Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

I started reading the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books with my girls the last few weeks and we are having such a good time. I read them when I was about their age and absolutely loved them. Now, we are sharing the experience and laughing together. It's also great that I can bring up our reading in conversations about discipline. "Uh oh, it sounds like you've got a case of the slow eater- tiny bite takers." If you haven't read them, you must give them a try, regardless of your age.

One of Those Weeks

Exhale. It's Friday night. Whew. Have you ever just had one of those weeks? Of course you have. Well, it's the weekend now. Hopefully that will bring the rest, perspective, and refocusing we all need.

In addition to everything else we were already dealing with, I found out my spunky, classy, one-of-a-kind Grandma Maridon suffered a stroke and brain bleed this week. She made it through neurosurgery to repair the bleed, but the road to recovery appears long. She is making progress, however, and is able to intermittently speak coherently and recognize people.

So, as the week draws to a close, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Soccer season is almost over (yeah!) I actually finished my laundry (miracle!) and I relented and fed my family a real meal of lasagna and yummy bread tonight in strong opposition to all my Biggest Loser goals. Because I still believe in comfort food. A good, hearty, traditional meal can have a healing and stabilizing effect on people.

Shameless Photo Ops

My Little Angel

Prouder parents would be hard to find!

Getting Ready for Baptism

Somehow, in the blink of an eye, my darling baby girl grew up. Now, we're couting down the weeks until her baptism. Grandma Donnette bought her a beautiful dress over the weekend and cousin Megan was kind enough to do a photo shoot with her. Isn't my Taylor Elizabeth beautiful!

Picture Day

Picture day is historically a battle of wills at our house. I usually pose the argument that I am the one forking out $20 per kid for pictures, so I should be the one to pick out the outfit and hair-do. My argument typically falls on deaf ears or is countered, like this morning, by the argument that they're the ones in the pictures, so they should be the ones to pick out the outfit and hair-do.

Today, I relented and let them exercise their freedom of choice. They settled on matching shirts, which is kind of adorable. And Taylor insisted on pigtails even though I tried to tell her that she might look bald. We'll see how it all turns out!

Loving Loryn

A picture is worth a thousand words. You know, it is important to children with Loryn's intensity to be taken seriously, but sometimes it's just so hard! Last weekend, she looked at me with tears welling in her eyes, and through clenched teeth and all the consternation she could muster, pointed an accusatory finger at me and said, "My life is always so hard because of YOU!" and then she turned her finger to Taylor and said, "And YOU!"

What can you say to that? Nothing. In fact, it took all my strength and self-discipline to keep from laughing because clearly she was passionate about what she was saying. But, let's face it, Loryn is passionate about everything she does. Nothing is half-hearted with this one.

And just as an unrelated sidenote, but something else I love about Loryn: still, at five years old, she refers to breakfast as "grefast" and the library as the "live berry". And despite hundreds of corrections and explanations, she still calls the remote control the "red remote." Even though our remote control is not red.

The Biggest Loser

For years now, Dan and I have been faithful, but passive, viewers of the Biggest Loser. This year, we're going to be active participants in the challenge. When the next season premieres on Tuesday, Sept 15th, Dan and I will weigh in ourselves and begin our own Biggest Loser of sorts.

Just to make ourselves extra accoutable and motivated (and humiliated), we started a blog to track our progress. We will be weighing in each week, just like the contestants, when the show airs. Hopefully, by the show's season finale, we'll have transformed bodies!

Sound like a good idea? Join with us and report your progress on our blog, losewithus.blogspot.com. It will be a community effort and we can all cheer each other on!

Outnumbered

Today I was babysitting my two nieces and nephew, which means there were five little girls in the house and two little boys. Obviously, the boys were outnumbered. But they didn't seem to mind. In fact, they may have been just a little too cooperative in dressing up like princesses. I have the distinct feeling that their dads are not going to be very pleased with me.

Talkin' Bout My Girls

Loryn started kindergarten last week, which means that I get the unparalleled pleasure of watching my two little girls walk home from school together hand in hand. The first day, I waited for them outside the school, just to make sure that Taylor remembered to pick up Loryn.

They couldn't see me at first, so I was able to watch their interaction undetected. Taylor was shepherding Loryn through the throngs of children with her arm around her, proud to be the seasoned big sister. My heart melted. I could tell it took the wind out of their sails a little when they finally spotted me. So I vowed to the eagerly independent Loryn that I would never come to school to pick her up again.

My girls are a study in contrasts. Loryn bursts through the door after school with a deluge of information falling from her lips. She gives me a minute to minute rundown of everything they did that day, the new friends she made, who got their name written on the board, who did and did not follow the rules, etc. Taylor, for three years now, gives me the same tacit reply. To my prodding, "What did you do today?" She says, "Nothing."

The Dusty Journal

As the matriarch of the family, I decided that each member of our family needed to be keeping a journal more regularly (at all, really). So, as a shot in the arm, I brought a smattering of my personal journals from years past to the dinner table. I hadn't read any of them in years, so when I began reading excerpts from my junior high journal, I nearly fell into fits of laughter. And then, as I relived each painful adolescent moment, I was nearly moved to tears. Pubescence is a curse! Why must we all endure such treachery!

Painful accounts of who my latest "crush" was in love with instead of me, tragic tales of who had snubbed me. Doleful droning about daunting homework assignments. The lists of who my friends were, and the touching reminder that they were the same as they are today. Wrenching rants about acne trouble, weight gain, and braces.

The insecurity and overwhelming self-consciousness seem to literally drip from the pages of my seventh grade journal. Oh the agony! And I say all of this realizing that I was a fairly normal and well-adjusted youth. I would still consider my adolescent years a relative success. I can't begin to imagine the torture of those who are still traumatized by their teenage-hood. I still maintain that I might lock my daughters in their rooms for the junior high years. Then, miraculously, they might emerge as beautiful butterflies.

But, perhaps, there is a real lesson at the heart of all of this. There must needs be opposition in all things. We can't appreciate security and confidence without knowing the intensity of the opposite. We will never truly relish love and celebrate happiness without knowing heartbreak and sadness.

Thank goodness for junior high journals. I am now reaffirmed in my commitment to making my children keep journals and in keeping my own more faithfully. Then, years from now, I will look back on today with the same sense of irony and appreciation.