Of everything, that may have been the one that broke my heart the most. Harder than sitting my babies down last night and explaining that daddy was going to live at cousin Ray’s house for a while. Maybe for a long while. That they’ll still see him, but most likely will never live here again. Harder than watching Bailey shut down. Harder than listening to Morgan scream and rage at me for half an hour, until I finally carried her and put her in bed. Harder than laying in her bed and eventually sitting outside her door listening to her sob, until she finally fell asleep.
Is it still real mommy, whispered to me at 2am, may have been the worst. I pulled her into bed with me and whispered the words that I knew she didn’t want to hear, yes baby, it’s still real. She laid there with me, cuddling and crying for about an hour and then went back to her bed. It’s too crowded in here she said. Yes, it was crowded, since her little sister and brother were already in the bed. Mostly though, she needed her space. I get it, but I wish it wasn’t like this.
It is though. Reality has set in and I don’t like it. My girls don’t like it. One is raging at me, angry, so very angry. Wanting me to fix it, wanting daddy to actually show up, so she can yell at him too. The other is shutting down and I’m helpless to stop it. Harrison, thankfully has no clue what is going on. Yet. One day, he will.
Their father and I have wrecked their world. We’ve inflicted pain on them; pain that they shouldn’t have to deal with at five and eight years old. Too much pain. I would do anything to take it back. To make their world innocent again. I can’t. I can’t make this go away. I wish I could, but it’s not possible.
I never wanted this for them. I know this pain. I know how horrible it is. Yet here I am, doing the same thing to them that I swore I’d never do.
Last night, I changed them forever. No matter what, I can’t change that. I just hope they end up okay. I just hope I can explain things to them in the right way, things that I don’t fully understand. This knocked our world out from under us. I pray that I am strong enough to rebuild it in the way they need me too. That I can do this better than my parents did.
That I can remember that this is about them now, not me.
Because yes, it is still real.
My beautiful, smart, sweet, talented, smarty pants with a huge attitude girl. My big, eight year old. My Morgan. Today is your birthday. Today you are eight.
You said those words to me this weekend. The, I’m halfway to sixteen line. Sixteen is big to you. Yes my love, you are; today you are halfway to sixteen.
Can I tell you something though? I am not ready for you to be sixteen. Heck darling, I am not ready for you to be eight yet. I wish I could explain it to you. To the eight year old you. Not the you who will one day receive these letters. There unfortunately is no way I can explain to you how it feels to have an eight year old. Not until you are in my shoes. I can’t make you understand how being eight may seem young to you, but it seems so old too me.
I tried to explain to you how amazing this last year has been with you. How amazing and talented you are. How helpful and kind you are to your siblings. (Mostly. Ha.) How you are one of my three favorite people in this world. How grown up you’ve become.
You laughed at me. Silly mommy you said, being seven took forever. Being eight is better.
You’ve changed a ton this year, my love. You’ve grown. Not just taller, but wiser and more mature. Seven was a phenomenal year for you. For us. This year, we’ve grown much closer than before. In a way, we’ve become sort of friends. It’s been great. You are being mostly challenged in school for the first year ever, which you love. You are being forced to be more responsible at home; something you wanted and needed, but it took me a while to realize. I’m sorry baby, but I may always have to learn through you. You are the first after all.
In one year you have changed from only wanting to discuss Disney tween characters lives, to always wanting to talk about what is going on in the world; what is happening in our family. In one year, you have learned so much. You love to learn. You are constantly telling me something else you need to learn about, something new you want to learn how to do.In one year you changed from a little girl to a big girl. I’m not sure how I let it happen. It sounds silly I know, but this is the age I’d bottle you at, if I could. Most of the time, people say that about babies and toddlers. I do about your sister; nineteen to maybe twenty-three months was amazing with her. But you? I’d bottle you up at this age.
In some ways, I want to hang onto seven. Seven and I got along great. Then again, I said that about six too. Six was such a change from five for us. Seven made our relationship even better. It’s not about the year or the age though, it’s about you. It’s about you getting to a place where you understand life. You like the world more, the more you understand. It makes you happier to not be treated like a baby. You always tell me, mommy, tell me the truth. I do. Sometimes it hurts to tell you the truth, sometimes I’d rather not tell you the truth. But it’s important for you, so I do it as often as possible.
You are a natural born leader. You have dozens of friends. Trust me on this. You literally wanted to invite 32 people to your birthday party next week. You and Mackenzie** are, yet again, have a joint party. Cosmic bowling. Your auntie and I keep wondering how long that will last, the joint parties. Personally, I think it will continue forever, just because then between the two of you, can get away with inviting EVERYONE you know.
We have had a lot of talks about friends lately. About how easy it is for you. How easy it is for Kenzie as well. How it may not be so easy for others. How you and Mackenzie need to be friendly with everyone, even if you aren’t their friends. I know by the time you read this, it won’t matter anymore. By then you will be an adult and you will have found your own way through life. I also know I can only make sure you know right from wrong. At some point I have to trust that you know the difference.
Your favorite show right now is, Jonas. The Jonas Brothers. How I wish they’d go away. Really, when you are over loving these little boys, I am going to forever remind you of how lame they were. Sorry sweetie, but they are horrible. They can’t sing or act. Yet, they seem to be EVERYWHERE. I keep my mouth shut now….okay mostly I keep my mouth shut. Dude, they wear skinny jeans. Boys who can’t sing or act, wearing skinny jeans. Enough said.
You love Playing Majong, probably as much as I love playing Bejeweled. Let’s just call it what it is, an obsession. We are obsessed. We sit on the couch sometimes, side by side, me on my laptop and you on your daddies laptop, playing computer games. Tonight you will open the gift that you have said you wanted all year, an iPod Touch. I wnet back and forth on it, but I know you are ready for it. You are responsible enough and frankly, you’ve earned it this year.
Mario Kart, after an entire year, is still your favorite Wii game. You beg me every day to let you read the Twilight books. I’m not going to give in yet. Maybe when you are nine. Just because you can read and understand it, doesn’t mean you are old enough.
Baby girl, your birth made me the person I am today. You made me a mother. You challenge me every day to be a better one. I could not be more proud of you if I tried. I know eight will be an amazing year for you. Know that whatever happens in life for the next year, you will always have me.
Enjoy being eight, okay? Enjoy each day. One day, I promise you, I’ll let you turn sixteen.
Happy birthday Morgan,
Love mama
**Mackenzie is Morgan’s best friend…since oh say in utero. I call her my niece often, because her parents and I have been friends since we were four years old. Kenzie’s birthday is December 27th.
-All in all we had a great Thanksgiving. However, there was some family drama as their always is. I have a cousin who believes the world revolves around her. She always seems to get her way. She is the biggest asshat. Even bigger than her mother, which we all thought wasn’t possible. She didn’t want me to see her daughter (long story, but her oldest kid lives with her dad and step-mom in Colorado, about five hours away from us, but they were in Texas visiting family as well) and made it impossible for me to see her while we were in Texas. (Until this time last year, the girl practically lived at my house and I miss her.) On the drive home yesterday though, we ended up driving behind them and they called us when they noticed it and we all stopped and had lunch together and I’ve invited them to my house for Christmas. Take that, cousin.
-My great-aunt passed away on Wednesday night. She’d had a stroke the previous Friday and I decided not to mention it. It just didn’t feel right. Anyway, we didn’t stay for her funeral, which was yesterday. I did help plan it. It put a slight damper of the holiday. We decided to celebrate her life by doing it all anyway. She would have wanted us too. It did change the mood of the week though.
-We saw the world’s smallest skyscraper. Seriously. See?
It’s four stories high. It’s all small and tiny and cute. The story is this: at some point, lets say 100 years ago, although it may not have been that long ago. What? It’s my story. Anyway, this great businessman came to town. He told the town that he could build them the greatest, highest skyscraper in all of Texas. They looked over the plans, which looked amazing. He told them it would bring people from all over the world to see it. They could charge admission. They agreed and paid him his rate. He built it. They were outraged at how tiny it was. He told them that they’d signed the contract, they’d approved the plans, it wasn’t his problem. He left town. Turns out, the plans were exactly how he said they were. However, the town folks had not noticed that he’d used inches instead of feet in his measurments. It was clear as day on there, but in the excitement, they’d failed to notice it.
-We took roses to put on my grandparents and great-grandparents graves. Took us about 30 minutes to find them. Good thing we did too, since my grandpa’s middle initial is wrong on there. Nobody had noticed it when grandma passed last December.
-Football is a fierce subject in Texas. Doesn’t matter if it is the NFL or college. They don’t care where you live, if you are in Texas, you are a Texas fan. The end. To have a little fun, I pretended not to know a thing about football. I like seeing that vein in my uncle’s neck pop out.
-As a family, we all went and saw Blind Side on Saturday. See that movie. Trust me. It is phenomenal. I am now a Raven’s fan. I had to ask where they played and I don’t even care that I’ve never been to Baltimore. I am now a Raven’s fan. Everyone had a favorite line of the movie. We spent the following two hours at dinner discussing it. My favorite line? Tim McGraw plays the dad and he turns to his wife, played by Sandra Bullock, and says, “who’d of thought, we’d of had a black son, before we’d met a democrate?” Cracked me up.
-My youngest cousin is seventeen years old. He’s a great kid. Funny, sweet, easy going. His girlfriend made him go see the Twilight movie on Friday night. I guess there is a part where the one buff guy rips off his shirt, when the girl is bleeding? Anyway, D stood up in the theater and said, WAS THAT REALLY NECESSARY?? Then he said to his girlfriend, H, don’t worry ALL GUYS look like that. I’m not sure D still has a girlfriend. If so, he owes her big time. He’d already been texting his dad and my husband for scores to the Texas vs. A&M game. Ha. Then again, a smart girl would have gone with her friends, not her boyfriend. Seventeen year old boys don’t care which vampire is hotter.
-The twelve hours in the car on the way to Texas was not so bad. Girls played nicely, read books, watched movies and listened to music. The boy managed to notice every, single bird that flew by; he napped for hours; he watched Cars and was generally a happy little dude. The way home to Texas took thirteen hours, but it felt like twenty-seven hours. The girls fought; with me, with each other. Batteries in iPods died. Movies were toooooo boring. This song is stupid, I don’t like this candy. On and on and on, it went. At 7am, the questions about how much longer started. The answer of ALL DAY AND STOP ASKING was only met with tears. Instead of napping, Harrison screamed and hit people. We had Cars on constand loop, just hoping he’d stop for ten minutes at a time. Then the last three hours, he choose to sob. Non-Stop. For three hours.
-Mostly though, we ate too much, we slept too little and we had a great week. How’d you guys do?
Two years ago Logan and I decided to make a 24 hour rule about Halloween candy. The previous year had been an absolute nightmare. Morgan snuck candy at every possible chance. We found wrappers hidden for months. The girl managed to find it anywhere we hid it. She became this little sugar obsessed loony. Which wasn’t very pleasant in a four year old with ADHD. We swore never again.
We invented the 24 hour rule. Its very simple really. For 24 hours after trick or treating, they can have as much candy as they want. True to form, they ate a ton of it and by the end of yesterday, they were over it. Neither of them has looked at the bowl of candy since 6pm yesterday. It looses its appeal after a bit. From here on out, when I say, one piece of candy, neither will argue. Whatever is left in a week or two, I will throw away. Last year, I tossed more than half of their candy. Basically whatever is left by Thanksgiving is trash.
The downfall of course is that last night, we had to peel them off of the ceiling.
At 8pm, which was really 9pm, but isn’t anymore (I hate time changes), they were both still bouncing off the walls. They are normally asleep by 8:15pm. I couldn’t even get Bailey to put a shirt on. She couldn’t stay still long enough.
Logan and I just watched them dance around in circles for like 20 minutes and by then it was getting close to 9pm. Nothing we said, nothing we did was helping. I’d started thinking that the 24 hour rule was not a smart one.
We finally decided to separate them. I took Bailey into our room and he stayed with Morgan.
I climbed into bed, pulled her in with me and turned out all the lights. She fidgeted for a good ten minutes and then finally I felt her start to settle. Her words got slower and quieter. Eventually she fell asleep.
I considered getting up. I had laundry to do, dishes to clean, I needed to call my mother, I’d heard my cell phone beep three times which I knew were texts from Liz, and we had The Amazing Race on DVR to watch. But I didn’t. I stayed there with my baby girl. I stayed with her all cuddled into me. I listened to her breath and I played with her hair. I breathed in her smell: Gain on her clean PJ’s, melon scented shampoo, bubble gum toothpaste, and the smell of her. The smell of little girls, the smell of my little girl.
I stayed there. I fell asleep with my baby girl. Funny enough, Logan stayed with Morgan. Neither of us got up.
At 5 and nearly 8 years old, they always sleep in their own room. They never sleep with us. This was nice, a nice sweet change. Made me think that the 24 hour rule is not such a bad one.
Hey friends, one more thing, can you guys do me a favor? My evil plan worked and Liz started a new blog, called Lacking Super Powers. Would you mind going to visit her? It’s all pretty and shiny and new over there. Heck, she even posted. Give her some blog love for me? Thanks so much.
I am not feeling Halloween this year. If it were up to me, which sadly it’s not, we’d skip it all together. I am already thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and looking forward to both. Heck, for the first time in oh forever, I’m even looking forward to New Years. However, I’d seriously skip Halloween this year if I could.
Anyway, today is Monday and sometimes Monday’s just need random posts. I have to much stuff in my head and none of it is really long post worthy.
-I am not buying Harrison a costume this year. It will be freezing, he is just starting to get sick as I type this and I am not letting him walk around and get candy that I won’t let him eat. Logan will take the girls trick or treating, while Harrison and I answer the door. The chicks have said they want to be a surgeon and a witch again, so yay, I’m not buying a single costume this year. I was prepared to buy Morgan a new costume, but she really does want to be a surgeon again. Bailey is easy, she’s wanted to be a witch for Halloween every year since she was old enough to ask.
-I had the chance to buy pumpkins this weekend and didn’t take it. I did however buy a butt load of candy. I may be a Grinch, but I’m not stupid.
-Last year it was pleasantly warm on Halloween. We had a blast walking the kids around. The first year we lived here though? It was like 20 degrees. I think we held the girls as we walked them to five houses and then we went home. I have been told that this is the norm. Last year was a fluke.
-I considered offering the girls the entire huge bag of candy that I bought at Costco if they’d forgo Halloween. But it seems cruel. At five and nearly eight, they won’t care if they freeze for an hour.
-I hit mark all as read in my reader. I had absolutely no time this weekend (truly, I am not even remembering if I opened the laptop at all) and even though I said I’d read everything last week, I couldn’t get to it all. I needed to start fresh today. There was just no other way I was going to get caught up, since no one seems to be willing to stop writing while I finish reading. Please to be forgiving.
-My husband went away for the second weekend in a row. It is very different to be a single parent, even for three days. Not bad per se, just different. Tiring. Kristen, if I lived near you, I’d come keep your kids for a day. Seriously. Everyone deserves a break.
-I don’t understand why men don’t sleep on weekend get aways. Does anyone understand this? Last weekend Logan went with some buddies and his brother to Vegas. I didn’t expect him to sleep there. He came home a HUGE grouch who needed two days to recover. It’s Vegas, I get it. This weekend he went to a family event in Los Angeles. We just couldn’t swing all of us going. He, yet again, came home a HUGE sleep deprived grouch. I don’t get it.
That’s pretty much all I’ve got. How was your weekend?
I watch her. More often than not, I find myself studying her. Two months shy of eight years old and I very rarely get glimpses of that baby she once was. I look but I just don’t see it anymore. I have to look at the baby girl on my walls, for even a vague resemblance.
Instead when I look at her, I see glimpses of the woman she will become. The little girl of now, is the woman of tomorrow. That’s a tall order as a parent: to raise good adults.
Tall, lanky, a natural athlete. No misspoken words, no more baby belly. She is helpful. God, she is so helpful. She is independent, opinionated, loud; loving, caring and kind. All of this and so much more describes her.
She walks with me these days. Just in the last few months, I’ve noticed this. She walks with me. Not ahead, not lagging behind, not stopping every two seconds to look at something, touch something. No, she walks with me. We talk about things. Big things. Life things. We talk about the latest Hannah Montana show and who was mean to who on the playground; but we talk about adult things now as well. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I want to go back. It’s hard to explain huge things, bad things to such a small child. Then I remember that she is a child, but she’s become a woman. I won’t lie to her. I just can’t. Plus, she no longer wants me too. She wants truths. She wants to learn. She actively seeks knowledge, constantly.
I don’t have to tell her to look both ways anymore. In a parking lot, she automatically grabs her sisters hand. She keeps her brother from danger…which he easily finds, everywhere we go. She is an amazing big sister, even though she lacks patience with them sometimes.
She walks with confidence. Tall and proud.
She knows what she likes, what she wants and isn’t afraid to tell me. Constantly. However, she tells me, she doesn’t scream it at me anymore. We have gone nearly six weeks without a tantrum over nothing.
She is her own person, now more than ever. She has her own ideas, she knows what she wants to be when she grows.
She is becoming a woman. Slowly but surely. I see it when I look at her.
My baby girl, my first baby love. My big girl. My daughter.
Yesterday was a big day o’ Fail. Can I just name it that for the rest of time? August 26th, 2009 can now officially be, the day of fail. Let me start at the beginning and you all can decide if I can claim this.
-Tuesday night, well really Wednesday morning, I sleep from midnight until about 1:30am when the baby started screaming. After finally getting Harrison back to sleep at 2:00am, I fell asleep about 3:15am and managed to sleep until 4:30am when he woke up again. At the time I thought he must be teething. He had a low grade fever and was generally just a big ole mess. I finally got him back to sleep, but then I couldn’t sleep and laid awake looking a the ceiling until Logan’s alarm went off at 6:30am. (We really need to paint our ceiling.)
-After taking the girls to school, where I ended up yelling at them both for things that most days I would have ignored, I went to Starbucks to get my coffee. Unfortunately, I grabbed the wrong coffee cup. Got home before I took a sip of it (What? It’s a weird thing of mine. That first sip of coffee is the best.) and realized it was some nasty vanilla and raspberry flavored caramel machiato or something. I have no idea what it was really, but it’s not coffee. I did the only thing a coffee addicted woman could do. I strapped my crying son back in his car seat and drove back to Starbucks for a new coffee.
-I pulled out a dining room chair, to sit down and pay some bills, only to completely smash it down on my foot. The bruise is killer and I swear to you, I must have bruised the bone.
-I called my mom to ask her what time her flight came in on Thursday, the day before Labor Day, so I could make sure I had someone to pick up the girls from school that day. She was all confused. Turns out, I had my holiday days confused. Labor Day is a Monday holiday, not a Friday holiday. So instead of my husband and I getting a much needed two day vacation, while both of our mother’s keep our kids at our house, we will be hanging out at home with our kids and both of our mother’s. I had completely booked the wrong two days away. It being a…you know, holiday weekend, now there is not place nice to stay. We’ll still have a fun weekend and maybe even get a date night, but still, we needed that time away together.
-Last but certainly not least is my sick baby boy. About four yesterday afternoon I realized that Harrison wasn’t getting any better. In fact he was getting worse. He was lethargic, grouchy and basically a crying sad little smooshy heap on my lap. When I took his temperature, I found that is was 102. I did what any good mom does, I asked the advice of the lovely Twitter peeps. My question was should I take him to Urgent care. The answers were amazing. I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter these days. However I appreciate everyone who answered me last night. You guys were awesome. I hadn’t even considered alternating Tylenol and Motrin. It’s funny how a four year gap in between my last two kids, has made me forget some things. Although, honestly I’m not sure I ever knew that one. Morgan can’t tolerate Tylenol. It’s like giving her speed or something. Makes her jump out of her skin. Bailey can’t tolerate Motrin. I was thinking that Tylenol just wasn’t working on him. But I think it does, I just think it wasn’t capable of making him magically better last night. Ha. (Thank you big time to my friendly Internet Pediatrician for the helpful fever advice. Truly, no one has ever explained fevers that way to me before.)
I decided to go with my mama gut and take him in. Which was a good decision since my ear thermometer is crap. The boy had a freaking 103.8 temp when we got there. Two antibiotics (one inner and two outer ear infections and possible tonsillitis) and some Motrin later and his fever started to go down.
-After I put the baby down and got the girls settled, Logan and I sat down to watch Top Chef, which we had DVR’d. We were ten minutes into it, when I hit some button and deleted it. Now, I have it sitting on there again already, since it was showing again late last night. But still, come on now. Really?
Today, is better. This morning, Harrison is doing a bit better. I slept extraordinarily well, since I slept in the guest room, while Logan was on baby duty. I needed sleep. I can not tell you how much, I needed sleep. The girls both seem to be fine, although I will be Lysoling our house and changing sheets and toothbrushes today, just to be on the safe side. Oh and today, there was donuts for breakfast. But oh boy yesterday just sucked.
What do you think? Does yesterday qualify for the day of fail?
Harrison:
He calls to me an hour before the alarm would go off. Mama, mama, mama. MAMA! He gets louder the longer I ignore him. What are the chances he’ll go back to sleep if you leave him, Logan asks? Slim to none, I say as I get out of bed.
MAMA, he squeals as I walk in his bedroom. Shhh baby, it’s quiet time. See, the sun isn’t up yet, I say, as I pick him up. (Anymommy, this sun shit doesn’t work. You got a better idea?) As we walk down to the kitchen for a bottle of milk, he jabbers constantly. This boy is a morning person, that I know for sure. Evey forth word is a word I know: milk, sissy, ball, wow, uh oh, goggie, dada. They don’t make sense yet, but he’s showing off his skills.
Mix the formula one handed, as he doesn’t like to be down in the morning. Why don’t we go see daddy, I ask him. Yeah, lets visit daddy. Dada, kak kak, he says back to me. Every morning, it’s the same thing. I get him and make the bottle, we go back to my bedroom and I basically hand him off to his daddy, as I try and hide under the covers for another half hour. They play some odd game involving duck noises as I try unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. When the alarm finally goes off, Logan goes to shower and I take back over. It’s at this point when I pull out the big guns. Namely the matchbox cars that I keep in my bedside table. Two cars, one for each hand and my boy is a happy boy. Soon, it’s time to wake the girls.
Bailey:
I wake her first because she is easy. Simple as that, she is easy to wake. Easy to make get dressed. Bailey, wake up love, it’s time to get ready for school, I say as I sit on their bed (Yes, my girls share a bed. Swear it’s by choice though, as they both have beds.) She wakes up easily, rolls over and sits up. As she hugs me, she says, I get to go to kindergarten again right? Yes, you do. Okay, then. Can I have donuts for breakfast? Uh, no, you can have cereal for breakfast. Oh man, she says, laughing. We do this every day. Her just hoping for the day when I say, yes, we can have donuts for breakfast.
She gets up and heads towards the bathroom. Please wash your face and brush your teeth I tell her. She still needs to be told. When she’s done, she comes and sits on me for a few minutes. I tickle her and laugh at her jokes, play with her hair and then I hand her her clothes. Clothes that we picked out the night before, because I don’t deal with clothes issues in the morning.
She talks a mile a minute about school as we walk down the hallway toward the kitchen. I need coffee, I think to myself. Instead of saying it, I answer her nine million questions. She picks her cereal as I grab the specific Disney bowl she requested. She pours her cereal and I pour the milk. As she eats, she talks constantly. She stops to chew, because she knows better than to talk with her mouth full. Between bites, she tells me again how much she loves school. How she met so many new friends. Where her teacher sits during reading time, what book they read and how many times she had to be reminded that reading time is quiet time. I remind her again that today I’d like that number of reminders, to be a bit less. She agrees.
I make her lunch and then braid her hair. I ask her about ten times to pick her backback up off the floor in her room and put it by the door to the garage. Please find shoes that match I tell her. Strange child, I think as I shake my head.
On the way to school, we sing to every song that comes on the radio. Ooohhhh I like this one mama, turn it up, she says at least three times.
One kiss and a hug good-by at her door and she’s off. She doesn’t even look back to see me leave.
Morgan:
I wake her three times before she even acts awake. One day, I will leave this to her, but seven and a half is too young, right? I think this to myself each time I have to wake her up. She rolls over and glares at me. Mom, I’m tired. Yes, so am I, I tell her. You still have to get up and get ready for school. I’m ready for summer again, she says. Oh it’s going to be a long year, I think.
I wake her last, after her sister is out of the room for two reasons. One, she is a mean morning person and her sister being happy bugs her to no end. Two, she gets ready much quicker.
I poke and prod her. I sing to her. I tickle her. I finally tell her I will dump Harrison on her if she doesn’t get up. He’s too big for that mom, he’ll crush me, she says. Fine, I’m up. Are you happy now? Sure my darling girl, I’m thilled. Please get dressed and come eat breakfast.
I’m not wearing that, she says as she walks to the bathroom. That is the dumbest outfit ever. I have ugly clothes. I’d rather be nekkid than wear that. Whatever Morgan, I tell her. You picked it. At the store and last night you picked it. I don’t care what you wear, as long as you come to the kitchen fully dressed. I am not in the mood for this, I tell her.
We will do this for the next nine months. At some point, I know she will show up in the kitchen with no clothes on, or her PJ’s still on, just to argue with me some more. Today, her clothes are still brand new. They still have tags on them, which makes her happy. It’s no longer new, once the tags have been removed.
She comes into the kitchen fully dressed. Thank you, I say. I appreciate you doing what I asked. No response is given, although I didn’t need one. I hand her a breakfast bar and a glass of juice. I also hand her an Adderall. She drinks the juice and takes the pill and rolls her breakfast bar up in a napkin, to eat later. Like me, she’s not a fan of breakfast. She puts it in her lunch box. I didn’t want a mini-bagel today, she cries. I hate those. Well, you wouldn’t tell me last night, so that is what you got. Trade with Mackenzie (her bff), you know she loves those. Fine, that’s what I’ll do then. Auntie Kate makes better lunches anyway. I’d say something back, but it’s useless. Plus? I know my best friend is having the same arguement at her house right now with Mackenzie. There is a reason they are as good of friends as Kate and I are. Most likely, the girls will switch lunches and both be thrilled with it.
Head band on her head, flip-flops on her feet and she’s ready to go. Her back pack, neatly put by the garage door the night before is in hand.
She pushes Bailey out of the door and I yell at her. Why do you do that, I ask? Because she was in my way, is the response. I should say more, but I know it’s like talking to a brick wall this early in the morning. On the way to school, she warms up a bit. She tells me about her need to find a good book at the library today. She reminds me that I didn’t sign her reading slip from last night. No, I did after you went to bed. I put it in your Hannah Montana folder, I tell her. Oh good, thank you mommy. I smile at her. Might be the only mommy, I get all day.
As I drop her off, I get one quick hug, before she runs off to find her friends.
This is my new normal. I don’t mind it really. It’s comforting.
Me: Girls if you could do one more thing this week, before school starts, what would it be?
Morgan: I’d like to go back to Disneyland.
Bailey: Um, I think I want to play in the sprinklers.
Yep, there it is. Right there in two sentences, the explanation on how completely opposite my daughters are.I adore them for their differences, but this really does make explaining it a bit easier.
On my last post…well the consensus seems to be that I should just delete/block trolls and ignore what they say to me. Get over it, I suppose. I don’t know what to say about that, except I guess I’ll stop talking about it.
Last night I wrote a post where I basically complained about everything. It felt kind of nice to write it down. Get it out, if that makes any sense. Although this morning, I’m glad I didn’t post it. Not because you guys can’t handle it, not because I didn’t need to complain about petty nonsense last night, but mostly because this blog has become so depressing that I’m just thinking that it would have made it worse.
I’m trying. Trying to get it together. Trying to not be so pessimistic all the time. Trying to not be depressed. Trying to not be this complainy (yes, is word), whiney, pain in the ass that I have become lately.
It’s not really working for me so well. But at least I’m working on it.
Instead of whining about things that really don’t matter outside of my head, I thought I’d give positivity a try. See how it works for me today. No guarantees on tomorrow, but it’s worth a shot today.
I love the 4th of July weekend. My husband won’t be working for three whole days. (Truly, I am forgetting what the man looks like, he works so much these days.) We have BBQ’s to go too, swimming to do and tons of great food to eat. I adore fireworks, now that Bailey has stopped being terrified of them.
I found the business cards I am going to get for BlogHer. They are cute and I loves them.
My excitement of BlogHer is starting to out way my fear of it.
Harrison is cute and fun and the best baby I could ever hope to have. Nine months, really is a fun, if not a bit exhausting age. Although his idea of morning being 5am, needs a bit of work.
Bailey is almost five and while it makes me sad, I see the big girl she is becoming and it’s awesome. She’s awesome. The funniest, most honest baby girl I could ever hope to have.
Morgan has decided that she likes clean clothes enough to help me with laundry. Have I told you she’s my favorite today? She is. At least in this moment, when she’s being so dam helpful. Seven is an awesome age.
I love the Internet. Well I love you guys. Yes there are haters, trolls and asshats. But real life has them too. But you guys keep me entertained on a daily basis and I adore each of you for it.
Oh one more thing, my friend, the lovely Anymommy, had a beautiful baby boy on Sunday. Nathaniel. He’s big and squishy and absolutely adorable. He has red hair!!! Squee. Please go and congratulate her.
So, how’d I do? LOL. Don’t need to answer that. Is okay.
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