living in a bubble

I've come to the conclusion that I must live in a bubble and that there is an entire world of people out there that I don't know about and that I really don't understand. I enjoy watching American Idol. I love seeing a contestant walk into their audition with confidence and some kind of normalcy to them, and then sing a song that showcases their talent. But the people.....why are their so many people that say things that make me so embarrassed for them, and then to make their situation even more excruciating, they just can't hold a tune. Why are their so many people that feel the need to showcase their weirdness? Or even if what they spill the beans about on national t.v. is admirable or cool, don't they know it just comes off as just weird in the context of American Idol? Like the kid who shows up for his audition with his dad touting the fact that he's never kissed a girl and wears a heart necklace around his neck of a heart with a keyhole, while his dad wears another necklace holding the key to his heart, and they explain the whole story of how his dad will give the key to his future wife on their wedding day, yada yada yada. It just comes across as so extremely corny, yet it's really admirable! Then there was the kid who pulled out a plastic bag full of his own fingernails that he keeps! I just about gaged! Why oh why did he feel the need to share this disturbing secret with Ryan Seacrest, knowing that the whole world will now know about this? So many people that they "exploit" for entertainment purposes willingly show up and give them what they want! I just don't understand the need so many people apparently have for the spotlight. I've never met a person like any of these talentless contestants in real life. What about the guy with the long hair and long fingernails who wrote his own song for his audition and came in with a big fan. Do people like him really exist in the real world? And if so, how do they survive not living in reality? Like I said, I really must live in a bubble because I have yet to meet someone actually like that. If they are so out of touch with what is real, how so they survive real life? I wonder what they do for a living and why they think being a famous singer when they can't sing would be a good thing? Do people really get so caught up in the celebrity world that that is what they think they need to be happy? I just don't get it. Oh well, please just don't pop my bubble.

News of the passing of Pres. Hinckley

It's Sunday night and I just learned that Pres. Hinckley passed away tonight about an hour ago. I have mixed feelings because on the one hand I am so glad he is now reunited with his sweet wife, who we know he missed so much. But on the other hand my heart aches that he is actually gone. I miss him and I love him and I am so sad that I will never get to hear him speak again with his humor and clever wit and his forthright honest way of speaking to us. He was our Prophet for I believe 12 years and I don't think anyone could doubt the love he had for all of us. I felt it every time he spoke. I love that he worked so hard to unite all faiths and showed such deep respect for other faiths. I feel such deep gratitude for the tireless work and dedication he gave to the church, making it a more public, global church. I love that he had interviews with both Mike Wallace from 60 minutes and Larry King and the way he answered each question presented to him with such conviction, and humor and I just have to say that he was just so cool! With such amazing leaders as him, how could I not be proud to be a Mormon!

More Brooklynisms

Brooklyn keeps shocking me with the things she says. I don't know how my 4yr old comes up with some of these, but she says them with meaning and intent. Some of the latest that I can remember...."Oh my smack'n eye", "Oh my stink'n head", "Oh my freak'n screaming out loud", "Oh for crying out loud" (well, I do know where she pick this one up, it's a daily or hourly, or more like every couple minutes phrase I find coming out of my mouth) and another common one she created is "Oh my holy smack'n freak'n head". She has many other variations of the above aformentioned phrases, usually adding different body parts, or names but the same general idea. In fact the first words out of her mouth this morning as she woke up was "Oh my freak'n crazy head!" as she frantically searched the bed for a missing small toy she had slept all night with, along with her usual posse of stuffed animals. I said to her "what did you just say?" and she repeated it like it was the most normal and common thing to say upon waking up and looking for a misplaced toy. I just hope it doesn't get worse. She already tried out the "Oh my God!" phrase on me one night as I was laying with her to get her to sleep. I could tell she was just using it to test me to see if it was okay or not. I think she must have inherently sensed it wasn't okay to say that for some reason even though we've never mentioned it before. I think she noticed a classmate from preschool saying this and wanted to try it out on me to see what I did. We were just laying there in the dark and she all of a sudden said it three times in a row. I told her I've never heard her say that before and if she just learned it today, but not making a big deal about it. I asked her if she thought it was okay to say God's name that way when we are expressing anger or surprise etc. and explained that we love God and his name is special, and tried to explain what taking his name in vain means on a 4 yr old level. I told her it's okay to ask me if a new word she heard somewhere is good or not, but usually if you never hear Mommy or Daddy saying it, it's not a good word to say. She was so cute talking to me about this and she's never said it again. I know freak'n and stink'n and smack'n aren't the most wholesome words to come out of a child's mouth, but I can't help it......it just makes me laugh!

Another reason I love my husband

PMS Sucks. Some months I feel I'm battling fierce, vicious demons who want to suck the very soul from my body, yet other months I barely notice a change. Hormone balance is a real thing and this week I can tell I am one messed up chick. I feel I need to admit myself to an anger management /psych ward. This morning was a classic case in point, where I didn't want to get up and face the day and I felt such pent up anger at the universe I guess because nobody did anything deserving of my bad mood. I went about my usual morning routine but everything made me mad...Brooklyn was too squirmy when I needed to blow dry her hair so I raised my voice at her...the boys threw their eggs on the floor (as always) so I raised my voice at them...Pete wanted to hug me but I was too angry at what? so I shrugged him off and went on in my bad mood...you get the picture. Well the last straw was the boys AGAIN for the gazillion time had crawled up onto the counter in the mud room and thrown everything down onto the floor making a huge mess and my poor hormonally depleted brain just couldn't handle it so I burst out crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth and locked myself in the bathroom before I hurt somebody, or give them nightmares of a raving mad lunatic mother until they are 37. Then I notice the time and I realize that if I don't pull myself together Brooklyn will be late to school, so I exit the bathroom to find a very quiet house. Pete had loaded up the kids and took Brooklyn to school. You are probably thinking ahhh, what a sweet husband he is, but me in my pms'ing hormonally challenged body am a little irritated that he didn't tell me he was leaving. I know, I know, I'm awful, but it gets worse. He comes back home and I won't talk to him, but he's really trying to be kind and help me out by doing the dishes and asking me if I'm okay, so I just lay into him about this and that, and somewhere in there I think I even called him stupid (sorry honey!) but as I was ranting, I notice his eyes....so full of compassion and love. He didn't get angry at my stupidity and irrational behavior, he just apologized. All of a sudden the ice daggers hanging from my heart just melted. I was a puddle of humility and remorse and I just grabbed him and hugged him so tight explaining that he had nothing to apologize for and that I was so sorry for the way I had been treating everyone, etc. I don't know how he did it. I'm sure it wasn't easy, but he possessed this morning the true essence of Christ-like love. He was humble and patient and kind. He would have been very justified in being angry at the way I was acting, but somehow he had the strength to rise above it all and give me what I needed...pure love. Somehow his love overpowered my crazy hormones and sent them running. I had a great day after this. Just another reason why I love my husband.

A thought from Brooklyn's mind

Today Brooklyn wanted to watch Sleeping Beauty, but I reminded her that the witch scared her. She replied, I'm not scared of her, she's just a made up person from Mexico, wearing a costume. I had a good chuckle :)

the crib tents are up!

It was Sunday afternoon, about a half hour after I had put the boys down for their nap and I was lying on the bed just dozing off for a sweet, much needed nap myself, when all of a sudden I heard a loud THUMP, followed by crying and a door opening and footsteps running down the hall into my room. Ryan had fallen out of his crib again. I guess the first time he did it, it didn't resonate in his memory long enough to prevent him from doing it again, or it just knocked all sense out of him. Zachy has watched Ryan spill over the side of his crib twice now. It's funny to see his expression of concern for his crying brother and when I ask him, what happened? he leans over his crib and points to the ground. I think he has learned not to attempt the trick himself, but just in case, they both get a crib tent to keep them where they are supposed to be. I'm not even close to even thinking about big boy beds......Oh the terror that would bring to my life! So for now, I put them to bed and zip up the flap making it impossible for them to crawl out. It does feel a little weird zipping them up like little prisoners but I have peace of mind now, knowing Ryan won't give himself a concussion falling out of his crib again. In fact, they amusingly like it now. Sometimes when I go in to get them up from a nap they protest me unzipping their tent. They have to be "ready" I guess. It's a delicate balance between going in too early and too late! There is a "sweet spot" of time where I can get them up and they will be happy and fun, but if I miss it, oh the misery and crying and clinging to mommy for the rest of the day! Crazy!

There are times throughout the day when I wish I could zip them up in a tent. There seems to be a natural law that exists that states if you turn your back on the boys for more than 30 seconds they will turn into a Tasmanian devil and make a room in the house look like a tornado tore through it! Case in point, yesterday I turned my back on the boys to put a Shirley Temple movie on for Brooklyn (she is so into Shirley Temple movies right now! Very cute) and I sat down for some cuddle time with my favorite girl. The next thing I know is that my entire kitchen/dining area is covered in paper napkins, there wasn't an inch of floor to be seen. They emptied an entire Costco bag of napkins all over the floor! I should have learned by now that laughing boys = big mess for mommy to clean. Their next stop was an old favorite place of destruction for them called the mud room, where they managed to pull everything off the desk and counters, empty the shoe baskets, and pull down all the coats. I should have grabbed the camera because you can't even imagine the mess, but I was just to tired to find the humor in the moment. All I could think of was how do I stop them from creating another mess, so I can clean up these messes? Seriously, sometimes I think about strapping them in their car seats with a movie to entertain them, but that could be borderline abuse/neglect. But in a frantic state it seems quite reasonable! I could just picture someone stopping by and asking where are the boys? and I casually say, Oh their out in the car watching a movie, you know, just until I get these messes cleaned up.

Can someone spare me a hand, or two?

I was at our primary teacher inservice training meeting last night, chatting with the gals, when one friend who has a son a few weeks younger than the twins ask me if I've noticed the twins going through a learning curve. She said her son seemed to be all of a sudden learning so much, new words, singing the alphabet, counting, etc. I racked my brain thinking if the boys were demonstrating some kind of new intelligence that I hadn't noticed, and well, nope....I couldn't come up with a thing. I thought about all the times I sat down on the floor with grand thoughts of peacefully reading a few fun books to them, pointing to the pictures and hearing them try to repeat the words back to me. Then reality hits, and my grand dreams of sweetly reading to my babies as they grow more and more intelligent through every page we turn BLOWS UP IN MY FACE! The reality is that first, it's a fight on who gets to sit on my lap as they push and shove each other and one tries to climb up on my head for the best view, then as I finally situate them, one on each leg, I realize I now can't hold the book and turn the pages with my arms around two kids. But that doesn't really matter, because one of them is already grabbing the book away from me and throwing it across the room while the other cries because he wanted the book!
So in response to my friends question about whether the twins have seemed to be getting smarter all of a sudden? Uh....no. I've come to a peaceful place in my mind that they will eventually learn the alphabet, colors, and numbers.....eventually. But boy can they both roar like a lion better than any other baby I've met! So there!

Help! There's two of them and one of me!

Yesterday was definitely a day I felt out-numbered by having twins. Somehow, every so slyly, they have started to shed their sweet baby persona and created this bond to wreav havoc in my life. Ya know, I always wondered what they stayed up talking about in their cribs, instead of going to sleep. They are plotting and planing their next attack plan. If only they would play together and share their toys as well as they work together causing mischief. I was busy organizing a neglected closet that somehow grew a ton of clutter out of nowhere! They were in there with me, busily climbing on the piles of pillows and blankets, and strewing all the baby toys out of the neat pile I was trying to organize them into, when I realized at some point that I couldn't hear the boys anymore, and that the piles I was making were strangly staying in their piles! so I followed their trail out to the garage where they were busying themselves whith a box full of lightbulbs that Pete had left on the floor. There was broken glass everywhere and much laughter going on, until they saw me that is. They were like deer caught in the headlights. They somehow instinctively new that what they were doing was very very bad, or maybe me yelling No! was their first clue? Anyway they didn't want mommy to catch them so they took off running and I was on the chase! I ran Ryan down first, grabbing him and prying the lightbulbs out of his hands, and carried him back into the house, shutting the door behind me as I grumbled stay in the house! Well, I wasn't even half way through the garage tiptoeing around all the broken glass, when he already had the door open and was climbing back down the stairs...little punk.
But that didn't derail me from my next task which was to find Zachy. He was waiting for me on the other side of the pool table in the RV garage, posed for action with a sly little smile on his face and yes, a lightbulb in each hand! I knew the race was on and let me tell you that little punk is fast! So I take off around the pool table and we lap it once, but did I mention he was very fast? So I try the o'l change directions in the middle of the lap, but he is very savy to that game, and pretty much expected that move from me since he just screamed in delight and turned around and headed the other way. So two laps later I caught him, pryed the lightbulbs from his hands and headed back to the house, stoping only to scoop up Ryan AGAIN on the way, prying more lightbulbs from his hands and then locked the door to the garage! For the next hour I had to patrol the house doing damage control to everything they touched. I'm thinking to myself, next time I'll leave the stupid closet cluttered because it's either getting a closet organized at the expese of the entire house, or one messy closet.
So how was your day?

Now that's what I'm talking about!

This is Zach heading out barefoot in the snow!

We finally got the snow worth talking about! This is when I love living where I do. Of course, I didn't have to leave the house today since I enforced my own "snow day" and kept Brooklyn home from school. It's not that I didn't think I could safely get her there, it's just that she REALLY didn't want to go today and I wasn't motivated to bundle everyone up to take her.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's to 2008! Looking forward to it. Bring it on!