Category: Family

A few weeks ago (okay almost a month ago) Miller turned 10 months old. During that same week she had a double ear infection and the stomach virus. You can imagine that it’s not something you want to capture on video. Apparently the next week I was very eager to shoot the 10 month video, becuase I did it twice! Even as I was shooting the second one, I was thinking, “I’ve heard these words come out of my mouth before.” But, I’m the mom of a preschooler, I repeat things ALOT. It was not until I was emptying my camera card that I realized I had, in fact, shot the video twice. Amazingly, I remebered the same milestones in both videos. The only difference is that she’s engaged in a different favorite pass time in each. So choose this post, or the one below, and hear about her 10th month!

Have you ever looked at pictures of yourself as a child or teenager or on your wedding day and thought, “I wish I could go back and tell that me something”? (start playing “If I Could Write a Letter to Me” in your head now!) Maybe there’s been a tragedy in your life that you’d want to prepare yourself for or maybe you’d just like to tell your 16 year old self that things will get better!

Well, we (as most of you know) are in the (eternal?) process of fixing up our house. We just passed the year anniversary of living here a few weeks ago on Phil’s birthday (happy 30th, by the way). It’s been several months since I’ve posted a new set of before and after pictures, and quite honestly, I’ve been a little down about that. Sometimes I just want to scream “WE’VE BEEN HERE A YEAR FOR HEAVEN SAKES!!! WHY DOESN’T IT LOOK ANY DIFFERENT!?” When the truth is, we’re painfully close to being done with phase 1 of a major area of the house and pictures are soon to be posted. We have gotten a lot done and I just have a bad case of “never is enough.” I’ve begun to start giving some serious thought to what I want to do with the kitchen. Do I want to just get it to an attractive room to live with for a few more years? Should we live with it the way it is for a little longer until we can do a complete overhaul? What defines each of those options? Join me in the hamster wheel of frustration, will you?

So, I was flipping through all of my before pictures of the house to see what I had of the kitchen to show a kitchen designer when I meet with her. This is one of the pictures:

(I’ve really tried to avoid posting before pictures without an after- sorry to have ruined the affect for when I do finally get some posted of this area!)

The day before we closed on the house our realtor, Wilson, and I went to the house to do a walk through and then wait an ever loving eternity for a cleaning lady to show up. While we waited, I decided to go around and take before pictures of the house completely empty. I had big plans after all and these pictures were going to be part of the greatest polishing of a diamond in the rough the world had ever seen.

Wilson was not really supposed to be in any of the pictures, nor did he want to be. But somehow he wound up in this one. I’m glad he did because when I opened it up it made me stop for a second and reflect. I wanted to run to “that him”, scoop him up, give him a big hug, and talk to him. Actually seeing pictures of the kitchen caught me by surprise first. We pulled the wallpaper down less than 24 hours after this was taken so the kitchen has had a different look the entire time we’ve lived in the house (note “different” does not always equal “good” – in this case, different is just different!). But as soon as I saw the “old” kitchen, it immediately made me realize the one I have now (as horrid as I think it is most of the time) is “my” kitchen. Looking at the old pictures brought back the feelings of “we’re leaving home and buying someone else’s house”- feelings that do not immediately come to me now when I walk in the door. I have said several times that the past year has literally been some sort of time warp for me and I am baffled quite often when things I think happened a few days or weeks ago actually happened over a year ago. This is another one of those times, except that this time it is pleasantly surprising. Somehow during this warped time, I ACTUALLY HAVE adopted this place as home. I really didn’t think that I had. I still flip on the wrong light switch every time I go in the playroom bathroom. I am still completely grossed out by the remaining fibers of carpet in the bedrooms. I still say four letter words every time I go in the laundry room and that terrible fluorescent light fixture doesn’t warm up and come on until I’m done in the room and flipping (the wrong) switch off. We are still paying a mortgage on a squirrel motel. But somehow, it’s home.

So, if I could go back, what would I tell that little face looking at me in the picture above?

“Buddy, it’s going to be okay. We are about to embark on a crazy, busy, mixed up year. You are going to make it through unscathed, and love most of it. We WILL get the smell out. Santa will bring you the Lightning Spiral. Your sister will get here and be very healthy. Your room will be bright blue “like your train” in a matter of days. You’ll still be wearing that shirt next Christmas. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. You’re going to love having an upstairs room- it will never bother you that we’re downstairs (except for the first few weeks when Miller comes home and you want her upstairs with you in her room). Thank you for not being right under my feet for once when that grease came flying out of the pan- I’m still so thankful that it only got on my hand and not your head! Sometimes, even a year later, you’ll miss our old house- and that’s okay. It was your first home, and as long as we’re here we can drive by whenever you want. You’re going to love sitting on the back steps waiting for dad’s car to turn down the street on his way home from work. You’re going to have a buddy right down the street to play with at a moments notice- he’s also going to love Cars as much as you! Chasing Jack up and down the stairs is soooo much fun. I don’t know how, but you’re always going to like it here- and you’re going to protest most of the changes we’re going to begin to make. You’re going to be okay.”

Or maybe I’d just say most those things to the person behind the camera.

Since Miller has FINALLY figured out how to crawl, we’ve been able to move on to the next phase of play place fun- crawl through tunnel. Seriously, this thing is GREAT. If you’re looking for a gift for new parents, this will be a hit. 10 months and we’re still using it daily!

The under publicised Duchess of Hazard, Millie MAE- she prefers to exit via the side window.

. . .bug my house?! Recently I gushed about Amazon answering a silent wish of mine- to be able to add anything to a wish list from anywhere on the web. Well they must have had a camera in my kitchen a few weeks ago as I tried to extract my new cell phone and was reduced to banging it on the counter in cave womanly manor confounded by the “clam shell” style plastic packaging that has become so favored by manufacturers these days. Or maybe Big Brother had been dispatched to the playroom as mountains of twist ties piled up and Wilson nearly wet himself waiting on me to open up his birthday gifts (you know the opening up that’s not nearly as fun as the ripping off of bright paper and ribbons- the opening up that requires yard shears, heavy duty gloves, 4 letter words, and a professional manicure to repair the damage). Today they announced this new initiative . . .

“Thanks” just doesn’t seem to cover it. I’ll be drying tears of joy if anyone needs me.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been back for over a week- and even harder to believe that I haven’t posted any pictures! If you are a regular follower you’re about to see that I’ve had a lot of catching up to do, so scroll down- there’s about 10 new posts (at least it seems that way if there really aren’t!)(Okay, I just counted, there’s actually THIRTEEN!).

I’ll spare you each and every individual photo from the whole entire trip (it rivals the day he was born). And, as you can tell by the 1800 posts, I’m too behind to do scrapbook pages. I did however spend the better part of 2 days putting together a photo book online and I’ll post a link below (click on the picture of the album, shutterfly will open and then click on the album picture again- don’t use “view album” it doesn’t work). When you get to the site click view the show. There is a magnifying glass on the upper right side if you want to see it page by page and be able to read the journaling & captions.

Disclaimer to family- you may want to skip this entirely because you will be required to look at the hard copy when it arrives and you will have to sit through Wilson’s tour of the book- pace yourself!

I can’t leave this post without saying THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to my mom and dad for keeping Miller while we went. It’s definitely not an easy job, but we really appreciate you doing it. We couldn’t have gone without your help. As I’ve said, “I have a no diaper, no stroller, no pregnant in Disney World rule . . . and only three of us qualified.”