Catching Up

I am just absolutely the pokey-est. I meant to do this on G's birthday but I didn't get around to it. Seriously, where does my time go?!

 

You'll notice he says his favorite movie is Chrsitmas Vacation - pretty sure that's based solely on the cartoon during the opening credits. He usually walks away after that.

 

Also, take a close look at the the "What do you think about..." questions. Wowsers. Talk about glass half empty - and parents that need improvement. I should probably be embarrassed to post this. Yes, I definitely am. But it's worth sharing just the same. I'm pretty proud of my creative formatting. Hahaa! I'm so lame.

 

The First First Day of the Rest of His Life

 "They're yours, and then they're the worlds." - Rob Lowe

This week, G started pre-school. Our church was starting a new program and the timing just seemed right. He and I need a break from each other. I was (am) the problem. My patience is thin. I'm harder on him than I should be. He seems so much bigger now than he did six months ago, and sometimes (very often) I forget that he's only (barely) three. I don't want this to become our ordinary, so I decided we needed a break. "It's not you, it's me," except for really, it is.

And though I knew we needed this break, and that he will have to grow up eventually, it didn't stop my heart from breaking knowing it was time to shove him out of the nest. At least that's how I felt.

The night before school started I remember thinking that the days of not having school constraints were over. Forever. Yes, there will be summer vacations, but it'll never quite be the same. From now until he leaves our home, we have to share him. It seems strange to me that you only get three or four short years to load your kid up on love and confidence and fun and strength before you have to send him or her out into the world and hope it doesn't destroy those things. This week, my sweet baby experienced the first first day of the rest of his life. There will be many of these, of course, but this was the first one.0

For weeks we've been discussing school, and for weeks he's been saying he's "nervous" about all the other kids. Luckily, it's a new program and so far it's just him and one other kid. They have an absolute blast and each time (three, thus far) I've picked him up he's screamed "NOOOOOOO!" or hidden under a table.

So I guess he likes it.

And so do I. It's nice to have time with just Piper. I thought I'd get more done around here while he was gone, but as it turns out, having one kid instead of two is no less time consuming, it's just that the time is less hectic. So... I've pretty much just done laundry. But I'll get better. Maybe.

Well, and I did shovel (half) the driveway today! So that's not nothin'...

Anyway, here are a few pics from my sweet baby's first day of school! Erik couldn't join us for drop off because he had to be at work super early, but I'm proud to report there were no tears! Despite the fact G said "Sorry I don't need you anymore Mommy," on the first day.

 

Pleas excuse the most horrific wallpaper on the planet.



Ready to play!

This is Why

I feel kind of silly blogging. I don't have a particularly interesting life, or earth shattering things to share. I don't have an angle, or a talent or eloquently stated ideas. My pictures aren't gorgeous and my background is plain. Hell, I'm not even as funny as I used to be. (Find my college blog - that was HILARIOUS!). So I don't really "advertise" the fact that I do this. Sometimes if I really want to get my thoughts "out there" I'll post the link on my Facebook, but for the most part, I don't think I do much to share this site with the world. I seriously don't even know if my own husband knows about or reads this.

And that's okay with me, because I don't do this for the world.

I do it to remember. Because I'm already forgetting.

And I do it for my kids. Because they won't remember. (which sometimes I'm grateful for...)

I'm not just a mom. I'm not just the person who packed lunches and cooked supper, cleaned up messes and gave baths. I have (usually pretty strong) opinions. I have thoughts that I don't say out loud (though those of you who know me well might find that pretty surprising). I want my children to look back on these posts and know who I was when I carved out a minute to be out from under my mom hat.

I read a super interesting article on the NPR website about memories. Basically that we plug current facts into into our memories. Think about your mom. How did she look when you were a kid? Because I put my moms current fifty-something-year-old face on the body I remember looking up at opening presents on her 33rd birthday (which, by the way, seemed positively ancient back then...).

Here's a quote from the article:
"Our memories aren't perfect," Voss says. "They're not like tape recorders. There's a small current of thought that thinks these failures aren't necessarily a bad thing. Memory is not intended to allow you to remember what you did last week, or remember your childhood. The point is to help you make good choices right now."

There you have it.

Our memories aren't made to remember the little things. But for me, my blog is.

I Blame Wally Lamb

Reading a book a month was one of my 2014 goals. (Which I now realize I haven't even posted about yet, and at this point probably won't.) I didn't used to need to make reading one of my goals, but I guess that's life.

Anyway, my tablet recently took a nosedive. Yeah, yeah, paperback books, blah, blah, blah. But I like my tablet. It probably wouldn't hurt my baby as much when I drop that on her as the big ass books I read could. (I dropped a hardback copy of Breaking Dawn on my own head once and nearly saw stars).

Luckily (but unluckily for Piper), for Christmas I had asked for a paperback copy of We Are Water by Wally Lamb. I love (love, love, love) his writing. The way he writes from the inside of female characters minds is nothing short of astounding. If only my own husband understood the inner-workings of women's minds so clearly. I'm not very imaginative, but always get clear, vivid pictures from his prose. I love the way characters from some books come back in others, just for little cameos. I get a little jittery inside, like I know a secret only a few others know, when I see old characters show up in new books. I feel like he does it as a shout out to his most loyal fans.

And I'm one of them.

I've read all his work. Even one of those lame prison essay compilations he put together while teaching workshops at a correctional institute. Wally, if you're reading this, sorry about calling them lame.

So as I said, for Christmas this year I asked for a hard copy of his latest book because I like to have hard copies of all of his books. I usually only buy the hard copy after reading the e-book and falling in love. Hmmph, I say usually like I actually do it regularly, but I don't. I'm rarely that "spoken to." Fortunately, I can know I'll be spoken to in advance by Lamb's book, so I just go ahead and buy them in hard copy and try not to concuss whatever child/pet is in my lap while reading.

But the man can't write a book that's less than 900 pages. (Except for once) And that's kind of a commitment for the girl with two kids and no real time on her hands to use for reading.

So here I am, on page 300 of We Are Water, which is only 1/3 of the way through and I have today to read the other 600 pages. Not. Happening.

As such, I've broken my first goal for the year in the first month of the year.

Obviously, this is Wally's fault. Ya know, and not mine, for choosing to watch 2 seasons of the Pioneer Woman when I realized Food Network was on Amazon Prime. (Why is food TV so damn soothing?!)

Maybe his latest offering can count for 2 months since it's larger than the average novel? I hope so. I'd hate to be a failure so early in the year. If I'm not done by the end of February though, I'll have no one to blame but myself. ;)

Also, I promise I'm not a stalker.

The Difference

Recently, I heard an article on NPR about why it's hard to make friends in your 30's. You can read it here, but I've cut and pasted my favorite excerpts:

"It was like one of those magical blind-date scenes out of a Hollywood rom-com, without the “rom.” I met Brian, a New York screenwriter, a few years ago through work, which led to dinner with our wives and friend chemistry that was instant and obvious. [...] As Brian and his wife wandered off toward the No. 2 train afterward, it crossed my mind that he was the kind of guy who might have ended up a groomsman at my wedding if we had met in college. That was four years ago. We’ve seen each other four times since. We are “friends,” but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way."

"As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added."

"External factors are not the only hurdle. After 30, people often experience internal shifts in how they approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with, said Marla Paul, the author of the 2004 book “The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore.” “The bar is higher than when we were younger and were willing to meet almost anyone for a margarita,” she said."

We've been here in "purgatory" for over a year and a half now, and I've had a revelation.

The difference between civilian and military friends is this: Civilian friends don't need you.

At a regular duty station it's not unreasonable to invite a new, potential friend to come along to try whatever festival is on that weekend in a nearby town. People come over for dinner. People invite you to lunch (you know, so if things go south they/you can always beg off saying you have to get home for nap). You're at someone's house on any given weekend for no reason other than they invited you over and that is how you make friends when you're a million miles away from your old ones.

Military friends need to make new friends because they're probably new, too. And if they're not new, their close friends probably just moved away. And if neither of those are true, they are just nice people who know it's hard to be new and know Army life is easier with Army Family nearby. Here, everyone is where they've always been, around the people they've always been around, and therefore don't have the drive to make another friend - which, as I showed you earlier, isn't exactly easy in the first place. There is someone here that could easily have become a close friend if circumstances were different. But having kids/jobs/spouses make it hard to get together if you're not especially motivated and people here don't have the kind of motivation - because they don't need new friends. It's not wrong. No one is at fault. It just is what it is.

But all this becomes painfully evident when I admit, with a somewhat heavy heart (and bruised ego), that not one of our "civilian friends" came to Grant's birthday party. Only one of them had RSVP'd, so I wasn't pinning all my hopes on everyone coming - but in my experience, people outside the military are pretty bad at RSVP'ing so I was still hoping some of them would come and show my little boy how much fun birthday parties full of friends can be. But that didn't happen. And I suppose it was just as well, because after the cupcake and sangria debacle we would have run out of cake anyway!

I'm not a person who gets their feelings hurt easily. And I don't get embarrassed all that easily, either. But in this case I was both. I went through the trouble of planning the party, cooking, decorating, I even had Mandy separate the red, yellow and orange candies for a centerpiece for heaven's sake (color scheme, ya know... - and it looked awesome, BTW!). I don't mind doing all those things for my family and closest friends (we still had a full house of guests), and for my sweet baby's birthday, but I felt a little silly when all but one family that came was in on the decorating and the tear down. I felt a little awkward that the following Sunday at church I was met with a million more apologies (okay, maybe just 3) and "were going to come, but..."'s, all in front of the others, and I am CERTAIN there were sideways glances exchanged when they came to the realization that they ALL missed the party. I was gracious. (I don't have any right to be mad, and I'm not - people have lives, and I TOTALLY understand. The story just serves to prove my point.) And luckily, the others that came are great kids that he loves to play with and close friends and family he doesn't see often enough - and he really wasn't any the wiser. But he will be someday, and I hope it's when we're back near Army Family again - I trust military friends with my babies hearts a little more easily, I think. They know it can be harder than it looks to make friends and feel a sense of family on days that should be spent with you're whole family but can't be. They're the only ones who COULD understand.

Well... Or this could have happened anywhere because maybe we're just totally and completely unlikable and I haven't gotten the memo yet.