Group Effort

Sometimes when Josh is gone at night for a business meeting or something, or on the occasion I've had the girls by myself for a weekend it makes me TOTALLY realize why people say stuff like, "We stayed together for the children."

I always thought it meant they stayed together for the well-being of the children, and while that's important for sure, I think the real reason they say it is because, Man it's hard to be a single parent.  That shit is not easy.  Even if it's just someone to commiserate with at the end of the day, it's easier.

My hat is off to all the single parents out there.  I don't know how you do it, sometimes you just have to yell, "I don't have to poop but I'm gonna go poop for about a half an hour right now, and even though I'm not really pooping, I need that time to poop, do you understand what I'm saying?"

And then you hide in the bathroom for about five gloriously-gorgeous-no-yelling-no-one-puking-in-your-hair-annoyingly-loud-toy-free alone minutes before the kids escape and find you, and then once you're out of the bathroom, that's when dang it, that's when you realize you really do have to poop, and good luck doing that alone now!

Because that's how life works folks.

Parenthood.  It means never pooping alone.

But you also get to have conversations like this one.  So that's a major plus.



Addie demonstrates how to properly wear underwear:

Halloween

I don't think you really know how much you're turning into your parents until you actually become a parent yourself.

One Halloween my mom completely forgot about it until that day and ended up sewing balls of cotton thread onto our footie pajamas and painting our cheeks with lipstick and called us all clowns.

This year the holiday is slowly creeping up on me and though I keep thinking about it, it doesn't mean I've actually done anything about it.  It's just how my life goes right now - I think really hard about how I need to fold the laundry, and yet when I look at the pile again it's still there.  Weird.  

Anyway, in an effort to get on the ball I asked Addie what she wanted to be for Halloween the other day and she said, "Saturday."

So, that's gonna be tricky to figure out.

Tula on the other hand was easy.  I've already got her costume done.  Parenting win!

She's the old guy from Up!

I love this movie so much.

Addie might just go as a teenager because that's what she's been acting like lately.  Sassy, sleepy, and eating everything she can.  Lately when I've been going in to get her after her nap she refuses to get out of bed yelling, "No! Addie's restin' right now."  

"You are? But you just took a three hour nap."

"Addie's sleepin'. Mommy get Addie new blankie."

"Excuse me?"

"Please. Mommy do it. Now."

She then asked specifically for "Auntie Becky's blankie." 

She looks so small and cuddly in this picture.

Until you get close up and realize she's scowling at me because I daned to try to sing to her.  God forbid.  How embarrassing, Mom.

And hour later she was finally ready to get up and be cute.

Mood swings.  Well, hello being a girl.  Way to show up early!

Josh is thinking about going as a bald eagle (ha) and having Tula be part of his baby birds, but I'm not sure.  The Up costume is too cute!

One more time for the cheap seats!

I pretty much almost explode with love and want to punch something when I look at this picture because I love it so much.

Fall

We went to a nearby farm yesterday where they have a pumpkin patch and hayrides, and goats, and pigs and all that good farm-y stuff.  One of the baby goats escaped and ran right toward us like a puppy, jumping up on Addie and trying to eat the food out of her pockets and it did not scare her at all.

The harmless pumpkin patch on the other hand, that freaked her out.

She would not leave my side and she was very concerned about this particular pumpkin.  It had another pumpkin growing out of it, LIKE SOME SORT OF MONSTER.

It wasn't even a real pumpkin patch, they'd taken all these pumpkins and spread them out in a field and let you pick them. Grandpa thinks it's because you'd lose the kids in a real pumpkin patch, but I think it's more likely their marijuana farm is dangerously close to their pumpkin farm and they don't want nosy pumpkin getters to ruin their profesh drug ring/slave trade they have going on because that's where the real cash comes from and they just launder it through the guise of running a little ol' farm.

But I have been watching a lot of HBO, so I could be wrong.

Still very worried about the pumpkins.

Tula on the other hand could not have been more thrilled.

After pumpkin patching we came home and Tula decided to work on her crawling skills.  She's not doing it yet, she sort of lays on her stomach and flails her arms and legs around like she's pretending to paddle out to surf, but even that seems like a lot for a four month old!  You're too little to start crawling little missy!  Addie wasn't even really flipping over until she was like nine months old.  At this rate she'll probably be in a big girl bed before Addie.  

Showing off.  Lucy is supervising.

Addie decided to get down and show Tula how it's done.

"She you start like this..."

"And then ., . . Ugh. I can't. . . I don't remember what comes next."

"Just move your feet, something will happen.  Right?  Mom? Help!"

Behind The Scenes

I've decided my girls are going to nap until High School.

That is all.

Except I'm dreading the day they stop napping.  Even more than that, I'm dreading the day Addie gets moved out of her crib. She's already requesting a pillow when she goes to bed, next it'll be a canopy, a feather duvet, and no more bars holding her in!

Luckily she loves her crib right now and pretty much refuses to get out of it when I go in to get her up in the mornings or after a nap.  She'll take her breakfast right there thankyouverymuch.  But some day I'll have to take the crib down, and then she'll be able to amble around the room at will, and open the door and I hear it's illegal to lock children in their rooms so that's gonna be rough.

Also, I just wanted you to share the behind the scenes of picture taking.  Because kids, they're not always super cute.

Sometimes pictures turn out adorable like this:

Ridiculously cute.

But before that, are nine hundred pictures that look like this:

Get ooooooooooff.

And then sometimes you just get this:

And this:

Because asking her to smile is like telling her you just punched her kitten.

 Also, this happened:

Oh hey winter.  YOU'RE EARLY.

Private Area

Adeline is really into body parts right now.  Especially private parts.  She's really into private parts.  Probably because they're private and she is totally curious about anything that's off limits. 

For a while when she was learning what the different parts were they would just come up at random times, like when we'd take walks, as if she'd needed to clear her head and think it over, and then she'd walk up to this particular bush we'd pass and yell, "Penis, Daddy's private AREA!" and then keep on walking.  I'm not sure what that bush did to deserve to be yelled at every day about private areas, but it happened a lot.

Now that she's more confident she likes to label people, so anytime Grandma and Grandpa come over it's, "Gradma have vagina, Grandpa have penis." And if she's feeling sassy she'll say, "Grandma have penis," and then laugh hysterically at her own joke.

Yesterday we went to the doctor and then this happened:

"Mommy?"

"Yes?"

"Where'd Mommy go?"

"I'm right here."

"Yeah. Have boobs."

"Yes, Mommy has boobs."

"Mommy have vagina."

"Yes I do."

"Where Dr. Hopson go?"

*just then he walks in*

"Hello Adeline."

"DR. HOPSON HAVE PENIS!"

"That's the weirdest greeting I've ever gotten."

"At least she didn't tell you that you had a vagina."

That's my daughter.  Making things awkward since 2013. 

 I'm so proud.

In totally unrelated news we went to an alpaca farm this weekend.  Well, it's not totally unrelated, we were schooled on which alpacas had which genitalia during the visit, so that was fun.

You can't tell from this picture, but there were literally hundreds of alpacas there.  Alpaca? Alpaci? 

Friendly, cute little suckers.

What up, we're alpacas.  We're soft and weird.

This one is winking at Addie.  She probably just told him he had a penis and he agreed.  He's really good with kids.

Special Time

A good way to make sure the kids wake up early from their nap is to break out the cross stitch, get yourself all situated, and happy, maybe a cozy blanket around your legs and a fun little stitchy-stitch in front of you, needle all threaded and whatnot, because the second you're ready to start - BLAMO! It's cry city.

On a similar note breaking out the cross stitch is also a good way to never get laid.

But does that stop me? Nooooooooooo. Because I have a Memento-like memory for what makes my babies wake up and what makes people not want to make-out with me.  For instance, I also still insist on cutting off my hair and starting a really good book.

Oh, you're comfy? WELL, WE'RE AWAKE THEN!

Along those lines, something weird happened the other day.  My sleeping partner and I found ourselves with a rare moment of quiet to ourselves and decided to catch up on some cuddling and Duck Dynasty.  Mid-way through Duck Dynasty though Josh's armpits started sweating all over me.  Now, it was a warm day, but not that warm, and he had just taken a shower, so I let it go and kept watching Uncle Sal be crazy.

But it was getting worse, and it was totally weird because Josh is not a sweaty guy even while he's working out but I didn't want to ruin the cuddly moment, so I kept quiet, but I just kept thinking to myself, What the hell is going on? Maybe he has a thyroid problem? Did he eat something really spicy right before we sat down? I should call the doctor and see if he has a thyroid problem.  Wait, does your thyroid make you sweat? Maybe it's lymph nodes.  A gland. It's some sort of gland.  I'll have the doctor check all his glands.  Maybe it was extra water caught in his armpit hair from the shower? Oh my god how much armpit hair does he have!? That's probably a follicle problem all that armpit hair. None on his head and they all ended up in his armpits to hold onto water like some sort of weird armpit-rain-forest.

Finally I couldn't take it anymore and sat up.

"Why are you so sweaty?" he asked before I could say anything.

"Why are YOU so sweaty?"

And then we both looked down to our sopping wet shirts.

Turns out, it was not Josh at all.  I had fantastically leaked breast milk all over both of us during our cuddle sesh and didn't even know.  I was literally laying in a puddle of my own breast milk.

HAWT.

This is why I don't understand how single moms do it.  How are you supposed to date when you can potentially leak bodily fluids onto your date?

The good news is Josh does not have any sort of thyroid, glandular or nodular problems.  He also is kind enough to stay silent while he thought I was sweating all over him, and I him.

The magic is not gone, people!  We still love each other enough to watch tv with each other covered in sweat.  Or breast milk as the case may be.

Tula thinks it's funny.  Until she realizes that's her food I just bathed in.

Addie had a really good hair day the other day.  

Tunnel Hiking

The great thing about living in Bozeman is that you have (most) comforts of a city (one Starbucks, one movie theater, 70 billion steak restaurants, a hospital, Justin Timberlake's house, Michael Keaton's house, Jeff Bridges' house, and one of the best Targets in the whole United States. My sister, who lives within a five mile radius of five different Targets in LA, prefers to shop at the Bozeman Target because they have better clothes, and there are never any lines. *sigh* I love Target.)

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah.  So, you get the semi-comforts of a city and the joys of nature right outside your door.  There are so many trails in Bozeman that I've lived here over three years and haven't even tried half of them, all of which are either right outside our door, or a short ten minute drive away.  Lately we've been taking the little ladies on a hike on the weekend, and not only is it beautiful, but it just reminds me of how lucky we are to live here.

When I was a kid we went on a trip to Ireland and we wasted an entire roll of film on some cows that were crossing the road.  Because ohmygawd, COWS! In the road! What kind of old fashioned magic is this!?

But to Addie this is a normal thing.  The other day I was driving to Target (where else?) and she said, "Addie see cows Mommy?"

"You want to see cows?"

"Yeah. And horseys!"

"Horseys?"

"Please Mommy! Horseys! Moooo!"

And because I can't deny my daughter when she's excitedly screaming that horseys say moo, I made a left and bam! I was able to produce horseys AND cows.  And a deer.  I mean - c'mon.  Fuck yeah for nature showing up.

And then we were at Target five minutes later.

Now if only I could talk my entire family into moving here it'd be perfect.

The other day we literally rolled out of bed and took the girls on a little hike walk thing.  Here's proof we literally rolled out of bed.  Tula is still in her pjs, and I'm apparently sleep-hiking.

Me: Durrrrr.

Tula: What the hell is going on?

There was a tunnel on our walk.  Addie ran through it about twenty times she was so excited. Kids are so easy.  Who needs Disneyland when you have a graffiti-covered, probable nighttime drug den of a tunnel?!

Stopping to admire the drawings. "What's that mom?"

"That's a bad word."

"Addie likes that one."

"Of course you do."

Running. Girlfriend likes to book it.

HORSEYS! MOOOOOOOO.

I mean, seriously? Shut up you two.  There's too much cute for me to handle right now.