Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Rewind/Fast Forward

[Lee and I took the babies up to North Carolina for a long weekend this past weekend-- another one of my crazy, do-everything-see-everyone kind of road trips, except this time we decided on one central location (Raleigh) and worked out our visits from there. When you have to drive 8+ hours to see anyone who knew you before age 23, every trip turns into sort of a circus. But a good circus. A necessary circus. 
Also, my camera battery died. And I lost the charger. So this is the part of the trip where I had resorted to my phone camera.]

See this? This is my baby on Franklin Street. Actually it's my baby on her Daddy's back on Franklin Street. Mary Bullock's FPE [favorite person ever] Molly just started UNC Law on Monday, so we spent Saturday with her and Uncle Derbs walking around campus, showing MB the sights. See the dark cloud to the right? That's Hurricane Irene. Thankfully, that's as bad as it got in Chapel Hill.



















































































I haven't spent a lot of time in Chapel Hill since I graduated, mostly because I've lived so far away and am not a huge sports fan, so I don't go home for many games. It was strange to walk around campus after so much time had passed, and with my own children. In some ways it felt like nothing had changed [although a lot has changed on campus]. I walked by certain places on campus and recalled specific incidents-- like, getting my books my first semester freshman year and sitting down in The Pit with the box, so freaking excited. Or being in the undergraduate library, pestering Rachel to help me cram for an Econ class I'd only been to twice. It was odd how much came back to me after 15 years-- parts of college I loved, parts I was tortured by [Astronomy- the worst], and parts the older me would have done very differently.

Of course, if Lee has his way, MB won't be spending her college years in Chapel Hill, but wherever she is, at some point, hopefully, she'll be in a dorm room far away from her mama. I'm sure I'll cry dropping her off, just as my mother did. I'm sure she'll make some mistakes, just as I did.

But dear baby, if there is an Old Well, and drinking from it will get you all As, my advice is this:
DRINK FROM IT.  Especially if you only plan to attend your Econ class for the month of August.


























This is Mary Bullock pouting because she wanted to go to WATE FOWEST. I think she was coached.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

From Yesterday

Mary Bullock has this new thing where she starts stories by saying, Once, when I was a baby... And this always makes me smile [and sometimes cry] because I can't imagine a time in the future when she will not still be my baby.
























I try to remember how we got from her being Bobo's age to now, and I swear I can't. She was about Bo's age when I started blogging, and now she has real hair [that she let me BRAID!] and wears big girl panties! And we have real conversations!

Last night, for instance, she had a pink bear sippy cup full of milk.
Mommy! The beaw is cwying!
Huh? I said. Distracted. As usual.
























She's cwying!
Aw! She is crying. What do you think is wrong?
She lost her baby! She was very sad about this. MB is nothing if not sympathetic.
Well where do you think she went?
























She picked up Bo's hand-me-down pink sippy, which had been tumped from his tray in a fit of gimme my cheesy poofs rage.

I found her, mommy. No worries.

Oh, how I love that baby.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

A prayer for her first day






































Dear Lord--
Let her hands be gentle.
Let her words be kind.
Let her mind be opened,
But her heart stay mine.
Amen.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Dear Lee,

You make me smile like the sun, fall out of bed

  Sing like a bird, dizzy in my head

 Spin like a record, crazy on a Sunday ni-ight

 You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breathe
























Shine like gold, buzz like a bee...

OH! You make me smile.


Seven years is the medal anniversary. Get it? Medal? I made that up myself. Are you snarfing now? I know. This is why you married me. I promise you a lifetime of jokes such as this. Look forward to it!

Love,
Suz

Friday, August 19, 2011

Friday Favorites from Bo & Buck

Dinnertime with Bo:


It's all well and good till the cheesies disappear.

Storytime with Buck:


She is clearly a better reader than I am.

Happy Friday!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

First Position

I have to be honest: I am not one of those mothers who, upon getting the girl news from the ultrasound, starts imagining her little girl in tutus. To me, that kind of thing teeters too closely to the whole Princess circus that SO makes me cringe. But that's just me. I decorated MB's nursery in blue. I am contrary. I get this from my father.

Even when people started mentioning the possibility of Mary Bullock one day taking dance, I got kind of prickly. Really? With the recitals? And the outfits? And the make-up all over their faces? No, thanks.

But then of course, I have a real child, not a hypothetical one, a child who is starting to have real interests [insofar as a not-quite-three-year-old can have an interest, which basically means she talks about it a lot and squeals when she sees Angelina Ballerina].

And then there's the leotard. If anything will make the mother of a baby girl's heart melt, it is the sight of her in a leotard, tights, and ballet shoes.
























Today at lunch she sidled up to me [she's always sidling up for something at lunch, because she hates to sit in her chair] and whispered in my ear: Mama, you want to see my first position? And then she stared at her feet, which were not really in first position, but I could see where she was going with it.

I'm sold.  Ballet here we come. 

But don't worry. There will be no tutus.
Unless she wants to wear a tutu.
Then we'll talk about it.
But there will probably be no tutus.
Unless she turns out to be a dancing prodigy and her teacher says we have to wear a tutu.
But I'd prefer no tutus.

And definitely no make-up.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Birthday Things is a Big Girl Now!

Today, my other baby, Birthday Things, turned two! It started out with a bang. Or-- more like, an alarm. As it turns out, the sound of glass breaking and the sound of Mary Bullock shrieking TINKERBELL, DADDY! TINKERBELL! are strikingly similar to the noise sensors on our alarm system. What could I do except laugh and facebook it so everyone else could laugh with me? And pour more coffee, of course?

Welcome to life in our house. Admission requirement: sense of humor.

I didn't set out to make this blog about my family necessarily, but WOW they give me so much to work with. There are few dull moments around here.









































I hope you know that there are Things I Hate in this life, but OH! the Birthday Things are so much sweeter for the contrast.

Thank you for reading, for laughing, for celebrating, for commiserating, for encouraging.
For everything.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Well Played

You probably can't possibly imagine this about me, even tempered as I appear to be, but when I was little, I used to give my mom fits. FITS!

Basically, she couldn't take me anywhere. By that I mean, she couldn't take me anywhere without risking having to remove me kicking and screaming. As much as I'd love to tell you that it was all toddler hysteria, it wasn't. I actually remember some of the fits I threw, so I couldn't have been that young. One involved telling her I hated her in the middle of JC Penney.

I know! TERRIBLE!

My mother always told me my antics would come back to me. By the time I had babies, though, the advent of online shopping had me fairly confident that if the time ever came when MB should need physical restraint in the toy aisle at Target, her box of coal could come just as handily from an online merchant such as Amazon.

I can do damage on Amazon.

As it turns out, I underestimated my mother's determination to see me suffer for the tantrums of my youth. In fact, her revenge plot quietly began last time I was home to visit. See, she gave Mary Bullock a gift-- a gift which re-appeared from the bottom of the toy bin sometime last week and became her new favorite thing.






































Don't be fooled. It looks like a harmless recorder, but it is a human torture device. Especially when she wants to get the band together at 6:30am.

Well done, Mama. You played the long game, and you won.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Another thing I do...

When it's way too early for wine, but my patience has run out. I watch videos of MB being cute*.


Y'all, I love my baby. But I am so sick of poop. Thinking about it, waiting for it to happen [in the potty], bargaining, bribing, trying to act like it's no big deal [IT IS A BIG DEAL! IT IS! IT IS!].

I even bought MB some new Tinkerbell BGPs yesterday, and y'all know I am wary of anything coming close to the big P[rincess]. So far today the result has been...nothing.

Keep us in your prayers. I know poop might be a silly thing to pray about, but I've got nothing else up my sleeve.

*She's saying Aurora Borealis. She's not a genius [except maybe the evil kind], she just watches too much TV and learns ridiculous words that make me giggle. That, and the nose picking. It's wrong to giggle about that, though right? It won't be funny in a few weeks. Dear Lord, while you're solving my poop problem, could you also not make my baby the class nose picker? Amen.


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Didn't even need to make a wish

So, my birthday was awesome. So awesome, in fact, it's taken me a few days to wrap my head around actually posting about it.

Last year, if you'll remember, wasn't so hot. I was pretty pregnant, Lee had to work, Mary Bullock ingested Bengay, poison control, blah-d-blah.

Up until last Wednesday afternoon, I was bracing myself for another sad birthday. Lee was in trial in Tallahassee and was supposed to be gone until late Friday night. I had to resist the urge to stamp my foot about that one. Don't judges consider attorneys' wives' birthdays? Ugh.

But I didn't stamp my foot. I waved goodbye to him on Sunday night [ok, I might have pressed my face to the kitchen window and thought seriously about crying] and decided to have a great birthday no matter what. I even planned my own birthday breakfast.

And for this supreme and rare pulling up of my own big girl panties, I was rewarded handsomely. Lee surprised me Wednesday afternoon by calling me from our driveway [trial was done early]. He had re-booked our previously postponed overnight trip the beach, and surprise! he even gave me my birthday present early. And it was thoughtful. And pretty. And had nothing to do with running, cooking, ironing, or children.
































And God Bless his parents, who kept the babies and are probably still recovering.

All of my birthday wishes had come true before I even got home to my cake on Sunday, which was probably better because MB helped blow out my candles and it took us several huffs and puffs.

Now I just need to figure out how to keep the glow of these Birthday Things alive till 34!

Friday, August 5, 2011

Did you know

So, you know that I'm a twin, right? If you know me or have been reading, this is old news. But did you know that I was also a surprise?

On this day, thirty-three years ago, my mother, nearly two weeks overdue with what she thought was her third baby, finally went into labor. She got to the hospital around 7, and forty-six minutes later, the girl that she'd hoped and prayed for was born.

That was my sister.

And then I popped out [maybe she wouldn't describe it as popped. Or maybe she would. She has the convenient tendency to only remember the good stuff. Which has worked out really well for her memory of my teenage years].

But I digress.

SURPRISE! I must have been thinking in my tiny baby head. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!

Then she set about getting a second of every baby item she had [can you imagine?] before bringing us home from the hospital.

Later, I thanked her for all of this by acting like a total brat between the ages of 3-10. And then again between the ages of 15-18. I definitely had some bratty years in my twenties.

Even now when she doesn't answer the phone by my second time trying I have been known to get huffy. And how old am I?

Oh yes. Thirty-three.

So Happy Birthday, Sister! Thanks for sharing.

And Happy Twin Day to my mother. Thanks for rising to the challenge, and for always making me feel like you preferred it that way, even in my bratty years.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

ABC Book

At this point, I should probably edit MB's ABC book to make P stand for PROCRASTINATE. First I procrastinated on finding the pictures [Q and I were hard for me, and I didn't want to pose any pictures just for the book.]. Then I procrastinated on getting prints made. And then, just when I was admitting to myself that this project might go the way of my wedding scrapbook, sad and neglected, I realized I could do the whole thing very handily on Shutterfly. And I realized I already had Q and I pictures-- I just had to search back through the blog to find them.  Within one nap time, it was done! [We won't talk about the laundry and dishes that certainly did not get done.]

And then I got it in the mail, did a little dance, and procrastinated on writing this post.

Better late than never?





























It only took...18 months to complete. At this rate, I guess I better go ahead and get started on LDWIV's ABC book. He'll still need this when he's five, right?


[Edit: I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I got it from here-- so so long ago!]