da table. I was just wooking for her."

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

An important job

2010-04-22T09:29:00.001-07:00

This morning little monster woke up rather late. He was a bit out of sorts and it was obvious that he wasn't really awake yet. Little did I know that he wasn't sleeping this morning:

Me: good morning little monster. You slept late!!

LM: Yup, that's cuz I had to wake up the sun and the whole wide world.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The fog has lifted!

2010-04-08T06:33:00.001-07:00

The past couple of days have been wonderful. With each day I wonder about the reality of SAD in my life. I always get a little melancholy in winter, when the sun comes up late and goes down early. It is more difficult to get out of bed, and harder to fall asleep. I'm not sure if that's normal or if it really is some sort of seasonal depression. Maybe it's just Vitamin D deficiency.

While I think I'm happy with the way my life is turning out, and in general I am a happy person, I haven't felt this happy -- this easily motivated and energized -- in a long time. Getting up in the morning hasn't been so easy for years. Maybe it's just because it's the first few days of really nice weather, but maybe I have been stuck in some sort of California fog, hoping and waiting for a summer that isn't coming. but I'm happy to say that I think that when we left the California coastal fog behind, the fog of my brain lifted a bit too, and after two days (and soon three) of warm - almost hot - sunshine I'm happy to say that I think the fog has completely burned off.

This morning I got up to see the sun shining. I opened the window and was greeted by a cool, crisp, spring breeze. It was not difficult to get up and get moving this morning. It wasn't even hard to be happy about doing so. The lessened necessity of coats and mittens brightened my morning even more than the sun that began shining brightly at an early hour of 6:30 AM. Funny, I didn't mind being up at 6:30 this morning. I guess I was wrong the other day. I can handle mornings like this. My toes are a bit chilly, but the kind of chilly that makes you feel alive, not like they're going to be frozen off.

There is a smell in the air that I had forgotten existed, but happily remembered the moment I took it in. The smell of damp soil and freshly budding plants and dewy grass just says spring. Yesterday I had to put sunblock on the kids as we sat outside, and I was never so happy to smell little kid sweat mixed with Coppertone and soil. Little Monster and his friend dug in the dirt with their Tonka dump trucks. Butterball waddled around the yard, picking up sticks and putting them into a bucket and pulling grass.

Last night I laid in my bed, sheets cooled by the crisp breeze coming in the open window. They almost smelled as if they'd been freshly washed and dried outside on a line. I got dozy as my body heat warmed the sheets and finally fell asleep with the smell of sweaty kid, Coppertone and baby bath on my hands. It has been amazing. It is going to cool down this weekend, but this cool down comes the hope and promise of brighter, warmer, summer days.

I can't wait.

Easter Pics...

2010-04-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

I had a few minutes while Butterball was napping and Little Monster entertained himself with some paints in the kitchen to edit some of the photos I took on Easter. Only a few came out, but I don't need hundreds to remember what a wonderful day it was. I'm thinking about going through and editing some more, just because I'm afraid of what is waiting for me in the kitchen. It could be bad. Very Bad.

In case you were wondering...

2010-04-06T06:10:00.001-07:00

I'm a little bit crazy. Sometimes more than others. I'm grateful on those days when I seem to be able to contain my sanity with supernatural powers, that I'm sure are only heaven sent.

This morning was one of those mornings. Note that it is only 9:11 AM as I start writing this. I know it's the same story heard around the country on any given morning, but really?

My day started at 6:07AM when Butterball began wailing from her crib. She was awake and wanted everyone to know it. She didn't need food, wasn't in dire need of a diaper change, but she was lonely and the toys in her crib just weren't cutting it. It is Tuesday. It is a day when I theoretically should be able to sleep until 7:00AM since Little Monster doesn't have preschool and I don't have any obligations outside of the house. I know you working moms are laughing at my idea of "early" wake up calls, but I don't like getting up before 6:30AM. Never have. Probably never will.

After listening to her wail for what seemed like forever, Not the Momma came out of the shower. The clock read 6:17 AM. He brought her to me, and I tried to nurse her, even though we're working on trying to wean. My hope was that she'd go to sleep and I'd get another 15 minutes of unconscious bliss. I was dozing off, hoping we were both on our way when she. bit. me. That ended that!

Up we got and I trapped her in the living room so she could wander around while I chopped up her morning banana and got her brother's breakfast ready. He wasn't up yet, but I knew he'd be up asking for his "Apple Whacks" soon.

I don't even think it was 7:00 when Little Monster got up and started making demands. "Turn da bathwoom WIGHT ON! PUH-WEEEEESE!"

Sigh

It's 7:20, the kids have been fed. Little Monster is dressed, and I still haven't used the bathroom this morning. (Note, that it's only because Little Monster doesn't have preschool today was he able to get up and be dressed without a fight. If It had been a preschool day, he'd still be sleeping.)

Such is life. I was looking forward to the nice day, the sun is shining. We are going to the park today. We ARE going to play outside today.

I grabbed a second to use the bathroom, since I hadn't done that yet. When I came back into the living room, where Butterball was safely trapped, this is what I found:

Sigh.

She found a stash of chocolate eggs that the Easter Bunny had forgotten about. Perfect. Now Butterball is topless, running amok while I clean chocolate off of books, the floor, the couch, and everything within reach of a 10 month old girl. A 10 month old girl can reach a LOT of things. And she does when she's covered in slobbery melted chocolate. Luckily she only sucked on the tin foil wrappers and didn't eat any. That I know of. Yet.

Half way through cleaning the carpet I heard the splash. I assumed it was Butterball in the dog dish.

Wrong!

She had 'stolen' her brother's juice -- OJ mixed with an acai berry blend, and dumped it on the floor. Have you ever seen acai berry juice? It's very sticky. And it stains everything it touches. The juice is dripping off of the table onto two chairs, the floor, and all over Butterball.

Sigh.

I finally got that mess cleaned up and got Butterball into the bathtub. I was grateful that her squats and grunts were for nothing. I looked at my phone. It was 8:21 AM.

I'm glad that I, somehow, was able to keep my composure this morning. I think it has something to do with the memory of the angel that existed the night before:

Many of my days are like this morning. Most of them, probably. Sometimes the messes are bigger or my composure goes out the window. If I do have a quiet morning I often find out later that I should have been paying more attention to something or someone. If there's any doubt left in your mind as to why I'm insane, and this post hasn't convinced you, Let me show you something:

And This:

You understand, now. Don't you? I knew you would.

My Favorite!

2010-04-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

I like Christmas. The air has a bite to it, and there's joy. But there's stress too. Too many things to bake, too much commercialism, the whole bit. I enjoy the fourth of July with it's sticky humidity, barbeque's during the day and fireworks at night, but it hasn't been as much fun as an adult as it was as a kid. Thanksgiving is wonderful with family, and friends and so much food it's easily one of my favorite holidays.

Easter, however is easily ranking high on my list of favorite holidays again. All that it represents, new life, warm weather coming around the corner, and the Resurrection. There is so much to be thankful for.

This year, Easter was amazing around here. We got the kids all spiffed up:

We took them to church, where Little Monster "participated" in the Easter program. I have participated in quotes, because he stood at the front of the church looking at the giant crowd in front of him. I think the sight shocked him so much he forgot all the words to his songs. But he did shake his little tambourine at the end. I might post some video of that once we get the right cord for the camera.

After church there was an egg hunt at church. Butterball is walking -- WALKING -- well enough to carry a basket, so I let her loose. She proceeded to find two eggs and sit in the dirt to inspect them thoroughly. It was still pretty cute.

Then, we came home and let Little Monster have his fill of candy. And candy. And candy. And maybe some chocolate. Followed by another Easter egg hunt, and dinner of ham, homemade mac n cheese and green bean casserole.

It was a nearly perfect day. I'm grateful for the opportunities we had to be together as a family -- I know all too soon, Daddy will return to sea duty and he'll be gone, gone, and gone.

Happy Easter Everyone!

The Sneaky Snunk!

2010-04-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

The other day I went into Little Monster's room to find a huge mess. It's nothing new. Lego's all over the floor, blocks and little plastic soldier men laying, guns facing up, just waiting for my bare feet in the middle of the night. It's not normally a big deal, but this time his room had a certain unfriendly aroma.

It wasn't sour milk. It wasn't any kind of rotting food or dirty sheets, diapers or anything else. It was that little boy sweat smell. It surprised me to find that my little baby is big enough to make that sweaty boy smell, and that it can take up residence in his room already. (I am so not looking forward to puberty and the horrible smells that go along with that!)

I started tidying his room so that I could vacuum and maybe spray some deodorizer into his carpet to try to fix the problem. Little Monster was in a helpful mood so I tried to convince him to help me clean his room. He wasn't so sure he wanted to pick up all of his toys, so I explained to him that his room stunk and I wanted to pick up the toys so I could get rid of the smell.

A few minutes later, Little Monster stopped all cleaning and stood there. He was making the sound he makes when the wheels start cranking in his brain -- it's almost a sigh with a hard beginning -- and as he was making that sound, you could see the light bulb turn on above his head as he reached his "aha" moment.

"MOMMY! I KNOW WHY MY WOOM IS SNINKY!!" A SNUNK GOT IN HERE!!"

A Snunk? What is a snunk? I'm pretty sure it wasn't in here.

YES! MOMMY! A SNUNK! THAT SNEAKY SNINKY SNUNK!

What is a snunk Little Monster?

A. SSS.NUNK! A BWACK AND WIPE AMINAL! A SNUNK!!! WE NEED TO FIND HIM! HE'S HIDING IN MINE WOOM AND MAKING IT ALL SNINKY!

After that I had no trouble getting him to help me clean the room. However, he was really disappointed that there wasn't a skunk in his room. His imagination knows no bounds, my kid. And that skunk? Little Monster says he lives in the bushes in front of the house across the street. Waiting to sneak back into his room when it's all messy. I'm sure we'll be getting a visit from him again very soon.

Charisma and Chocolate Bunnies

2010-04-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

Charisma. One of the definitions is "personal magnetism or charm" according to http://www.dictionary.com/ Little Monster normally exudes that kind of charisma, but today it was pouring out in buckets and leaving a mess all over the floor at the Commissary (that's the base grocery store for you non-military folks).

It all started in the car on the way to there. He asked about something related to Easter, and I took it as a teaching moment to tell him about why we celebrate it. I told him that Jesus died to save us and was buried behind a big rock in a mountain. Everyone was sad, but a few days later, he came back to life and (because he's super strong like super man) pushed the rock off. It made everyone happy to see him again. Now he's in heaven waiting for us all... Okay.. So, then I had to explain that Superman is not, in fact, Jesus -- or vice versa. I wasn't sure how much of it he picked up.

Until we got to the grocery store.

He saw the chocolate rabbits and wanted one. Daddy is on a diet, trying to prove that the military standards for people built like him aren't exactly correct about body fat, so I hadn't bought any chocolate rabbits for anyone. But, I caved today and got one for Little Monster. I picked one out and told him he could have it on Easter.

"After Jesus comes, on Easter Day?!"

Yes, I told him. So, he was very excited about the fact he was going to get his chocolate rabbit on Easter. Add to that, the fact that this particular commissary hasn't dished out the cash for any kind of child-friendly shopping carts we had back in California. Man, do I miss those. So, Butterball is in seat of the cart (I should be saying carriage since I'm in New England!), and Little Monster is supposed to be walking very near the cart, keeping his hand in contact with the metal cage at all times. Instead we walk past the fruit section and he yells out "I WANT ORANGES!" and runs over to try to grab one. I reminded him that we weren't there to get oranges, so he calmly came back and walked with me. Since he was so anxious to help pick out groceries, I let him be my helper. He was in charge of finding the items I needed on my list.

In theory it was a good idea.

In reality, it wasn't a terrible idea, it just meant that he really wanted to help. And everyone within a thirty foot radius of us was going to find out what we needed, what color it was and how many we needed. If they were lucky enough, they'd even get to have a discussion with him about whatever it was. And then there was the miraculous sudden cravings for things like pickles -- which he normally won't eat. Or lettuce. He wanted to buy everything he won't eat, claiming he liked it.

Then there was the employee who was guarding the hams. (I say this, because she was standing next to a grocery cart full of hams. Not stocking them, just hanging out with them.) She struck up conversation with Little Monster. Which was a mistake. He started talking to her about his chocolate bunny. And how he was going to eat it on Easter. And then he talked about his Daddy and Mommy and sister. Then the poor lady asked him who was coming on Easter -- expecting to get an answer about an Easter Bunny, she looked a little confused when Little Monster said VERY excitedly:

"Jesus is coming! And he saved huss (he can't say us without the H)! And he's Coming! On Easter Day Sunday! And I get to eat my chocolate bunny with the carrot on Easter day after jesuscomesbackandbutterballdidn'tgetachocolatebunnybecauseshesababy!

My husband is glad he wasn't along for that ride. He doesn't like a scene. And Little Monster was the scene in the store this morning. When people in the ham aisle heard him talking about Jesus, they all turned to listen to his story, smiling sweetly. We created quite a traffic jam in front of those Easter hams while he explained that he was getting to eat that chocolate bunny right after Jesus came back to life on "Easter Day."

In the checkout aisle, the clerk got the whole schpeal too -- only now he had Easter cookies. And onewasforbutterballanditwastheeggoneandtheduckoneisformeanditsbecauseitseasterandiwasgoodandjesusiscoming. And he wanted to give the bagger man his pennies to say thank you for his hard work. And he was determined to give the man his penny. He HAD to give the man the penny!

I swear the kid was oozing so much charisma, he was why they had to call for a clean up on aisle three. By the end of the trip, I was exhausted. And so was Butterball.

Do you think there's anything in the Easter story about how after Jesus comes on Easter Day, and chocolate bunnies are eaten that three year olds should take a nap? There should be.

What are you looking at?

2010-03-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

This morning wasn't a morning I'm proud of. Every time I turned around someone was throwing a temper tantrum. There was one over a pair of socks that wasn't put on, because someone didn't want to go to the bathroom, because that same someone didn't want to get dressed, put on shoes, eat breakfast, carry his backpack, etc. There were more tantrums than I can count.

You'd think, ah a typical day in the life of a three year old, right? Yeah. Except that the three year old wasn't the one having the tantrums. It was me. I don't wonder where my child learned the art of being so difficult. I only have to look in the mirror to see it.

I was very grateful for time with my friends this morning. Time where I was able to look back and reflect on how I failed this morning, and know that it doesn't matter. Little Monster went to school and had a wonderful day. He was able to get a break from my psychotic behavior, and spend time having fun while learning. By the time he came home, he had his normal Mommy back.

What was my problem this morning? I'm pretty sure I was focused on myself and how "bad" I have it.. I mean, it's rained for how many days now? We were SICK the last day of sunshine.. And NOW the MALL is going to be a pipe dream at best for Friday. Friday, which I thought was going to be a day where I could leave Little Monster in school for the entire day and go shopping is pretty much cancelled. Friday school is closed. The malls are all flooded. Poor, Poor Mary can't go to the mall to get a bear re-stuffed and buy jammies for the baby. Don't you feel sorry for me?

Never mind the fact that I'm lucky enough to still have power and be in a warm, DRY house. Never mind the fact that we have a stable income and my husband has a steady job. It isn't important at all that we have MONEY to buy things like pajamas and food. Forget that the children are healthy or that we recovered from the yuck that hung over our house.

I was focused on the negative. The dark sky. I didn't even noticed that it had stopped raining.

This morning, I was able to remember that I should be focused on what is good in my life, and how much of it is a direct blessing from God. Thank You.

Now, let's hope tomorrow the person acting like they're three is actually three!

A Typical Tuesday

2010-03-30T09:46:00.001-07:00

Do you remember this? Probably not. Go ahead. Read it. See how horrible we are.

Fast forward to this morning.

It was a typical morning, a messy diaper change while the dog was outside. After letting the dog back in from outside, I gave Butterball her breakfast and lay semi-conscious on the couch while she ate, threw her juice cup onto the floor, and teased the dog with endless amounts of corn pops and banana waiting for Little Monster to wake up. As Little Monster came out of his room, groggy from sleep, I noticed it. Butterball's apple juice cup had leaked on the floor, directly under her high chair. I bent down and touched it, thinking it was odd that the puddle was pretty far away from the cup, which still had juice in it. The puddle was warm. It smelled of urine. Warm. Urine.

OH NO HE DIDN'T!

Yes. He did. Our dog left a wet spot in the living room. Not only did he do it under the baby's high chair while waiting for her to drop breakfast on the floor for him, he did it while I was IN THE ROOM! How I missed it, I didn't know. It must have happened while they were talking about something fascinating on the news.

After a few words I'm not proud of, perhaps at a volume that I definitely I'm not proud of, the dog was in his kennel. Ugh. I cleaned up the puddle, still grumbling things that I hope the kids didn't hear.

Then, Butterball started signaling that she was all done with breakfast. She waved her hands about and proclaimed "aaa duuuuuh!!!!" (Can you believe she says ALL DONE?! I can't!) I pulled her out of her high chair and snuggled her... I hadn't snapped her onesie after the diaper change, so I lifted it up to blow raspberries on her belly and as I leaned in, cheeks puffed and ready, listening for the excited giggles of a ten month old baby girl, I noticed it. Something looked wrong. SHE WASN'T WEARING A DIAPER.

So, that puddle. That pee. That wasn't the dog's fault. It was mine.

Lessons learned this morning:

A diaper change is not actually a diaper change unless the old diaper is replaced with a new one. Without the new diaper, it's just diaper removal.
DIAPER REMOVAL is not recommended for children who are only 10 months old. You should definitely always complete the diaper change.
Coffee timers should be set the night before to avoid repeats of the lessons above. Or worse.

The time flies!

2010-03-22T11:23:00.001-07:00

I can't believe how quickly time is passing. **Warning! A maximum amount of cheesy content is below! Maybe it's the rain and gloom today? But seriously. Cheese Alert!**

I was reading some of my older entries about weaning Little Monster the other day, since, we are getting close to that time with Butterball. It seems that time changes your perception of things. I always thought that Little Monster slept through the night by about 7 months, but it turns out that he wasn't really. I thought I nursed him until a year, but really he was weaned by about 10 months. It must be something God does so that we'll continue to want more children even after enduring months of pain during pregnancy, hours and days of even more pain during delivery, and then months or maybe years of sleep deprivation along with massive amounts of horrid laundry, dishes, and constant cleaning just to keep up.

Butterball is no where near being weaned. She's still nursing four times per day, and then at least once at night. What's a mom to do? I don't enjoy getting up in the middle of the night to be a pacifier. However, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up nursing her. She's our last baby and there's something about that fact that keeps me wanting her to remain a baby.

She is, however doing everything in her power to remind me that babies grow up -- quickly. She's already begun walking. Just last night I caught her walking from the kitchen all the way down the hall to her brother's bedroom. This morning as my friends were leaving, she held her hand out to wave and said "buh buh" I'm not sure if she was calling my friends name or saying "bye bye" but either way. She also has begun letting out wails of MAAAAA MAAAAA in an utterly pathetic tone when I leave her in her bed for naps and she thinks she isn't tired yet.

This morning she nearly ripped my heart out when she cried for me. She's eating real foods now. She's mastered a sippy cup. And she has opinions. She's not afraid to share her opinions either. This week she's figured out that if she waves here hands just so, I'll ask her if she's all done, and take her out of the high chair. She giggles uncontrollably when her brother make silly sounds. You should see how she adores him. It's crazy.

Little Monster adores his preschool. Almost as much as I do. He's younger than most of the kids in his class since he joined mid-year, but he's doing pretty well as far as I know. He's come home with a few new habits, some good --like washing his hands without complaint. Just the other day he announced that March starts with M. And he's begun being an amazing helper at home. Just last night he set the table for dinner. On his own. Without any kind of prompting or direction. They must teach manners at this school of his. Either that or he was very hungry. He's grown into such a little boy, not nearly the baby that I knew only a little more than a year ago.

With all the bad in our world, I know I'm truly blessed to be a witness to these kids growing up. I hope that time will slow down just a bit though. I like what I'm seeing.

Little Monster Moments

2010-02-19T10:44:00.000-08:00

Little Monster: I gotta go potty!
Daddy: Hold it buddy, we're trying to find somewhere!
Little Monster: I can't! Mine pants are in da way!

--------------------------------------------------

Little Monster: (out of the middle of NOWHERE!) pee is yellow. Poop is green.
Daddy: Yes, sometimes it is.
Little Monster: Mine poop changes colors too!!

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Old House New House

2010-02-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

When we were in California we were in a new house. I mean, probably only a couple of years old, new. Here in Rhode Island, we are in an old house, as in, probably more than a couple of decades old. I knew we would be in an older house when we moved here, and I was willing to "put up" with the inconvenience since we are only here for a few short months. However, after being here a week, I am thoroughly happy with our "new" old home.

Our "Old" New house in California was wired for Internet throughout most of the house, was beautiful on the outside, and was fairly new. It had a fenced in backyard and a huge front yard. There were power receptacles everywhere and had a decent sized pantry. And here ends the list of things I miss about our "old" new home.

Our "New" old house in Rhode Island has closets. Big Closets. Larger Rooms for the children, free heat, a SCREEN door on both the front and the back door, new Berber carpet that looks amazing, brand new windows all over, open floor plan, laundry room that has a Door! That can be Shut! and tons of shelving. HOT! water, and and free utilities. Our house is all one story, so toys can stay in the kids bedrooms! We are also getting to keep some of our rent money -- enough to pay for an amazing preschool that Little Monster will attend next week. There are about 5 nicer chain eat-in restaurants within a mile or so, as well as a few different fast food chains. And the clincher -- we get real cable. Not some crappy satellite service that is going to nickel and dime us to death. No over priced, under-bandwidth "High" (but really Low) speed Internet. Our cable and Internet package here is cheaper than just the satellite in CA, and we get our phone for free. We also get high definition signal and FAST FAST FAST Internet!

These things don't make up for the fact that I couldn't transplant my bible study group and my huge circle of wonderful friends, but they do make day to day life just a bit easier!

Welcome Home!

2010-02-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

It is a relief to finally be in our new home. We are now nestled into our cozy house on the East Coast. It is very temporary, as we should be returning to the west coast soon. It is amazing to live somewhere we've lived before. Things have changes a bit, but it's nice to know where the good grocery stores are, be familiar with the local chains, and at least have an idea about where I am when we move to a new home.

We spent ten days in the truck traveling across the country. Have you ever spent ten days in a truck with an 8 month old and a three year old? It makes for quite an adventure!

We stopped in Las Vegas to walk the strip, do some people watching and eat at one of the buffets. After that, the real trip began. Up early, and driving late, it still took us ten days. Between stops for restrooms (gotta love being just past potty training!), nursing breaks, and plain old sanity breaks made the days go by quickly.

Some highlights of the trip:

Las Vegas, and Treasure Island show: "There will be no pillaging of this booty tonight boys!" A show not meant for kids.

10 rest areas between Monterey CA and the eastern AZ border. 2 were open.

I-10 in El Paso, TX is so close to Mexico, that one of our iPhones decided to go ahead and join the Mexican Cellular network. It only costs about $20/mb to send and receive data.

Three solid days of rain. Rain at night. Rain during the day. Rain. Rain. and more. RAIN!

Trying to hit up every Cracker Barrel possible for those oh-so-good biscuits and southern comfort food.

Flooding! Flooding! Flooding! As we were getting ready to leave Texas, the roads started to get a bit waterlogged. We found that they had closed the interstate minutes after we passed because it was covered in water.

We experienced the most complicated interchange on I-10 in Houston, TX.

Driving through the swamps of Louisiana was an experience. Have you ever driven down there? That is definitely a new experience. We were grateful to have passed through BEFORE the Superbowl AND Mardi Gras.

Stopped in Northern VA in the snow and let Little Monster throw snowballs. His first time being old enough to play in it!

After all of those, we hit DC and Baltimore. Two days after they were hit with three feet of snow. Pulling the fifth wheel. Imagine if you will, the worst washboard road you can think of. Then multiply that by 1000. We had a hitch haul, carrying the generator and an air compressor on the back. Note, the word "had." As we pulled into Connecticut for the coldest night of our lives in the camper, we were very grateful that we had made it without incident. The hitch haul had cracked and broken, but had managed to hang on until we stopped for the night.

We could tell we were on the receiving end of many heartfelt prayers, because we didn't have any car trouble, and despite all of the adventure, we all managed to keep our sanity, and most of the time our sense of humor.

The snow in RI held off long enough for us to park our fifth wheel at its new home a few blocks away from our house, and the ABF trailer to arrive. But, the second we opened the trailer to unload, the snow came down. We got nearly a foot of snow while we were unloading, though we were lucky enough to have several neighbors come out to help.

As of right now, we are mostly moved in, and enjoying being on the east coast. The person who enjoys it the most? Probably our daughter who got her first taste of Dunkin donuts and a jelly filled munchkin:

What neighbors?

2010-01-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

This morning my three year old built this with his legos:

My son. The cherub who kisses me at night and squeezes his baby sister with hugs so tight she erupts into giggles is building assault rifles with legos? I searched my mind to think about where he would have seen a gun often enough to remember it with such detail. None of the videos or cartoons we let him watch have these in it. A nine mm maybe, or a 22 but not a machine gun. And for some reason I doubt PBS has added guns to the things you'll find in the drawer in Elmo's world. Surely Calliou's parents are too perfect to let him run amok armed like a guerilla.

I finally broke down and asked him where he had seen a gun like that. He responded "in abwaska. In a neighbors house, when I pway in dey bwack car."

The first thought through my mind was that we haven't been in Nebraska for over a month, and he played in the neighbors car in the beginning of November. What doesn't this kid remember? Then I panicked a little. What kind of people live next door to my parents? He saw an assault rifle in their car!? Were they axe murderers? No, their paid assasins. Or sleeper cell terrorists. Maybe I've seen one too many movies.

I called my mom and talked to her.

He saw a nerf gun they had purchased as a Christmas gift for their nephew. He wanted it badly and had tried to convince them to give it to him. I then asked him again. He said "yes they had a gun and me wanted it and dey said no. So me come home and me build it wif mine wegos."

My kid isn't a budding serial killer after all. Thank God. And my parents don't live next door to covert terrorists either. And my imagination is a bit out of control. Now. How do I smoosh this new gun obsession my three year old has?

Aaahhh..

2009-12-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

Our stuff is gone. All of it has been packed into a truck and is well on its way to the East Coast. Now, we're officially in limbo. Without an address or house, but not quite homeless. We're enjoying some family togetherness in our fifth wheel before we try to haul this thing across the country in a crazy blizzarding el nino year.

Our holidays were amazing, complete with Little Monster turning into Ralphie from A Christmas Story both when he sat on Santa's lap and forgot to tell him what he wanted for Christmas, and when he discovered the Light Saber Santa left for him. He, apparently was going to use it to save us all from the bad guys. Let's just hope I don't have any reason to give him soap poisoning and blind him anytime soon. For now, "naughty words" are any words that he doesn't want to hear from one of us. As for the words that come out of his mouth, they never stop. I swear the child even talks in his sleep.

Butterball is quickly becoming her namesake -- a little turkey. Fat thighs and goofy personality. Can it even be possible that she's pulling herself to standing and thinking about cruising on the furniture. So much for living in an RV arresting her development. She makes this incredibly cute face that's somewhere between a smile and a grimace when she's feeling silly.

I messed up again this year and failed to send out Christmas Cards. I still haven't even sent out a Christmas email to anyone. You'll all forgive me, right?

We spent most of the Christmas holidays enjoying each others company in our RV, but there was a break for a long, wonderful Christmas Eve service at church with many beautiful pieces of special music. It was probably a little late for two little ones, but we managed. We visited a friend, and Little Monster (I think for the first time in history) didn't have an accident at their house.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

It's all in the timing...

2009-11-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

We all have that family member. You know the one. The one that likes to tease you. They get just the teeniest bit of pleasure in making you squirm. They know all the right buttons to push and when to push them. So they do.

I have one of these family members. She always catches me at least once during our family reunions. This year, she wasn't at Thanksgiving dinner so thought I was getting off Scot free.

Then, today we visited the hardware store to get the folks a new Christmas tree. We turned our backs for two seconds. When we turned around, there Little Monster was, ten yards of felt ribbon unfurled around him, half of the spool ripped off. My mom, while holding three large spools of her own ribbon, told him to put it back. He promptly ignored her and continued to unroll the ribbon. At that moment, I turned around gave him a stern talking to, and swatted him on the butt because he didn't listen.

At that very moment, I turned around and there was that family member. Watching my normally angelic little boy --What, you don't believe me?? Well, I guess if you read this, you know the truth -- being incredibly naughty. And she commented on it. Oh yes she did. The one moment in the entire store when you really don't want anyone looking, let alone that family member.

Oh well, at least she'll have something to tease me about at the next family reunion we go to. Plus, my dad ran her over with the Christmas tree when we were in the checkout lane. ;) If you're reading this, family member, you know you are loved!

Wanted!

2009-11-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

Boy Aged 3, goes by Little Monster. Other Aliases include but are not limited to Bo-Bo and Wolverine. Last seen wearing denim pants, brown shoes and grey hooded sweatshirt. Rosy cheeks and messy hair. Possibly covered in dirt. Carrying a rope.

Dog. Aged 13. Jack Russell Terrier, White and Tan. Some aging apparent on face in muzzle and eyebrows. Goes by the name of Buster. May or may not be wearing a red collar.

Approach with caution as the two could be considered armed and dangerous. They were last seen on Saturday afternoon. They are believed to have escaped from the high security facility known as Grandparents backyard. The escape was believed to be a team effort out of the back gate. Their motives are yet unknown as are many of the details of the escape.

Either I have a Doctor Doolittle on my hands, or we're in big trouble. Maybe a little bit of both. This morning, while I was taking and unexpected nap with Baby Butterball, Little Monster came in crying because Grandpa said he wasn't allowed to play outside anymore. Why? Because Grandpa had found the dog outside of the gate, while Little Monster was attempting to climb over it out of the backyard.

We interrogated both parties. According to Little Monster, Buster was tired of being in jail. So Little Monster helped Buster to get out of the yard, then decided he needed to "rescue" Buster. The dog, however still refuses to talk.

Go Huskers?

2009-11-14T21:12:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a college town. A college town that revolved around their football team. You don't go shopping, eat out, go downtown, or do anything outside of your home on home game Saturdays. And heaven forbid you accidentally wear your favorite purple shirt the day Nebraska plays Kansas State. So when I met Not the Momma, a big hunky football-y player looking guy, I asked him what his feelings were about football and sports in general. His answer, something I can't repeat because he is, after all, a sailor, made it clear that I didn't have to worry about becoming a football widow. There would be no worries about needing to throw giant Superbowl parties, or whining about turning the game down so that the kids could sleep.

Being away from all of the sports craziness has made me want to embrace it, just a little bit. So, when we returned to Nebraska, I bought some "Husker" gear for the kids and I to wear this weekend for the game. We went out to dinner the night before the game last week, and Little Monster learned the phrase "Go Big Red!" It's actually rather cute to hear it come from his little mouth. Especially when he forgets that he's supposed to say 'big' and it comes out "GOOOOOOO witttllllllllle Wehhhhhh-ehhhhhhd! Go Big Wed!"

It's surprising how quickly little ones pick things up, and what they mean. Little Monster today somehow picked up that we were all wearing red, and that all of our clothing had the "huskers" logo on it, and I somehow missed it. Imagine my surprise, then, when we skyped with Daddy earlier this evening:

Me: Never mind the shirt I'm wearing.

NTM: Ah, you went out and bought some husker gear, eh?

LM: GO BIG WED!

And now that the child has learned team spirit, for a team to which he doesn't belong, I now must pray that my husband has not changed the locks to the house when I return. Or that, now that we have orders, he hasn't up and moved without us.

How about some Beta Carotene?

2009-11-13T13:13:00.001-08:00

Auntie L: You know, LM, carrots are good for your eyes. They help you see!

LM: Carrots not good for mine mouth!

Strange Happenings

2009-11-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

Mom! Don't worry! Dat not a monster! Dat just a car driving by. It not a bad guy. Where dat car going?

Probably to the grocery store. I don't know where they're going baby.

Dey not toming a dwama's house?

Nope. They are not coming here.

Oh, Okay.

----------------------------------

Buster! Buster! Tum outside and pway wif me. It a nice day outside! Tum On! (the pitch going higher with every sentence) Tum ON! Tum on Buster!

Buster, it a nice day outside, Tum on! Don't be mad! Tum on! Tum on! Tickle Tickle Buster!! You tum outside wif me and you pway wif me.

-----------------------------------

Baby, Buster is old and probably needs a nap. Let him take a break and he'll come outside with you again in a little bit.

It IS a little bit! Buster need tum outside wif me and get da bad guy monters out of da yard.

------------------------------------

After all of that, he came inside, took off his pants.

Me tiwerd mommy. Me take off mine twothes, me get mine jammas on. Me need take a shower first though. Den me get in mine bed.

He proceeds to remove the REST of his clothing, go downstairs, find pajamas and pull-ups, put them on. If the child goes downstairs and crawls into bed and goes to sleep, I'm going to start praying, because surely it is a sign that the end of the world truly is near.

Good Listening skills

2009-10-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight, in order to celebrate Little Monster's birthday, we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant.

Little Monster was in rare form, arguing and demanding things.

I tried to remind him to turn on his listening ears. In the car, after some arguing about whether or not he was good enough to get his fortune cookie, I gave it to him.

"Mommy! MOOOOOOOM! HERE!" as he is shoving the paper into my hands.

It read "Your good listening skills will open many doors."

After spending a good forty minutes of:

"Little Monster, sit on your bottom. What do you say? What do you say? Use your manners. Turn around and sit down right. Please use your spoon. Use your spoon. Little Monster, remember your manners. Little MONSTER! EAT YOUR RICE. NO! Slow down. Don't slurp your lemonade like that!"

I couldn't help but laugh loudly and uncontrollably. Nearly to the point of tears.

When I showed the fortune to Not the Momma, his response was "MY BUTT!!"

and then we heard:

"Yeah, and my butt too!" come from the back seat.

Later that eventing at Target, we were discussing how he would be rewarded for his "good listening skills." I explained that he needed to turn on his listening ears. His response (which nearly toppled the old woman in front of us she laughed so hard) was:

"Mommy, mine wiss-ning ears bwokeen. Me need buy new ones!"

Maybe his new ones have the listening skills his fortune cookie spoke of?

Recipe for a good party?

2009-10-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Little Monster turns three this week. It seems like time is passing faster than it should. It isn't fair. Between he and his sister, I'm going insane trying to keep up. Butterball can sit up, and she's rolling over and around and over to get to thing she wants, mere seconds from crawling.

We had his birthday party early because the kids and I are planning a trip home for November. I was stressing it a bit. I invited what I thought were a few too many people (the E-vite said 32 people were coming). The house was trashed, its normal state these days, no matter how much I don't want to admit it. I was exhausted from being up all night most nights nursing a hungry little girl. I didn't exactly know when I was going to find the time to get everything done for the party.

Not the Momma's plan was to set the party up in the garage. Mine was for the front yard. I let Not the Momma have his way. It was a good decision. (I refuse to admit he was right. ;) -- I just won't.) After I thought about it, if it was going to be foggy, then it was going to be better if we had a place to warm up, and if it was sunny our horde of babies was going to need a shady place to hang out. I had spent quite a few days thinking about what to serve for food and cake.

I ended up doing everything very simple. We hung some streamers, NTM grilled some hot dogs, and bought some pre-made salads.

For days before the party, Little Monster knew something was going on. We had invited the Fire Truck to come out, but hadn't told him about it, but he knew that his friends were going to come over, there was going to be a bouncy house, and he was going to get a fire truck cake and sprite. What else could he want, right? The night before the poor kid didn't sleep more than an hour at a time. The morning of the party, I brought him with me to pick up the cake. Despite his exhaustion from lack of sleep, he still buzzed around the grocery store like a free electron. He buzzed from the front of the grocery cart, to my leg, to the shelves. The wait at the bakery nearly killed the poor kid.

When the bouncy house showed up, his energy went through the roof. I half expected him to vibrate through the walls of the house, anticipating the fun he was going to have.

And then it began. His friends showed up. They bounced and bounced and bounced. And I kicked everyone out and made them eat some lunch.

As they were finishing up eating, the fire truck arrived. The look on Little Monster's face was priceless. He was a little big confused. And when they began to back the truck into our driveway, we had to restrain him from running into the truck barefoot.

He was so excited to 'drive' the truck and push buttons! All in all the party was a success. I think it was mostly because I didn't try to plan much. We made the kids stop jumping to eat, and let them do whatever the rest of the time. They even had a 'fire' in the playhouse while the truck was here!

A Day for Praise!

2009-10-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Some days we are tested more than others. Will we praise the Lord when things aren't going as planned? I had one of those days last week. The plan was to go to the pumpkin patch with a friend. Apparently, someone else had other plans.

When we left late, I wasn't worried about it. For once in my life, I wasn't anxious about being late. Praise the Lord!

We picked up my friend, got everything in the car, and headed to a local coffee joint to get caffeinated before dragging three children under three to the pumpkin patch, a mere two days after one of the biggest rain storms we've had in decades! Praise the Lord! The fire season is over.

I had forgotten the address and directions that had been posted for us by our group, but I had the iPhone, and the GPS (never need a map again!). I had been to the town the farm is in a billion times (more like three or four). We were running late, but it wasn't like it was a ten minute activity.

I typed in the farms' name in my GPS and it found an address! the first time! That rarely happens! Praise the Lord the thing finally did what we bought it to do!

So off we went, heading to the farm. We turned onto the road that was supposed to head into the farm. We turned left onto the last road! After thirty minutes of whining from the back seat about when we were going to get to the "punkin patch!" from the three year old, we were within a mile of the farm.

But as we turned the last turn, we were greeted with a golf-course and a gated housing community. Somehow I doubted that this very public, farm could be found in the middle of a gated, very private community. So, no big deal. We turned around, parked and I looked up the address on my iPhone. Turns out, the address was wrong. Again, no big deal, I plugged the address into my GPS, and it took us to the other side of the town. We headed through, and ended up in the middle of a farming community. A vineyard on one side, an orchard on the other. Private homes everywhere. But no halloween-y pumpkin patch farm. We were forty minutes away from home, who knows where the pumpkin patch was, but it was almost 1:00. The kids needed to eat. So, we decided to fore go the pumpkin patch. We ended up at a McDonalds (not the one I had planned on going to after the pumpkin patch) where the boys could get out and run around the play castle for a while. J, who is 1, spent the entire time splashing in a rain puddle. and Little Monster pooped in his pants. We decided it was "mommy time" and headed to Panera to get some good lunch, that wasn't fried in oil and processed beyond recognition.

Praise the Lord. For good conversations, a lesson in humility for both me and my son, a lesson in my dependence upon technology and getting to spend some time in the sun. And for good food. even if we didn't make it to the pumpkin patch.

Don't be confused if...

2009-10-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

... you happen to see us, and my child bounces around yelling "Piss off." he's not really saying piss off. He's saying "BLAST OFF." We don't let our kids watch British shows where people have potty mouths. Or if when he says he's going to get "funky", he forgets about the "n" in the word. At least don't be as confused as I was, and think maybe it was time to lay the smack down in the house about what we're watching on TV, and what we're saying. And don't be surprised when Not the Momma laughs uncontrollably when he realizes why I'm upset and staring at Little Monster as he's repeatedly "blasting off" all over the living room.

...you drive through our neighborhood, which has completely lost power due to winds and rain, and you see my husband sitting on the couch enjoying television on his giant flat panel. Because, friends, that's what generators are for. And extension cords.

...you see me with a giant size 3 diaper wearing baby instead of the teeny (giant) newborn I just brought home. Who knew that babies grew up? Who knew they grew up this fast?

...that tiny newborn actually sits strapped into the grocery cart.

...you see Little Monster pedaling on his bicycle. It happens.

...you call me and you hear lots of yelling. It happens a lot. Especially because the phone only rings when Little Monster has managed to smear poop all over the bathroom, Butterball is crying because she's hungry and wet, and I'm trying to get ready to leave.

...I forget something. Children (even non-nursing ones) have a way of sucking the brain cells right out of their mother's heads until they can barely walk, let alone remember anything.

...you see me online a bit more. I got a new laptop and it is fancy! (That is the major reason for the lack of posting -- I had to get it all up and running!)

...I begin to whine about the cold again. I'm getting ready to go somewhere that is actually cold, instead of pretending to be cold like the area where we live now.

...the sun shines in Coastal Central California. It happens. It also rains here. And we get nasty winds. Once every "hundred years!" Even if it's happened three times in the two we've been here.

...This coming Saturday it rains, even though the weather is supposed to be nice. The only time the weather people are right around here is when they forecast a temperature range of 45 to 65, partly cloudy and a chance of fog, or if the storm of the century is coming.

A typical day in my life.

2009-10-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days that I will look back on and laugh about. Eventually. Eventually, but probably not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. But probably sometime pretty soon.

It started out a bit too early. Right about 3:00 AM. And again at 4:30 AM. And 5:15AM. 6:30AM.

Then, Butterball decided to exercise her lungs. And the capillaries in her face. For three hours. Without stopping. After I gained about sixty new grey hairs, and sympathized with every mother whose ever thought about doing horrible things to their four month old, I put on some crazy music, and she finally went to sleep. Ten minutes before we needed to leave for the afternoon play date. A play date that I definitely needed. Little Monster needed it too. In fact, I'm not sure who needed it more.

The last time we went over to this friend's house, Little Monster had a diaper explosion of catastrophic proportions. There was poop everywhere. Thinking of that, I packed an extra pair of socks, underwear and pants. I didn't want to have a problem. I also packed an extra outfit for Butterball.

We got to my friend's house and the kids began running around the backyard, playing and having a good time. It was hilarious to watch them all play together, using such big imaginations. And then it happened. One of the children came into the house and announced:

Little Monster's pants are down!!

What? His pants are down?

We looked outside to find Little Monster standing in the middle of the yard, jeans and underoo's around his ankles. There was a streak on his leg, and poop on his shoe. He must have had an accident and then tried to clean it up for himself.

I walked over to begin getting him cleaned up.

Did you have an accident?

Yes. Me doop in mine pants.

I see that. As I began pulling off his pants, careful not to disturb any remnants within his pants, I noticed that there were no remnants in his pants. Not even a skid mark was left in his underwear. WHERE WAS THE POOP?

Little Monster -- where is your poop?

In da back ward.

You pooped IN THE BACK YARD?

I began cleaning up Little Monster's shoe while he went inside the house. Without pants or underwear. My friends began searching the backyard for the poop. And that's when my friend's husband came home. To a bottom-less Little Monster. What a nice surprise for him, huh?

After hosing down the backyard, his shoes, and getting him dressed in his 'backup' clothing my friend offered me a cup of coffee. I took it, and considered asking for something to "Irish" it up.

Luckily, things settled down. Butterball enjoyed playing with other mommies, the kids threw a wedding in the backyard, complete with veil and flower girl. And there were no temper tantrums when we had to leave. I felt refreshed, glad for the time with good friends who wouldn't judge me for having a three year old who would poop in someone else's backyard.

So, I began making dinner. As I got elbow deep in chopping veggies, Butterball started whining and crying in her chair. And Little Monster, sitting on the toilet was whining for a butt wipe. Just in time for Not the Momma to come home and find out what my life is like every day.

Every. Day.

blatant, obnoxious begging

2009-10-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

Click and vote. Or I will hurt you.

Just kidding about the whole hurting you thing. Sort of.

4 months

2009-10-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

Our little Butterball turned 4 months old last week.

FOUR MONTHS OLD?

I go back and forth between "Has it already been four months?" and "How has it only been four months?" It feels like she's been part of our family forever.

Obviously, Little Monster likes her, so we plan on keeping her. And Not the Momma -- he's pretty smitten, so smitten, it's kind of gross. But don't tell him I told you. It would damage his macho pride.

She's only been here four months, but you wouldn't know it to look at her, she can hardly believe it herself!

She's trying to sit up. She is this --> <-- close to doing it all by herself for more than a few seconds.She's already stealing my soda.
Look at the cupie Hair-do. Or is it a mohawk? She certainly can't be making rebellious statements already can she?

I guess she can. She was done having her picture taken. Poor kid.

She's doomed to a life of cameras in her face and photos on the internet. Just more fodder for her therapist later.

Sometimes it takes a while...

2009-10-04T07:52:00.000-07:00

... for the electricity to connect to that little light bulb that goes off. You know, the one that goes on when you finally come to a realization? Mine came on today.

Little Monster is pretty good, and in order to keep it that way, often I'll ~~bribe~~ reward him for his behavior. A common conversation in our house is something like this:

Mommy, I get tookie?

Yes, Little Monster, if you're good.

I AM good!

He is. Every child is good. Some children are just naughty. I don't like using the word "bad" because it is a personality description rather than a behavior description. So, I changed the way I phrase my ~~bribes~~rewards to include the word behave. Then, we started having the following conversation:

Mommy, I get tookie?

Yes, Little Monster, if you behave.

Me AM have! See, it in mine pocket! (Then he pulls something pretend out of his pocket and shows me, waving whatever it is around like a card or a piece of paper.)

(Isn't that hilarious! His HAVE, pronounced with a long A, like CAVE is in his pocket!) It only took me two weeks, to realize he thought I was saying "be Have" not behave.

So then I got to wondering how else can I phrase my ~~bribe~~reward statements? I started asking him to "listen and follow directions." But that doesn't work well either. When he forgets, he reminds me that he wants to listen. So he wants to, but he forgets, or can't. What do you do with a kid like this? I mean, besides smother him with kisses and hugs and pretend to be "ZURG" when he insists that he is NOT, in fact, Little Monster but Buzz Lightyear instead.

Adventures in Milk

2009-10-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

Not the Momma is a wonderful Daddy. He helped me get everything into the car for our trip to the potty train. He even remembered to pack the double stroller, knowing I have a friend with a little one who is not quite walking yet. Because he is such a wonderful father, I didn't think anything of it when Little Monster was sitting in Schmitty, with his seat moved to the back, with a sippy cup of milk.

NTM, thank you for giving Little Monster some milk. That was a huge help.

I didn't give him any milk, Mary. I thought you did.

I didn't give him the milk. I thought you gave him the milk.

We simultaneously shuddered and I yelled for Little Monster to put the cup down. The cup that Little Monster had been drinking out of for at least ten minutes.

How OLD is this milk NTM?

I don't know. I. Don't. Know.

(I tilted the cup to check for its consistency) Well, at least it's all still liquid. No chunks.

Needless to say that Little Monster got some fresh milk after that. He did not suffer any intestinal distress so the milk must have been fairly fresh. Please tell me that we're not the only family that often finds sippy cups in odd places (and prayerfully not being ingested) that sometimes contain a substance that is more cheese than milk?

The Potty Train

2009-10-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

The trip was postponed, but it did happen. Little Monster got to ride the POTTY TRAIN!!! Really, it was a train up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was pretty.

I think he was so overwhelmed he didn't know how to react.

He is ready to give his ticket to the "maaaaan."

I have no idea what this is all about, other than I told him to smile. This is what I got.

Then the train whistle blew. It was a bit loud, and he was surprised by it.

In the end, I think he had a good time.

Oh, Brother.

2009-09-30T11:02:00.001-07:00

Little Monster has positively got to be the best big brother in the entire world.

This morning I tried to catch up on some missed sleep. It didn't work entirely too well, but I don't miss the zzz's. I got to witness the sweetest thing ever.

Hi butterball. me wight here. Mommy, she waffing at me. Butterball. me hold yours hand. one two fwee four five. fwee four five turtles on yours jammas. tickle tickle, butterball. hee hee hee, you tickle me! ha ha.. You got mine shirt! ha ha!! (butterball giggles) Butterball waffing mommy! Butterball, you sweet. I wuv you. I wuv you too. Wook butterball. here yours wegs. you wook at yours body? at yours belly? ha ha. wook at yours turtles jammies. me here butterball. hi! hi! yours brudder wight here. You want pway wif baby toys? Me share wif you. Me got you. me got you. (gives her a hug) i wuv you too butterball.

For about thirty minutes, Little Monster, without prompting, played cooed and laughed with his sister. It was some of the best non-sleep I've ever gotten.

Make Me Laugh

2009-09-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Things Little Monster has done that have nearly brought me to tears:

Daddy "Go bug Mommy."

LM "No. I bug Daddy."

Mommy "Okay, it's time to say our prayers."

LM (loud breathing like Darth Vader) "Luke, I am your Father. Amen."

While eating out at a restaurant, Little Monster was misbehaving. Daddy told him to behave and stared him down. Little Monster's response was to open his eyes wide and stare back.

We told him we were going to visit our friends G & J last Thursday. He asked once per hour for the next four days if we were going to visit G & J.

Dad: Let's go to twore. Me want go to target. me get stickers, OOOOKAAAAAY?

LM: No daddy. go in my car.

Dad: okay let's go.

LM: NO WAY! door slam

LM (to mommy) mommy. Daddy and popcorn and movie and night-night and green bike. no bye-bye.

Sunday Sorrows.

2009-09-27T18:34:00.001-07:00

My son ate three pieces of pizza tonight. And a brownie. The child used to skip dinner every night.

My daughter is exhibiting signs of jealousy. She whines when her brother plays near her and she can't join in.

They grow up fast.

Music Mania

2009-09-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

Little Monster has all of a sudden taken to actually listening to what's on the radio in the car while we drive.
I didn't think it was such a big deal. I love it when we're listening to Derks Bently and the kid starts belting out "sideways! hey! hey!" or if we're listening to Christian music, it's fine for him to sing along.

The problem comes in when I listen to my Lithium station (Alternative rock from the 90s) or when Daddy listens to his rock station (Octane).

On regular radio they blurp out the bad words. On satellite radio, not so much. And although it is hilarious to hear a 2 year old sing the lyrics to the George Michael song "Faith," I was unaware that the Limp Bizkit version took an already X-rated song to a new level.

It isn't so funny when he starts singing along to the limp bizkit version. I am very grateful that to Little Monster, they were just 'sounds' as opposed to telling someone to be quiet in a very rude way. No matter what, I still love hearing that kid sing "brass monkey."

More Monster Talk

2009-09-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you're all going to get tired of these little anecdotes. But I think they're hilarious. I've started carrying a notebook around with me to record all of the silly things that he says. And let's face is. This is my blog, in essence, my memoirs. And these are the things that I want to remember.

Trying to get Butterball to talk:

NTM: Da Da

Me: Ma Ma

NTM: DA da da da da da da

Me: Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma

Little Monster: Little Monster, Little Monster, Little Monster, Little Monster, Little Monster.
(of course he was using his name, but still, it was hilarious.)

Monster Talk

2009-09-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Where is da mommy store?

I don't know. Why do you want to go to the mommy store. Do you need a new one?

Yes. Mine udder one is bwokeen.

On a Saturday Morning drive along the beach:

We stop and pway on wocks? Tweeeeeeeeeeeese Daddy! Me want wook at da fishies. Dey my FAAAAAAAAVOWIT!

Not the Momma and I were laughing and having a discussion in the front of the car.

Top Woud talking! SHHH!! Butterball sweeping!!

Weather Woes.

2009-09-23T04:13:00.000-07:00

I live in a land of eternal cool and fog. 60 to 65 degrees is great. Wonderful even. Especially between November and March. I so much prefer that to bitter cold that sucks the breath out of you. However, from June through August it's supposed to be HOT. I was fine with the temperature (for the most part) this summer, because I knew that in September and October, we'd be in for some good weather. And good weather we were promised. This week!

The forecast was for 85 degrees (even on the coast!) on Monday, and temps in the 90s for the rest of the week.

The actual temperatures have been lucky to get above 60. And the fog. There was no mention of fog in the forecast. This isn't any regular fog either. This is fog reminiscent of the "mist." I'm afraid to go out into the world for fear that some crazy military experiment bugs are going to eat me. You can barely see across the street.

The fact that the weather guessers changed their graphics to include temperatures that DARE rise above the 60s had me very optimistic. I went out and bought Tank tops. And skirts. And planned to paint my toenails by the pool all week. I got all of my chores done during the crappy weather this weekend so that I would be able to enjoy the weather with my kids. I am craving the smell of sweaty little boy mixed with Coppertone and sunned skin. I had hoped to get it this week. Instead, the air feels crisp. Cool, like autumn. Except how fair is it to have autumn when we haven't had a summer? I mean, other than that one perfect day. Autumn is supposed to come after you've been bombarded with so many hot days in a row that you can't possibly take one more. Then, you wake up and the humidity has gone away, the temperatures are cooler, and the air smells of fall -- freshly mowed grass along with fallen leaves and moist soil.

I feel kind of silly because I was so very excited about the hot summer weather that we were supposed to get. I was so ready for it, that now that it isn't coming, I feel let down. Depressed. Almost to the point of tears when I think about it. If that isn't a sign of crazy, I don't know what is.

Who are you?

2009-09-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

Little Monster is a great big brother. The other day we were out and about, driving all over the county. The sun was shining into the back of the truck, right into Butterball's eyes. I turned around and found Little Monster adjusting the shade. I told him to stop playing with her seat:

Little Monster, stop messing with your sister's seat. You're going to wake her up.

No, mommy. I just fixing it. Da sun was in Butterballs eyes. She not happy.

Oh, okay. Little Monster, You're such a good big brother.

No, I dest batman.

Reverse PC translator.

2009-09-21T20:08:00.001-07:00

"One person would take the project and run with it and the others would assist and provide input when required. I do believe that there could have been a better way to pick the final briefer other than the junior person; however they emphasized their managerial skills by empowering me with the brief. " -- NTM

Can anyone else translate this? I mean, when I do, it looks like someone typed out the paragraph below into some Dilbert Political Correct-ness translator.

"They were all jerks. They made me do all of the work, and then yelled at me when it wasn't what they expected, even though they didn't tell me what they wanted in the first place. Then, when it's finished, they'll either take the credit for my good work, or pass the buck on to me when it sucks. It was especially crappy of them to make me not only do the work, but present it. But then again, they outrank me and life's a B****. Until you're a Commander, then you can tell some unlucky Lieutenant do all of the s***work."

Disclaimer: The paragraph above is in no way what NTM actually thinks about the people he worked with. That was MY translation of the paragraph he wrote for a paper. He never once complained about anything about this particular class or this group. And trust me, if they actually had been jerks, he would have.

Sleep is a wonderful thing...

2009-09-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's bout of "WILL YOU PLEASE INHALE BETWEEN SENTENCES BECAUSE IT WILL GIVE ME 1/2 SECOND OF SILENCE" verbal dysentery by the Little Monster, we headed over the hill to where summer lives so that he could play with a friend.

Play he did. For four hours, that child and his friend ran. And ran. And ran. And wore capes. And yelled "da DAH!" while popping out from behind corners. They rolled cars on the ground and threw balls. They completely and totally trashed his little friend's room. I felt bad because we were there to bring meals to MY friend who recently had a baby. We did, but I feel like we made some more work for her. She said the hours of playtime were worth the clean-up. I hope she wasn't lying. (And I know she's reading!)

As for me, it was definitely worth it! I got out of the house, spent some time with friends, and Little Monster had a blast. It would have been worth it before we got home. Before Little Monster went to bed at 7PM without complaining. And slept for thirteen hours straight. Without sneaking into our room and making a bed on the floor with our bed pillows. I was surprised when I got up at 2AM and he wasn't up. And 3:30AM. And 5:00AM. And 6:30AM. And 7:30AM. And 8:00 AM when he finally came into our room, after 13 hours of sleep, I looked at my precious little cranky Butterball, who hadn't let me sleep much at all and wondered why she couldn't sleep like that.

Oh yeah, she's just a baby.

GOOOOD Morning!

2009-09-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

Are you aware that we have not set an alarm clock and actually been able to sleep in until it went off for over a year? Almost two? Little Monster gets up with -- and often before the sun. Every. Morning. Even on Saturday.

In the early days of the whole "no alarm clock needed" phase of our life, we'd wake to screams and cries. That morphed into "MOMMY!!! DADDY!!!!! OUT!!! WET ME OOOWWWWWT!!! Most recently we wake up because of doors slamming followed by demands to be taken to the bathroom.

This morning was no different, except that we had the rare occasion that we didn't have to BE anywhere bright and early. No one was coming over, chores were going to be skipped, and Daddy didn't need to be to work before the sun thought about getting up. So, we told Little Monster to just go to the bathroom. Daddy coached him into moving his stool and putting the seat on. I reminded him to "hold it down" so that the littlest fire hose didn't spray the entire bathroom. And we tried to go back to sleep.

Emphasis on "tried."

After Little Monster used the bathroom, it started. It was as if someone turned a switch on the back of his head and suddenly every little thought that came into that little boy's head came spilling out of his mouth. My mom used to tell me I had verbal dysentery. Who knew it was genetic?

Mom, the sun up? Yes, mom. The sun up. Get up mom. Mom, I tell you a story. A story, mom. A story about a Mommy. There was a mommy who went in a cave and she was in the water. It dark. And then Mommy fall down in water. And yell at daddy get hers swimsuit. And turn the wights on. And then Mommy fall down in da water. And da owange joker come and Daddy wide on owange motorcylce. And joker push mommy down in dark water in da cave. And it dark. And mommy well about hers swimming suit. The end. You like that story mommy? I tell you story about a cave and water and swimming. Daddy owange joker and he push you down and wide on owang motorcycle.

It went on like that for a while. So we got up and got dressed. And we went to drop Daddy off at work. I thought surely, the narrative would stop.

Mommy, the owange motorcycle. Look! I see joker house! It wight dere! Mommy, wacecars need headlights? No. da track is lit. ha ha ha dat funny! Mommy. I need mine skateboard. I pway wif it. wight now. NO, it is in a wittle bit. WE go to fwiends house aday mommy? Is it amorrow? YAY! it amorrow! We go to fwiends house! Mommy - this a timer. It beeping. See? Now it not beeping. Now it is. Now it not. Now it is. Now it not. What is dis mommy? What is dis den? Mommy, i need sit in yours lap. Mom, I want this open, me get this in there. Mom, thank you. Dat in da wiving woom. I want other one. Mom, this mine stuff. I want my softball me wooking for. Mom, a me hold this mom..... Mom what is this? It say "boop boop boop boop" (turns on game) What is this mom? See it boop boop boop. (shuts off game) What is this mom?

I was warned a long time ago by my mother that "someday I would have a child JUST LIKE ME." If this is what I was like, maybe I'll be lucky enough to have two.

I'm FAMOUS on the INTERNETS!!

2009-09-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe not...

My neighborhood is small... and the photographer who took our most recent family photos is amazing. And people are now recognizing me from the photos she's taken.

This must be what Hugh Jackman feels like when he goes to ComiCon. (Did you know he gets naked in Wolverine: origins? Not bad naked, nice naked.)

Fun times, fun times.

Lingustic proof of aging.

2009-09-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

Kids grow up too fast. We all know it is going to happen, but when it happens to your kids, you never cease to be amazed.

I don't know when it happened, but my Little Monster is growing up, and it is evident in the way he speaks these days. No longer does he say "boose" when he's asking for apple juice. He asks for apple juice. He corrects us and says his sister's name correctly when we call her "butterball," which is what her name sounded like after she was born. It's getting easier and easier to distinguish "Turkey" and "Cookie" and "poopie" which all came out sounding like "too-kee" not that long ago.

I just hope that he continues to use the word "whackin'" instead of napkin for a little longer. And it's totally fine with me that he messes up his pronouns and says "me" when I is what he wants to say -- even when we correct him. I hope he'll continue to yell at the sun for shining and the wind for blowing as if the world bows to his whim.

I'm not quite ready for him to be a big kid quite yet, so I'll hold on to these moments -- as long as I can...

My schpeal

2009-09-15T12:47:00.001-07:00

I have been a member of PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) for a while, now. Today, I spoke, and I'm putting what I talked about up here too. Of course what I have written down is not exactly what I said, but you'll get the gist of it. And you won't have to watch me sweat and shake like the poor ladies did this morning. To God be the Glory for this message. I hope that those who need to hear it hear it.

This tour has been extremely pivotal in my faith and my journey with Christ. Even still, since I have been here, I have found myself questioning my faith and my salvation more than I ever have. I started asking myself “Am I really going to Heaven,? I’m not good enough to get in. I haven’t done enough. The answer is No, I alone am not good enough, but through FAITH, I am saved by GRACE. Nothing I do will ever be enough to earn entrance into heaven. And even though I KNOW that, I still heard these nagging voices questioning myself, my faith and my role as a woman, wife, mother and friend. I wondered where are those nagging thoughts coming from? Why am I questioning the things that I know so well? I went to the PWOC International conference last year and attended a class led by Dawn Kennedy, who I believe is the Prayer Chair for PWOCI this year. That class really changed the way I think about those nagging thoughts. It helped me to understand a bit more about what is really going on inside my mind.

She spoke of the voices of God, Ourselves and Satan, what they sound like and how we can react to them. The message she gave me is one I’m going to share parts of with you. I don’t have time to cover an hour class in five minutes, but I can give you some points that helped me. I give all credit to the Lord for placing me in that class last year, because the message I am about to share with you is one that has saved my sanity many times over the past few months (and especially the past few days as I’ve been preparing this) and I know it will come in handy in the future too.

We all have an internal monologue… the voices that are running around inside your head narrating your day, etc. Dawn explained that this internal monologue isn’t only one voice. It isn’t just our own heart. There are three. God, ourselves, and the enemy. All three get jumbled around in our heads as we go about our day, mixing and mingling until we often don’t know whose voice is whose and which one we are supposed to be listening to. Was that the Father leading me in a certain direction, or was that Satan pulling me away from where I’m supposed to go? Or really, is it just the desires of my own sinful heart? Without a little armor, it could be really hard to tell the difference.

First, we know the lord speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, (you will find this story in John Chapter 14) Jesus explained to his disciples of the things that were to come. They did not want to think about Jesus leaving them. They were afraid that without Jesus being around, they’d have no leader, no guide to help them. Jesus, always the loving reassurer, said to them in

John 14:16-17, “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another
Helper, that He may abide with you forever – the spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for
He dwells with you and will be in you….(NKJV)

As long as we have faith, we have the gift of the Holy spirit to guide us and help us along the way. It’s easy to believe in God and His loving, gracious mercy. But sometimes, we have trouble believing the influence that the enemy has on our lives. Biblically, we know that the enemy is out there, messing with us.

1 Peter 5:8-11 says:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith,
knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the
world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by
Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen,
and settle [you]. To Him [be] the glory and the dominion forever and ever.
Amen.(NKJV)

How do we tell God’s voice of the Holy Spirit from Satan’s voice or our own?

1. If we know what God sounds like, we can pick his voice out of the mish-mosh the three voices can create in our mind. We know that god’s Holy spirit speaks to us, but we also need to remember that God speaks the truth out of LOVE. Going back to John, Jesus promised his disciples, and He promises us, that we are not alone.

John 14:26-27.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will
send in MY name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all
things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not
as the world gives I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it
be afraid.”(NKJV)

2. We also know that when God speaks to us, He will not contradict scripture as he says in:

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every
good work.(NKJV)

3. Other ways we can know it is God speaking is because He will not contradict His character, His hand will draw us to Jesus, and is gentle. Conviction is combined with truth, holiness love and Grace. We can see an example of this in:

Hosea 11:4
I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love and I was
to them as those who take the Yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed
them.(NKJV)

He asks us to do many things, things we often don’t want to do, and convicts us when we resist, but it is always with love that He leads us, always knowing when we need to have that yoke removed, always knowing when we hunger and thirst. He draws US with GENTLE bands of LOVE. He removes the Yoke from our necks, takes away our worries and feeds us, because His goal is to strengthen, encourage, comfort, restore hope and bring LIFE.

So – we know God speaks out of LOVE using the spirit, does not contradict scripture or his Character, and seeks to bring us TO Jesus, not away. He convicts us with kindness. We can use this knowledge to test those voices and help tell us if that little thought or whisper in our mind is God speaking to us and convicting us, or someone else.

Now we go to Satan’s influence. We know He is messing with us, because we are told so 1 Peter, the devil prowls like a ROARING lion. We are to be able to hear him coming and seek shelter in our Lord.

Some things to remember about the enemy:

The enemy speaks truth mixed with error. He knows God, and He knows scripture. He tested Jesus in the desert and tried to use it against Him – if he was going to try to use scripture against Jesus, don’t you think he would try against us, people who are much more easily swayed? The enemy’s thoughts and words are centered in condemnation, predicting that dark future with no hope, accusing God, leading you away from Him.

Remember that the Enemy is sneaky about entering our thoughts. He doesn’t just crawl in and say, “Hi there! Satan here, I’m going to be playing with your emotions today.” He doesn’t show up to us as the cartoony devil on our shoulder either. If he did, we’d be able to see him coming too easily and fend him off. He slithers into our minds and tricks us into thinking that what HE is saying is OUR own thoughts. He replays the words that others say that hurt us over and over again, breaking us down. But one of the most effective things he does is that HE SPEAKS IN FIRST PERSON!!!!

Let me tell you how he speaks in first person. The past few weeks, I’ve been preparing for this devotion. Life got crazy busy. My quiet household turned into chaos, it is messy. I’ve not had time to do much other than ‘exist.’ My kids, who normally sleep pretty well have been getting up at night several times. Everything has been a bit off. The Lord knows us, but so does the Enemy. He knows I am weak when I haven’t had enough sleep and when I feel like my house is in shambles. Because my kids have been up nights, I’ve been sleep deprived and weak, allowing him to crawl in and say things like
“I’m not good enough to get up in front of these women.”

“Everyone else there knows more than you.”

“You know you’re going to quote an inappropriate scripture, or WORSE mis-quote one and distort the Word.”

“No one in the audience needs this message, they’re all CHRISTIAN, and don’t have to worry about these things. The enemy only attacks me.”

“Who do I think I am trying to teach people when I have so much left to learn?”

The devil tricked me into thinking I was hearing myself saying these things. I finally realized YESTERDAY after praying with a group of friends about my devotion, that here I am, about to tell all of these women how to fend off the Enemy! Of COURSE he’s going to play on my insecurities to try and keep me from delivering the message that the Lord has been placing on my heart.

These voices that are without hope, voices of fear and worry – they are not of God. They are not of you -- WE as humans have the desire to live and continue on! They are Satan trying to take your mind off of all of the good we have, trying to steer you into a downward “no-hope” spiral, draining our wells of the living water that is the Holy spirit.

Voices that say “I’m not good enough, Nobody likes me, NO one cares.” Those are the voice of the enemy.

What can you do about it? The best thing you can do is pray. Prayer is our first and best defense. We often try to do things ourselves, I think especially as “independent women” who were raised in the world to believe that we don’t need anyone’s help. But we’re told that if we ask, we shall receive:

Mark 11:24

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have
received it, and it will be yours.(NIV)

And I’ve found that when we pray against the enemy’s attacks, those prayers are often answered quickly.

Satan is real. He is here to mess with us, and trying to keep us from doing the Lord’s work. He tries to get us to confuse our thoughts with his words, he masquerades as the Lord in our mind, making us question ourselves, our faith and our motives. He replays other’s hurtful words in our minds, hoping we’ll focus on him and his goals, rather than those of the Lord.

Don’t let him mess with you. Recognize that prayer –even a small quick cry of help! – can send Satan on his way. Yes, the Lord will allow Satan to mess with us, but he won’t give us more than we can handle. Long before we’re tired he’ll remove the yoke from our necks and stop to feed us. Draw close to the Lord, and you’ll have no reason to fear. Remember what Jesus told his disciples:

Peace I leave with you,. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid.

Yes, the enemy prowls around us, roaring like a Lion in our heads, telling us lies, but remember, the Lord is with us too.

In his kindness God called you to his eternal glory by means of Jesus
Christ. After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and
strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.