Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Almost Wordless Wednesday: DCIS, but we'll take it.

As it turns out, the nebulous fear I cryptically mentioned a few weeks ago has a name. Ductal Carcinoma in situ. And it's in my mom. But it could have been much much worse, so we are grateful that this was the diagnosis.

She meets with the surgeon tomorrow.

We're really, really, grateful.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

RTT: Blech and stuff...

randomtuesday

So! The great Swine Flu watch of 2009 continues. As of this update we've got one case of complete recovery (apparently not the Swine Flu) and one case of total false alarm (but still a major attitude)- well maybe, she's still suspiciously warm in spots. And I've got a sore throat, a headache, and am sore down in my bones. David appears not to be even aware that the ladies of the household may be trying to participate in the Pandemic. Or at least an epidemic. We'll keep watching the developments.

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All of this Pandemic business has me thinking about a book I just finished reading. Well, listening to on my iPod. I like to read/listen to books out of the "Youth" section of the library sometimes. They are frequently enjoyable and often less violent and disturbing than adult books of similar genres and that's restful for my brain. I can't say that this book was not disturbing though. It's by Susan Beth Pfeffer and is called "The Dead and the Gone". It's a sequel to her book "Life as We Knew it". The basic gist of the plot explores what would happen if an asteroid knocked the moon slightly out of orbit so it was a little closer to earth. Like environmentally. And what happens to society. It's the same series of events told through the eyes of two different families. One out in the suburbs/country, the other in New York City. Disturbing as it was, I kind of hope she continues to explore this theme from some other view points. At any rate, eventually the survivors of all the chaos run into the flu. And there isn't much they can do about it. So while pondering the what-ifs of the Pig Flu, I keep thinking that maybe I'm both taking it too seriously and maybe I'm not taking it seriously enough, as images from this book flash through my head.

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The other day Elizabeth was taking a bath and was pretending to be a manatee. David whispered to me “I’m going to have some fun!” He went into the bathroom, picked up one of her tub toys and dropped it on her saying, “Oh no! A boat!”. In a very injured tone, and, in my mind, speaking for all manatees, she said “Heeeeeeeeeey!”

Yes, we are easily entertained in these parts.

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I've decided to go and commit myself to good health. Not biting the bullet and joining HASAY yet, but I've taken some very positive steps towards my goals in that last week and a half. So I find it very ironic that at the present I have the following items in my freezer:

1 pint Haagen-Daz Five Brown Sugar ice cream

1 pint Haagen-Daz Coffee Frozen Yogurt

1 quart Baskin Robbin's Rainbow Sherbert

1 half gallon Breyer's Praline Pecan ice cream

1 half gallon Friendly's Black Raspberry ice cream.

yeah.

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For more Random Thoughts (including some more about the Swine Flu), head on over to The Un Mom!

Monday, April 27, 2009

False Alarm. I think.

I feel a little ashamed to say it.

I was good and worked up yesterday due to all the Internet fear mongering, and it turns out that Lilli is just fine. And Elizabeth definitely does not have the Swine Flu, her fever is all gone.

She definitely has one heck of a snotty nose though. And a little bit of an attitude. Actually, they both have attitude. Nothing new there. They were sent to bed early tonight to think about their behavior.

Ok, no, it was really just because Elizabeth's snotty nose kept her from napping. And when she can't sleep she kicks her wall, which keeps Lilli from napping. She hasn't figured out that if she can't sleep she could get out of her bed and quietly play with her toys and we would never know. Instead she lies in her bed as if chained to the thing. If she does get out of bed to use her in-room potty chair, she guiltily leaps back into bed like she has been very, very, bad. And then lays there and kicks the wall some more.

I will tangent here to state, that yes I realize that we are well into the modern age and are past the era of chamber pots. But Elizabeth needs to have a potty in her room because I put one of those door knob covers on the inside of her door (which is shut to keep the cats out because 2 of them are big and like to snuggle and these girls I have are little) so she can't get out. And with great power (she's potty trained) comes great responsibility (I prefer her not to pee in the bed). I'm sure its some kind of safety hazard to physically prevent her from leaving her room at night, but I can't sleep as long as there's a possibility that she's wandering the house. And me with even less sleep than usual is a much bigger safety hazard.

Anyway, there was no nap/not a good nap, so there was an early bedtime. More importantly though, we seem to have dodged the Pig Flu bullet, but I am very good at settling back into lethargy only to be rudely awoken. Sometimes literally. By like, a vomiting episode.

So we'll see.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

If it looks like the flu, sounds like the flu, acts like the flu, does that make it Swine Flu?

There's an article on MSN today: "US Declares Swine Flu Public Health Emergency". I'm sure you've heard about Swine Flu. Even I, who lately have had my head under a rock (or that's what it feels like), have heard a ton about it. And with two small children (even though I read that its mostly affecting the healthy 'prime of life' people and not the kids or the elderly), I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a little worried about it.

For more on the latest info, check out that article (provided that link works, otherwise- the magic of Google can be yours), but one key line says: "Symptoms include a high fever, body aches, coughing, sore throat and respiratory congestion."

I read this just a few minutes ago, which is highly ironic because we've been home all day with a child whose symptoms include a high fever, body aches, coughing, sore throat and respiratory congestion. Yay! Ok, her fever isn't super high yet, but she's getting that look that says we're in for some kind of fun tonight. Oh, and guess what? Lilli's getting a fever too. It's low, but that's how its starts. Isn't that fantastic?

Normally I would be mildly concerned but would feel quite comfortably on top of the situation, armed with Motrin for the fever, Tylenol for the aches and pains, Popsicles for the sore throats, and plenty of tissues and videos for the rest of it. But because of this latest CDC announcement? Yeah. I'm going to be worried that it's not just the flu, it's the pig flu. And I have no idea if I should treat that any different than the regular strains. I can see I'm in for an afternoon of research and that their pediatrician might be in for an interruption of his weekend!

Hopefully your evening and night will be better than mine promises to be!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Spin Cycle: A lecture from Miss Manners

This week's Spin Cycle is encouraging us to discourse on the subject of manners. Good ones, bad ones, people with no manners at all, the spin is all ours.

Naturally, in my case, my mind turned to mannerless children.

Let me preface this by saying that for all the whining I'm about to do, I am not the Mother of the Year, and I do not have perfect children. Elizabeth interrupts like you wouldn't believe and can't sit still in Sunday School to save her life. Lilli does not understand the concept of an "inside voice". On one horrible day I took them to story time at the library and have never been so embarrassed in my life. All the other children were sitting on the rug with their hands in their laps gazing raptly at the librarian and hanging onto her every word. Mine were standing up for a better view and jumping up and down excitedly as Elizabeth called out to the librarian to "go back to the page with the penguins on it!"

Still, though, they do some things right which gives me a little license to complain about other people's children. They say "please", "thank you" and "excuse me", without being prompted. They can sit at the table while we eat dinner together at home or 99% of the time at a restaurant without whining, fussing, or wanting to get out of their seats. They are polite to other children. They don't shove or hit or bite.

Can you guess what my manner related child pet peeves are?

If I'm at a restaurant eating my food (and even more so if I manage to be alone with my husband), I don't want to meet your kid no matter how cute they are. Other restaurant patrons are not entertainment for your bored child. I had a strange toddler ask me for a piece of the bread on my table once. Where the heck were his Cheerios? Where the heck were his PARENTS?

If your child makes fun of, shoves, hits or otherwise hurts my child emotionally or physically, and you didn't try to stop, correct or apologize for his behavior? That's a reflection on your poor parenting. It's not something to smile indulgently at because, you know, they're just little. Or you think its cute. If you don't teach them what's ok, they're not going to magically know how to behave.

This is, of course, a generic "you" I'm speaking of. It's not aimed at any of the people who I know read my blog. Having said that, I'll go on.

If I'm offering cookies to a group of children (because I'm nice like that) and a kid barrels his way through the crowd, elbowing children aside left and right, grabs one, or worse, grabs THREE, and sprints off without saying thank you, and doesn't fall into any of the categories of children I make exceptions for? That kid is Not Nice. And we don't like children who are Not Nice.

Ah yes, and it irritates me on Halloween when children knock on your door, hold open their bag without a "Trick-or-treat" or even making eye contact, and then leave without thanking me. That is actually one of the reasons I no longer give out candy.

Oooh! Oooooh! I also don't like big kids that run around on playgrounds without watching for smaller kids. My children may be small and hard to see, but their size makes them fly through the air much farther. Those big kids need to stop thinking they own the park.

Hmmmm. I think now that I'm getting on a roll that this could go on for awhile. I'd better stop before I get too carried away. I know just as many, or more, perfectly lovely children that I would love my girls to spend more time with, as I do grabby, shovey, mean, rude little kids.

I'll focus on the good ones.

Play date anyone?

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

An Almost Wordless Wednesday


People would pay good money to have those lips. And I get kisses from them for free.
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By the way, thanks for all the e-mails and Facebook messages (and I even got a phone call!) checking up on me since I took a bit of a hiatus. You're all very sweet and I love you. If you didn't ask but we're wondering, all is well, I've just been contemplating life and focusing on a new attempt to get healthy, and the only entries I've had in me were of the "look what my baby did today!" variety. Those entries are great for journaling purposes, especially since my babies are constantly doing new things (Lilli got all 4 eye teeth at once! Elizabeth will now sometimes let me "do" her hair! Etc.!) but kind of monotonous to read unless you're the child's obsessed mother. Naturally I find them fascinating, but I took pity on everybody this time. Next time you may not be so lucky.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Spin Cycle: A brush with celebrity..

Before I lived in Florida, I lived in Ohio.

Ohio is a great place but I'm not aware of a lot of celebrities that visit it. Sure, plenty got their start there, but they left as quick as they were able. For this week's Spin Cycle we're sharing the moments when we brushed shoulders with the famous or the semi-famous.

My list is pretty pitiful since nothing much exciting has happened to me in Florida either.

The fall of my freshman year at OSU I went on a dorm trip to Chicago. Mel Gibson happened to be filming Payback that weekend, and I watched him from across the street.

I knew the president of Nationwide Insurance. Woohoo! There's some glamour for you.

I know a guy who is a dead ringer for Orlando Bloom. It's scary how similar they look. Sure, he's not the real thing, but if you saw him you would think it counts too.

If I've met some more I either can't think of them or I've forgotten.

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Of course there was the time I ran into Sprite's Keeper at Publix...

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Sort of cryptic, sorry about that...

So today I got some news about a close family member.

I'm not going to go into specifics since I haven't asked permission, but let's just say that its health related and we won't know if things will be pretty bad and we'll have to deal with it, or if this will have just been a scary false alarm until the end of the month, at which time I will have either cleared the permission thing and give you an update or I'll just send another mysterious post out into the blogosphere. Either "thank heavens, its all good" or "yeegads".

Needless to say we can use your prayers, or your positive thoughts, or your lucky dice rolling, whatever you've got. We gladly take good wishes in any form.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Random Tuesday Thoughts: This is more for me than for you...

randomtuesday

A happy Tuesday to you, full of random thoughts!

Here's one for you- the child pictured below is three and a half, and decided tonight that she is afraid of thunderstorms. Naturally she didn't decide this until bedtime...

This child below can successfully work a computer mouse. She frightens me.


Oh yes! Here's this one again! She has discovered that saying "I have to go potty" is the perfect excuse to get out of anything. Tired of eating spaghetti? Bored? Is it bedtime? Suddenly its potty time. And of course we're still new enough at this that we have to take her seriously. She's a sneaky little devil.
And this one again! That sweet smile is planted on a very hard skull. If she ever headbutts you? Say, in a defiant thrashing moment? Yeah, you see stars. I've had had two fat lips and a split lip caused by that head. eeeeeeeeeeee.


They sure are cute, but every day I don't know what to make of them.
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For more Random Tuesday Thoughts, quite possibly not about children (although in my book its even better if they are), head over to Keely's place!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Gratuitous Weekend Recap

We had a great weekend!

I realize that this entry is more for the journaling aspects of this blog, and is not so reader-oriented, but humor me.

On Friday night we got the girls' Spring photos taken:

As usual, it was a nightmare, but we persevered and got some shots I like. More tomorrow as part of Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Elizabeth wanted to hide and find the Easter egg props all over the room, and Lilli decided that she wanted nothing to do with the photographer, but eventually I had my way and they smiled as commanded. Or at least looked pleasant. Muhahahahaha!

On Saturday we got to go to another egg hunt. Woohoo!

Why yes! Those are the same dresses from the night before! What with the polar ice caps melting, and all, I figured it would be a lot greener of me to let them wear them for more then a 15 minute photo session before I washed them. Aren't I considerate?
We also went to lunch with friends and discovered that Uno's offers you apples on the way out the door. I don't see the connection. Partnership with a dental association? But hey! Free apples! We learned that both girls are quite capable of eating them whole and have been suckering me into cutting them up (and sometimes even peeling them!) all this time.


After nap time, Grandma and Papa came over for some Easter festivities. The girls are big fans of celery, thanks to the Wonder Pets, and there's nothing like sharing a healthy snack with your grandma.

We did an (another!) egg hunt out on the lanai, and I don't think I've ever seen the girls move so fast. They were like little egg gathering locusts.

And we also dyed eggs. A lot of eggs. 30 eggs.

And I was so pooped from all this activity I didn't realize that I hadn't even considered a fancy Easter dinner until late Sunday night.
Next year I'm calling the Honeybaked Ham store!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Spin Cycle: My Ultimate Meme

This week, the Spin Cycle assignment was a wild card. Any topic we can think of is fair game.

You may know by now that I love memes. Love. Them. I love to read ones that other people have written, including total strangers, and I've posted a few myself. Generally though I fill them out in my head, while grinning madly to myself, and that's the end of it.

Having been given a pass to go wild though, I decided that when you have something interesting behind your origins, sharing it is the me-me to beat all memes.

I was adopted as an infant. I've known about it for as long as I can remember and I grew up proud of it. I used to share things about it for show and tell in elementary school. I'll happily talk about it long after you regret having asked. This post topic gives me a "print" format to share some thoughts I've had about it recently.

Plus, I turn 30 this year. I actually turn 30 on June 30th, making this my Golden Birthday year, which adds weight to the significance of jumping up a decade. At least in my view. It seems to have some kind of symbolism which makes me feel more even more sentimental about this aging business than I would normally be, and turns me back to all kinds of things in my past. And somewhere out there is a woman nearing 50 who holds a lot of answers for me.

This is my beginning: My birth mother was 16 years old. She went into the 11th grade and met my father. They immediately fell in love and conceived me that very same September. Even though they were madly in love, they were too young to get married and too young to keep me, so they gave me up for adoption because they wanted me to have a better life. My birth mother had dark wavy hair, like my mom (aka my adoptive mother, aka my "real mom"), and was about 5'5" or 5'6". She sang and played the piano, loved to read, and liked school. My birth father was also brunette and was a jock.

At least that's what I believed for at least 20 years, through a combination of childish imagination and lack of information (it was a closed adoption).

About 5 years ago my dad (aka my adoptive father, aka my "real dad") kindly requested as much "non-identifying (all that is available) post adoption information" as could be had for me, since he knew who to call, and I didn't. I had finally gotten curious. Something about considering parenthood yourself makes you wonder a bit about your roots. Sure, I "knew" about my birth parents, but what diseases was I going to die of? What would the adoption agency even tell me about my birth parents? I had heard somewhere that a lot of adoption records from around the time I was born had been destroyed in a fire (no idea where I heard this), and I wasn't really expecting to find out anything. Boy was I wrong.

Even in its very limited state, it is completely different from what was in my head.

Here it is, verbatim. Well, almost verbatim, I've made the tenses agree. This seems to be a current summary of the past interview and I think whoever wrote it was having some consistency issues. My comments are in italics:

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Birth Mother: The birth mother, 17, stood 5'8" tall, and had strawberry blond hair and blue eyes. Her racial ethnicity was Caucasian and she had German, English, Swedish (this possibly explains my cheekbones) and Irish ancestry. The birth mother was single and was attending the 11th grade. She was interested in tennis, sewing, horseback riding and color creativity (what the heck is color creativity? Is that like interior decorating? Or like being into makeup?). Her social activities centered around dating (heh. yes, apparently so. read on...). She came from a family that consisted of her brothers and her mother and father. Her relationship was closest with her father.

Pregnancy: The birth mother lived with a foster family for three months during her pregnancy (I frequently wonder if it was the same foster family that took care of me for the first 2 and a half moths of my life. I did get into contact with them at one point, but it never occurred to me to ask that). The birth mother had a good relationship with the foster family. The pregnancy was normal and uneventful. The birth mother received regular medical care during the pregnancy.

Delivery: The delivery was normal with no unusual complications or findings. After six hours of labor (this totally explains where I get my fairly quick labor and deliveries, although mine were 8 and 4. Maybe with a third child I would hit 6), the child was delivered at full-term and was reported by the attending physician to be healthy and normal (Apgars of 8 and 9, thank you very much!).

Relationship with the Birth Father: The natural mother stated that she had relations (edited slightly to prevent myself from showing up on certain google searches) with more than one person and did not know for certain who the father was (!! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that my birth mother slept around).

Feelings About Adoption: After weighing the alternatives and consequences, and after deliberations with her family and her counselor, the birth mother made the decision to place the child for adoption (not quite the sweet discussion I imagined her and my birth father having).

Birth Mother's Future Plans: The birth mother intended to return home to her family and resume her academic efforts. She enrolled in summer school after delivering the baby.

Health Information: Good physical health, RH factor, smoked cigarettes (! I weighed 8 pounds 12 ounces! If smoking during pregnancy causes low birth weight babies, how big would I have been? Of course, maybe it didn't stunt a baby's growth back in the 70s), one time drug use (leading me to believe very unpleasant things about my conception. Drugs? Not sure who the father is? aieeeeeee!).

Birth Father: The presumed birth father stands 5'9" tall, weighs approximately 140 pounds and has brown hair, brown eyes and a medium skin tone. The birth father had used some illicit drugs (yes, I strongly suspect that I know the scenario of my conception).

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So, I have this little bit of information. And on one hand, I'm thrilled! The only thing that could top it would be having pictures of them at various ages. And maybe finding out if I have brothers and sisters out there since I am currently an only child. But on the other hand it's got me asking questions that never even occurred to me when I had my little adoption fairy tale in my head. Like, just how many people did she sleep with? Did anyone else catch on to the physical descriptions of these people? I'm 5'4", ghostly pale, with gray eyes (that sometimes humor me by looking blueish), and hair that my mother would nicely call honey brown, but I would normally call mousy brown if the stupid Florida sun didn't make me look like I spend all of my free time in salons getting highlights. The sun hates me, but I wear sunscreen so it has to settle for trying to eat my hair. It is not a good thing. With skin this pale I am not meant to be a blond. At any rate, except for my possibly Swedish cheekbones and the potential paleness of my birth mother, I'm not sure I'm the child of EITHER of them. And I really wonder how sure she was that she had the right guy. Was she sure, but he denied it? Why was I in foster care for 2 and a half months? From the little bit I've researched I think it was to give time for a birth father to step forward before the parental rights were terminated, since he was unknown, but I'm not sure. Now that I have had children myself and am aware that pregnancy is actually 10 months, not the advertised 9, I figure I came to be during an end-of-summer fling in August of 1978. Yes, the song Summer Lovin' is going through my head too right now. But of course I don't know that either. I pretty much still don't know anything.

Most likely you are wondering if I have a point to telling you all this, besides just the chance to subject you to a super personal meme. Shockingly, I kind of do.

I like knowing the some of the truth. I like it a lot. But it has made me greedy for more. Kind of like how I read a new blog, get fascinated and then go back and read the entire archives and pretty much absorb the person so I have context for future entries. In this case, it's like getting to read someone's super intriguing profile, and not getting to read single one of their posts.

I was a social work major. I know all the reasons that so many adoptions used to be closed. I also know why so many these days are open, and I applaud it. All the reasons for adoptions to be closed, no matter how well meant, end up kind of selfish, since they don't consider for a second the last person of the triangle. Someday the baby grows up enough to wonder about their origin. It's not very nice to the poor kid to not tell them anything. What I had growing up, besides two very loving "real" parents, was knowledge equivalent to someone who has been left on the steps of a convent with like, only a locket to give me a clue to my origins. But at least I made up my own genealogy. I had it all worked out in my head and I was content.

Now that I've had a little taste of reality though? Oh yeah, I'm hungry for more. I'm also paralyzed into inactivity from the fear of what else I might find out. What if I do have sisters? Eek! What if I find out that more family medical issues have developed over the last 30 years? What if I'm the smartest member of my family? What if I'm the dumbest? What if I somehow got in touch with my birth parents and didn't like them?

Apathy is much more comfortable.

So that's the lengthy tale of how I came to be. To read more spins about anything under the sun, visit Sprite's Keeper, and think about submitting a post yourself sometime.

All the cool kids are doing it...

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Unusual- For me, anyway...

I just finished watching ABC's The Unusuals.

Sorry for the lack of link, but I've actually been going to bed fairly early lately and this uncharacteristic TV watching has sucked all the energy out of me. I haven't watched a show for months, not even my beloved Heroes, but something about the way In Touch or Life & Style worded their blurb about the show made me want to watch it. Plus, I like Amber Tamblyn. Whose name I might have spelled wrong. Anyway, she's in it, plus Harold Perrineau whose cheek bones are quite maddening in their beauty. If you don't know who he is, since I've inconsiderately left off that link too, he played Mercutio in the 1996 version of Romeo & Juliet (where I first began to love him), and I didn't mind watching him in the pilot of Lost, which is the only episode of that show that I have ever seen.

Oh, you're wondering if I have a point? Yes! I liked the show. I don't like it being at 10, but I liked it. I looked at the message boards on the ABC website, and it appears that I am alone in this. I don't know what it says that the girl who doesn't watch TV made a special point of seeing the pilot and is planning on watching it next week, but hopefully that's a compliment to the show. And not indicative of the fact that I have very little in the way of current television experience to compare it to. Except for children's shows which I am way more up on than I would like to be. I can tell you that I liked it better than Handy Manny and My Friends Tigger & Pooh combined.

So, next week! Try to catch it. If you love it, hate it, or are completely apathetic about it, I'd like to know. You have my e-mail address. I'm sort of having flashbacks to elementary school when I'd shout out one of the few shows I knew about during TV freeze tag when some of my choices were received better than others. Am I shouting out "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood (May he rest in peace)!" or "Transformers!"?

Let me know.

Monday, April 6, 2009

It's not so bad to have a sister...

Sure, they squabble at times. You'd think with this many toys in the house there would be nothing to fight over. Not so, my friends, not so.

Generally, though, they are already each other's best friend, and that's the way I like it. Elizabeth refers to her sister as "my friend Lilli", just as often as she calls her "my sister". And nothing makes Lilli happier than hugs from her sissah.

If you didn't have a sister, who would share the joy of a swing on a spring day with you?


Who would, and I shudder to even say this, share their lollipop with you?

Only a sister.
I'd say they fell in love at the very beginning.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

A Hunting We Will Go...

I love Egg Hunts. I love them with a fiery passion. With the heat of a thousands suns. With more hearts then there is water in the oceans....

You get my drift.

If I had my way our family would frolic from Egg Hunt to Egg Hunt for the entire month preceding Easter, and we may yet do that when the girls are older, but for right now my darling husband gets in my way. He is not nearly as excited by this idea as I am. I'm not entirely sure what it is that I love about them so much, but its something to do with the fact that Egg Hunts are the only time you can go treasure hunting in the real world (unless you're like, Mel Fisher or something). And they also have some of the elements of a gladiator-type to-the-death match.

Anyway, today we went to one at church. It was awesome, but I'm going to be a little bit cranky if I can't go to at least one more this "season".

Here's Lilli and Grandma with the chick that Lilli made. Ok, Lilli didn't really make it because I became a craft making tyrant and took over. I can't help myself sometimes. The wings are totally her hand prints though.


Here she is in hot pursuit of the eggs. This was her first hunt and she sure got the hang of it quick.
Elizabeth is a veteran hunter these days. She's finally caught onto the fact that you can't lolly gag around at one of these events or the eggs will be all gone. THIS IS A COMPETITION PEOPLE! MOVE! MOVE!

Ok, technically, at this particular egg hunt you were only allowed to pick up a certain number of eggs which took the brutality down several notches. I was still urging her on though.


Part of the excitement of these hunts is checking out the loot inside the eggs, naturally:

I find it utterly charming that upon opening each egg Elizabeth would say "I wonder what's in this one? Oh! (joyfully) Candy!" Every. Single. Egg.

Yep, we had a good time. But I'm going to be doing some more research on the net tonight.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Spin Cycle: Time Traveling

Supposedly time is on my side. Yes it is.

That's what I keep hearing anyway.

Everyone remembers how slowly time went when we were little. It just crawled. One afternoon playing out in the backyard would seem like a week. The stretch from Halloween to Christmas was an agony of slowness. A year was forever.

Things have changed.

Now I blink and a week has passed. Let's not even discuss how fast the days go by. The last time I paid real attention to the date it was November, and somehow when I was looking the other way it became April. I wish there was some way to slow it down so I would feel that I was actually savoring the baby and toddler hood of my girls. I really only see them for a couple of hours each day and on weekends, it goes too quickly, and they're growing up between one breath and the next.

I take way too many pictures of the girls so that at least I can relive some of their baby moments. I was realizing the other day that I have very few memories of Elizabeth before Lilli came along. I remember her birth extremely clearly, but then I only have flashes up until the morning that she visited Lilli and I at the hospital. I think that is partly because I got pregnant again when Elizabeth was 12 months old and so I spent the next 10 being a little distracted, and that time went by so fast it was like it was on Fast Forward. It's really weird to be able to relive a moment I took a picture of but to not have a clue what came before or after it was taken.

Anyway, I'm holding out for a time machine. I apparently can't stop time myself (no matter how often I scrunch my eyes like Hiro from Heroes), so I need some way to go back and visit all the moments that are sprinting past me while I do necessary things like work and cook the food.

If anyone out there is working up a patent for this, please let me know. I've only got about five dollars to my name at the moment, but I'll invest it all with you.

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This melancholy moment was brought to you by Sprite's Keeper. Please check out the other spins, and maybe make time to do a little spinning yourself!