a.rose

A List of Things I Tell My Four Year Old To Do That I Should Remember Myself: Don't Whine. Make Your Bed. When You Want A Toy, Ask. Don't Grab. Say Please. Are You Done Playing With That? Then Put It Away. Say Thank You. You Have The Power to Choose. So Does Everyone Else. Thank You For Saying Please and Asking Nicely, The Answer Is Still No. Hold My Hand. This Is Not Something You Need To Cry About. Be Patient. Don't Be A Bully.  Just Because You Are Bigger Than Her Doesn't Mean You Get Everything. Take A Deep Breath.  Now Tell Me What Happened. Once You Lick It, It Does Not Go Back In The Peanut Butter.

disclaimer: If you don't like birth stories, stop reading now. Hallie's Birth Story Hanna's Birth Story Like the day before, I woke up at 4 am because I was wet and needed to change.  The difference from the day before was that this time there was blood.  I cleaned up as best I could and got back into bed.  Not long after laying down the contractions started.  I halfheartedly paid attention to them, trying to count how long they lasted in my head.  One one thousand, two one thousand... I didn't want to get my hopes up, it seemed too ironic and I really really didn't want to get sent home two days on a row.  I tried to get comfortable and ignore them.  That worked until about 5:30 am, when I thought I should maybe start paying closer attention to them.  I woke Devin and asked him to help me keep track.  When he heard about the blood he wanted me to call just because of that, but I was not walking into the hospital again unless I was h...

I knew walking into the hospital that morning that I would have to face my fear.  I have two main fears when I am pregnant, and the intensity of these fears increases as the end of nine months approaches.  The first fear is that something will go wrong while I am in labor and I will have to have a procedure done that will require needles going into my body.  (Namely, that I will have to have an emergency c-section and get an epidural, but it also includes needing to be induced, and/or getting an iv.) The second fear is no less real and while it may sound silly to you, it is no less frightening to me than the first.  I am afraid that I will get to the hospital and they will not admit me, and I will have to go home and wait some more and then "try again".* On Saturday morning when I walked into the hospital at 5:45 both of these fears were pounding in my head, making my heart race.  The evidence in this was when they took my pulse: 145 at rest.  Yikes. ...

A house that is inhabited by ghosts is known as "haunted".  Our sweet little home here has no ghosts, and is therefore certainly not haunted, and yet our family lives every single day surrounded on all sides by personalities unseen.  There is a whole troupe of these characters and some of them are of indeterminate age and gender.  I will however, endeavor to tell you what I do know about them.** The main one is a shadowy figure known as Shurter*.  He (sometimes "she") has, by all accounts, done everything, been everywhere (but most particularly New York City) and he has seen it all.  He is at times an infant, and at others he has been as old as the age of 9.  He has a birthday nearly every day.  Sometimes he is potty trained, and sometimes he is still an infant in diapers. Then we come to Piglet.  Piglet is Shurters sidekick.  He comes along for the ride on many of Shurter's adventures.  Often Piglet needs to be scolded for being na...

Sometimes I think about the time, years from now, when my girls are grown and beautiful and I am not involved in every bit of their daily lives. Sometimes this thought scares me.  Sometimes I wonder how much they would hate me if they knew that I am already planning on camping outside their bedroom door, my ear to the floor pressed against that crack between the door and the carpet when their girlfriends come over, or how I plan on bringing in first popcorn, then soda, then napkins, just to have something to bring me into the room every five minutes when they have a boy over.  Which of course, he will only ever be on the opposite end of the couch in the living room. And sometimes when Hallie hasn't stopped talking in two hours I think those days might be a relief, but sometimes I love that I know all of the little inner workings of her mind.  And yet, I can already feel her slipping away and becoming her own person independent of me and what I expose her to. Halli...

I've heard some criticism about people who blog that they try too hard to make their lives look shiny and perfect, and of course it isn't.  I have never necessarily gone out of my way to make my life look or sound better than it is, but I certainly have never given you all the gritty details of my life. (Let's be honest, my life isn't that really what anyone would call gritty, but I do spare you the boring mundane parts.)  But today, I'm in a grouchy mood, and there is no good reason for it. And because of that I am going to give you every detail of my mundane and not so gritty life.  Then I dare you to tell me that I try to make my life seem perfect on here.  (None of you have ever said that I do that, but I suppose this post will take away forever any right you ever have to say that.) Hallie woke up at 3:00 and climbed into our bed.  I said, "Hallie go back to bed."  Devin is sick right now with the cold we all had last week, but for some reason he wa...