Just a quick update to introduce you to our newest girl! I’m still the only one who gets to snuggle her, but we were all excited to get a glimpse of her beautiful face. Can’t wait to hold her!
Month: January 2014
Today’s Musing on Parenting: Changing Your Samuel L. Jackson Inner Monolgue into Snow White
When you don’t have kids, it’s perfectly normal to, say, curse wildly upon stubbing your toe, smacking your head, having to chase goats to get them back into the blankety-blank pen. You get the picture. People just see you as being young and…we’ll leave it at that. But once you are responsible for another life, you are quickly forced to develop that elusive trait called “self-control”. (No, no, the need to develop self control doesn’t apply to eating an entire carton of ice cream alone in the back of your closet while tiny hands pound on your door, asking for everything from a cookie to video game time to a pet zebra. Don’t panic.) If you don’t, your children are at risk of turning out as “those kids”.
It’s rather fortunate that babies don’t understand English (or any language for that matter) immediately at birth. This gives you time to mop up your sailor/gansta mouth or, more importantly, install what I like to call the Snow White filter. The Snow White filter takes the response in your mind that sounds like it came straight from Samuel L. Jackson’s mouth in…well, any movie but Turbo, really, and turns it into a calm, sweet, almost-birdlike song.
For example: Let’s say you drop a glass and it shatters everywhere. Mr. Jackson might say something like, “Well, blank. Who the blankety-blank even makes such a blankety-blank cheap glass that breaks so blanking easily anyway? Imma find that blankety-blank and…” You see where this is going.
The Snow White filter takes such internal monologue and tweaks it ever so slightly: “Oh my! Goodness, what a mess!” and then you flutter off to daintily find the broom and with gentle, cautioning tones, remind your little ones that broken glass is very dangerous. It helps if you imagine bunnies smiling on the windowsill and birds lighting about to help with the clean up.
The transition to using your Snow White filter can be very frustrating for the first little while, as you may feel alone in your struggle against sounding like a person who has recently shot someone in cold blood. But over time, you begin to realize that there are others like you. Not me, of course. My Snow White voice is totally legit. 😉
Fairy Princesses
Our oldest daughter, Maya, is something of a paradox. She loves pink and tiaras and glitter, but she also enthusiastically tells Daddy that she wants to go elephant hunting with him. You might be thinking that she probably just wants to snuggle the baby elephants and build nature reserves where elephant families can roam together in perfect harmony. Ask her about it. She will, without missing a beat, explain that she intends to shoot and eat them. Three-year-old me would be horrified.
I think a lot of this has to do with growing up with brothers. As I never had one (until I inherited five fantastic brothers through marriage), I cannot be totally certain, but surely having brothers plays an important role in the neurological development of little girls. Important, yet note that I did not indicate whether that influence was positive or negative.
Take this evening, for example.
Maya had decided that she was, once again, a fairy princess. Wand in hand, she began fluttering about the living room. Feeling inclined to bestow her glittery essence on her less fortunate siblings, she sang, “Magical, magical, I sprinkle you all with fairy dust!”
Sam, not even bothering to look up, simply replied in the most bored tone he could conjure, “Immune.”
It’s Been Too Long.
I’ve done a really bad of keeping things up to date here. I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.
Here’s what you missed:
I was dreadfully ill due to pneumonia and some pretty serious morning sickness. We’re talking barely getting out of bed for two months. It was bad. Have I mentioned that we’re having number five? (Or numbers 5 and 6, if you ask Caleb.)
The kids picked up a lot of new skills while I was incapacitated. Vacuuming, laundry, meal preparation, cleaning the kitchen. You name it, they helped out with it. Very proud mommy here.
Texas had an awesome ice storm.
It was pretty impressive. Fort Worth pretty well shut down for about four days. Schools were closed, grocery store shelves were eerily vacant as delivery trucks couldn’t get through. I waited two freaking weeks for a Fedex delivery…not that I’m bitter or anything.
We found our own piece of paradise just outside a little Texas city. We are currently in planning stages for how to set it all up and what to do with it all.
We got goats! Yah! Real ones! The kind that try to eat your clothes and stuff! Why goats, you might be asking yourself? Well, a big part of it is that we’d like a little help clearing our new spot of land. Of course, Caleb has a real hankering for cabrito now.
This year, I hope to be able to keep you abreast with the various projects we have planned. I’m not going to tell you what they are just yet, but I will say that many of them involve heavy machinery. We’re very excited about it, even me despite already loathing the thought of getting up and feeling like a beached whale.
Life in a Three Ring Circus 