When Braden was at SERE he asked me to blog often so that if he got a chance he could see the girls and wouldn't feel like he was missing so much.
I said that I would.
And I meant to.
But......I didn't.
I was busy wrapping 30,000 pounds of crap that we have somehow acquired and deem necessary to maintain. And then I put all that crap in boxes. And then I took a Sharpie marker and specified exactly which crap is in which free box that I dug out of the trash or my neighbors garage. And then I stacked them all up in the living room and made the great wall of boxes. And I felt proud. And so so so tired.
Anyway, one can certainly understand why I wasn't upstairs getting my blog on. But I decided I better catch up while it is still August, that way I can still use the phrase "last month", which is important for keeping my slacker guilt at bay. Good thing my memory is sharp as a Colton shank (and that I came across some notes while unpacking).
Highlights:
From Anabelle: -"Every time I walk into the living room and Dad doesn't have to go to work yet, I see him watching soccer and eating pork in his flight suit".
-I have gotten in the habit of singing both "As Sisters in Zion" and "Walk Tall You're a Daughter of God" to them each night before bed. As I do Anabelle simply cannot stay laying down. She lunges towards me, hugging me and stroking my hair with a dreamy look on her face and she says, "Whenever you sing, I just want to cry". Which is the reason I don't generally sing; it would have that affect on everyone. But lucky for me that isn't why she cries. She is still in that pure state of childhood where she is touched to the core by the words and hopefully she senses how they apply to her. One day soon I'm sure I will be singing to her and her eyes will squint and her whole body will shudder in pain and I will know that my glory days of being a bedside concert favorite are over. But until then, I soak it up.
-Last summer she was not exactly a party at the swimming pool. Let's face it- she was a downright sissy. This year, she sort of stayed on the steps the first few times I took her to the pool. And then one day I looked over and saw her standing at about the 6 feet with no floaty and she just jumped in. All by herself. With no prompting and no friends around. And then she just swam to the stairs. Just like that. Who knew she could swim? The rest of our pool days were greatly enhanced after this. She became the four year old at the pool that all the other Moms would use to try to coax their five year olds out of their life jackets.
-She practiced and practiced and I wish you could have seen the look on her face when she finally got it- she learned to snap. She was so excited to show Dad when he got home.
-She has a seriously impressive Spanish accent. Also a fantastic southern drawl and her British ain't half bad either. BUT, Spanish is what she loves. If she uses a word that's not quite right and I correct her she'll just tell me it's a Spanish word. She walks around "speaking Spanish" in her own made up way and it's pretty good. My favorite is if I tell her something she doesn't want to do she shakes her hand and her head and says over and over "no confrendo", meaning that she doesn't understand what I'm saying. Braden and I have adopted it.
-Her nightly prayers lengthened significantly once she started praying for every soldier she knew by name. She also would pray for the Millers baby in the hospital and every night she would "forget" his name (don't think she really did, not sure why she would do that), but every night Lila yells down from the top bunk "BABY SETH"! to help her out.
-In primary we gave the kids pretend temple recommends and told them we wanted them to bring them back next week. She reportedly approached Liz Garza and said, "It's not that I'm being irresponsible with my recommend, it's just that it's in my seat and my Mom has the car keys".
-She started this thing where every time she would for something or to do something and the answer was no she'd whine, "Awwwwwwwwwwww". I asked her to stop doing that because she was setting a bad example for her little sisters to follow. Without skipping a beat she said, "BUT- I am
also teaching them which words start with the letter O".
-Lila asked her to name a group of animals. This is what she came up with: A-sa, B-sa, C-sa, One-sa, Two-sa, Three-sa,
-Lisa and Dennis came over to say goodbye. Dennis picked both girls up, one on each arm. She said, "Wow! You must do Jillian Michaels! And you must follow Natalie!" (Natalie is the one who does everything on the most intense level; she constantly reminds me that I'm not quite following her).
-She watched the Dreamworks movies of Moses and Joseph of Egypt. After Moses, she walked in the kitchen and said, "I have GOT to watch that movie again. It's not that I liked it, it's just that I...well...it's a true story from the scriptures so it's just that I felt the Holy Ghost. At the end, when the song comes on, I just feel the Holy Spirit". When she watched the one about Joseph, I watched as she covered her face, hiding tears. I wondered if she was getting the movie because she seemed upset. Then she moved her hands and sobbed openly, her little shoulders shaking and completely unable to talk. It was the part where he freely forgives his brothers. Finally she said, "It's so beautiful! I feel both the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit".
Lila: -Learned to ride her bike all by herself, using the peddles. Unfortunately she also learned how to carry that bike inside and ride it around. Few things complicate cooking dinner like a Lila riding a bike in the middle of the kitchen. So
that's the reason why I stopped cooking dinner.
-I came downstairs to see the girls chasing each other and hear Lila yell in her best evil voice, " You will nevo get me"!
-Had a moment where I realized that I am a true Mamarazzi. I dressed the girls in their matching white ruffle dresses, knowing that it would be the last time, for they are looking rather short. Realizing that I never took the matching picture I intended to, I asked the girls to stand against the wall real quick before we went to church. Lila, who really truly never complains, slumped her shoulders to the ground, heaved a heavy sigh, and said, "Ahhhhhh maaaaaaaan. Not again!"
-We are at the pool. Lila is on the stairs with no floaty. She always sits on the stairs and doesn't move. I am holding Maisey and walk to the middle of the pool to get her toy. Once there, I turn around and see that Lila is completely under the water and is flailing about but can't come up. It takes me a minute to get to her. I pull her up and set her on the step. She says, "Oh. I went undo da wato".
-I bought a cantaloupe, apparently Lila's first. She watches me cut it the same way I do a watermelon. She says, "Can I have some watermelon?" I tell her it's not watermelon. She says, "Can I have some cheese?" I tell her it's called cantaloupe. She eats a bite. And then she asks for more canto-cheese.
Meanwhile, Maisey continued in her mischievous ways. I would often hear her crawl up the first section of the stairs, then hear silence. So I would go to see what she was doing. And there I would find her every time, waiting for me to come around the corner and bust her so she could bolt up the second set as fast as she could, huge grin on her face. I put her to bed one day (10 months) and she never would go for the nap. When I came in to peek at her she was jumping up and down on her bed, totally naked. She had removed her clothes and thrown them over the side. I feel afraid of her.
All in all it was a good month. We said our goodbye to our Florida friends, I packed around the clock, usually sleeping from 10p-2a and then waking up to pack after I fed Maisey. Anabelle seemed to handle this separation really well. She only insisted almost daily that he be home for her birthday. Maisey didn't know him when he came back. Lila had the most trouble this time. When he first left, she asked incessantly where he was. And then as the days wore on she began asking less and less. I noticed this and thought that it was sad, thinking that she was forgetting about him. She began screaming all day for no reason, and I never figured out a good way to deal with it. It truly exhausted me and left me frustrated and drained. And then one day she walked in the kitchen where I was. Her face was drawn out and her whole demeanor was somber. I had never see anything like this on a child before, especially not her. I waited for her talk. Just watching her. And she said, "Mom? Is my daddy dead?" I had tears spring to my eyes instantly to realize what she had been going through this whole time. I tried to comfort her and explain that he would be back soon. This was during the time that he was in the field so she wasn't seeing us talk on the phone. When he did come back she hugged him for so long without lifting her head or saying a word. It became clear that she really did think he was dead. We are about to do another six weeks so hopefully she realizes now that he will come back.
I decided to pack the toys early, that way I had less to clean. I must say, it sort of makes me want to throw all their toys away. They got along famously, playing from sun up till down with each other. I made them forts out of boxes where they hid from monsters, and if the monsters did find them they fought them off with rubber whisks. It seemed like they really did become best friends that month.
