Don't take no crap from no one

Especially not a big (bossy) sister.

Anabelle is a natural leader. She instructs, and often time, people follow. Sometimes, she preys on those with easy going, relaxed personalitites, like her little sister.

And after almost three years of being talked out of the beater with more batter, her potty treat, or the pink bowl at dinner time, Lila took a stand.

And it was awesome.

Today I heard her on three seperate occasions tell Anabelle what was up.

I gave the girls a snack at 4 at the table. Anabelle ate hers while getting off the chair to go play. Lila took a nibble then she sang a song. Then she took a bite, then she picked her toes. The she took a drink, then she counted the flowers on the table.

So at 6, when it was dinner time, Lila was still there, working on her snack. First thing Anabelle does when she gets up to the table is tell Lila to eat her food. You know, just to be bossy.

Lila said, "Don't boss me Anabelle. Eat your quesadilla".
I had to duck around the corner because I was laughing. And do you know what Anabelle did. She ate her dang quesadilla.

She also told her to "say sorry to me" and asked her to "speak kind to me".

Yeah, take that punk (said affectionately).

Really though, she had that comin for a good long while.

Nice to see Lila take a stand.

We have wondered if Lila was gonna get pushed around all her life because she is so good natured and sweet as pie.

Nice to know she can hand it to you if need be.

Because we had 20 minutes to kill after dinner

How much do I love that the beach is at the end of my street?

How happy does it make me to see my kids love the ocean like I love the ocean?

Like I could even answer those weird questions.

I don't always take my camera on these spur of the moment trips to find some shells before bed. But I did this time.

These pictures represent countless days of family fun exploring and loving the gulf.



Did you know that as long as you can't see people, they can't see you? Which means that no one knows that Anabelle is standing there purposefully peeing her pants.



"TAXI!?"

Born babies are the best kind of babies

Maisey has now been out as long as she was in.

She's much better out. Definitely.

Have a mentioned how much I LOVE this age? It might be my favorite baby stage. So much fun.

She does however put a serious cramp in my productivity. My other babes were not so much work at this age. Previously I could dump a bucket of toys out in front of them and they would play, allowing me to get something done. If you dump a bucket full of toys out for Maisey do you know what she will do? She will crawl over the ball, push the toys out of her way, disregard the rattles and shakers, zero in on a dead fly stuck in between the carpet and the baseboard, dig it out and taste it. I swear to you I have seen this exact scenario played out. Yesterday, in fact. And the day before that. And the day before that. Except not just with flys. Trash and sticks and leaves and once I caught her with a beetle. She seemed to be having a hard time nursing yesterday so I sat her up and swept her mouth. Oh, cool, half a foamy ball stuffed in her cheeks. Took the girls to story time and was working on the craft with Anabelle. Her pieces come up missing. Cannot locate them. Have to go ask the librarian for a new set. 20 minutes later Maisey chokes up an entire set of butterfly pieces, including the thorax. I can't keep my floors clean enough. It has become almost exclusively what I do all day it seems. What did I get done today? Oh, nothing but Maisey is still alive and she doesn't appear to have ingested anything jagged or coated in Clorox so I feel like it was winning. I am sure her gut is lined with a rainbow of tiny rubber hair bands. Needless to say her fine motor skills are coming along quite swimmingly. Kinda freakish if you ask me. And exhausting.

In fact, the other day as she finished eating her puffs I watched her lick each finger separately the way you and I would after eating Cheetos. (That is, if you and I ate Cheetos. But you and I would never eat Cheetos, what with all those preservitives & unnatural additives). Especially not the Flamin Hot Cheetos with Lime. Never those especially). Braden doesn't believe me that she did that. Doesn't make it any less true.

Another thing he doesn't believe me about is the fact that she stood up all by herself for at least a good 6 seconds, twice now. Way too early. That's all I have to say about that. If I see that again I may or may not push her down.

She continues to resist baby food or table food for the most part, with the exception of mangos. Why should she, wrappers stick to the ribs a little better. I fed her a jar of mangoes the other day and I thought she was gonna eat my arm off. It was perhaps the highlight of my week, I dare say. That little episode is worthy of its own post. Which one should expect to see at least by the time she has a birthday. Or two.

She is pulling up on everything. She can be found standing in her bed bouncing after naps and disassembling all the pieces to her mobile after she's ripped it down.

When we all go upstairs and leave her at the bottom she leans against the bottom step and pounds on the wall for someone to come get her.

Cracks up when you tickle her under her chin(s).

Averages 23.4 full rovers in a single diaper change. Goes nuts when you try to dress her. I swear it would be easier to put pantyhose on a wild turkey than to change and dress her.

Loves to play hide and seek with Anabelle.

Crawls all over this house. Particularly likes to bolt for the front door, the toilet, and behind the kitchen trash can. I might as well just save her trouble and spoon feed her a teaspoon of bacteria first thing every morning.

Loves to take baths with the big girls and climbs all over that bath like she owns the place. She seems about a year older than she is in personality. Although not a hard baby at all, she does have an opinion and you do know about it.

She finally sleeps through the night. Praise, rejoice and give thanks, it was time. We are just now starting to fall into a pretty regular routine. This has driven me a wee bit crazy. I would say it has been one of the hardest things with the transition to three. It's hard to plan to do anything. I haven't had a regular time to work out, and Maisey and Lila take up the whole day with their naps, alternately. But it's finally coming together, loosely.

Braden briefly suggested that he take her with him on his TDY and leave her at his parents. Get real dude. Kissing those cheeks and hearing those squeals are what get me through the tantrums and arguing.



She can just about get one leg up on a stair. Curse the day that happens. Good thing she's padded.


Well hey there Grandpa Reynolds

Anabelle-ism's

I do so enjoy observing the frolickings of this spirited child. And the conversation's not too shabby either.

In the last month:

- Talking about Braden's parents: "I hope they have another baby soon so they're not just a grandma and grandpa. Don't you think it's sad to be away from adorable little children?"

- Skyping with Tim & Katasha and they have to talk to someone else for a minute and ask her to hang on: "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just not really the kind of kid who likes to wait for other people".

- Braden discovers the toilet in her bathroom is full and asks her who forgot to flush. She assures him it was not her. He asks her who else uses her toilet. She says, "Dad, what color is it?" He tells her it is brown and green. "Oh, then it's not mine".

- I got a tan the other day and when Anabelle saw me she noticed and said, "Oh Mom, you look like you speak Spanish. People who are brown speak Spanish."

- She was telling me how excited she is to go to school. "But I hope there are no spanish speakers in my class". I am horrified and ask WHY?! "Because what if they try to talk to me and I don't know what they're even talking about. The only word I know is 'hola'".

- "Why is Dad such a scaredy cat about being so old"?

- She was complaining about not liking the green onions in her dinner (the green onions that she chopped and put in). I gave her the classic "Well I think you should just say Thank You to your Mom and eat your dinner because there are some kids who are hungry right now because they have nothing to eat at all." Her reply: "Well then can't we give this food to them?!"

- She and I were discussing current events in world politics last week because she asks more questions than the Riddler. I told her about the no fly zone in Libya and somehow about China's child restrictions and so on. As he conversation evolved I decided it would be a good time to put a plug in for Braden's job to help her realize what he does so that maybe she would be more okay with him leaving. I was explaining to her how blessed we are to live in this country and the things that other people suffer in their countries for a lack of freedom and how when Dad goes away he will be helping other people who don't have the same comfortable lives that we have. I told her we won't be sad because we'll just be so proud of him. As I sat trying to sell her on this idea, becfore I knew it she was consoling me. "And you won't get to go on any more dates with him. And that will make you sad not to have date night and get us a babysitter but you'll be okay. But you'll be sad, but that's just what he has to do. I'm sorry about date night Mom".

- "Mom, you are like a restaurant to Dad. You just get him whatever he wants. And he likes that".


I was working on a project for church with my cricut and she collected all my scraps (because it is impossible for me to be crafting without her breathing on my shoulder). As she added each piece she told me the name (a word that she made up) and what it was. Each piece is part of an indian village. It eventually went all the way down the hall, tiny piece by tiny piece. Her mind makes me tired. No wonder she sleeps so well at night.

-

I wish I played like this

Do you ever watch kids play with complete abandon and feel liberated just by watching them? Anabelle has always played like that. She sings loud, she takes control of the whole space she's in by pulling everything around her into her world of imagination and fun. Indisputably, she has one of the best laughs I have ever heard. So when we find something that elicits "that laugh", we ride it out and enjoy every minute of it.

I discovered last summer that the tire swing does that for her. And although it makes me sick just to watch, I just can't help myself. That head back, throw-your-cares-to-the-world laugh- I'll do whatever I have to do to soak up a little of that.





It was so much fun to watch Anabelle as she belted out a (very catchy & hilarious) song that she made up about Maisey, sung in her best southern drawl, that we forgot about the wee babe taking her first ride in a swing on the other side of the playground. This is her watching us from afar. I love the "Real cool guys, looks like a lot of fun over there" look on her face.

From here to there

We have spent countless hours piecing the puzzle of our future lives together in Oklahoma City. Secured financing, picked out the best house ever (by the top rated school in the state). We almost drove there on two or three separate occasions to finalize said plans. Sure, we were lacking official orders, but we knew we didn't really have a shot at the Alaska slot that Braden wanted, so we felt confident forging ahead.

Until the afternoon that Col Smith asked to speak with Braden. Privately. He thought he was busted. Being that there are 150 other 2nd Lts buzzing around the squadron with a new crop in and out every six weeks, it's not like he's hanging around the Col. much.

He asked Braden if he is interested in the new CRC position. This option just became available to graduating students in the last few months. Braden recently came home and told me about them:

B: "Hey, they have new bases available....Hill in Utah and Mountain Home Idaho!"

J: "Are you kidding me?! Yes! Let's do that. How do we do that?!"

B: "I don't know. But their deployments are 6 on, 6 off."

J: "Um, forget about it. No location is worth that deployment schedule."

Fast forward two months... (where we will now go to a mock Q&A format using questions I have received from family over the last few weeks, so that I don't have to write fluid paragraphs).

Q: Did the Col offer him the CRC position in Eglin, and why is that a big deal?

A: Why yes, he did! It's a big deal because his call sign night wasn't to happen for 2 more weeks and it was cool of him to pull Brade aside and give him the option. They generally reserve this position for the top rated student in each class. It is a compliment that they would offer it to him (especially because although he has done well, he is not numero uno). They said they take into account personality when considering this position, as they need this person to lead hundreds of airmen in the field.

Q: What are the advantages of this job?

A: It should be good for him career wise. While the majority of his counterparts are training in the sea of ABMers at Tinker, working the snack bar and other non essential casual jobs, he will be one of a handful of officers in charge of a few hundred enlisted airmen, thus giving him plenty of leadership opportunity. Also, it is helpful when it comes time for boards for rank advancement. Also, it is hard physical labor, which appeals more to Lt Reynolds who prefers not to sit around all day, even if it is in an airplane. Also because he likes to scare the eebie jeebies out of his wife.

Q: Is it dangerous?

A: More so than flying in an AWACS, that's for sure. He reassured me at first that it is safe. Then found out that there was an incident where the truck blew up and everybody died. But has since reassured me that they don't convoy anymore so it's really not that bad.

Q: So when will you he deploy?

A: Every six months, for six months.

Q: How long will you do this job.

A: Between 2-3 years.

Q: Do you get a raise?

A: No, but you're free to send edible bouquets of dark chocolate and fresh fruit to said wife at any time during deployments.

Q: Um, why are you doing this?

A: Because it's the only way to get away with a beard in the Air Force.

Q: Are you proud of Braden for being a picked-out-of-the-crowd kind of awesome?

A: What a silly question. YES!

The truth of the matter is this: since the moment he came home and told me about it, I just knew it was going to happen. And he said the moment the Col told him about it, it felt right. We actually never discussed not doing it. It somehow didn't even seem like an option. We drove over to Eglin the next day to get a feel for the base (it's about 50 miles from here). The housing situation is looking glum. Looks like it will end up costing us quite a bit more to live there in order for us to be in a good neighborhood. And let me tell you, being alone for at least a year, we WILL be living in a good neighborhood. The tricky thing is that it's beach side so it's very expensive and our BAH just doesn't cover what it will cost.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this. I resisted Braden's requests to be in the military for a while on the grounds of safety and being a single mom. He assured me over and over how those two things were basically a non issue for his specific job. And now we're here, and that's not the case at all. It's so far from what was supposed to be. How did we get here? How did this happen? This wasn't supposed to happen. This very thing, this ultimate level of uncertainty where your safety and your family life are in question and out of your control, this was my hang up with it all along. And yet, we're here so....

It's one of those things where too many things have happened just right. Too many small miracles and "coincidences" to deny that this is our path. Not the path that I would have chosen, for sure. But one that I am learning to accept and embrace.

Col Smith said it would be hard on our family. That kind of constant change and transition on our little family and marriage (especially considering the effect OTS had on Anabelle) is absolutely daunting when I let myself get to thinking about it. I wonder how the girls will handle Braden leaving constantly for long periods of time. I get sad knowing he will miss the majority of holidays for at least two years in a row. I get sad at the thought of him possibly missing a birth or big chunks of the girls lives. I understand how exhausting it is to be a single parent.

So with all this on my mind, I was going through pictures the other day and was struck immediately by this one



What you and I see and understand by looking at this picture is very different than what Lila understood to be happening at the time. Lila knows that Braden is near her because she can see him out of the corners of her eyes. He is after all, the one who put her up there. But what she can't comprehend with her limited visibility and perspective, is how very safe she truly is. She doesn't know that her Dads hands are practically wrapped around her, in case she should slip, or get tired, or scared, or sweaty. There is no way she will fall with him protecting her in this way. Holding her up would rob her of the full experience. But he stands by, ready to rescue if need be, all the while cheering her on.

I don't know any of the specific details of how this will work or the blessings that will come from it. All I know from my limited perspective is that it will be hard. But looking at this picture reminds me of a loving Father in Heaven with outstretched arms, protecting, and ever watching over me. I know He is there guiding my life in this tender way. I feel like I go along life with my narrow perspective doing the best I can. And then every once in a while, I have a trial that offers me the opportunity to trust wholly on the merits of Heaven in order to get through. And in doing so, you get a little peak at the big picture, and you remember what this whole gig is all about. And in the end you feel grateful for the growth and the humility and the faith.

What an opportunity for me to have a little faith. And to suck it up and stop being a flippin cry baby. I'm working on that. In fact, I'll probably even start tomorrow.

A good trade

I've clogged several drains and stopped up vaccums due to the rate which my hair falls out.

I can't wear my old pants because my hips have spread as wide as Texas.

My shoes don't fit because my feet have grown, and have done so unevenly.

And those are just the changes I'm willing to admit to in a public forum.

And was it worth it?

A million times y e s.

I'm sure there are a few things better than hearing your kids laugh and play together, but there can't be that many.

Easy Peasy Nice n Squeazy

If I had to make a t-shirt that summed up Maisey that's what it would say. I can't think of a circumstance in which that would be asked of me. But if it ever pops up- I am ready.

Maisey is 8 months old.

She claps.

She crawls. Sort of. She mostly just maneuvers. Somehow she travels and eats wrappers all day but it is hard to describe her method of doing so.

Cracks up at peek a boo.

Is a maniac during diaper changes, hair styling, nail clipping, and nose sucking. I've never had a baby put up full on wrestling matches at such an early age.

I decided to try to give her some baby food & cereal for the first time. She seemed excited at first.

But then she realized that baby food is nasty. The whole time she shook her head and wiggled and squirmed. It was as if I was feeding her a giant bucket of pulverized garbage. Anabelle & Lila both ate two bowls of it and I am happy to report that they both slept through the night. But not Maisey. Nope, not Maisey.

So we gave up on that after 2 seperate attempts and decided to have a photo shoot. No reason not to. Besides baskets of dirty laundry and floors that make a gas station bathroom look inviting. OK, no fun reason not to. Yea for being my own boss.

Pop Quiz

Name something that is amazing, has changed my life profoundly, and has been around for thirty years.

Did you guess Braden? If you did you are totally correct and you can come over and pick a prize out of the basket (of broken toys that I cleaned out of the girls room today).

I also would have accepted Justin Timberlake, invention of Post-it notes, the discovery of the Titanic, or the first PC by IBM.

But Braden should be the obvious and best choice, even considering the goose bumps I get when I hear "Cry Me a River".

I had a pen made that said "This pen to be used exclusively by those who are 30". I traded it for the pen that is always in his flight suit. He discovered the trade before he left for work. He walked past me and threw the pen on the counter and said, "Very funny". Well thank you, I do find it very funny.

As it turns out, it happens to be a really great pen so I have claimed it as my own. I never was a big rule follower.

Happy 30th Birthday to my Beldy, who really is amazing, and really has changed my life profoundly.


Some of Braden's younger friends who came over to hear stories about what it was like to grow up in the 80's.


Wish I woulda stripped her down to her birthday suit pre-cone. This outfit is still soaking in Oxi-Clean.




Double dark chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling and dark chocolate ganache frosting with heath on top.

A happy Braden- about to eat his cake and just got back from winning the squadron soccer game.

A smoker and a chunk of cow.