Tom was complaining the other day that he doesn’t have any new photos for his wallet, and I scoffed. ‘Cause I don’t take pictures very often, right? Log thee onto Wallgreens.com and order thy self some photos, sir. It did give me an excuse to put the girls in matching outfits again and make them play in the yard for a bit this morning, so I guess I can forgive him.
I wish I had the time and energy to edit these nicely, but the truth is I don’t really care. I see their faces, and the shabby background just disappears.
More here.
I found Tom a pair of boobs today.
They are the first generation of the Adiri bottles, so while they are not pretty colors, they are the same basic idea. They were new, sealed in their boxes, and .50 cents each at a garage sale. I bought them because I had an extra dollar, not really betting that Alice would take them. Why would she? We’ve bought 6 different kinds of bottles and sippy cups, and she has not been interested in any of them. She knows what she likes, which is something I like in a girl, but the bad news is that I’m taking her best friends to work with me (whenever that happens, still no word on that).
So, when we got home, I washed one out, handed it to her, and expected it to be ignored. Instead, she laid back, smiled, and made her “Nom nom nom” noise.
So yay for knowing she won’t starve while I am gone. Now to find an old bra, and cut out the cups. Manary Gland anyone? *snicker*
I slept on the floor of Ella’s room last night, aware of every passing car, of all the various ticks and thumps that echo in a sleeping house. I was both embarrassed to be so frightened of shadows, and sure that my presence was the only thing keeping her here, protected.
It’s just not enough to know that “most of us make it to adulthood”, that “news wouldn’t be news if it was everyday.” It’s not enough to squash the fear that runs up and down my spine when I think that some of us don’t make it. Some of us are the statistics, some of us are missing, some of us never grow into our winter clothes.
I just want a guarantee that my girls will make it. I want it in writing.
Ella, you finally have enough hair to put in a real ponytail, though it is rare that you let me spend the 30 seconds necessary on it. You prefer to have it down long and shaggy, and I prefer not to fight with you. It’s so cute when it is up though. Maybe I’ll have to start breaking out the jelly beans and bribing you to let me brush your hair.
Your sister is jealous, since all she has is what we call ‘duck fuzz’, save for 7 strands of 4 inch long hair in the back. I know at some point I will have to cut these to the same length as the rest of her hair, but maybe we’ll just bring rat-tails back into fashion.
See Ella, I told you that soon she would want to play with you. Give it 6 more months and maybe she won’t be trying to escape the ’space ship’ (aka a collapsible laundry hamper) before you get to Pluto.
The last few days have been a roller coaster of anxiety, giddiness and stomach lurching fear. I oscillate hourly between calm confidence that my going back to work IS the best thing for our family, and abject horror that I am willingly missing out on my tiny daughters’ lives.
The transition is going to be harder on me then I realized. My entire self image changed three and a half years ago, when Ella was kicking my liver. At the time, the idea of being someone’s mom was foreign, and I could not wait to get back to school, back to work, back to making my mark on the world. Little did I know, as soon as Ella was born it became hard to see myself as anything other than her mom. Suddenly, the only mark I wanted to make on the world was with this amazing little girl. I have worked off and on in the last few years, but rarely without Ella milling around under my feet, and never with a greater purpose then to be able to ‘get through this so we can go home’.
And we have been lucky that we could afford for me to stay home, even as our family grew. Being home with both girls has been a challenge, and one that I can’t lie and say I cherished every minute of. I didn’t, and now that just seems silly. But the hard times were so few and far between when I consider how much laughter there has been. We were lucky to have these last 8 months together, but I panic at the idea that it may not have been enough. That being gone nearly all of their waking lives will push me into the periphery, and that I will regret this decison. That suddenly they won’t know who I am - that maybe I won’t know who I am either.
Of course I’ve been talking to Tom about this all, and of course, being the supportive husband I rarely deserve, he has told me that I can stay home. That he’ll find (yet another) job to make ends meet. That (if I take the job) he’ll drive the girls 60 miles round trip every day to come play at the park on my lunch hour. He set up a webcam so I can watch them play. He’s already making plans for craft time and play group. He wants to stay home with our daughters, and as hard as it will be for me at first, I’m going to let him. Because while he isn’t me, he is their dad, and he deserves to see their childhood firsthand also.
But right on cue, Alice has started saying “Mama” so pitifully when she needs to be comforted. Oh my girl.
Spring cleaning is in full effect around here, and the girl’s rooms were the first rooms under attack. I’m a huge fan of “A place for everything, everything in it’s place” and until we reorganized everything, nothing had a place, other than “in the toybox”. Let’s hope we can keep it up.
My camera has a setting that lets you take panoramas, but they obviously warp the photos a bit to get them to stitch together. Click over to Flickr to see details, and all the little notes.
Ella’s room
Alice’s/Diaper/Play Room
Again, no before pictures, because, well, they were embarrassing.
Houston, we have a tooth.
If I were a good mom, I would be able to pull out Ella’s tooth chart and see if she also got her lower right front tooth first, but instead I would have to go through the archives of two blogs and 3 years of random photosharing sites (goodness I need to consolidate those) to figure it out, and well, we all know that is not going to happen tonight. That would take away from my precious “googling for images of baby sharks” time. Priorities, people.
