Blah Blog

So, I may be bad at this public blog thing.
When one is writing for writing sake... privately, how often one checks in doesn't really matter.

It may not here either, though I do have a certain amount of guilt over looking at this blog day after day and not having much desire to write in it. That is not abnormal. I seem to have a certain amount of guilt about most things. Guilt is a wasted emotion. But I am good at it.

It is Labor Day today and I find it so ironic that most people have this day off from work. So, I am sitting here with about 4 projects surrounding me, ignoring them all with the internet. I have become very good at ignoring things with the internet.

I have a serious case of writer's block. That happens when I am tired, or busy, or uninspired... (I have just about covered most of my time there...) When this happens, I tend to ramble. I tend to have nothing of interest to say. I know what I need to do and yet I haven't gotten there. Seems like there has got to be a medication for that.

Let's not misunderstand here. I have a great life, a beautiful family, a good job... I am blessed. But, I know what is missing and I spend lots of time trying to get away from that. It would be so easy for me to just fix what is broken. But, I am not doing that. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why. I am so glad that our God is a patient, understanding Daddy... because I am feeling a little like the prodigal son (er.. um... daughter?) lately.

Well, I need to work on these projects, I need to spend some time with God, and I need to get organized, because tomorrow we are right back to work.

Your prayers are always appreciated <3

Back in the swing of things...

It's been a long past few weeks...
School has started up once again and left me with precious little free time. I lack the motivation to do anything in those few rare moments a day :(

Today was day three with students and I find myself missing something... I felt during pre-planning that there was a certain heaviness hanging over our campus. I can't explain it or describe it well, it was just something I felt. Well, that heaviness has continued on into the school year. It has only been a few days. yet I definitely miss last year's vibe.
So far, my classes are quiet and respectful, but it's hard to know if "anyone is home" or they are staring with apathy and indifference as I go on and on about the finer points of whatever we're discussing that day. I am just not sure how all this will turn out. I wish with all my heart that I could be a "home maker" or stay at home mom like so many of my friends. I struggle with this a lot especially after a nice long summer vacation.

Life is what it is though and I am content to have the next best arrangement.

I prayed a lot this summer for God to move in my life and change some things about me. Change is difficult.
God's best work is done in difficult places. I am a little concerned that *this* will be one of those years...

Coming undone

I went online earlier to follow a link from a friend to a blog where I could read about frugality and some inventive meal planning ideas. Little did I know that 4 hours later, long after all the inhabitants of my house were long asleep, I would still be reading that blog... hungrily.

From there, I spent about 45 minutes reading about international adoption. My heart breaks for orphans. It always has... and for as long as I can remember, I have been "curious" about adoption. But, (as I say a lot... ) life happens at warp speed. One day you stumble upon a blog written by a family with unbelievable, unparalleled faith, and the stories of how the Lord has used them to literally save lives.... and how, in the process, they have been saved by those precious children... and you say... "wait. a. minute... I missed the boat."

I am not sleeping tonight because I cannot shake the feeling that I have missed something so important. A lesson, an experience, a blessing... an opportunity ... I am not sure what, but I missed it. We missed it.

I am not sleeping tonight because there are so many children in the world going to sleep without a Mama or a Daddy to pray with them, hug them, kiss them, or love on them. It breaks my heart. In the same vain... there are so many women and men going to bed tonight having never known the unconditional love of a little life they created (or fostered). These people have never known what it is like to sleep with their arm slung into a bassinet beside their bed, hand on their brand new baby... just to feel the soft rise and fall of her breathing. They have never smelled an infant's breath and known there was something supernatural in its scent.

But they want to... And it's not fair.
I stumbled a little off course from where I intended to go with this post... but, I get weepy when I think about this all and the tears made me lose my focus.. LOL

My Baby Belle turned 4 today. Her sister, Kitty, did her very best to make sure it would be a special day for her. I love them passionately. I cannot imagine a life without them.

But for the unfathomable Grace of God... I would be one of those lonely "would be" Mamas... I am blessed beyond measure.
But, while I was reading those blog entries, I was thinking about all the children who ultimately will never end up in a loving home with a Mama and Daddy and brothers and sisters. Those kids who are at some point deemed "un-wanted" and stuck in the foster care system at best... turned out on the streets at worst...
And for those children... I came undone tonight.

I will never fully understand the magnitude of God's unfailing love. I am so guilty of taking advantage of that.

Though Rob and I have both talked about adoption on and off in our married lives, it was never an idea we seriously considered.
I cannot speak for him.... but, even in the wake of our most recent decision that we were completely whole as a family... I am going to be in prayer about this topic. I don't know what it all means... I just know it broke my heart and a broken heart is a good place for God to begin to work.

Feeling Artsy

Yup. We were... So we backed up and headed to the Clay House to express ourselves... via interpretive ceramic design...
Yea. Baby Belle and Kitty walked in the place not quite knowing what to think. But, it didn't take them long to pic the things they wanted to create. The hardest decision by far was deciding which colors to use....






The finished products should be back in a week or so. The girls can hardly wait!!!

Quietly sleeping...

That is what my husband is doing beside me as I type this. We have made it past the normal cacophony produced when he first falls asleep. The tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable, the funny sounds that breathing makes as we go from waking to sleep... and now, he is now simply laying there, breathing softly.. and I can feel that breath on my arm.

I expect he will stir slightly any minute in the light of the computer screen, make a muffled 'hfumph" and turn over... but for now... he is still facing this way... after nearly 11 years, two babies, and a lot of dealing with the "cacophony" of life... And I am blessed.

I am thankful to God for the direction my life has taken. I certainly don't show this daily... I am sometimes discontent day to day. I wonder what might be different about my life it I had made different choices... And, I think this is a common thing to wonder. Nevertheless, I am blessed in so many ways. And I am thankful.

Can't hide forever... and other rambles

Thursdays are a lot like Fridays lately... just a little bit less cool.
Since I have been off for several weeks now, I don't always keep track of the days. Don't judge me.
Sadly though, these lazy days of summer are about to come grinding to a screeching halt as back to school (thus back to work) time is right around the corner...
It ALWAYS happens this way. I just get good at being a stay at home mom and suddenly, that little carpet is yanked out from under my feet. I just get used to late, insomnia fueled, internet and movie filled nights... and rolling out of bed at about 10 am... and BAM!
It's over, just like that. I had better stop. I am starting to bum myself out.

I searched for me my blog on Google tonight... I wanted to see how easy it would be to find.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn't all that easy to find.
Right now... there is probably no one reading my musings...

(**ooohhh!! Except maybe my friend Katie who was mildly amused when she found out I had a blog and very politely promised to "check it out" if I gave her the link. I have not done that YET, but I'm sure I will... at some point. )

...But, I had a facebook stalker for a while... She found a way around my security settings and was spending HOURS pouring over all of my family pictures and personal info... (Okay, I don't know if it was actually hours... but, when she emailed me to say some very un-pleasent things, she did know FAR TOO many details that I thought were kinda protected behind the ((admittedly superficial)) facebook privacy settings...

**My sweet husband has asked me not to go into the details of the whole FB stalking thing... nor post the woman's name as he fears re-percussions... so she shall remain nameless... for a while.

So, it occurred to me that MAYBE, POSSIBLY having a public bog might not be the best idea I have ever had. So, listen... if you are reading this... just promise me now that this stuff just stays between you and me.. kay? :)

We are still pee-deep in night time potty training... (get it?? Pee Deep? uh huh. This is Me.... with Insomnia :) ) Baby Belle has had a few accidents, though I am finding that she has had those accidents on nights when her fluid intake not been cut off or dramatically reduced early enough in the evening. I will be so stinking glad when she makes it all night long with out my having to get up, shuffle across the house and walk her to the potty.

AKA.... months from now, I think. Boo. I am over it.

Waking up early in the morn to run errands and take the girls to have their hair trimmed. They both have beautiful long blond hair and I am against a big cut, though they have both asked for a little length removed I have mulled this over for quite a while and I am still on the fence. Shorter hair would make mornings soooo much easier... but I would miss their hair... UGH.

I have a good friend who will be coming with us as she intends have her daughter's hair cut too... She is trying to convince me that short hair would be "just adorable"... She will not be cutting her daughter's hair short... LOL

She's not too convincing.

I will let you know how this whole hair saga turns out...

Oh and, don't forget what I said about keeping all this good info between us <3

I knew I could count on you!!

Kelly is giving stuff away....

So my friend Kelly has started hosting giveaways on her blog :)
She contacted a cool company called HearthSong for this particular giveaway because they had so many awesome toys that encouraged imagination, creativity, and physical activity, a mothers dream!

She was able to review an item of her choice and she picked the tetherball set.

The company (www.HearthSong.com) is offering one of her lucky readers one item of their choice. How cool is that??

Head on over to her blog at: http://michiganmommyx4.blogspot.com/
to enter this fun give away :)

Oh... and tell her I sent you!!

Really? I was just trying to be nice...

So, tonight our church did their monthly community outreach. We went to a few different assisted living facilities and gave flowers to the residents. It was nice. The ones who answered their little "apartment doors" were friendly and glad to have someone bring them a little treat. It was all very "warm-fuzzy." When we left, there were lots of left over flowers so Kitty and Baby Belle asked if we could take them home and give them to our various neighbors.

I told them we could take 5.

When we got home, the girls and I walked around to our closest neighbors... except we had to go to about 10 different houses because most people didn't open their doors. The ones who did, looked at me like I was crazy as I explained why my precious three-year-old was trying to hand them a beautiful yellow gerber daisy. They took the flower. They (mostly) politely thanked us and promptly closed the door... probably before we could we spit out whatever they thought our real motivation was for being there.

We had NO other agenda... except to love on our neighbors.

Is the world really so deprived of love and kindness that even a simple flower from a three year old is looked at with suspicion? That makes me sad.

And here's something else you really liked...

I got to chat with an old friend tonight...

This isn't a totally un-heard-of thing... It's just been so long since I talked to him, it was fun. I called him because I was looking to put some new music on my iTunes and he has always been one of my go-to peeps for good music. He dropped everything he was doing and chatted and laughed with me for a few hours, even politely laughing at the silly "jokes" my sweet husband made about our conversation in the back ground.

Music used to be so important to me. Yet, as the years have gone by and I have become so pre-occupied with life, I have lost touch with my enjoyment of music. So, my friend spend quite a while, iPod in hand, reminding me of some of those "oldies but goodies" that we all used to love... even singing some of them...

Ha!! So fun. But, this eventually led to a conversation about a couple of people we both knew 20 yrs ago in high school and how, despite the complete inappropriateness of it (given their scandalous situation in high school... again, 20 or so yrs ago *lol* ), they seem to be becoming friendly on Facebook. The guy is married and the gal is not... But, if we can learn anything from history, making overtures toward *taken* men seems to be her style... and I actually find myself feeling a little protective of this guy's wife... *who I do not even know*.

The whole situation rubs me the wrong way. But, I am not completely sure why.

My husband thinks it is dumb that I even noticed, but... for goodness sake, stupid old Facebook puts in in my feed.. right out there for me to see... I am getting off track...

The point is, my friend did make quite an interesting observation... He said.. "Ya know... we really can't get away from who were are. Who we were 20 years ago is still who we are, it's not surprising that it bugs you now... We are still essentially the same people."

I don't know how I feel about this statement. For all I have been through in the last 20ish years to become the happy, healthy, funny (yes, some of these are self assigned labels... *lol*) you see before you, I am still essentially the same person I was then. Time changes a lot about us... I know... But are we always going to essentially be the same people?

Bah.. Humbug.

IDK. I am going to roll this around in my head for a while.

What do you think?

Baby Belle is a Big Girl...

..."So, hey... lady... if you could knock off calling me your 'Baby' that'd be great..."

She didn't really say that to me, but I could tell it was rolling around in her little three year old head. She's been complaining about wearing pull ups at night for a while now. (Well, time is very relative... my while and your while may be a little different, but it's been at least 2 weeks. ) I think you see where I am going here?

Being the reasonably thrifty mommy that I am ... I couldn't quite come to grips with the idea of wasting a half pack of pull ups. Those stupid little fakey diapers with Dora's happy little face all over them are not inexpensive... you know what I mean, I know you do.

So, I told her that when this bunch of Dora pull ups when Adios, she was done

... and then I promptly forgot what I said and went back to the place in my mind where I soothe my "baby ache" by reminding myself (and her!!) that Baby Belle is still my "Baby."

...and she, being my Mini Me... set a very well thought out plan into motion... where by she pulled a little too hard on her pull ups to get them up and down when she went potty (breaking the sides, requiring a replacement),.. or saved every drop of day time tinkle for nighttime Dora... rendering the thing useless and often asking for a replacement...

That sort of thing.

Before you knew it we were down to the bottom of the bag...

Only, because Baby Belle is a Big Girl Legend in her own mind, she gets her own pull ups at night.

She came to me two nights ago with a smug little, self satisfied grin and told me she was holding the last one... and tomorrow, she was a big girl.

Yesterday, July 11, 2010.. she made the leap. She was thrilled.. and ready, I know. I was... less thrilled, but supportive. I knew it would be my job to help her wake and get to the bathroom to see if she could "make peeps"... I barely slept. I had way too much anxiety over the whole process. But, she made it through the night with totally dry panties...

And she wanted to do it again tonight...

She'll probably want to keep doing this whole "wearing panties like a big girl" thing. And she should growing up is exciting...

...if you're not the one who laid awake at night with your hand on your new born, making sure you felt the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing...

My "Baby" is blossoming. She is throwing off her "Baby" and spreading those "Big Girl" wings...

Mommy isn't ready just yet.

You are my Sunshine...

My girls are the lights of my life... the proverbial apples of my eye (if, in fact an eye can have 2 apples)... my sunshine. They really are quite wonderful. In fact, they are the sweetest, most adorable, most beautiful kiddos in the world (besides yours, of course). And, it is a good thing I love them so madly... because that is the only reason I am allowing them to keep on keeping on these days.

They are 3 and 7. They are the best of friends and the worst of... friends. They fight like cats and... other cats. You know, like when the cats don't really know each other and they sort of rear back and hiss a lot. It's kinda like that, but with more screaming. Shrill, high pitch screaming. I am sure if you don't have a little girl, you don't know this exact kind of scream that takes on a fever pitch at it's apex, but trust me, it's polar opposite of sugar and spice. Frankly... it bites.

My first born, was the air that I breathed for first 4and a half years of her life. She was the walking, talking embodiment of my heart. She is my "BooBoo Kitty"... or just "Kitty" for short. Because of our close relationship, she doesn't like to share the spotlight with her sister, which leads to many headaches for mommy. She is tall and lanky like her daddy and has his fairly no non-sense approach to life. She is (mostly) pragmatic and driven, barely tolerating the playful flitting of her sister... Our "Baby Belle."

My 3 year old is a carbon copy of me. She has my attitude, my ability to find joy in stupid, tiny things, my tendency toward insomnia... She even looks like me (though her hair is blonder...) She has the ability to chill your bones with her shrieks of anger and melt your heart with her sweetness... at the same time. She is smart and witty, but prefers to get her way with a simple bat of the eye lashes. Oh boy...

We sometimes call her "the Hurricane" because of her uncanny ability to totally destroy anything in her path, though she does so with such joy it is difficult to stay upset with her for long.

Together these two really are the sunshine of our lives. But, lately... I am having trouble dealing with the constant drama that is their relationship. Please tell me it will get better...

Though you really shouldn't lie to me... so, never mind.

In the beginning

Because this is where you should always begin... right?
I have wanted to blog for so long. Why? You may ask. I don't know for sure. Doesn't everyone have something important to say? Don't all people need to be privy to my words of wisdom? Ha. Maybe not. But, here goes nothing!