why I haven't been blogging

Once, when I was a girl, my mom gave me a little lesson on what stress is.

She got out a glass and poured a little bit of water in it:

"Just like this glass has some water in it, everyone has some stress in their lives," she told me.

She told me that different things will add more stress to your life, and sometimes it feels like the water tension is getting really tight and you are just barely hanging on:

"Sometimes," she explained, "When you feel this way, a small thing that normally wouldn't be that difficult comes and breaks the water tension and you feel completely overwhelmed."

Well, right now I'm sort of feeling like this:

And that is why, dear friends, I haven't blogged for a few weeks.


(As a clarification: a lot of that water is good stress--I like swimming you know--but there's still a lot of water!)

The Morph--not so bad

About two years ago--when I knew I was having a baby girl and was just playing the waiting game--I started getting curious how the baby girl would look. As with any good question, I decided googling it was only appropriate. "What will my baby look like," I typed. And I found this awesome website: morph thing. This site is genius. You put in a picture of yourself and one of your partner and out pops a photo of what your child will be like. The child looked about one and a half and was a perfect mix of Camm and me. Since Ruby is now around that age, I decided to compare her real picture to the morphed picture:

Not so bad, huh? Can you tell which one is morphed and which one is real?

Anyone else found a real gem of a website from googling a random question?

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Reminiscing

I just started missing Ruby. I mean, obviously I still play with Ruby every day. But I started missing the BABY Ruby. She's so different now! And while I enjoy the cute things she does and says, I decided to take a minute to reminisce about how she used to be.

"Daddy, I will not play with toys, no matter how much you want me to!"

"Uh, excuse me? Can someone please take the large blue cups off of my ears?"

"Why did the parents stuff me in this bag? Is this supposed to be fun?"

Oh, the days when a burp cloth could double as a blanket. 

deer in the headlights (guess the flash was too bright)

Big cousin having fun in Ruby's pack n play. Ruby not so sure.

"You talkin' to me?" 

Cupid Baby

Back to school

Sleeping St Patrick

Does anyone else miss their baby? 

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happy memory at a sad time

This morning I woke up and immediately made pancakes. I was remembering one of my favorite evenings that happened two winters ago while we were renting a house owned by Camm's grandpa only 0.4 miles from the house he lives in.

What sparked this memory is something sad. Camm's grandpa is not doing well at all right now. He's in the hospital on complete life support and they will probably pull the plug before too long. It's a sad time for everyone.

In this sad time, I'd like to remember that happy wintry evening two years ago:

I was pregnant. For me, this meant that I was usually tired and sick. But, this particular January evening was out of the ordinary. A blizzard came and the roads and houses were covered in snow. At around 7pm (which to me when I was pregnant felt basically like midnight) I looked outside and it looked so magical. All thought of the pregnancy sickness and the tiredness vanished and I longed to be outside. I told Camm we were going on an adventure. I got out all the snow clothes I could still fit over my growing belly and kept piling them on. I think by the time I was ready, I had four layers on the bottom and about six on top. I could barely bend enough to get my three pairs of socks and then my boots on. Camm was dressed similarly and we set out on our adventure in the snow.

We went outside and threw some snow balls and walked through the empty streets covered in snow. It felt like we were far from home in a distant land--even though we were in our own neighborhood. We ended up walking to the street where Grandpa and Grandma Clark live. We knocked on the door and I'm not even sure they could recognize us underneath all of our clothes, but they let us in all the same.

As soon as I walked in, I began sweating--I was, after all, wearing enough to clothe a small village. So I started stripping. I remember Grandpa Clark laughing as we kept taking off layer after layer, scarf after scarf. Eventually I stripped down enough that I just had black long johns tucked into my pink knee-high wool socks. Camm looked similarly bizarre and we began to chat with Grandpa.

"Have you guys had any supper?" he asked. I realized it had been about two hours since my last meal so I could use a snack. "Well, let's make some pancakes." He rummaged through his downstairs food storage and pulled out a box. "You make the pancakes," he handed the mix to me, "and I'll get working on the sausage."

I started mixing the pancakes but though I had followed the recipe exactly, the mix refused to thicken. I kept adding more and more of the mix and it just stayed thin. I glanced at the "sell by" date and realized it had expired twenty years earlier. "Grandpa, do you think that this might be old?" I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

"Nah, that stuff doesn't go bad!"

So I kept adding the mix until eventually it was thick enough to cook.

We ate the twenty year old pancakes(no one got sick) and enjoyed the sausage (though I decided to eat mine without ketchup when I saw a little mold--there's only so far you can push your luck).

Grandpa Clark laughed equally as hard when we got dressed up to leave again, and it was a night I will always remember.

As I ate my pancakes this morning I thought of the hilarious, loving, compassionate man that Grandpa Clark is. I will always remember his example.

Please Interpret My Dream

This is my dream last night that I keep thinking about and am in desperate need (want) of some interpretation:

I was pregnant--in my third trimester but not about ready to pop yet. I was walking around some kind of place where a bunch of kids were and the lady in charge of the kids tapped me on the shoulder. "Excuse me, Ma'am," she said, "This just fell out of you--you just had your baby." She said it with the same tone of voice like she would use if a pack of tissues had fallen from my purse.

I looked down and did not see a baby at all--or at least not a real one. It was a doll. I was confused but she looked up and said, "Don't you want to take your baby?"

So I picked up the doll and suddenly a huge crowd appeared with tons of people congratulating me on my new baby. "Oh, she's so precious!" "Oh, how cute!" Then they started to get worried about me. "Don't you need to get to a hospital? You just had a baby!"

I looked around and said, "Well, I didn't even have any contractions. Don't you think I should have had one, at least?"

The crowd chalked it up to luck but told me I ought to get to the hospital. I kept looking at the doll I was holding wondering why everyone thought it was a baby. I began doubting myself "Well, maybe at the hospital they can do an ultrasound and see if I'm still pregnant or if this is a real baby."

Someone called 911 but after waiting a few minutes I called them back, "You know, I think I'll just have my husband take me to the hospital."

On the way to the hospital I kept staring at the doll. Every few minutes she would look like a real baby for about a second, but then look like a doll again. I walked into the hospital, bewildered, confused, and curious. Then the baby doll started crying and looked like a real baby. It sobbed and sobbed and I knew it was real.

Please interpret this dream for me. Or at least give me an idea!


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