I am a sentimental sap, maybe even a little bit cheesy. Anyone who knows me well has seen at least a glimpse of this. In high school, when many kids my age were bumpin' their speakers to Snoop Dog and other upbeat booty-shakin' songs, you could find me swaying to
"Lady in Red." That being said, my iPod is ridiculously all over the place.
Martina McBride, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Mr. Big, LMFAO (what?), Zak Brown Band, Madonna, Pearl Jam, Kenny Chesney, and yes, Snoop Dog.
I may be a sentimental sap, but I also don't discriminate. When someone loves a song, it speaks to them in some way. Maybe it's motivating you to change the world or yourself, to run that extra mile, or just plain telling you to shake your booty, but it speaks to you all the same. Right now, and for the past 3 years for that matter, any song with lyrics about babies growing up makes me bawl my eyes out. Every.Time. It doesn't matter to me that a million other moms out there are running to their husbands and saying, "OMG honey, this is SO us!" It IS us, and it punches me in the gut and I keep listening to it over and over because sometimes it feels good to cry. Currently, these songs consist of the following:
It Won't be Like This for Long (Darius Rucker),
You're Gonna Miss This (Trace Adkins), and
American Honey (Lady Antebellum). Okay, the American Honey one isn't about babies, but it was the song that was playing over and over as I breathed my way through 13 painful hours of labor with Austen, so it's her song. Amazing how so much pain can be such a wonderful memory.
Those three songs are my current life playlist. Dealing with the ups and downs, successes and trials, elations and frustrations of parenthood, and all the while wishing it would all just slow down.
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It's time to document some recent quotes and stories from the girls. Some of these are copied and pasted from Facebook because I'm lazy:
Kaitlyn, being silly: "Mama, what's your name?"
Me: "Um...how about Princess Mama."
K: "Daddy, what's your name?"
Jeff: "I don't know, why don't you decide."
K: "You're my prince and you're Mama's prince."
Kaitlyn saying "I love you so much, Mommy," has got to be one of the best things I've ever heard in my life.
Austen is talking so much more in the past few weeks. It felt like she started saying full sentences overnight. "Mommy, Kaitlyn locked the door," or "Mommy, Kaitlyn hit me." Notice a pattern? She's also learning to tattle on her sister. The good thing is that I wouldn't consider her normal unless she did, so check that off the worry list. ;-)
Austen was crying in her crib one morning, wanting to come out. Kaitlyn made it in there first, and we hear over the monitor, "I'm here, Austen. What's the matter?" These girls can fight like cats and dogs at times, but oh do they love each other. They are connected at the hip, and I love it.
Austen is in love with her daddy. If he's in another room, she's calling for him, "Daddy? Daaaaddyyyy?" If we are in the car and he runs into the store, she asks "Where's Daddy?" And when I say he'll be right back, she makes the most pathetic face and cries. So sad, but so cute.
Kaitlyn sees little girls, or animals or something similar and says things like, "She's so cute, isn't she?" We were at Red Robin last night, and she leans in to tell me, "Look at that pretty girl, Mama. She has a braid in her hair."
And Kaitlyn's made-up words are my current favorite: Nextersmorning, yestersmorning, nextterday, and nextertime. Giraffe = Kajraffe. Umbrella = Kabrella. Stool = Toostoodle. No joke on that last one...Jeff and I can't figure out what the logic on making it that much longer.
Austen has been waking up around 5:30 or so on weekends because she's cold. Sometime before falling asleep at night, she takes off her jammies and chucks them across the room. So, when you go in there because she's crying, she's lying down on her tummy in just a diaper, and as soon as you walk in she whispers, "I want bankie." You cover her with her bankie, and she says "Tank you" and goes right back to sleep. Love her.
Since Austen is talking in short sentences now, we have taken to asking Kaitlyn to translate for us. It's unbelievable what she understands when we have absolutely no clue.
After she's done telling us what her sister is trying to say, they both walk away with an "Are they serious?" look on their faces.
Last week was a bit chaotic. On Saturday evening, Paige, Kara and Travis came over to play, and the girls managed to dump a jumbo bottle of Johnson's Lavendar Baby Lotion onto Austen's carpet. Awesome. Seconds after Kara went up there to check on them we hear, "Guys, you are going to want to come see this." My response? "No thanks!" It came out alright with our Green Machine.
The very next day, Kaitlyn got into my make-up for the third time. In my defense, I really did think I had it out of her reach, the little monkey. I would have loved to have found her with make-up all over her face again. No such luck. The Green Machine doesn't fare too well with liquid foundation on cream carpet. Our carpets have now been professionally cleaned for the first time since we moved in...score!
As we were moving some things to make room for the carpet cleaners, we noticed damp carpet and black mold downstairs. Excellent. The week was just getting better and better. In a nutshell, since this post is becoming a marathon, we have a leak in two places connected to our guest bathroom. Insurance won't cover it since it's a maintenence issue. We have our health, our beautiful girls, and many other things to be thankful for. And we'll keep repeating that until this big inconvenience is all fixed and behind us.
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Dancing in the window reflection in her own world
Every evening at home is spent in princess dresses or tutus
Best of friends
I turned 31 yesterday. I took it much better than when I turned 30. After work, the four of us went to Red Robin, Kaitlyn slept through the first part of dinner, and Austen cracked jokes and made us belly laugh. As we heard the Happy Birthday song for the 245,354th time, my timid girl snuggled up to me trying not to smile, and my anything goes girl clapped next to her daddy. We came home to share a cupcake and had an impromtu dance party complete with dizzy spinning. I like 31. :-)
