Blogging Life

One of the reasons I wanted to start blogging again is that I've saved funny little tidbits about my kids and my life in various places and I wanted to put them all in one place. The weird and funny things kids do when they're little are like these little bits of magic. When I read other people's blogs and Facebook feeds and things, I can fall in love with children I've never met (not in a weird way). So I have this idea that if I could go to one place and gather up those little bits of magic about my own kids, it might give me enough warm fuzzy feeling to make it through their teen years. LOL

So, here we go. On this day in 2008, I made some notes about Taryn on my blog. She was two years old at the time.

After church Sunday we were invited out to lunch with two older couples. Both the guys are retired military. I know one of them was Navy, maybe they both were. They took us to Red Lobster, where Taryn took many trips to the front of the store to see the "monsters." She was both fascinated and frightened by them. I think both phones got left in the car when we got home from lunch. I can't find them anywhere and that's the last place I remember seeing them.

Taryn's song of the weekend was the alphabet song: A B C D E G H I lala LMNOP two R S Y Z now I know ABCs next time sing me WXYZ now I know ABCs next time lala sing me

In May of 2011, the girls started a hair cutting binge. The first time, they just cut a chunk out of Caelie's hair that was easily hidden by wearing a hair bow. I hid all the scissors I could find, but that didn't slow them down.

By Caelie's birthday at the end of June, they had hacked away a huge bit in the middle of the back that resulted in a bobbed look, and then just some random cutting that made some weird hack job as pictured. I was going to let her just live with it until it grew out.

Then in August they went at it again and cut so much in such random places and all the way to the scalp...I can't even explain it, it was worse than the above and I told them we were going to have to shave it down and start over. This was when I learned how involved Taryn had been because she had a complete meltdown, she told me "you can't do that! Caelie is a GIRL!" I explained that a haircut wouldn't change that, and I was really taken aback because I didn't think I had reinforced traditional gender roles that hard.

Anyway. The reason I'm sharing this story today is that this is the day in 2011, that I shared on Facebook: This morning Caelie ran into the bathroom to look in the mirror and she said, "I still have boy hair, but I have dirlo blue eyes!" (dirlo is the closest approximation to the way she says "girl".

On This Day...

On this day in 2008, I started my second blog which was about our life in the Air Force, some of that post is kind of funny, so here's a blast from my past:

Being surrounded by the near constant sounds of traffic, I am daily reminded that my life is not anywhere near being in the fast lane. Everyone keeps asking me for updates and there really isn't anything to tell. But yet I seem to be busy all day long. No one wants to know how many diapers I change each day or how long it takes to get all three of us girls dressed for the day. Nobody cares how many loads of clean laundry are waiting in the hallway for me to fold and put away. I could keep going but I think you get the picture and I don't want to sound like a big whiner, because honestly I'm happy with my slow paced life. The point is just that it doesn't leave a lot to talk about.

Taryn is hilarious, but most of the time her antics cannot be adequately conveyed in print or even in verbal conversation. She is getting pretty good at singing her favorite songs. She mostly has the tunes down but the lyrics evade her. Usually she'll fill in jibberish between words she knows. For example: "Tweetle, tweetle, (jibberish) STAR! How I (jibberish) you are. (jibberish jibberish) so high. (jibberish jibberish) in SKY" It's adorable and hilarious, but more so if you could hear it. When Caelie gets upset, Taryn sings to her. Caelie hasn't responded to the singing, but when she's calm she has started to react to Taryn by smiling and cooing. That is, if Taryn is actually a respectful distance away and not trying to hug or kiss her.

Today I had to get up at Insane AM and take Tim to work so I could have the car. The good news is Burger King also opens at Insane AM, and I do love me some fast food breakfast but am rarely out and about during breakfast hours. Tim isn't actually at regular work this week or next week. He has FTAC. I'm not sure what that stands for but what it means is: sit around and listen to briefings about stuff that is either common sense or he already knows anyway. It's supposed to help airmen transition from tech school to regular duty. So the reason I needed the car was that they finally decided we could have the rest of our stuff that didn't fit on the first moving truck, and all trucks like that have to be searched at the gate and escorted by someone.

They were supposed to arrive between 9:00am and 9:30am. About 10:30 I had heard nothing from them. Then Tim called to say he was on lunch break early because someone who was supposed to give a briefing didn't show up or couldn't make it or something. So we decided I should pick him up for lunch and then drop him off whenever the movers called even if it wasn't time for him to go back. You never know how long you'll be waiting at the gate. Well you know how when you put your life on hold to wait on something, as soon as you stop holding, the something happens? I got Tim and we pull in the driveway and get the kids out of the car and walk through the front door and the phone rings. Since Tim had two hours until he had to be back we took the risk and he went with me to the gate to escort the truck. I think we waited like 20 minutes, so it worked out.

So now we officially have all of our stuff. Except the leaf to our dining room table and the legs to the desk in the office. But those got left in the house so Papa is going to hold on to the leaf for now and mail the legs hopefully. So far it looks like we only lost a couple empty rubbermaid containers. But we gained a fairly nice pair of sawhorses, a really old beat up folding camp table and one of those doobises that you put at the foot of your bed and hang a fancy quilt over. It seems wrong to keep or donate that stuff, but what else are we supposed to do with it?

Somewhere out there, someone's quilt is lying in a heap on the floor.