Dance Festival

So we were getting ready to go to the dance festival Friday night and I ran upstairs to grab some diapers. When I came back down this is what I found...

She has never done that before. She doesn't really climb on anything except up on the couch or on a chair. Apparently she took the step stool I leave in the kitchen, pushed it up against the trash can, climbed on the stool then on the trash can and finally up onto the counter. I thought it was creative and showed just how smart she is. It was also very cute! So I snapped a picture!

Melody loved the dance festival! Most of the night she stood on my lap or one of my parents and danced the night away. Two of our cousins were in a basketball dance to the song "Get Your Head in the Game," from High School Musical. After it was over Melody kept asking for Austin. When the show was over she was so excited to see him. Here are some photos from the night.

Melody rockin' out!

Pointing excitedly! "Mommy look!"

Watching intently!

She was so interested in the dances that every time

I would try to take her picture she would turn her body

toward me but keep her eyes on the field!

Since the show started after she is normally in bed

we saw many of these throughout the night

Finally I was able to get her smiling! She's not looking at the camera but I was trying all night to catch her pure joy on camera . When is comes to taking pictures of our kids sometimes we just have to take what we can get! Despite my failed attempts to get the perfect picture of her we all had an enjoyable night and made many memories as a family!

Light Bulb!

Last night was a terribly long night. After spending what seemed like hours tossing and turning (really only 1.5 hours) thinking about my previously mentioned friend I got up and wrote her a text message. I was going to save it and send it today but I accidentally pushed send. Sorry Erika-it was soooo late. Then I went back to bed to try to get some sleep. All that came of the attempt was more tossing and turning. Somewhere around one in the morning a light bulb suddenly turned on and I figured out why moving away from her has been so unbelievably hard on me. I have never had a relationship like ours with another woman. My mom and I have never been very close because for various reasons I have had difficulty throughout my life both confiding in her and trusting her. I don't have a sister so I have never had a sisterly bond with anyone either. Of course I have Derrick and he is amazing, but it was great to have another woman to talk to, laugh with, cry with, and share my life with. I believe there are things we women share together that the men in our lives will never understand or fully appreciate...but Erika got all of me. There were things I could share with her I had never been able to share with anyone else. The best part was that sometimes I didn't even have to say it...she simply just knew! I need her like I have never needed another "sister" before. Selfishly deep down I wanted her to need me as much as I need her. What I realized sometime in the middle of the night is that she NEVER will. She has always been close to her mom and her sister so she has them to turn to. She recently had her gall bladder removed and I had tried to call three or fours time to arrange to go to Washington to help her after the surgery. I found out that she actually packed up her kids and went to Arizona to have the surgery so she could be with her mom and sister. As much as I would love to trade places with either one of them I am so so grateful they can be there for her and that she has them to lean on. How incredibly lucky she is to have them and they get the sweetest end of the deal because they have her. Although it hurts to know I will always need her more than she'll ever need me I now feel like this huge burden has been lifted off of my shoulders. I can now begin to heal my troubled heart! Erika-just remember I love you, miss you, and you are an irreplaceable source of all things good in my life!

Perspective

There is a quote in a book I recently read that really helped me to keep things in perspective today. It says, "Can you see the power emotion has to distort our outlook? Makes you wonder, did you have a bad day, or did you make it a bad day?"

With that in mind, here is a run down of my day beginning Wednesday night.

1. Derrick gets home from work and informs me that tomorrow on his day off he has to go in for a meeting. Under normal circumstances this would be no problem but I have my post-op appointment from having my wisdom teeth out the week before and it will cost $75 if we cancel.

2. I go to get my cell phone that has been charging all day to call my mom and ask if she can watch Melody in the morning. It still has a low battery. Huh? Maybe something is wrong with the outlet so we plug it in somewhere else.

3. This morning I grab my cell phone to head out the door...it beeps low battery at me!

4. The dentist wants me to schedule a cleaning for today. Derrick assured me he would be home by 10 so I make it for 11:45.

5. It is 11:20 and Derrick is not home!

6. I frantically try to figure out what to do with Melody. Thankfully there is a family from church who have a little girl the same age as Melody so I call them up. I was in such a hurry I didn't even have time to think about the idea that I had only left her one other time with anyone but family and that was in Washington where she had Sarah and Zephrah (my best friends girls) with her. Thank you Viki for being willing to help!

7. The dentist informs me that I have about $250 in dental work that needs to be done. Where are we going to find that money?

8. Derrick finally gets home and we decide to go bowling. We have been bowling several times as a family and Melody usually really enjoys herself, but today she looked like this the whole time..

She cried the whole hour we were there unless she was drinking Mommy's smoothie. She had one of her own that was the same as mine, however anything but Mommy's was unacceptable! At least she shared some of it with me!

9. My cell phone still won't charge. Even the people at Verizon can't figure out what is wrong so we end up buying new cell phones. We go at around 7pm and Melody is usually in bed around 7:30 so she was tired and cranky which did not make the phone buying experience very enjoyable for Mommy and Daddy. She had a blast playing with all the phones though!

All day I couldn't stop thinking about the quote from the book. It really helped me keep things in perspective so that what chould have potentially been a "no good, very bad day" was simply a day met with and few bumps along the way! So maybe it is possible that we don't have bad days we make some days bad by the emotional reactions we have to things that occur throughout our day! I guess that is something we can all ponder! Hope your day was much better than mine!

Just Venting

For those of you reading this you should be aware that this post is really just me venting about things I've been feeling for a very long time. I've tried numerous times to talk to Derrick about it but it is one of those things that a guy just can't understand (at least my husband can't and he has tried...I can't really ask for more than that). I know that writing things down can be extremely therapeutic so I'm hoping that getting it all out and written down is going to help.

When we lived in Washington we were quite sociable people. We were never lacking in things to do or people to do things with. Gig Harbor truly become home to us and so many of our friends were like our family. There was one family in particular who we became especially close to. They were our family in every sense of the word. We did practically everything with them and were so close we knew basically everything there was to know about each other and told each other practically everything. Her and I would talk literally every single day and sometimes multiple times a day. We knew all the daily goings on in each others houses and I loved it. I always knew there was some one there no matter what...if I needed someone to celebrate with, cry with, hang out with, escape with, sew with, etc. she was always there. She was so so so much more than a friend...she was/is my sister. He was the best friend Derrick has ever had. He and Derrick thought up some of the most hair-brained schemes together which gave all of us something to laugh about for hours on end. More than that though Derrick had someone he could confide in and trust to give him sound advice to some of life's most meaningful and difficult questions. They have two girls who we all loved as if they were our own. They also just had a baby boy a few months ago who I have not seen yet but am dying to hold and love. The whole family was just as excited as we were when we found out I was finally pregnant and when baby Melody (that what the girls have always called her) was born.

Moving away from them was so much harder for me than moving away from my entire family and all of my friends when I got married and moved to Washington. My heart aches everyday for all of them. I get so terribly lonely sometimes I'm ready to pack up and move back to Gig Harbor. I know that really isn't possible at this point though and so I cry and feel sorry for myself because I have no one here to call and say "hey you want to hang out?" I've tried to hold on to our relationship but sometimes I can't help but wonder if it is all in vain. They seem to be doing so well and have made other friends to fill the void in their lives when we left. Maybe they have moved on and it's time I/we did too. Maybe then it wouldn't hurt so much not to talk to her everyday. Or maybe I need to step up my devotion and start calling her everyday to check in like we both did when we still lived there. Maybe I'm over analyzing everything and need to just stop getting so worked up. Maybe I'm having crazy emotions right now and shouldn't be writing any of this. Maybe I need to get a life. Maybe keeping up long distance friendships as intense as ours was is jut not possible. Maybe I need to get out there and find some new friends to call up so I'm not so miserably lonely sometimes. Although I really don't think that would help erase the ache in my heart. I think I really just need to find a better way to deal with missing them all so much so I stop crying about it so darn much. I just don't know how to do that. I also think that I need to step it up a little and be a better friend/sister. I just don't know how to do that without feeling like I am imposing or pestering them.

I guess what this is all really about is that I love them, I miss them, and they are irreplaceable! I'm just having one of those extreme emotional days that all of us women have from time to time. Me more often then others it seems. Surprisingly this little exercise actually worked. I feel so much better now! Much better than I feel after I finish talking to Derrick about all this stuff. If the person who this is about reads this(which you probably will) just remember I love you and miss you terribly! Don't be surprised however if I start calling more often! You just might get sick of me yet!

Piled High!

I actually wrote this post a couple of days ago but didn't get the picture uploaded till today. It wouldn't have had the same effect/meaning without the picture so I waited to post it.

For those of you who do not know this about me I HATE (I know that is a strong word but it is true) the heat. If the temperature gets above 75-80 I sweat. I can just be sitting there doing nothing and I will be sweating. The point is that lately the heat has been unbearable for me so I haven't ventured outside unless I absolutely had to. For some reason whenever we use the dryer our whole house heats up like 10 degrees. As a result it has been about three weeks since I did laundry (unless we really needed something washed). So I spent two whole days with the air conditioner on and turned way down washing clothes. It was either do laundry, buy new clothes (not an option with our budget), or wear the same thing for the third time without washing it. Don't worry if something smelled we chose not to wear it a second time. If this post does nothing else it should at least help everyone feel better about one thing....you don't have as much laundry to fold as I do today! Anyway, after washing all of the clothes this is what my couch looked like.

That is so embarrassing I can almost not believe I am even posting it! Oh well, I'm sure all of our couches have looked this way at least once, right? I bet everyone can guess what I will be doing ALL day tomorrow. Anyone, want to come over and help? Unfortunately since the post was actually written a couple of days ago all those clothes have already been folded and put away. So you are all off the hook. Until next time at least!

Cranky Mom Day

Today was what one might call a 'cranky" mom day. It was one of those days where you have a lot to get done and your kids are being less than cooperative and you are on edge so you tend to snap at them. Melody wasn't even doing anything all that terrible and I feel like all I did today was snap at her. To be honest I think most of it was probably her just trying to get me to pay a little bit more attention to her. It all started with the ants. It is summer in very hot Southern California and so no matter what you do you are going to end up getting some ants in your house. Well Melody hates bugs! Every time she sees one she cowers away from it and says as quietly as possible "scared, bug," then comes looking for mommy to come take care of the bug. Needless to say I was coming to rescue her from the ants all day! We've tried to tell her a million times that the ants won't hurt her and to just leave them alone but it doesn't make any difference. Later in the day she climbed on the coffee table which she knows she is not supposed to do and has only ever done one other time. Then she decided she wanted to give mommy a fashion show with all the clothes I had just finished folding and were sitting on the couch. Then at dinner she dumped salt all over the table. Then in the bathtub she kept leaning over the edge while I was rinsing her hair getting water all over the floor. In retrospect all of these tiny little things are nothing compared to what I know toddlers are capable of, but I still found myself snapping at her. It seemed to be my gut reaction to everything all day and after I would do it I would feel so bad especially since 90% of the time Melody would start crying. I am usually much more patient than I was today and I really can't figure out why I was so cranky. By the end of the day I was feeling terrible. She is so innocent and certainly did not deserve to be at the receiving end of my own crankiness. As I was reading her bedtime story to her I broke down and cried and told her how sorry I was for how cranky I had been today and that I loved her very much and promised that tomorrow would be a better day. I wasn't really sure if she would comprehend everything but apparently she did. She looked up at me and took her sweet little hand to my face, wiped my tears away, said, "it ok mommy,' and then gave me a kiss! Sometimes that little girl amazes me so much I can hardly believe I am her mother! Do I still feel bad for having a cranky mom day? A little, but mostly I am so thankful for Melody and what a perfect example she is to me of what forgiveness is all about! It should really be that simple to forgive others, but as adults we tend to harbor our hurt feelings and carry them around with us creating heavy burdens. We would be so much happier if we could just learn to let go and truly forgive.