Friday, May 30, 2014

Being a mommy


I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a mommy. I’m all up in the midst of it every day, and I have a million stories to tell, but until you actually think about the full scope and spectrum, you may not know what you’re getting yourself into. So I thought I’d give a little explanation of what a mommy has in store…

Being a mommy means you must know the exact location of every toy, book, and piece of clothing that has ever passed through your house at any given moment, and failure to know means a demotion in your child’s eyes.

 Being a mommy means that as soon as you turn your back on a clean room for a second, you will turn back around and see it destroyed.

 Being a mommy means you spend your days sitting in pillow forts, fighting with imaginary swords, and drawing eyes and mouths on matchbox cars. It also means you roll on the floor, read countless books with different voices for every character, and crawl for a good part of your day.

 Being a mommy means that sometimes the words coming out of your mouth surprise you. This could go in one of several directions, but what I mostly mean is that becoming a mommy makes you become more creative in expressing your frustration because as soon as you let a word slip, your child will be repeating it in the most inconvenient of places. So even if you’re awakened from a nap by your child who had explicit instructions not to leave his bed, and he’s tapping you ever-so-gently on the nose because he really needs to be wearing his robe right that very second, you may not, under any circumstances, say anything even close to what you’re thinking.

 Being a mommy means your sweet child will say, “Mommy, I have a song in my heart and I just have to let it out,” or, “I keep saying [insert random word/phrase] because it feels so good in my mouth.”

 Being a mommy means you have honed the art of simultaneously listening and tuning out the same little voices.

 Being a mommy means your supergluing skills are second to none, and you can build a tower, carwash, or zoo from Legos like a champ.

 Being a mommy means you will spend a lot of days drenched in pee-pee and spit-up and leftover food all at the same time, and if you're wearing perfume, makeup, or jeans your child will ask you, “Are you going somewhere?”

 Being a mommy means your child thinks you are the most amazing, beautiful, skilled, creative person on the planet. It also means she wants to be permanently attached to you and has developed some amazing spider monkey skills to make sure that happens.

 Being a mommy means that you are never ever ever finished with the laundry. In fact, it means that until you wise up, you will look out into the living room at your basket of freshly folded clothes and realize that your child has unloaded all of said clothes onto the floor. Awesome. Because folding clothes is just not as fulfilling until you’ve done it twice.

 Being a mommy means watching your kids grow up and feeling so proud and wanting them to freeze in time at the same time. It means watching them somersault for the first time, or take their first steps across the living room, and having your heart almost burst and your eyes fill up with tears. It means eagerly waiting for them to become more self-sufficient and wishing they’d never do anything on their own.

 Being a mommy means that everyone always needs you to be doing something for them that is completely unrelated to what you are actually doing.

 Being a mommy means that every once in a while your energetic child will ask you, “Mommy, want to snuggle up with me in my blanket?” and you will drop everything immediately.

 Being a mommy means you will get considerably less sleep than any human should try to function on. And despite your exhaustion, when you finally get your kids to bed at night, you will find yourself staying up doing random things just to have a few minutes alone. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you obviously have a nannie and we can no longer be friends.

 Being a mommy means that every once in a while, a sleepy-eyed little one will come stumbling into your room in the middle of the night, just because he woke up and needs to be cuddled.

 Being a mommy means that the phrase, “Do you need to go potty?” comes out of your mouth every thirty minutes like clockwork. It also means you will randomly embarrass yourself when you ask grown-ups the same question.

 Being a mommy means you sing at least fifty percent of what you say, stalk your little people with a camera, and snuggle them every single second they’ll be still.

 Being a mommy means that at your most frustrated moment, tiny little arms will wrap tightly around your neck and little fingers will get all tangled up in your hair, and you will feel exactly what it means to be unconditionally loved.

 So, what do you think? Are you interested?

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Milo's First Gymnastics Class

My sweet Milo is either going to be a breakdancer or a tumbler. He has moves down that I could never even imitate. And since we have no breakdancing lessons anywhere in Lufkin (Or do we? Is there even such a thing or are breakdancers too cool for all that?), I put Milo into the gymnastics class at the city. For a mere thirty dollars, Milo can run around twice a week and test out the waters. Today was his first lesson, and he definitely had a blast. It will be Milo, his cousin Kaylee, and one other little rambunctious boy, which equals lots of spunk and fun. Good luck to the teacher!

Milo is usually fairly cautious, thinking things through and hesitating to take action if he's not sure how things will go down. But today, he hit the gym running and tried absolutely everything his teacher asked him to. That is, when she could get him to slow down!

Before class picture. It's blurry because he was so excited he couldn't stop wiggling.


Stretching... And he's actually quite flexible!

Balance beam. Definitely not his favorite, but in hindsight he decided it was not hard at all.

Bars - Milo's favorite. He declared, "I'm a monkey! Everybody's a monkey!"

Loved the rings.

Building muscle with a smile on his face.
I should include all the pictures of his teacher trying to wrestle him over the vault. He's just not big enough to get much bounce off the springboard.

Here's how Lucy felt about the whole thing. Just kidding - both classes managed to be during Lucy's naptimes, so she'll be a little sleepy these days. But she still almost dived out of my arms to try it out herself. Soon, little lady!

Love a hat

We love a hat around this house. Milo has an entire dresser drawer devoted to hats, and I know I've posted pictures of all my knitting creations over the years. So imagine my horror when I realized that Lucy will not keep a hat on her head. I've practiced with headbands and she has the hang of those, but I have sadly neglected hats. I thought I was just doomed to never see my sweet pea in a floppy sun hat or a little flower-adorned stocking cap, and then yesterday happened...

 
Apparently Lucy loves a football hat. I guess we have to start somewhere, right? She sported this around until Nate snagged it from her. He's such a good-natured Daddy.

Lucy wants to know what's going on here.

The cutest little Jacksons I've ever seen.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Splash pad

I had never even heard of or seen a splash pad until I moved to Texas. Wonder of wonders, this fountain of spouting water draws children like nothing I've ever seen, as well as the parents eating Doritos who sit on benches around the area ignoring their kids while they run wild (until someone wipes out and bawls). And there I am, HoverMom, the one adult who dresses to get wet and goes in with my little people... 
 
Mom picked us up and we headed there on Saturday in high hopes of having a good time while Nate was out of town visiting his Nannie. Only problem? The weather wasn't quite hot enough. This is the only time you will ever hear me say that. Ever. But poor Milo needs to be nice and hot before he hops into that frigid water. He ran around for about 2 minutes, and then realized that it was overcast and there were tons of older kids playing roughly. That was enough for my little antisocial butterfly (he is his daddy's son...). He spent the rest of the 30 minutes we were actually there talking about how cold he was and/or being wrapped in a towel.
 
Lucy was really brave the last time we went and loved the tiny spouts of water. This time, a little ten-year old kid took a shine to her and wanted to play... and promptly dumped handfuls of water over her head before I could say anything. What kid does that to a stranger's baby? My poor sweet Lu was sputtering and crying as water and sunscreen streamed down her face and into her eyes. Needless to say, all my kindness went straight out the window and I told that kid to stay away from my baby (in hindsight, I probably should have went easier on him, but he repaid me by soaking me with his giant squirt tube a little later - grrrrrrr). Lucy spent the rest of the time giving him the stankeye. I kid you not, the girl can stare down anyone. But she wasn't interested in the water anymore, either, so thanks a lot, uncouth youth. It was just one of those days. But the pictures are cute!
 



 

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Lucy's new trick

Lucy's got a new trick, and she's been practicing it all the time. In fact, Nate found her practicing in her bed when she was supposed to be napping yesterday. I guess that's why she's so good at it all of a sudden. Now if only I could get a picture of her standing on top of her slide with no hands like she's been doing...




Thursday, May 22, 2014

Memory Lane

Remember this? Milo and I were laughing at it again today, although he is still blissfully unaware of WHY it's so incredibly funny. Just thought I'd re-share one of my many favorite Milo moments, from about a month before he turned two.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Happy anniversary!

Well, happy anniversary to me and Nate, a day late! That's right, yesterday was our nine-year anniversary, and we celebrated by taking Pegs to the emergency room. Say what? Yes, we tried really hard to have an anniversary date. We left the little people with Pegs and headed out to dinner and a movie. And we were having a smashing time for about thirty minutes when we got a phone call - Pegs had fallen in our kitchen and hurt herself.

There was no option but to rush home and make sure that both she and our little people were okay. Poor Mom. I thought for sure that her shoulder was dislocated the way she was holding her arm. She couldn't get Lucy out of the high chair because the arm was unusable, so it was a good thing we headed straight there. And Milo was calmly sitting at the table, having already prayed for Nonnie and finishing his dinner. Sweet Milo. When Pegs remarked that she just didn't have the money for an injury (because, who does?) Milo said, "Nonnie, I have money in my piggy bank. Do you want some of my money?" Sweet sweet sweet boy.

Anyway, Nate quickly packed up his mom and headed to the emergency room (well, I say quickly... he did eat his food that we'd gotten to go first), and I was left with my little people. I spent the anniversary evening with them. Nate spent the evening in the ER. Poor Pegs broke her humerus and is in a sling. And I am finding myself disappointed, cranky, and worried about her this morning. So, happy happy anniversary to me and Nate.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Happy Mother's Day!

I have said a lot of dumb things in my life. In fact, I kind of tend to run at the mouth quite frequently. I think it's one of my worst flaws. And of all the dumb things I've said, one of the worst was this - "I'm never having kids." Ugh. I shudder to think of it now because I have two gorgeous, sweet, funny, vivacious, amazing little people that wouldn't exist right now if I hadn't stopped being so ridiculously stubborn. All this to say, I am the most blessed mommy in the world (well, aside from my own mom, who had the privilege of raising ME - Mom, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude because I know I was a [lovable] stinker).

Grandma and Mom, the older I get, the more I love and appreciate everything you did for me. Being a mommy is really hard work, and kids certainly don't tell you that they realize that (because they don't). You are incredible examples and I love you both so much. Happy Mother's Day!


 





Mother's Day crafting...

...and the aftermath.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Picture dweeb gets a haircut

Have we ever talked about what a picture dweeb I am? Try to take a posed picture of just me and I go to a very awkward place. That said, I wanted to show you my new haircut. So try to see the hair and not my bizarre faces...



Saturday, May 3, 2014

Brothers and sisters

Did you ever have a sibling growing up? I remember laughing and fighting alike with mine, but the memories are especially precious the older I get. Time has a way of making you appreciate things past a bit more...
Lucy is the little-sister-est little sister I've ever seen (you know what I'm talking about...), and Milo loves her and torments her as only a big brother can do. I adore watching these two together because they will tease each other, get frustrated, scream, tackle, whatever else... And then hug and laugh and amuse each other. Milo has finally agreed that a little sister is the best gift we've ever given him. Woo-hoo!


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Friday, May 2, 2014

Anybody got time for that


Here's how you know your Mommy was an English teacher and has a deep love for the language... The word "ain't" isn't even in your vocabulary. Sweet Milo. He has heard the "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" phenomenon that is all over the internet and sings it to me frequently. However, I prefer his version...