Hello, summer

Doesn't it seem like it takes forever for summer to arrive, and then when it gets here, it goes remarkably fast? I feel this way, and I don't even have kids in school yet. However, even with a light preschool schedule, summer still seems like a break from the normal routine. We don't have a lot planned for this summer, except for a week in Iowa in August, so the girls and I have a lot of free time on our hands. We do have some things going on- the occasional afternoon with a fun babysitter, Vacation Bible School for Bennett, trips down to Cedarville to see Nana and Papa, etc.- but, on most days, we have many long daytime hours to fill before Ben gets home, we have dinner, they go to bed, and I start to work.

Unfortunately, we can't take off and go somewhere every day. It's just too expensive and/or tiring. We're in a weird spot with Blake- old enough to be entering the terrible two's but still not walking independently. It is very difficult to do a lot of activities with a non-walker who weighs 28 pounds. It's just limiting for us, right now. It's not an exaggeration to say that my back is in knots all the time from lugging this adorable chubster around, even at home. Next summer, we should be good to go. But for now, we need some simple home entertainment. Oh, and did I mention we don't have much of a yard to speak of? Besides short stroller walks/bike rides and a little sidewalk chalk or bubbles (which results in Blake getting filthy from inevitably crawling on the blacktop- because what child her age wants to sit still on a blanket?), we get along best indoors.

Hi, I'm Blake, and I am ruining every outfit I own by crawling around outside.

As a mom, it seems wrong to say that sometimes I really don't know what to do with kids. It just doesn't come naturally to me. Growing up, I rarely babysat and didn't enjoy it. I used to babysit for a family with four boys, and I tried to play with them, but they eventually sent me to the couch with my book and opted to entertain themselves. :) I was the youngest on both sides of my family and was never really around kids who were younger than I was. It is absolutely true that when Bennett was born, I didn't really know how to change a diaper. Before Ben went back to work, he gave me a tutorial because I was afraid I was going to mess it up terribly and be the worst mother of all time.

Now, I'm completely confident in my ability to take care of my kids and keep them alive, but I'm just not good at entertaining. When Bennett and I play Barbies, I usually pretend I'm the housekeeper so I can clean/organize the Dream House. Seriously. So, this summer, I'm trying to do better and come up with some fun activities. We do love baking, but we can't do that every day because we just don't need that many baked goods around here. We have made sidewalk paint:

Which was fun to make, but didn't really "paint" that well.

We have made cloud dough:

But we weren't that impressed.

We tried making collages out of old magazines:

But Bennett lost interest and asked me to finish for her!

We'll keep trying. If I come up with anything good, I'll be sure to pass it along!

Nothing like a good book

It's been a while since I updated my reading lists. My goal for 30 in my 30s was to read 120 books, or an average of one book per month. When I added it up today, it looks like I've read 21 books in the past 3 years, or an average of 7 books per year. So, I'm a little off my pace but I know I'll catch up. 120 books sure doesn't seem like a lot for an entire decade of my life, but as busy as I am with work and kids right now, a book a month is all that's reasonable for me.

I've moved my reading lists over to goodreads.com (connect with me there!), and I have links to them here on the right side of my blog if anyone wants to keep up with me. I love getting good book recommendations from friends and will still try to review any especially good books here if I can, but this just seemed more efficient. I really like the goodreads site and the corresponding app I have for my phone. I've even started a reading list with Bennett to see how many books we read together before she starts kindergarten. I let her rate every book, and she gives 5 stars every single time.

The last really good book I read was The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. If you like historical fiction or anything set in England, you'll love it. The majority of the action takes place in London during the Blitz of WWII. This book has such a great plot. I can usually figure out what's going to happen, but I didn't see what was coming in this story, and I loved that. Highly recommend!

One more?

This blog is in definite danger of not getting updated again for another year. Work and the girls keep me so busy, I don't even keep up with the basics most of the time. I pray that the police never need to come into my home for any reason, or they will assume it's already been robbed and ransacked, and I will probably just let them believe it.

I am looking forward to a summer without a lot of things planned, with the exception of a trip to Iowa to see our family there and our new niece who will be born in just a couple of weeks! Little Blake is keeping me busy with her various doctor and therapy appointments. Next week, we will take her to an ENT to discuss putting tubes in her ears since she has had at least 4 ear infections since Christmas. Since she is still learning to walk at 20 months, we have to be extra careful with her ears since they will affect her balance. Last week, she was taking several independent steps at a time; this week, she doesn't want to try. She will get there eventually. I'm so thankful for the Ohio Help Me Grow program and the services we are getting through the county.

But on to what I'm actually meaning to blog about....It seems like so many people celebrate their 10th anniversaries with either a vacation or a baby. I'm excited to announce that for ours, we will be welcoming...a cruise to the southern Caribbean. I think I'm at this weird point in life where I've had the babies I intended and hoped to have, but a small voice keeps whispering, "There's still time for one more!" A lot of my friends and peers are having their third or fourth baby right now, so I'm still in that mode where it seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. Only, for us, it really isn't reasonable. We both work a lot, we have two kids who take absolutely all of our time and attention, we have support but most of our family lives beyond the reasonable "help" range, we are stuffed in an already-too-small house and have no idea when or if we'll get one with more room, and we're just plain tired. In addition, we rolled the dice and won with the fertility treatments we've already done, and what are the chances we'd wind up with just one baby if we tried again? Like I've always said, one of my main aims in life is to not qualify in any way for my own reality show.

Simply put, we're stretched thin, and I'm positive I couldn't handle another baby. I couldn't be more thrilled or fulfilled with the two little girls we have, and neither of us are disappointed in the least that we didn't have a boy. I was so miserably sick when I was pregnant with Blake, and by the end of the nine months, I could barely walk or breathe because she was so big and putting so much pressure on my body. Still, I can't help but think about pregnancy wistfully when I walk by the maternity section in a store, and feel sad I'll never feel another baby kicking me from the inside or doing flip-flops in my stomach. The newborn phase of not sleeping, the commitment of breastfeeding, and the struggle of making sure the baby gets back to birth weight- I could definitely do without living through that again. Yet, I get this stabbing pain in my heart sometimes when I go through the latest round of out-grown clothes and wind up hanging on to some that I just can't part with. (I told myself I could save one box of special clothes...it has already turned into two.)

As Blake gets bigger, I feel an aching inside that I can't keep her little and that the baby days will soon be over for us. For some reason, it's easier to let Bennett grow up. A part of her was grown up from the minute she was born. But Blake, she is the baby. The sweet, chubby, can't-walk baby who is slowly but surely becoming a toddler. The older they get, the more semblance of a life I regain, which makes me feel both happy and devastated at the same time. I often ask myself, do I really want another baby- or do I just want to relive the good parts of my pregnancies and my kids' babyhood all over again? And, whatever its source, when does this feeling go away? Does "one more" ever cure it, or does every mom feel this way and have to go through these emotions, even if she has six kids? If anyone has the answer, I'd love to know!

Sweet Beezy lying next to me today while I worked. Still a baby...for now. 

10 years ago today...

...I got engaged to this guy. So glad he asked!

Today is National Siblings Day...

That's a real thing. I did not make that up. Timely, because my sibling is aghast that I left him out of my post about living in Columbus, so I told him I owed him an entire post. For the record, I love you, Bubba, and I'm glad we live in the same city. You help me keep my sanity, and in so many ways, nobody knows me better than you. I have so many good memories of us growing up together. When we were little, I would love the chance to go sleep in your room. You would give me tours of your room in the dark using a flashlight. And of course, there was that one time we put baby powder on blades of your ceiling fan and made it "snow." I guess living in Texas, we were pretty desperate for a winter wonderland of some kind. When we went to the "no mixed bathing" church, we had fun filling up plastic garbage cans with water and "swimming" in them. We watched the movie "Annie" so many times we wore the VHS tape out, along with our other favorites "Cloak and Dagger" and the TV movie "Rags to Riches." And I still remember the password to our clubhouse- "magma." I guess one of us must have been learning about volcanoes at school.

Later I remember having our two bedrooms as the only two rooms on the "third floor" of our house. We would freeze in the winter and burn up in the summer. Then we got a window unit for your room, hung a heavy blanket at the top of the stairs, and we were golden. I loved the snow days when I would watch you play Super Mario Brothers all day long. I never wanted to play myself- I just liked watching you play. When you got a job at Taco Bell and got your red 1992 Chevy Cavalier, I thought we were the coolest people in the world riding around in it with no parents. Our summer in Peoria with Kari and Val was some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. Rest in peace, Myron Hummel.

We got extra time together living in Cedarville, and I'm thankful for that. You have always been my friend as well as my brother, and I think we got to enjoy that more than other siblings in their teens and early 20s. Letting me come live with you in North Carolina for a while when I needed a break from college meant the world to me. I remember one day we spent just roaming around Chapel Hill, going in old bookshops, etc. It's hard to believe that's going on 15 years ago.

If you think about it, we've hardly spent that much time living far away from each other in the past 30+ years. Not a lot of siblings can say that. I know that NOTHING has ever been easy or fair for you. I think I've always known that even when I was too young to understand it. I know the past several years have been hard on our relationship as well as just plain hard. No matter what, I love you and I want to see you happy, healthy, and at peace. Every girl should be lucky enough to have had a big brother like you!

(Due to the lateness of the hour, I'm posting the first picture of us together that I could find. Do you still have those short shorts?)