Wild To Child

Since our big move to Eastern Washington and back again, we have downsized considerably in space. So much in fact, that it is impossible to go anywhere in our town home and not hear a crying child...three out of five times they aren't even my kids! It's been really tough going from a 1500 square foot home into a 900 square foot town home in a complex.

The biggest mistake we made in choosing a place was not getting one with three bedrooms. I figured putting the girls together was the obvious answer, because they are both girls and we could save money at the same time. Needless to say, the girls each occupy a bedroom and Evan and I have been sleeping downstairs in the living room! I miss, miss, MISS having a garage, and a big yard, and the luxury of not hearing your neighbors walk up and down their stairs. The upside to our home now is that it does have a TINY (I mean super small...like a 10 foot square) yard, rent is pretty cheap, and they let us move in immediately. Now I know why.....

The moral of the story is...I will never try to get a one year old and a three year old to share bedroom again. Never. Ever. EVER.

Now that the New Year is upon us and our lives have settled down a little, it's time to start this blog back up again. Don't worry, I don't have any bad ass resolutions to share. Mine are never original, I always end up with "lose weight", "less coffee", or "no soda", etc. I can't even think of something obscure or unoriginal. I thought about dropping the celebrity gossip, but I haven't kept up on it anyway because I've been so busy....so that one is eliminated. When I found out that a Jonas brother had gotten married recently, I died a little inside.

Between work and...well...work my spare time has been diminished to nearly none. I leave for work early and get home late. After eating dinner and playing with the kids for about an hour, it's time to put them to bed. By then the exhaustion has set in and I'm virtually useless anyway. Long story short...I don't need to make a resolution because...I don't have time...I'm too lazy...and I like who I am already. This year I'm going to continue being the best person I can be....and try not to lose my sense of humor...because then who would make the monkeys dance???

I've finally decided to take a rest from the hell I call moving. I will never understand how I accumulated so much useless crap. I've been going through all our belongings to prepare for a moving sale this weekend...so we can diminish the amount of "necessities" we have to haul across the state. My daughters have more clothes than I do...a mountain of onesies, dresses, pants, shirts, skirts and any other apparel item you could possibly imagine. And yet, I can't seem to part with almost any of them. I almost dread the day when my daughters or future sons come to tell me that I am going to be a grandmother because then I will break out all the outfits they wore when they were little...and out of the 4 box selection the baby will probably only wear one outfit. And even that will be because they are coming to see me and don't want to hurt my feelings by not putting their kids in the clothes that went out of style decades ago.

While I was doing a load of laundry (washing a small portion of the abyss) the wash machine finished it's cycle while I was laying on the couch. Scarlet walked up to me and said, "get up mommy." I was wondering what she wanted, because she usually doesn't go about things so diplomatically. She grabbed my hand and said "come here" as we walked over to the laundry room. Upon arrival in the laundry room she pointed to the washing machine and said "all clean. Dry!". I was absolutely shocked that she even paid enough attention to the laundry previously to realize the process it had to go through. I must admit I was pretty impressed. Before long, I will be able to get her to do the laundry...and she won't even be able to claim she doesn't know how!

I babysat my cousins 3 kids today...6, 4, and 10 months. The oldest wasted no time in telling me the following:

1) "This room is messy."

2) "These houses aren't very nice. No wonder nobody wants to live here."

3) "This jelly is weird. I should have had my mom pack extra STRAWBERRY jelly."

4) "These chips don't have BBQ on them...I don't like them."

5) "Did you brush you hair this morning? It looks messy."

Which only confirmed my decision to put Scarlet up for adoption at the age of 5.

I was glad to see how happy Scarlet was to see me last night. She got up and came downstairs at one point (still climbing out of bed!), and her face lit up at the sight of me. As terrible as it is to say, it felt so nice to know that she missed me so much. I see her act that way every day when Evan comes home from work, sometimes wondering if she would feel the same way if I were gone.....I proudly admit that she does. I let her stay up for a little bit, even though she was supposed to be in bed and basked in the smiles and hugs that came my way. I can't believe how much I missed my kids and I was only gone for one afternoon. I was disappointed that I wasn't back for their bedtime. I was feeling guilty even more than that because the whole trip was about doing things for myself....getting my hair cut, bought two shirts, and looked for shoes (for a wedding in August that I am going to be in). I did buy Noel a new swimsuit though. For some reason I feel bad making her wear a hand me down swimsuit....I guess being a child of hand me downs (yep....I got clothes that my BROTHERS wore) makes me a little more sensitive to the issue....even though she's just a baby. The most embarrassing hand me down story that I have: my mom made me wear a sunflower dress for school pictures one year......the embarrassing part? The previous owner was another girl in my class. I lied and told everyone that we had just bought it even though they were like “why would you buy a dress that you knew so and so had?” (keep in mind that I come from a VERY small town).......the girl never told anybody.....it's actually her wedding I am going to be in this summer.

So I'm feeling rather selfish about my “all about me” day yesterday. I know it's silly but I really like weekends to be family time. My parents have been harassing me about having Scarlet come and stay for a weekend soon, and while she may be ready...I don't think I am. I couldn't even stay away for 8 hours without feeling like I missed their high school graduation! Scarlet loves her grandparents so much....she probably wouldn't even realize she missed us until we came to pick her up! I'm sure if we lived closer to either of Evan or my parents, she would have had an overnight trip already. It will probably be a long time before we leave her with anybody but our parents too.....if even that happens anytime soon!