Posts from — January 2012

I’ve started taking a lot of pictures via Instagram, and for every photo I remember to post on Facebook/Twitter, there are about 13 more just hanging out in Instagram-land, where only the Instagrammed can see them. I thought I’d bring a few of them over here and let them chillax with the other images on the ‘nets.

This dress attacked me at Target. Like, literally there was a showdown, and Gwen Stefani appeared and we wrestled and I lost. I was Harajuku-Minied. Resistance was futile.

Rosie’s Picasso-fied name writing. Can you stand it? I kind of want to start using that many horizontal lines on my Es, too. They’re more festive, don’t you think?

Ballet days are bun days. But ballet nights are for waves and being free.

I remember when we used to go to the doctor every 5 minutes for well check ups. Now they’re all, Sayonara! See you next year! Good luck! In the meantime, he grows like a weed.

Yeah, I can see how RACHEL would sound a lot like that.

Downtown ATL, early in the morning. Getting to work as the sun is rising helps keep me sane, even though the act of doing it is kind of the opposite.

First time on skates and instantly ready to roll with the big kids.

Noah was invited to a Kindergarten friend’s birthday party, and this is the card he made him. So much sweetness in that kid, I suwannee.

There’s that dress again. Also, that girl with that smile.

Every few minutes while painstakingly arranging the pieces, she would faux-whisper, “SORRY!” and then shake her head in sympathy, like, “That poor imaginary person. What rotten luck.”

No matter how ridiculous the premise of a movie (ahem, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, wha?), it is always worth a family movie night viewing it if it produces uncontrollable spontaneous cackles from your kids. This is my theorem.

Also, here is this face for you. The end.

I remember when Rosie was still little enough that she could sit in my lap with her legs sticking straight out—maybe nine months? ten?—and even at such a young age, whenever music came on, be it a CD or a video or a 30-second commercial on TV, that girl would bop. I would feel her torso ever so slightly pulse up and down, and it would always be right in time with the beat.

Man, I love that about her.

Music: Find My Way by Gabe Dixon, whom I got to see last Thursday in concert and wrote about today over here.

Oh snap. Look who picked up her camera this weekend for the first time in a month of Sundays. (This is the project I was referring to here. Way to kick ass, L.)

Explanation of WSSs here.

Compilation of past WSSs here.

Things:

1. I can’t sew for shit, guys. Noah’s Boy Scout uniform is finally (5 months late) badged up and it is slapdashed together like you’ve never seen. Fortunately, it looks as though he’s only in the whole deal for the Pinewood Derby, so as soon as that little wooden car crosses the finish line in about a month, we’re in the clear. Membership renewal will not be happening next year. It’s a good thing, because that kid is all kinds of Eagle Scout material, and I would just bring him badge shame for years to come.

2. What’s up with the weather, ATLiens? One day it’s icicle breath frigid, the next it’s 65 and pouring like the world is ending. Let’s find a happy medium, shall we? Like, how about some nice Southern 40 degree winter temps with a bit of sun thrown in for kicks? Just a suggestion. L would like to ride his scooter again sometime soon. (Slash I would like for him not to have to pay $4 a day to park next to his building.)

However, if rainy weather means Rosie gets to wear her red striped galoshes and polka dotted raincoat, well, I can’t say it’s all bad.

Oh, who am I kidding. She would wear those in the middle of a drought. No more rain. The end.

3. For some reason I feel like it’s crap to link to my blog posts over here, but the thing is I have all these other words I wrote, and they’re just laying there! For people to read! So I will continue to link. (Except for when I totally filch content off this site to put there because I have had a very busy week getting ready for a seventh birthday party and have been working my fingers to nubbins sewing TROOP 134 onto a navy blue burlap sack of a shirt. Which has happened.)

So anyway! Here I talk about the boy things I have ready for the not-girl on the way. (None.) And here I explain the “abnormality” (I use that term loosely, because it sounds scary) that was found on ultrasound day. And today I’m asking all parents of more than three kids to lie to me good and tell me how going from two to three kids is like a vacation at the beach. In other words, I would like to be kept in as much dark as possible about the insanity that lies ahead. And I thank you.

4. Also, I am still pregnant, and slowly reaching hull breach levels of midsection girth, with more than 15 weeks to go. Noah, ever so kindly a few days ago, observed, “You know mom, really, pregnant people sometimes just look fat.”

And then I ate him.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to soak my bloodied, lame, pinpricked fingers in some Epsom salts to try to restore my humours before another one of my family members meets a grievous end.

Dance clothes always. Tights optional. Accessories encouraged.

Your style is your own. Wear what you want, and wear it out loud.

It’s never not time to party.

Be the brightest light in all the rooms you enter.

Live your life filled with anticipation of the best thing coming up next.

This is some of what I learn from her every day, and what I hope she continues to teach for a lifetime.