Nostalgia, and Something Else

Tonight I took a spin through the blogosphere, catching up on friends' blogs. It used to be a regular habit (as you all probably know) but lately died off (again, you probably know). No more Aimee comments, or already knowing your news when I see you.

Anyway, I enjoyed it so much, it made me miss it and wonder, what happened?

I think part is the FaceBook / Twitter factor. Why type or read 3 grafs when 47 characters can tell me your latest and greatest?

I think clearly, part is my time. Post Rachel, unless work is unseasonably slow ... even on a regular week, I just truly feel that I. Have. No. Time.

Or rather, none for blogging, that I wouldn't rather put into something else. The 30 - 60 minutes I used to put to blogging, then get my TV time / extra sleep time in, too, has gone POOF with the moment I walked that baby girl through our front door in August last year.

Now, it's a precious 30 minutes to myself at the end of the night, maybe, and I'm just finding I'd rather spend it reading in bed, watching TV or go to bed at 9:30. Just anything totally mindless(trust me, the reading's mindless) non-participatory activity.

And then it ties in to ME just not feeling the blogging bug right now. I hate that I'm not, but it's true. But sad. Because one reason I did it was to document what the kids are up to, for posterity, and for family.

Okay, really I documented Matthew ... Rachel's life has never quite gotten to that status and hell, we know that is just normal second kid syndrome ("hmm, where is YOUR baby book, Rachel? well it must be in the attic, HMMmm, go ask Daddy..." "quick, fill out her blank, dusty baby book!"). I try not to feel too guilty. But I liked having those pieces of their lives down. And I imagined that someday, so would they.

Another part of what's going on is that because we are all SO much more connected - sometimes it's feeling, in a NOT so great way. Just more and more feel that nothing's personal. So, my FaceBook connects so someone's whose connects to their blog to mine ... basically, I consider anything on the ol' interweb to be so public that sharing my real, true thoughts with you now becomes ... for various reasons ... impossible.

And I'm not good at the random trivia. I'm not a "did you ever notice ..." kinda blogger. I'm more a "this happened, CRAP, let me ruminate here about it ..." and when I don't feel I can say what I want, then what is there to say?

Soooo ... for a long time that just left me with happy, inocuous posts. Kid milestones. New photos. Birthday party updates. Which are great and important and I want to make time for those too.

But my point of view feels gone, and I think with it, my motivation.

Oh well, at least I choked this whiny one out right?

Advice? Feeling the blogging burn, ladies?

Concession Post

So, hmm, I do not seem to be blogging much. Sad. Just ... absorbed in work, life, and other things, I guess. Hey - I've actually been reading! Stupid stupid Twilight series sucking me in (save the commentary, non-fans - it's dorky, I know).

And yes, I even missed commemorating my baby girl's birthday, birthday party, Bridget's and much more. Unforgivable!

Recognizing, however, I still don't have it in me to scoop it all up in some witty posts just yet, but not wanting to deprive you of my beautiful girl's birthday shots any longer, I'm hoping this will tie you over.

This one's on my screen saver at work every day and just really makes me happy.

This is probably my favorite of the bunch. Grama Claudia and her baby Rachel.

Of course, then there's Daddy tending to his cake-faced one year old daughter (sigh :)

And the artsy black and white - Rachel with her most favorite toy, my old (OLD) doll from when I was a baby. These are all taken by Uncle Mark Jones at her party. He posted them to Picasa for me before I even had thought about downloading mine, which didn't compared at all. Mark was like a photojournalist, all OVER this party. Thank you Mark, what a gift.

Why I Like Taking Him to School

Even though it adds to an already rushed pre-work morning routine, I have claimed the job to take Matthew to school Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Even though Mike literally works about 200 feet from his school.

THIS face is a nice way to start the day.

Granted, this was from his first day of school. Not getting this joyful reaction every day. Some days, it's more like giant amounts of "I don't want to go - I want today to be a home day!"

Which is fine, because (a) he's adjusting to not having his Libby everyday and that's a tough one, and (b) he only got to bring that Lightning McQueen backpack on day 1, since it was all for show. Nothing in it. How could he ever get THIS excited again then?

But I like to think he feels a BIT of that excitement when he walks in each day to his big boy school, even if he won't admit it. I sure feel it for him.

Happy Crawler, circa 9 1/2 months

Had a few minutes, so I'm looking for photos to print. Even though it's dated, how cute is this? It was take in early June - just after Memorial Day weekend when she learned to crawl.

See that face? She was OVERJOYED by her new capacity for movement, escaping us, and finding trouble unaided all over the house. My girl.

What You See is What You Get

I have neglected my social media channels badly lately. I am attempting to carve out precious time to dip a toe back in. So you'd think I'd be using that time wisely to tell you about my children or maybe my views on really really important things. Wrong-o. After learning about WhoTheTweet from EEJ, naturally I just took the time to have someone else tell me what I Tweet about.

But it WAS kind of cool. And look - gosh - THIS should teach me not to get political. The election seasons, and me home on maternity leave with a constant overload of CNN, and one free hand to text even while feeding the baby, still haunts me.

But who is Thomas? Thomas the Train? Thomas the little blue train?? Why pray tell would that show up in my top words? I do remember some Tweets last fall with a couple friends about, did you take your kid to see the Thomas live show? Oh yeah, what was that like? But I think even prefer 'weight' and 'Palin' to knowing that I spent that much time giving that little blue engine (aka marketing ploy that has probably $500 worth of merchandise in my very small child's room right now) more air time.

11 Things About Rachel as an 11 Month Old

Just perusing months of backlog blog reading to inspire me to finally post again. So hard to restart after hiatus. Then I saw where my friend Cara posted this type of post for her 13 month old daughter. Okay, a focused angle. I can handle this!

1) She is awake for 60 minutes on the dot before she takes a hard core morning nap. (Except this morning of course, since I need her to be while I blog this.)

2) She is still eating some baby food for our convenience but mostly people food. Favorites include avocado, banana, any crackers or starchy thing like bits of wheat bread, yogurt and any type of meat (my little carnivore, for sure - Matthew wouldn't touch anything besides bits of chicken, maybe). We haven't tried milk. She gets formula in her bottle - and won't do the sippy (unless by "do" you mean bang it around and throw to the floor, that she'll do.)

3) Her favorite thing in the world is the cat. Hands down, bar none, I've never seen a child react like this to an animal. She squeals, grabs the fur, but also rolls her face on her, makes this sort of humming noise of happiness, and then rears up on her knees, puts her arms up in the air roller coaster style, SCREAMS, then flops on kitty full force. For more "love." And to answer the inevitable next question: yes, the cat actually tolerates it, for a while, before bolting, after which point, Rachel will try to dive off the bed, couch, wherever, after her, head first, no thought in the world about falling. She probably wouldn't care, either because ...

4) Rachel seems fearless - especially of us or any sort of disapproval or discipline. By that I mean of course the most basic stuff - Rachel, no no, do NOT go in that dog bowl. RACHEL NO! NOOOO! I have definitely turned up the intensity, more than I ever had to do for Matthew, and it still does NOTHING. The girl turns, grins, maybe even laugh in our face, and double down on whatever naughty/dangerous thing she was doing. She is absolutely our wild child. As she played with the fireplace gates the other day, and Mike is pulling her away repeatedly, I heard him say "Why are you so attracted to things that are bad for you?" and had a foreshadowing of conversations we'll probably be having in her 20's.

5) She is a happy, happy child who loves to laugh. I was speculating last night about whether she missed me on a short biz trip this week, or not. (I'd much prefer not - no ego on this, just want kids happy.) Mike shakes his head and smiles, "I don't think so ... Rachel always just has a good time, honey." As he's saying this she's laughing feeding spaghetti to the dog. Once again, I'm picturing my baby daughter as the someday life of the party in her college years and loving it.

6) She is now playing with that same little Fischer-Price musical "house" that "Santa" brought Matthew for his first Christmas. My first big gift to him that I was so excited to give him, and now watching her crawl back and forth through the door is just adorable, and ring the doorbell, and play with the clock. So many hours spent with her brother doing the same thing, it just warms my heart. She just gets such a kick out of you playing peek a boo through the door and windows, and it's just so cute when she ...

7) Giggles. This is by far the BEST part of having a little girl besides the clothes. Her sweet little girl giggles are different than Matthew and so special to me. She's my daughter, I think when I hear that little voice, that reminds me she's going from baby to little girl much quicker than I can imagine or would like.

8) Her hair is growing longer and sticking out in crazy directions above and below her ears. She's got that frumpy "why do they not FIX that?" look going but like many of you with little girls before me, I can't bear to cut it. We'll just see what happens and hope it grows quick. I still can't figure out barrettes (help needed).

9) Her night sleeping is awesome. Finally. A few months ago, there was a period of waking up 3, 4, 5, 6 (!) times a night for a paci. Not a big deal but layer in the regularly scheduled wakeups around here already for Matthew night terrors, dog whimpering, cat yowling or running, some animal puking ... etc. ... plus getting to bed around midnight for a while there when we were both really busy ... and I was zonked. But for a couple months now, she's goes down at 8 - 8:30, maybe 1 or 2 very quick paci-related wake-ups during the night, and goes until anywhere from 6:30 - 8:30 a.m. (depending on if we're up banging around or sleeping). Big side note: It usually takes her about 2-3 "rounds" of being put to bed to get her down. More often than not we hear crying at least twice within the hour of her going to bed, and take turns going in to find her standing at the end of the crib waiting for us. She doesn't need anything other than to be put back down with her paci, polka-dot blankey along her left side so she can hug it, and big fluffy blankey with the satin trim (that she likes to rub between her fingers) on top of her. We don't have to pick her up usually, but it's a high-maintence, multi-stage tuck in most nights.

10) She is cruising, climbing, practicing letting go and standing with her arms held straight up in the air "look at me!" style - but just for a second. But not walking or standing. People tell us, "Oh, she's just about to walk any minute" but Mommy has a feeling she might stick at this phase for a while. She is hard to predict. At 11 months old, she's totally physical, crawls fast as anything, and loves hitting anything like a bat or golf club to anything like a ball ... but when she doesn't feel like doing it - ala refusing to hold her own bottles STILL - she won't.

11) Her number one most favorite toy - besides the kitty, her brother, or us - is this squeaky old and deadly creepy dolly. That was mine. Something possessed my mom to go out of her way and MAIL this doll to us recently. I wasn't sure why she was so intent on it when Rachel has a zillion toys but maybe she knew something I didn't because Rachel loves this thing. Squeals at it, crawls toward it and even crawls around with it in her hand - pretty impressive coordination, actually. It's the one sure fire thing we can bring when we're out and about to keep her entertained, and for that reason I'm terrified of losing it. It's become the one thing that brings a smile and a screech every time.

Well, that was harder than I thought to contain to 11. Looking forward to 12 more next month ... though NOT to my sweet angel turning one, already.

Happy 11 months, my baby girl!

Sent from Mike's AT&T Samsung i907 Windows Mobile® Smartphone.

This summer I will run a series of posts capturing the funny things my husband sees and emails me about all day long ... hence the title of this post.

I am expecting my AT&T royalties to kick in immediately.

Today:
Matthew, what would you like to eat?
I would like that stuff with the fruit that I just loved yesterday (this morning)

That he "just loved"? Is Matthew now an 85 year old woman at a bake sale? Who talks like this?