Soaking it up.

Our children are sponges. And by "our," I don't mean my husband's and mine. We only have one, after all. I mean OURS, collectively. Any parent who has a child or any person raising a child as theirs. This became evident when a school bus cut me off the other day. Avery was in the backseat, telling me about her day at school. I had just come from picking her up. She's three now, and loves to tell stories. But back the bus. It cuts me off in an obvious way. He was in the straight lane, I was in the left turn lane. As I went to turn left, the bus driver decided he, too, would like to go this direction. So he did. Cutting me off, almost causing an accident. If I'd been alone in the car, I might've let him hit me just to give my rage at the situation an outlet. However, Avery was present, and so I did the rational thing and slammed on my brakes while honking my horn. I wish this was all I had done, but being a road rager, I also shouted out, "Watch out, you douchebag!" Avery, cute as pie in the backseat, shouts "DOUCHEBAG!" and laughs. I felt terrible. I don't cuss in front of her. My husband and I make it a point not to, and feel terrible on the rare occasions when a "Shit!" slips out. But I don't really consider the term "douchebag" a cuss word. Just a fantastic insult. But when I heard the word echoed in the back, out of the mouth of my sweet girl, I was filled with regret. I am responsible for teaching her. Is this what I want to be filling her vocabulary with? I immediately told her that mommy was sorry and that was NOT a nice word and please don't repeat it. Fast forward to last night. Laying in bed, she stroked my face and said to me "Everyone loves you!" This is something I say to her. I tell her every day that she is so loved. And that's she's beautiful. And so she doesn't become vain, I also tell her that in addition to being beautiful, she's also smart and sweet and funny. And everyone loves her. To hear her, unprompted, repeating this to me melted my heart. It's then that I realized she is a sponge. Do I want her to tell people they're douchebags, or do I want her to tell them they're loved? I think you know.

We went to a charity event tonight for the Special Olympics. Nothing fancy, very low-key, at a bar actually! It was a lot of fun. The baby showed off her dancing skills. Actually, scratch that. She didn't. Now, girl can DANCE. She has this pretty awesome move where she raises one hand above her head and just spins and spins. Cutting edge stuff, people.

But for whatever reason, tonight she just stood there. I even put on my white girl moves and attempted to dance while holding her on my hip. My hips that have no rhythm whatsoever. All I managed to get out of her was a nice nod. That's her signature move. The arm-raise-and-spin is just the icing on the cake. The head nod is where it's AT. She gets a serious look on her face and just...nods. So while spinny dance move did not come out tonight, The Nod did, and it pleases me to no end. I love that nod.

She also invented a new game on the way home from day care that had me laughing so hard I was afraid I would wreck.

She started just making odd noises. Screeches, guttural growls, squeaks, you name it. She would make a noise and then I would make some equally weird noise back at her. She would then think for a moment, and then try to outdo my noise. At least, I think that's what was happening. For all I know she was paying no attention to me (she is still rear-facing so I can't see her). But on MY end, we were playing a game, and the absurdity of it made me laugh and laugh. I just thought, "Boy, she is definitely my daughter because she is soo strange!" Now that I'm typing it up and thinking about it, though, I think the "she was paying no attention to me" thing might be true. But in my mind it was a fun game. Let's leave it at that.

About the rear facing thing. She is still facing the rear because babies are now supposed to do that until they're two. However, I am always like "IS SHE CHOKING BACK THERE?" Even though no gagging noises are coming my way. Or "DID SHE MANAGE TO GRAB SOMETHING AND IS NOW EATING IT?!" What she could grab, I don't know. So now I get my phone at stop lights, hover it above her, and take pictures so I can see what she is doing. Most of the time it takes me five or so tries because I CAN'T SEE HER (obviously, that's why I'm taking the pictures in the first place), so I have random pictures of her feet or the back door handle and stuff.

Anyway, someone caught me taking pictures of her the other day. I was really embarrassed. They laughed it off, and I still don't know if it was a "Haha, what a cute motherly thing she is doing!" laugh, or a "What a loser!" laugh.

Does anyone else try to take pictures of their kids to see what they're up to back there?!

Sleeping through the night (or at least two hours??)`

As I write this, the baby stirs in her room, even though I just got up with her around 10 minutes ago. Before that, I had gotten up with her for an hour.

Why? Because the baby is addicted to milk.

Yes, at 17+ months, my baby is still nursing. A lot. And frankly I'm tired of people that I don't really know commenting about how weird that is and how she needs to stop. Yeah, maybe she does. I know for my sanity I sure wish she'd stop needing it in the middle of the night. But why does a stranger, or acquaintance, get to pass judgement on me? It's not like she's five years old and attending kindergarten and having chats at the lunch table about how delicious mom's milk is.

But I digress. The baby continues to stir, even as I type this (I'm an exceptionally fast typer, and it's only been about 2 minutes since I started this post). I refuse to let her cry it out. I read the book "The No Cry Sleep Solution," and that failed, too. Ugh I wish I could just let her lay in there and cry sometimes. I know it works for others, but I personally CANNOT do it. I don't want my girl to cry. Especially when I know I can go end her "suffering" in 20 seconds by just letting her have some milkies.

Anyhow, it's been far too long since this blog has been updated. My curse. I always have good intentions of starting blogs but it never quite works out. I blame this strictly on the iPad. I do most of my Internetting from it, you see. And although I am in love with my iPad, it's kind of difficult to type out long blog entries from it, so my poor newbie blog withers and wanes.

I will try to do a better job at this. I know I can.

Halfway through the school year. I wish I would win the lottery already so I could quit my job and do stuff like craft all day.

Goals for this year: update this blog more often. Get trendier and more fashionable (where are all of these amazing thrift stores that this cute bloggers are finding these awesome clothes at?!). Eat healthier. Exercise more. Get bikini body before bikini season. That's related to the previous two. Craft more. Learn to sew. Make my house look cute.

I CAN DO THIS.

Christmas Portrait Fail.

Yesterday we had scheduled an appointment for our daughter, A, to get Christmas pictures taken. We've been putting them off and now it's sort of last minute because we still need to make, order, and send out Christmas cards using pictures from this shoot.

A looked totally adorbs in her Christmas outfit. She was rocking her dress, spit-shine shoes, and bow. Her hair was perfect - not a curl out of place. She really looked like she could be the poster child for Christmas, well, posters.

We hop in the car and set out to the studio. Two minutes before pulling into the parking lot, the downward spiral of our photo adventure started. She fell asleep. My husband was very optimistic when I told him what had happened ('cause I'm a freak, and even though she's 16 months old, I still sit in the backseat with her, because WHAT IF SHE GETS LONELY?!). He said, "Good, she can have a little power nap!"

No. A power nap is, like, fifteen minutes. Not two.

So when we pulled her out of the car seat, she woke up but was still in a semi-unconscious state. Little A is a people person, though, and when she started seeing other human beings besides dear ol' mom and dad, she perked up. I thought our crisis was averted. We get into the waiting area and there are other little boys and girls there.

This is good. Because as much of a people person as A is, she is even more of a baby and child person. She only eats Yo Baby yogurt because there's a picture of a baby on the front of it. Seriously.

Things were looking pre-tty good for us. "Gah!" she said to a little girl. "Gah" is her general sound of contentment. It can be a question ("Gah?") a statement ("Gah.") or in this case, an expression of joy ("Gah!"). Back in the studio, I suddenly heard sounds of a baby crying. "How badly does that suck for them?" I asked hubster. "Can you imagine paying for portraits only to have your baby scream the entire time?"

"Shhh!" was all he said, because he was paranoid someone in the waiting room was waiting for the unseen screaming baby.

Our dear A just kept playing with the other kiddos, Gah'ing to her hearts content. "Paula, we're ready for you now!" said a smiling lady, appearing from the back (crying baby was no longer crying back there). We gathered our things. You know, just the usual...a stuffed santa doll, stuffed elf, stuffed kitty, booger wipes, diaper bag, several coats, my purse, and other stuff. What? All of the stuffed animals were to make A smile during her pictures. Not that she'd need help, because I was really confident that she was going to do SO well at this picture thing. She can even say "Cheese!" when we take her picture at home.

Remember how I said A loves kids? Well this really came back to bite us. Because after we collected our junk, we attempted to gather our baby. She did NOT want to stop playing with the kids in the waiting room. She started fussing immediately. I thought once we put her in front of the camera, her natural charm would come shining through. But with the dimmed lights and soft fuzzy stuff they had set up, A not only thought we had snatched her away from her new best friends, but we were not trying to make her take a nap. Which she was NOT having.

She kicked and screamed and flailed. We couldn't put her down. I tried. My husband tried. We left her in a heap in the pile of faux snow, hoping she would come to her senses and pose. Yeah, that didn't happen. Our attempts to make her calm down failed miserably. "A, look, it's your stuffed kitty!" Scream. "Look, your stuffed Santa! Ho ho ho!" Kick. Scream. "It's your elf, he's going to tell Santa you've been being bad!" Kick. Scream. SNOT.

The photographer tried to keep her smile plastered on her face, but really we knew what she was thinking.

She said, "A, look at this snowball!" Great, A LOVES playing ball. She gingerly took it from the photographer, sniffled, and then threw it at her. And not in a "Let's play ball!" kind of way. More like a "I hope this hits you and bruises you." way.

We tried in vain. Giant strings of ornaments were presented. Dancing happened. Singing occurred. But you know what didn't happen? This baby didn't stop screaming. We had to reschedule.

As we took our screaming baby out of the photo studio, she saw her little girl friend from before and grinned and said, "Gah!"

Would it have been creepy to ask that girl's mom to borrow her daughter?

Anyway, here's the only picture we got of A before we left for the studio. Hopefully this won't have to go on on the cards. It's her in her favorite spot in the house - the pantry.

Let's start at the very beginning.

...a very good place to start?

I guess that makes it sound like I'm about to tell my entire life story, which is NOT the case. Although every day of my life up until this point something new and noteworthy happens to me, I'm almost certain it has been boring to almost everyone else. This won't be my life story per se, because I'm not telling about when I was 5, just now. The present, and some choice selections from the past.

The beginning of this blog is what the title is referring to. I've made attempts to start blogs in the past, most of which have failed miserably ("...Today was boring, LOLz!!"), but I have a chronic desperation to document my life for some reason. I know I'll never be one of those worldwide phenomenon bloggers. I won't be one of those mommy bloggers who makes money off of their blogs (more power to them, my point is that I am NOT that interesting, entertaining, or crowd-drawing). I am just me, and who knows, maybe one day my daughter (and future children) will be able to look back at my Internet-cached blog and read about their upbringing, rolling their eyes along the way.

So who is "me"? My name is Paula. I'm a young (can I say young when I'm 3 short years away from being 30? I still feel 16. So for now I will stick to that adjective) wife, mother, and teacher. I have a hilarious husband, an adorable daughter, and a horrifying job.

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful to have a job, it's just way more stressful than I ever imagined working would be when I was in college. I teach 8th graders at an urban high school. You might hear some tales from the classroom on this blog, although I'll have to censor myself when it comes to that, since once something is online, it's there forever.

Side note, when will I ever be able to see/hear the word "forever," and not hear it in my mind as "FOR. EV. ERR!" Thanks, Sandlot.

Anyway, my students are Google hounds and will inevitably stumble across this page one day and be all like, "Oh my gosh, my teacher talked about the time my pants split, I'm suing!" And since I AM a teacher, I'm obviously extremely poor (boo hoo) so I can't afford a lawsuit. Sorry, folks, you won't get most of the juicy stories when it comes to the kiddies.

But you will hear about my freaking awesome daughter, who really IS a genius. Not literally maybe. But if you ask me, yes, she has an IQ of a trillion and is going to graduate college when she is 10, although I hope without the social and emotional issues most child prodigies  face. Look at that, my daughter is 16 months old and I'm already declaring her a child prodigy. For serious, people - I asked her to say "Patti" for a friend last night and she said "Pah." Harvard, here we come!

You will hear about the hysterical things my husband does (sometimes only he thinks they're hysterical). Like the time I bought ugly granny panties for my impending birth and he thought it would be HILARIOUS to spread a pair with Nutella and leave them sitting around. Ok, it was funny. Until I forgot about them, washed them with the other new pair, and happened to accidentally grab them to wear when I did go into labor. The Nutella had been washed off, but a big brown stain remained for all of the doctors and nurses to see. Thanks, hubs.

I hope that you'll stick around to read, and honestly, I hope I stick around to write.