Writer's Guilt

I have writer's guilt. It is similar to writer's block, in that I find myself unable to write, but different in that I have plenty to say. My problem is every time I start to blog, I start thinking about all the things I SHOULD be doing instead of wasting my time at the computer, so I stop writing. That doesn't mean that I've been productive housework wise. It just means that I've allowed my guilt to keep me from writing. I suppose if I actually got the house clean, I wouldn't feel so guilty anymore and could blog to my heart's content, but what's the fun in that, right? ;)

To make up for it, I'm going to post a bunch of randoms from the past few days.

Last night both kids were playing upstairs. I thought that they were in Alex's room. But suddenly Kairi started screaming that Alex had my pretzels -- that means that he was in my bathroom. (Doesn't everyone keep pretzel sticks in their bathroom? No? Oh, well I do.) I hollered up the stairs that he needed to bring them to me immediately, and that Kairi needed to close my door.

Slowly the boy trudged down the stairs. Bag of pretzel sticks in one hand, other hand in a fist behind his back. He tried looking repentant, but there was a glimmer of a smirk on his face -- a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth that screamed he was trying to not laugh at his own cleverness. He drug his feet to me, handed me the bag, and said "Sorry Mommy. Go pay now." and took off running for the stairs. I grabbed his arm right before he took off, leaving his little legs running as fast as they could w/ him going absolutely no where.

I told him to hand over whatever was in his other hand -- the one he kept hiding from me. The smirk was gone. He was devastated for about 8 seconds as he started to hand me the handful of pretzels he thought he was hiding so well. Just before they reached my hand, he took a bite off, dropped them, and started to run again. Let's just say that he was completely devastated when I made him spit out his bite.

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My house is veeeeeeery slowly coming together again. I have cleaned out the kids' closets. Put up 2 out of 3 new bookcases. Moved another bookcase. Bought a new tv that needs to be mounted on the wall. Found a table for the kids, but can't put it up until the old tv is moved upstairs so that there is room for it. I know that one day my house will look the way I want my home to look, but so far it's not there yet. Let's hope it is by the end of the week at least, though. :)

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My weight loss is moving right along. I'm so very proud of myself. :) I have lost nearly 15 pounds since I started in January and am so excited about needing to put some of my clothes in the back of closet because they're getting to be too big.

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Alex knows not just that the PS3 plays movies, but how to take the old movies out and put new ones in. He can also operate the cd/dvd drive on the computer.

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Kairi has become quite the stickler for the rules recently. She's constantly correcting Alex, telling him that Mommy says the rule is xyz and he needs to obey. Of course, if the rule is to speak respectfully to your mommy, then it can be ignored...... right?

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Kairi cut her hair for me the other day. I still have to get it to someone to have it repaired, but for now it's not notice-able if I style it just right. She's having a hard time with "cut only paper" thing. She'll obey it (now that she's been in trouble for cutting her hair), but if she could talk me into letting her cut something else she'd be thrilled.

That's all I have time for tonight. Hope everyone is doing well! I promise to try to comment on blogs soon.... :)

And I should be back by Monday to tell the latest in our Naval adventures.

Story time

Kairi and Alex have been full of adorable moments today. Ok, so some of them weren't so adorable in the moment. But I can smile about most of them now. Here's a few of them:


Alex crawled into my lap and curled up in my arms like an infant. Then he pointed to himself and said "Mommy, rock baby. Tree top baby." He wanted me to sing rock-a-bye baby so that he could have the little "drop" in the song. After singing it and "dropping" him a few times, he informed me that he wasn't just any baby, he was an "ag-gator baby". Which if you were wondering, he's still on the alligator kick -- he is an alligator almost every day these days, with short breaks during the day to be a baby or a puppy.




When Alex first woke up from his nap he was terrified looking and sounding. I held him close and couldn't set him down for about 5 minutes without horrified wailing. I finally got him to tell me that he had bad dreams. He said he remembered monsters that scared him. I promised him that there were no more monsters and that he didn't have to worry about it. About that moment, Kairi came bounding up to my bed where I was sitting with Alex and climbed on up. She immediately launched into her fantasy realm and began to tell me that my bedroom floor was a river and we were in a boat. Our boat needed to hurry though, because there were monsters in the river. Alex set straight up for the first time since his nap and starting screaming "No monsters! Mommy! No monsters!" I told Kairi that we were not going to pretend monsters today. She could pretend dinosaurs or dragons or trolls or whales or whatever she wanted to, but no monsters. She started to get insistent that there were monsters chasing us while I tried to calm Alex down. Finally, I looked at her and told her that Alex had had a bad dream about monsters so we weren't going to pretend that way today. Suddenly, her whole face changed. She bent down to eye level w/ the little boy ball in my lap and said "Alex? You have bad dream?" Alex grunted an uh-huh response. "I sorry Alex. Look! No monsters. Monsters are pretend anyway. See? No monsters. We won't play dat. I sorry. Wanta tell me bout the dream?" And at that he launched into a babble that made no sense to me, but comforted him and Kairi set listening intently while nodding her head. When he finally finished, she patted him and goes, "Is ok Alex. Now let's play." And suddenly, the world was right again for both my kids.




While Kairi, Alex and I were curled up on my bed after naps talking and playing, Kairi decided she had to go potty. These days after going potty she has figured out how to wash her hands without needing me to lift her to the sink by climbing from the potty seat to the cabinet. Today, though, the water kept going and going and going and going and going. I hollered after a moment to find out what was taking so long.

Just washing my hands Mommy! And I'm gonna wash my face!
You're washing your face? Seriously? Fine .... just hurry up and finish.
Ok Mommy!
A minute later there's still water running.
Kairi, what is taking so long! Turn off the water and get in here!
But my feet are dirty Mommy! I gotta wash dem too!
You do NOT need to wash your feet! Turn off the water, and then get your butt down from the cabinet, dry off and get in here.
Fine Mommy!
Water is still running for another minute.
Kairi! Get in here NOW! Soap off. Water off. In here.
Ok, ok, I'm coming.

I hear her climb down from the sink. And in she walks ... hair is dripping, legs are dripping, butt is dripping, shirt soaked. I tell her to get that shirt off, at which point she climbs onto my bed and starts to try to jump while taking off her shirt, spreading all the water across Alex and me ... and my bed.




I am officially grumpy. Kairi said it, so it must be true. These days if I act the least bit upset Kairi looks at me gently and goes "Mommy, do you miss Daddy? Are you sad?" and no matter whether my answer is that yes I miss him, or yes I miss him but am just frustrated with your bad behavior right now, or the answer is yes I miss him but I'm more upset because I can't stop coughing, Kairi's solution is always the same. "Mommy, you need a hug." She then proceeds to hug me and tell me that she loves me. If she's supposed to be in trouble I usually shoot back "I love you too, but you're still not allowed to xyz...." The rest of the time I just grin a goofy grin inside knowing that she's a much more empathetic and compassionate child today than I had ever imagined she would be 2 year ago. Today, though, Kairi talked back non-stop. She does it frequently these days. And I finally jumped on her case about it. She calmly listened while I lectured her on not talking back, and then she pulled out the card

Mommy, do you miss Daddy?
Kairi, you know I miss Daddy. That has nothing to do with this. This is about you doing what you're told to do without talking back. I'm the Mommy, not you.
Mommy, when you miss Daddy you're not fun.
Kairi, when you talk back, you're not fun. Stop talking back to me.
Mommy, are you still sick?
Yes, I'm still sick. But we're talking about how you talk to me. Don't talk back to me again or else you're going to bed early tonight. Do you understand? Say yes ma'am.
Yes ma'am. But Mommy, when you're sick and when Daddy's gone. I don't like you much.
Sorry Kairi, you have your whole life to not like me. It doesn't change that you can't talk back.
At this point, she folds her arms and looks at me with a frown. Mommy, when you're sick, and when Daddy's gone. You're grumpy. Goodbye.
And with that, she marched out of the room and did whatever she had told me no about before.




Since I've been so sick recently, I've not been cooking. Instead, I've been blessed by an amazing church family that has been providing meals for us most nights. One of the ladies also brought by some diapers so that I didn't have to go to the store and so that I didn't have to try to do laundry feeling as badly as I do. It was very appreciated. Normally, if we do disposables, we do the Target brand. They work well, leave no rashes on children, and are cheap. We were brought Luvs though. I may be switching brands. Now, I hate the smell of Luvs. I hate the way they feel so very papery. I hate how they're smaller than Target's and hold less pee at night (Kairi keeps waking up leaking as she's still in night-time diapers). BUT we will be switching to them for one reason: Alex HATES how it feels to pee in them. We went through 10 diapers today because after every single pee, he took his diaper off and then brought me a new one. The worst one was when Kairi insisted that he take it off (even though I was yelling for him to not), because it was poopy and she wanted me to see it. As if I wouldn't see it as well when I was changing it..... Even with the annoyance, though, at the constant taking off the diaper before having a clean one to put back on, I was impressed that he was so aware. And if he hates the way it feels to have on THAT much, then it shouldn't take too much encouragement to get him to go in the potty instead. :) That's my hope at least. We start this week.




The kids are hyper these days. I've been sick and unable to properly run them ragged, so they have way too much energy for their poor sick mother to handle. Tonight they decided to expel that energy. They did so by running from one room to another, climbing on furniture, and throwing toys at each other, all the while screaming at the top of their lungs.




Final story for the night. It was way past the kids' bedtimes and I was gathering things to send them that way when Alex ran to me yelling that he was scared. I asked him why and he indicated that the problem was with Kairi. I hollered across the house that she needed to stop scaring her brother, and continued to get things together for bedtime. Suddenly there was loud shrieking on both children's parts. I walked in to find out what the deal was. Kairi was screaming while making scary faces from behind a corner of the couch at Alex, while Alex threw things at her shrieking "No scare me! No scare me!" I yelled for her to get away from the couch and stop scaring him. She looked at me calmly and said "I have to scare him. It makes me happy." Remember the monster story? Turns out there is no possible way for her to be that sweet all day. ;)

I don't even know where to start

We made it to Texas for Chris' pre-deployment leave. It was great to spend time with family and friends. There were too many cute moments to list w/ the kids and too many fun times with family to explain. I would detail it in pictures, but the camera battery died before I had a chance to take pictures.

There was one cute moment that I can't help but tell about Kairi. Earlier that evening I got onto her for screaming out of the van's window at me and when I got inside the van she went on and on and on about how she was just trying to tell me that my phone was ringing. I recounted the incident to Chris about 5 minutes later and told him that I apparently broke her heart when she was just trying to help me. She quickly interjected into our conversation ''My heart's not broke Mommy! It can't be broke! I need it!'' ♥




Other than that we're simply counting down the days till Chris leaves. It's like 21 days or so, which breaks my heart.

Of course we're going through the stages of preparing for deployment which involves more arguing that we'd like right now. But at the same time we're trying to desperately savor each moment together. Such a hard balance to find ... between enjoying each moment together and trying to find a separate spot for each of us as we know that before long we're going to have to stand on our own in our own worlds. There are the moments when I want nothing more than for him to just be gone already, and then moments later I'm bawling at the thought of him leaving.
Emotional train wreck = me




We've started talking to Kairi about Chris' upcoming deployment. Which of course means that we're talking to Alex about it too, but he doesn't understand nearly as much as she does. In trying to bolster her connection and faith in her daddy, we're telling Kairi that Daddy is going to go fight the bad guys so that he can keep her safe -- he's protecting us from them because he's a good daddy and loves us very much. I was never truly comfortable with the idea of telling her that Daddy is fighting bad guys because 1) I didn't want to have to talk about there being bad guys at this young of an age as right now everyone is a potential friend in her mind and I love her feeling safe and secure and 2) because she already goes around ''hi-YA-ing'' random things, I didn't want to give her any reason where it might actually happen. Not only that, but she always has such a hard time understanding that there are true bad guys on shows. We were watching Snow White the other day and while she knew that the Witch did bad things, she still didn't believe that the Witch was truly bad and didn't want to the Witch to be hurt. She just doesn't understand it. And I'm not ready for her to understand it. But if I just told her that Daddy was going to work she wouldn't understand as Daddy always comes home within a day or two of working. I was also worried that once he's back that she'd think he was leaving for months at a time every time he left for work. She has extreme separation anxiety as it is, I am hoping that the idea that Daddy is keeping her safe will help it not become as severe as it could become in the next few months. But be prepared for me to post over and over again about the horrors that separation anxiety causes my daughter to commit. lol



Since coming home we have lived in the house of sick. I have asthmatic bronchitis and the kids are pouring snot from their noses and goop from their eyes. If they had a fever or cough I'd run them to the dr, but as it's just tons and tons and tons of drainage, I'm trying to wait it out. The question comes to when have I waited long enough? Alex has had goopy crusty eyes for over 1 1/2 weeks now. Decisions decisions...



I have 2 million things to do right now but being sick keeps me from being able to concentrate on things. I should make myself a list tomorrow for things to start on Monday and tick them off one by one to make sure it all gets done.



Oh! How could I forget? We flew out to Texas, but drove home. We were given my grandfather's van. It's a 2002 but with only 37k miles! It's so very nice and perfect for our family. This is great for us as it means that we're going to be able to sell the car and get a huge break in our finances. I love seeing things start to ease up for us. :)