Maybe One of These Days...

So I guess six month absences are to be expected for me on my blog now. But I was inspired to write again by my cousins. One has started a brand new blog and the other asked me to do a guest blog for hers which got me thinking of my own. I was actually surprised that I had written in October last. I thought it would have been further back than that so I'm doing better than I had first thought. Though not as well as I would have liked when I first started this. The whole point was to have something to look back on that had lots of fun and funny things about my kids or just stories about them growing up and how the experience has been for me as their mom. Something for them to read when they are older and for me to look back on when my memory grows dim of what life was really like with little kids running around. But my faithfulness has been seriously called into question! If I think of my blog at all it's with the thought that one day here soon I'm going to write. But does "one day" ever arrive? Well apparently so since that day would be today. I don't want to keep being so wishy-washy with it though so I'm going to try for one blog no less than every two weeks here for awhile, maybe even more often than that if I can get into a groove.

It should help that my own personal routine has changed recently and we also have a very nice new computer so I don't have to guiltily slink onto the church's laptop we have at our house to access the internet. Now I can do it whenever I want without feeling bad. I've been on the computer much more often because of that lately too so I guess we'll just have to see how it goes!

The changes to my personal routine are that I am now what you might call an early bird. You might call it that if you get up later than I do now, or you might say I get up at a reasonable time for an adult and to stop whining about it already. Well, fine, then if you're going to be that way. AN-yway, I now get up at around 6 most mornings. And I even do this willingly, meaning no child is coming into my room to get me out of bed nor are they crying from their room, which also has the same result. No, I'm getting up at 6 AM in the MORNING to....wait for it....exercise. *GASP* I know, it shocks me too. Every time I do it I'm surprised that I'm actually up and exercising and until here recently it's still dark outside! And I have always been one of those if it's dark outside and I was sleeping before I should keep sleeping till the sun comes up people. But the guilt was starting to wear on me. The guilt from holing up in my room exercising and then showering and basically leaving my kids to fend for themselves for a hour every morning when I was doing all that after Riley got off to school. I actually know they were probably fine for me to leave them like that but I now have a dreaded and fearsome toddler who is capable of and regularly practices opening doors and climbing onto bookshelves so I figured I probably better be present and accessible just a wee bit more just for safety's sake. So now I get up at 6 when my husband gets up for work and I work out and shower before my kids get up in the morning. I've got to say, the idea of doing this had occurred to me before but I never went with it because I love sleep and would never volunteer to miss any but I should have done this a long time ago. For one thing, I can exercise in complete peace AND have a totally uninterrupted shower. Plus, by the time I leave my room, I am ready for the day! I was amazed how much more housework I got done just because I had those other things that seemed to take so much of my morning up done earlier. So anyway, all that to say, I should now have more time to blog because I get done with my housework so much sooner. Don't you wish I would have just said that without all the rambling and drama? He he...

So my kids are all still in the same grades they were in in my last blog but we are now coming to the end of their school year. Jake is preparing to graduate from Pre-K next week! We got his graduation pictures on Tuesday and I've just gotta say, I have one cute 5 year old. If you think you have a five year old who is cute...well I don't know. You need to see mine. I plan to scan his picture into the computer so maybe I'll put it on here in my next blog (next week? the week after?). Seriously though, Jake is just really growing up. He's an average sized kid as far as his height and all that but compared to his giantess sister, he has always seemed small to me but here recently he has really started to seem like a big kid. Physically speaking, I'll glance at him sometimes and do a double take because he'll look so tall to me all of a sudden or his face is turned in such a way that I'll think, "there, that is what he's going to look like in five or ten years". Those moments are almost scary to me because he seemed to go from this little boy who wanted to crawl on your lap or be carried to this big kid who wants to ride his bike all the time and can read an entire Dr. Seuss book by himself. Thankfully he still likes to climb on my lap sometimes so those days aren't completely over yet. Not so thankfully, he still acts like a little boy sometimes with his inability to suffer the most minor of injuries without screaming like his arm is half cut off from his body.

Riley is my teenager in training. I don't know who is in training exactly, her to be one or me to mother one but one of those things is happening. If I have to argue with her one more time about her clothes I might have to jump out the window. I'm seriously thinking I might just start letting her wear whatever she wants whenever she wants and not question her at all. She doesn't really own anything questionable in it's modesty so I know she'll be dresses properly as far as that goes. And that isn't our battle. The battle is we live in Indiana and with the exception of the past three days, the month of May is not necessarily shorts weather yet. And Riley has a deep and abiding hatred for jeans of all things. What is the deal with that? No really, I'm asking that as an honest question. Who hates jeans? I live in jeans. During the winter, all she wanted to wear were some skinny leg black pants she had, some brown corduroys (also skinny leg), or leggings with a tunic to school. If she had to wear jeans she would complain. I actually wonder if some of that wasn't just a skinny leg pants thing and if she'd had some jeans in that style she would have worn them without question. And now that the weather has started warming up, every day it's "What's the weather like today? Can I wear shorts or capris?" Thankfully it has been nice enough some days for capris and then three days this week we've had weather in the 80s so she's been able to wear shorts. I dread tomorrow when a cool front comes back through and drops us back to where our temperature is supposed to be and she can't wear shorts again. Oh, and lest you think that maybe denim is uncomfortable for her skin and that's why she doesn't like jeans, ALL her capris are denim and all but one of her shorts are denim. No arguments for wearing those though. So my consideration is to let her wear whatever she wants and learn on her own how uncomfortable it is to wear shorts when it's in the 50s outside. Not that my only experience with Riley right now is arguing, though. Don't want to leave that impression. She is coming to the end of her second grade year. She won't get out of school till June 6th though which seems nuts to me. She is really maturing fast. Especially physically. I'm going to have to have "The Talk" with her pretty soon just because I don't want anything to happen to her and have her completely freak out because she wasn't expecting it. She is so tall that I've always thought she was going to be an early bloomer and all signs are pointing that way. She may kill me for this some day but we recently bought her her first training bra. It was kind of a traumatic thing for me because I've sort of been in denial that I might need to get one for her until my mom pointed out that she thought she needed one too. And I was like WHAT!?! My EIGHT YEAR OLD needs a bra already?!? I didn't actually say that to my mom. But it's kind of how I was feeling at that moment. It's not all the time that she needs one but there are a few shirts she owns that fit a certain way that makes modesty demand a bra. She of course thought it was cool. What girl isn't excited at her first bra? But my feeling is still that this is my baby girl and she should not own a bra or wear one unless she is playing around with my stuff. But I guess this happens and I need to wrap my brain around it. She is so tall you wouldn't think I would be in such shock over this.

Tyler continues to fill his role as the dreaded and fearsome toddler with gusto. As the walls in our playroom attest, he is an adept door opener, pen or pencil sneaker, and wall colorer. To this day I don't know what pen or pencil he used but the walls have huge scribbles up there now. He must have gone into Riley's room and then put the pen back when he was done to hide the evidence. Needless to say, her door now has one of those door knob covers that he thankfully still hasn't figured out how to operate. But I'm sure that day will arrive before I'm ready for it to. He is now sleeping in a toddler bed, fully decked out in Disney's Cars bedding. He made that transition without the slightest whimper. We made a brief attempt at serious potty training recently but he's not quite ready for that so now I take him after naps and offer periodically throughout the day when I think of it. If he wants to try we try and if he says he's done I let him down even if he only sat there for a second. I want to keep the thought alive in his head so when he is physically ready for more intense training, he won't have forgotten all about the concept. He learns new words and phrases every day and surprises me with the things he'll say or questions he'll ask me. His "what dooing" question is very reminiscent of Joey on Friends' "How you doing?" The word "doing" comes out almost the same. And if anyone is gone from the house he thinks they are "a' work". We take Jake to school and then come home and he asks "Jake a' work?" That comes from hearing that Daddy is at work every day.

So our lives are mostly the same with some growing and changing and hopefully I'll be posting a little more regularly and hopefully not as lengthy. If you have stuck through till now in this blog, you are a trooper and you must really like me so thanks! :)