Ah, children

Life with a three-nager (think teenager) has been interesting lately.

To give you some idea of what it's been like, Lala is currently yelling and crying at me because I asked her to clean up the duplos....that she dumped out....and told her she couldn't watch Caillou (ugh...Caillou). 5 minutes later, she's all cheerful and has moved onto cleaning up because there is the promise of hot chocolate (not a bribe, I've got a playdate with my local moms club).

Out of her mouth have been such awesome phrases such as:

• Momma, you've really got to stop this angry stuff.
• I'm not listening to you because I only listen to Daddy.
• Wall-E told me to (insert questionable activity here). (As in, jumping off the couch, performing the high dive onto her bed...etc)
• I never want to sleep in my bed because it's too comfy. 

There is never a dull moment. She is incredibly stubborn, and coupled with selective hearing when being asked to do something, it makes for a frustrating mom. 

Gogo has taken a page out of Lala's book and immediately throws tantrums if told no, or moved away from an activity she was doing. 

I have virtually no patience right now. Thank goodness for that blessed hour where I get to workout. As much as it hurts....it's a bit of an escape for some me time out of the house. 

Day trip with Tutu

This weekend, I got the rare treat of getting an entire day to myself. The Hubs had the girls all day so that I could go on a mini road trip with Tutu to go visit Uncle Bubba (my brother), Auntie Eheh and Cocoba.

What a trip. I don't think I've come home from something feeling as relaxed as I did. Even after 6 hours round trip in the car.

The town they live in is beautiful and the weather cooperated so that it was warm (70s!! In January!) and we had blue skies! My sweet niece was so excited to see me. We really only get to see her via FaceTime (thank goodness for technology!) but when we got there, she started yelling "daddy! Chouchou!" I got several hugs, snugs and kisses throughout the day!

They took us out to their favorite little coffee shop for a latte, then to lunch at an amazing restaurant called PokPok. SO GOOD. I don't love spicy things usually, but I ate 5 of their chicken wings...and these aren't like the "wings" you get at American restaurants...these are the full thing.

After we were totally in food comas, we got to go see the venue that they're hoping to get married at this summer! If I were living where they are, and was getting married again.....oh my gosh. I'd go here. It's a beautiful venue  with rustic flair. Lots of reclaimed wood, metal and kind of a vintage/modern appeal to it. it is absolutely perfect for them. I cannot WAIT to see them get married there :)

I had great conversations with my sister (Eheh) and with my mom in all the various car rides we had. Lots got put on the table and lots of feelings were shared. It was really cathartic!

Hopefully I can escape down to see them again!

The hubs had cleaned while I was gone (what a wonderful man!) and told me about all the adventures they had while I was gone. He had a soccer game, so he dropped the girls off with Grandma. She later told me she has no idea how I do this everyday, that they have so much energy she couldn't keep up! It i s a skill, that's for sure!! They had tons of fun and obviously did quite well without me for the day! Bring on more trips away for me!

Birthdays birthdays birthdays!

We had two wonderful birthdays over the holidays on top of ALL the craziness the holidays bring!

First up was Lala! THREE! When did that happen????
Her birthday was a Tutu party. I made tutus for EVERYONE. 30-some-odd tutus. I was practically bleeding tulle. However, it was a complete success. Even her uncles wore them proudly. She was beyond the moon!

The tutus in process. It was a LOT of tulle.

 

Everyone's tutus

Birthday girl running around

The snacks even had tutus.

Inspecting ALL the guys.

The birthday Girl!

Next up, after Christmas and New Years was Gogo. For her first birthday, I fell in love with a sprinkle idea I saw on Pintrest. We kept it really small, with just our families and the girl's legal guardians. Tutu embellished a dress we found at Gap for the party so that it had little embroidered "sprinkles" around the hem. I think she was pretty adorable! As for another learning lesson (like the tulle) those tiny nonpareil sprinkles? They are the glitter of baking. I'm STILL finding sprinkles a week later.

We gave sprinkles out as favors

I edged glasses for drinks with frosting and sprinkles. Super easy and a fun idea. I'm going to do this for more parties!

The birthday girl!

Her cake. Those sprinkles are still everywhere.

Since then, we've been busy with potty training and swim lessons for Lala and walking EVERYWHERE and eating EVERYTHING for Gogo! Never a dull moment in our house! 

Coolest Dishes Ever

Recently, I backed my very first Kickstarter for a product called ez-pz Less Mess Happy Mats. Little kid plate/bowl/placemat all in one? YES PLEASE. They were touted to stick to surfaces and stay put so that kids couldn't take them off the table. This was a dream come true! It was fully funded and I received my mats just before the holidays.

I adore them. They're awesome and work incredibly well. At least for Lala.

Here are some of the issues I have with them:

• We have an old table that has a crack in the middle so that it can expand with leaves. If the ez-pz mat goes over a crack, it won't seal to the table properly.
• Gogo figured out you just need to peel the corner to break the suction. On day one. We're not the only family having this issue and the makers are in the process of creating one for infants that should be trickier for them to move. 
• They take up a bit more space than the normal kid dishes we have. Not a deal breaker, but it's true.

All these issues aside, I love that I only have to clean one thing after meals now. When Lala wants cereal, all the mess stays on her and the mat. No more scrubbing the table! For Gogo, it's an easy way for her to learn to feed herself, with low edges and three spots for snacks. You can also actually make faces in the mat because it does look like a happy face. Pretty fun for toddlers with huge imaginations!

I want to order their bowl version and their craft version next. These make our meals a lot of fun.

Fears Take 2

I've always had a bit of a worry-wart disposition. If any of you knew my mom, you'd understand I come by it honestly.

I worry a lot.

Until I had Lala, I didn't know how hard it could be to live with worry on a daily basis. As a disclaimer, I am writing solely based on my own experiences. Every parent has a different experience.

Since she just turned three yesterday, I found myself reflecting a lot about the past three years. A lot of time was spent reflecting on her birth and the first few months of life.

Her birth was traumatic for me. It's taken years to understand this, but it was. It wasn't how we had planned at all. She didn't cry when she was born. I was surrounded by people I didn't know.

Fast forward 2 months, I get diagnosed with Postpartum Depression, my milk is gone and Lala is classified as "failing to thrive" because she hasn't gained any weight in a month.

This is where the worry comes in today.

I worry that Gogo isn't getting enough food. That Lala, at three, isn't getting enough either. (ridiculous because Gogo eats on average 32-38oz of formula PLUS a ton of solid food a day and Lala is a bottomless pit).

I worry that they will resent me for not socializing them more, for not playing with them every time they ask, for making them cry it out. (again, ridiculous because how many of us remember being 10 months or 3 years old?)

I just want them to have the same kind of relationship I have with my mom. I'm so blessed to be in a great place with her. I've never hated my mom, like teen girls are "supposed" to. So when everyone says "oh just wait till you have two teenage girls on your hands" I start to worry about how our relationship will be.

I'm worried about how they'll thrive in the world today. There is so much going on that makes me concerned for their futures, not only as women but as humans in the world today. I hope that Poppa and I can give them the tools, skills and morals they need to navigate the world.

I worry about their happiness. Really, they can do what they'd like with their lives. Our only expectation for them is that they're happy (and healthy).

I worry a lot.

But having Gogo reach for me and smile, or have Lala say "You're the best momma ever. I love you all the time" certainly helps quiet them a lot of the time.

Fear for the future

I'm sitting here, enjoying my morning cup of tea and the sounds of Lala (running around in a diaper with a blanket over her head) and Gogo (currently in the playpen) laughing at each other. I'm also catching up on the news from overnight/yesterday.

What I've been reading the last several days have made me sick and very afraid for the girls' futures.

*Cyber Bullying/Bullying in general: There are so many stories about kids getting bullied via social media. The draw of it is that you can do it anonymously. That old schoolyard saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is completely false these days.
The most recent story that made me fear for the future was of a young girl who donated 14 inches of her hair to make wigs for children going through chemo or dealing with being bald for other reasons. She's 12. Can we for a second admire her selfless act? She got a darling pixie cut, went back to school, and was immediately bullied. Because she cut her hair and "looked like a boy". Who cares about why she did it, she was picked on.
I had super short hair for a lot of my childhood and was called boy often. It sickens me that these kids trying to do good, but their peers don't recognize the good and jump on an opportunity to bully. The school refused to see it as bullying, which is of itself a whole other matter....thank goodness the school district we're in has a zero tolerance policy.
I wouldn't say I was bullied in today's definition (that's another post), but these days, there are so many avenues for doing/receiving it. The reasons why people do it (and it's not just kids either) is because they disagree with what someone is doing or how they look...or because an individual is "different". I wonder just how incredibly insecure these people are to pick on others, especially through the vale of the internet. I wonder why they believe this is acceptable.
 I'm tempted to ban all online interactions until the girls are in college.

*GamerGate: The hubs and I are both avid gamers. I was working in the gaming industry before I had Lala. I've been playing games my whole life. I never felt "different" for liking them, since it was just part of who I am.
It wasn't until my first role as a QA tester that I realized just how differently women were viewed in the gaming world. I was part of a multiplayer test for a racing game, and the guy I was testing with was mouthing off about how I was "totally cheating" because I was getting specific power-ups/winning races/etc. There was a crowd of the other testers around us (it was the end of the day) and all of them were guys. He kept saying that I didn't know what I was doing, that I had unfair advantages, that I didn't actually know how to game. All of this because he was losing...badly...finally, at one point, our lead looked at him and told him he'd better just put his foot in his mouth because he was getting his ass kicked by a really good gamer...who happened to be female. I left that company soon after.
In case you've been under a rock lately, GamerGate is a phrase currently being used as a rallying point for a misogynistic group of individuals in an effort to remove women from mainstream gaming culture. It started as an unethical attack on a single female developer and has spiraled out to target any woman in gamest development, game journalism, or nerd culture in general. While some people will claim GG is about getting better ethical standards in game journalism, absolutely nothing has been proposed, advanced, or even theorised on how that can be done or what current practices are unacceptable. Instead, an outpouring of hate directed at women has been put forward on a scale not seen since the Iranian revolution.

*The fact that they're WOMEN: There are so many things that are putting shame on people simply because physically, they're female. (I'm going to use the royal "we" here...don't get thrown off) We get blamed for rape because how we were dressed/acted/looked gets interpreted as consent or quite clearly, we were "asking for it". Schools are banning yoga pants...because it's the girls fault for "tempting men" because obviously guys have zero control over themselves. We're getting the ability to make choices about OUR bodies taken away because we don't have the best interest in mind...obviously we don't know our bodies as well as men do. (That's not a statement for pro-life/pro-choice...simply that we're not getting to choose what's best for us...some choose one thing, and others do the opposite...but we should be able to make our own decisions about our own bodies, right?) It's just frightening. It almost seems like we're going back to the days where women were considered second class or even property. Having two daughters I'm raising makes me so fearful about how their world will be when they are adults.

This whole raising kids thing is scary, and then you throw gender into the mix and it gets even scarier. I can only hope that the world turns around and figures itself out. Otherwise, screw it, we're moving to the mountains and living off the land.

Four years

This past Friday, the Husband and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. We sat together wondering how we'd gotten to four years already. We haven't always been able to do a lot for this day, and this year was no exception. However, it's not something that really upsets us....just kind of how we do things. We reflected, spent time together...after all, that's really all that we need. Here's what we remembered from the last four anniversaries:

• 2010 - we got married! What an incredible day surrounded with people we love.
• 2011 - I was in the hospital with pre-term labor. Weird to think that Lala could have been born on our anniversary. She would have been 32 weeks, but the doctors insisted she would have been okay.
• 2012 - The hubs surprised me with a trip to Leavenworth in December to see the lights. Leavenworth is this DARLING bavarian themed town in the mountains. He had rented this little cottage on a vineyard. Although....I got super sick. Hurray for the perfectly timed flu.
• 2013 - Hubs had just been laid off from Zynga, so we kept it low key. Plus I was 6ish months pregnant.
• 2014 - Hubs had a huge gaming thing this weekend. I got to spend time going to parks with the girls. 

This year, though, I made him a Year of Dates! I pre-planned date days/nights for the entire next year so that at least ONE date we didn't have to think about!

• Nov - Fly Me To The Moon: a classy night out, listening to Frank Sinatra and going to fun bars.
• Dec - Jolly Good Fun: British night! Fish n chips, beer/cider and a movie set in England.
• Jan -  Snug as a Bug in a Rug: snug up with tea, books and each other.
• Feb - Test of Everlasting Love: Wii Showdown, will we still love each other after? Hahaha!
• March - Saint Patty's Day: Hang out at a pub, make food at home or invite friends over for a feast.
• April - A Night at the Ballet: Our favorite principal dancer is retiring at the end of the season, so we'll catch Swan Lake (for the third time) and then eat at a fun restaurant!
• May - Dinner in Reverse! Dessert, dinner, appetizers! In that order.
• June - Do You Wanna Build a Garden?: (can you tell I've been watching Frozen a ton?) Do some yard work as a family! Fence, garden, etc. 
• July - Picnic in the Park: Exactly what it sounds like
• Aug - Ren Faire! Time to take the girls to their first Ren faire! Gotta get costumes made for them and fix my own!
• Sept - A Date at the Frye Museum: Checking out a local museum we haven't gone to yet.
• Oct - Back where it all began: A hike at Saint Edwards Park. We went there the day he proposed (and almost lost my parent's dog), we got married at the chapel on the property....now it's time to enjoy the fall colors and let the girls run wild! 

There's a bunch of grab bag ones I included too. We enjoy getting out, but don't always have time/money/babysitters... it's nice to just randomly pick something and say "we're going!"

I'm eagerly looking forward to our first date...and also for a little toddler's 3rd birthday! She's demanded a Pink Party where everyone (and she means EVERYONE) wears tutus. So, I'm making everyone tutus. Not even kidding.

I would write more, but I have a growling Gogo to go remove from a not so great spot....