15 Nov
He’s three today, but if you ask him (and you’re on the list of people he’ll talk to), he’ll tell you he’s “free.”
He is ineffably beautiful to us. And his sister is screaming her lungs out at my feet. Brevity is the soul of motherhood.
14 Nov
This is my Nana. Her name is Charlene. She grew up in Wrightsville, Ga (same town as Herschel Walker, she’ll tell you). She was a younger child in a family of girls, and her father’s name was Charlie. As far as I can tell, there is nothing my Nana enjoys more than holding a baby. Here she is with Charlie. She has spent what probably adds up to years bouncing babies, singing songs like “Three six nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line….”
I’ve been lucky to have a few wonderful women as my grandmothers, but she is the last. And since that’s the case, I can now tell you that while I genuinely have loved them all, she’s my favorite. It’s because of her disposition….she’s always been so sweet, happy, untroubled. I wish I had her happy genes, but alas, since she’s my grandmother by marriage, there’s no chance of that. I do hope, though, that having her name could in some way help my daughter to have a disposition like hers.
Nana is not doing so good, y’all. She’s been diagnosed this year with diabetes, and then pancreatic cancer. This is not a pleasant member of the cancer family. I’ve been spending a lot of time pretending otherwise, for my tender granddaughter’s heart’s sake, but it’s possible that Nana may not have a lot of time left here to be my favorite. Please pray, or think, or do what you do, for my Nana. And my Papa, who has been right beside her, worrying over her like a new father, through it all.
4 Nov
Since I already missed two days in November, the pressure is off. I’m trying to see this blob as less a source of stress and guilt and more fun to do when I have time. Last week, we had fun *and* time in Seattle. Here’s Charlie enjoying a cuppa at one of my favorite places that we visited, the Pegasus Coffeehouse on Bainbridge Island. Also, a picture of me with no fancy camera angle or editing. This is what I look like most of the time, and I’m fine with that. See, I’m working on it, y’all. For Charlie’s sake.
1 Nov
Remember last year, when I blogged every single day of November? Yeah, well, I had one less kid then and it still just about killed me. So don’t get all crazy. But today is the thirtieth birthday of my very favorite man, and so here you have it, second post in two days:
31 Oct
Just keeps getting lamer, doesn’t it? Oh well, at least our kids are cute. I give you: Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. And Joey.
30 Sep
Since I realized the old blog has been pushed to the way back burner (of maybe the neighbor’s kitchen), a week or two ago I absently made it a goal to get something up in September, just so when you scroll through the archives, the month will appear at all. As it stands, getting pictures to appear here is a little beyond my scope, so I’m going to try something new. I’ll do the writing, and maybe Joey can insert pictures as needed. You game, Joey? Okay, great. You maybe can’t hear me since you’re sleeping or whatever. Eh. Snooze, lose. My dad taught me that one. I wonder if he’s a reliable authority on this subject, though, since he sees no problem at all calling people at, say, 6 a.m. on a Saturday if the urge strikes him.
So anyway, what’s new? Well, you know about my haircut already. That was pretty big. I may have mentioned the root canal here or there. And my final verdict on root canals is: they are not that serious. Other than the cost, which is quite serious. It’s been an expensive year, dentally. That reminds me: Joey got braces. In maybe June or July. He wants his teeth to be straight or whatever. Good for you, baby! [Joey here. I was told to insert a picture at this point but I coudn't find one that I approve of]
So yeah, the baby. She’s adorable and fat. There’s something about my pets and my children that leaves me unable to only use the one name. I’m constantly making up new ones. I thought she could use a unique, catchy name….one that really represents her essence. So I came up with Obesitee. Her pediatrician (and lots of other people) always argues with me when I say she’s fat. But to me, there is no higher compliment for a baby. By the way, has anyone figured out what the hell Lyle Lovett was talking about? [Joey....here we need one where she's obviously fat, but also adorable. Oh, she's adorable in all of them, so let's focus on the fat.]
Let’s move on, shall we? Let’s see, what else, what else….oh, yeah, how about Danny. When he was born, we sent a picture of him to pretty much our entire combined email address books. The pastor’s wife sweetly replied, something about how cute he was, and that he’s “all boy.” I always puzzled about that, since to me, he was just a little adorable, dark-eyed, bundle of incredibly fantastic amazingness. That looked vaguely Chinese. Anyway, let me tell you: Christa Skipper, you were right. This child is the boyest boy of all boys that have ever been. If he’s awake, he is climbing, running, destroying, poking, building, jumping, or otherwise boying. He is, in fact, all boy. Oh yeah, and mom, he was singing “You Are My Sunshine” yesterday until I foolishly attempted to accompany him. Like mom reads this. Uh, somebody tell mom. [Joey: boy picture here.]
Other stuff: someone broke into our house a couple months ago when I was having my weekly tryst with a dental professional. (Okay, not really a tryst. Though Dr. Shim is cute, no kidding.) I think that day I was having a crown placed, and a cavity filled. Anyway, that wasn’t really the focus of this bullet point…..it was more the fact that someone broke into our house and took some of our stuff. People can be so disappointing. We have a shiny new security system now, though. It’s been an expensive year, stuff-wise. Oh, yeah, and I should mention…they didn’t really find anything they liked in the jewelry box. They did enjoy Joey’s laptop and some cold hard cash they found (and by cold and hard, I mean cold and hard, as in a tub full of coins. These were baffling thieves.) [I think the jewelry box here, Joey. I hope that's not too traumatic?]
Now I’m ready to move on to one of the other 3,582 things I need to do today, but I can’t leave it on that note. It is not fun to be robbed, but really, it’s just stuff. (I learned that from my dad, too.) And anyway, it’s quite possible that Joey’s laptop might make it home soon, due to his super-cyber-sleuth laptop tracking skills. Okay, what else, what else….hmmm….well, there was that epic flood last week, but that’s not really a happier subject. Oooh, ooh, I know. [Charlie in her sassy red bathing suit, please.]
20 Aug
Some of you know that I could qualify for the A&E show “Obsessed” based on my hair neurosis. That’s a slight exaggeration. But seriously, I’ve been known to pine for days over an annual haircut that most people fail to notice completely. Not this time. The combination of: the month of August, the baby who tries to eat my hair, the enormous amount of time my long hair consumed, and how FREAKING HOT I WAS, this time it was easy to get rid of a lot of hair. And, as luck would have it, I finally got the haircut I have always wanted. I feel like a character from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, or Places in the Heart, or a Dorothea Lange photograph (except I have a little more meat on me than all that).
Cayla Roberts at Bob Steele Salon created this literary magic for me. Also, she packaged up all my hair in little ponytails and sent them off to Locks of Love for me. Nice, huh? Anyway, I didn’t have time to find a picture of a target haircut before I got there, and I liked her hair, so I just told her to make mine like hers. I can be very Single White Female like that. But since she’s a professional and all, she told me that she’d take a look at my hair and see if it was remotely like hers in texture, etc. It was, remotely. So I got a version of hers. And yes, it’s a version of the haircut lots and lots of moms have. Short in the back, a little longer in the front. Or, as my sister Danyelle calls it, a tellum. That’s mullet backwards, y’all. Well, I couldn’t love my reverse mullet more. And that picture up there? Just rolled out of bed. THAT is the kind of haircut I need.
4 Aug
Oh, y’all. Our little blob. So neglected. All these children in my lap, and all this laundry. Pottytraining. Et-setra, et-setra. And to save the life of my sad little laptop, Joey just blew away all the pictures I had on here. Don’t get mad at him, I asked him to do that. Anything and everything I did on this computer would blow its little mind, and make it run so hot it would burn my lap, and that is why we lightened its load by getting rid of all the pictures. So, I’ll just have to go use another computer whenever I have the time and energy to make a picture post. But not this one. This one, see, is a link to a Flickr set. Of pictures Martine took of Charlie when she was 8 days old. 8 days old! What?! Now she’s ginormous (16lb 4oz at 4 month checkup) and grabbing things and shoving them in her mouth, getting ready to scarf food from the table. And I’ll get around to more recent pictures sometime. But for now, please marvel with me at how tiny she was, how helpless, how ittybitty. I’m not sure how I avoided eating her whole. But I did, and now she’s too big. So I guess she’s safe.
4 Jul
Here’s a partial list of things that have happened that it would have been nice to blog about:
Vacation in Myrtle Beach
Joey’s big concert
Travelling with two chirren
Visit from the one aunt, etc
Visit from the other aunt, etc
The big chicken
My torrid love affair with Joe. Trader Joe.
My fat fat fat baby
My boy that speaks in complete sentences, with a few prepositions even
The end of the world as we knew it
Sun Valley Beach trip
Yeah, busy much?
But here, here is a picture of my fat fat baby’s first fourth of July. Not the best one we took even, but there is a 2.5 year old removing my festive pigtails and friends are set to arrive any minute. Also said fat baby will wake up yowlering in T minus….. anyway, gotta go.
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