She will be five soon.

A Big Girl.

She has been having a difficult time figuring out what that means for her.

Tantrums. Tears. Attitude.

I keep reminding myself how difficult it must be to grow up. To try to discover out how to be your own person with only five years of experience.

So go on, Babygirl, and find your place in this world - find yourself…but know that if it all becomes too much for your little soul to take on alone, that I am always right here behind you, waiting to help you find your way.

Green: All appears to be clear, but a virus could be lurking around any corner. Be ever vigilant. Shriek if your sister accidentally touches your unwrapped straw, and curse her for breathing too close to you.

Yellow: Someone mentions a headache…or that their throat is scratchy. This is your cue to do some heavy reconnaissance. Assault your mother (who is apparently the keeper of all knowledge regarding germs) with questions as to the likely source of the headache. Unsatisfied with her answer…..continue to ask…..and ask…..and ask. Take her exasperation as the attempt at covering up the risk of exposure to something menacing and potentially life-threatening. Announce that you wish you didn’t have a sister, who is obviously the source for all germs brought into your realm of existence. Retire to your room for some “quiet time”.

Orange: Oh no. Someone has actually gotten something. A cold? The flu? Malaria? Doesn’t matter. Now is time for drastic measures. Hole up in your room with the door closed. Demand to take all of your meals there. Demand that all of your meals be prepared in a different room from the person afflicted. Open your window to expose yourself to uncontaminated air. Dead of winter? No matter. You need fresh air, damn it. When your food is delivered, demand to be released into the care of your Mamaw until the coast is clear. If permission to flee the premises has been granted (much easier to accomplish now that you have your own cell phone) streak through the house and directly into the car, stopping for nothing, aside from yelling the fact that you must be transported to safety ALONE! No unnecessary passengers on this ride, baby. Eat yourself into a coma and play on the computer at Mamaw’s until the plague has lifted.

R ed: The end of the world is surely nigh. You have gotten sick. You are quite possibly dying. Everyone knows a stuffy nose does not allow the intake of enough oxygen to sustain life. And your eyeballs? Surely they are about to shrivel up and drop right out of your head. Loudly demand medication and lots of it. Wail and complain bitterly, tearing at your clothing when the medication does not work immediately upon ingestion. Demand more. When you are refused, curse the manufacturers of the medication for making promises they had no intention of keeping. Mentally begin a manifesto declaring what you would do if you could get your hands on the makers of these horrible products. Pause to ask your mom to move, she is blocking your view of the TV. Resume the wailing and gnashing of teeth, adding the lines, “Why? Why me? Why do I have to get sick? Why? Why?” Repeat cycle ad naseum until you are healed. Slink around, suspicious of everyone…every cough, every sniff, every blink that seemed a little too long…..for the next few weeks…at least.

Thankfully, The Boy does not get sick very often, because it is not pretty. Not pretty at all. I, myself, am quite the germ-phobic, and can’t fault him…to a degree. Heck, I’m sure that his obsessiveness caution plays a large part in why he does not get sick very often. But is sure doesn’t make it easy when someone is sick…..most especially if they’ve got The Pox.

Mommy, where is Papaw again?
He is in heaven.
No, I mean where is his body? In the ocean?
Yes, in the ocean.

A few minutes pass…
Sophia sat crouching and watching water trickle down the gutter.

Mommy, where does all the water go? To the ocean?
Yes, it all gets to the ocean eventually.
She sprinkles some petals from her hand and gives them a little push. She stands and watches for a moment.
There. Then I am sending these to Papaw.

Um, yeah. So, hi! Long time no blog. I didn’t die or anything dramatic like that. Just took a bit of a hiatus. I’m not entirely sure what prompted it. I took a bit of time off after my entry about getting older was quoted on another blog and picked apart by a bunch of strangers. But that was only supposed to be for a few days. Then I got really busy…taxes, business stuff, that sort of thing. But still….Quite a few times I added update blog to my to do list, but it just never seemed to get done. I pretty much just didn’t have anything to say, I guess. I still haven’t come up with anything to say. I even missed my one year bloggoversary. Which is a bummer, because I hate missing any opportunity to say WOOO HOOO! and have cake…even the fake bloggoversary kind. So is it too late for cake? Maybe I could celebrate my fourteen-month-a-versary.

We’ve got some pretty stressful things going on financially and I think I’ve hit some sort of early midlife crisis. If I got married early and had my kids early I can do that, right? You know…What does it all mean? What have I done with my life? Blah, blah, blah. So if guys buy sports cars and have affairs when they have their midlife crises, what do woman do? I’ve managed to gain enough weight to bump myself up a pants size, but no Ferrari.

Homeschooling is alright. The Boy starts meeting with a tutor tomorrow for his math lessons, since we tend to struggle and butt heads in that subject. The tutor is a man. I have never met him. This is a big deal considering my usual approach is pedophile until proven otherwise. That applies to all people, not just tutors. The Husband discouraged me against informing him that if he tried anything funny with The Boy, that I would castrate him myself with my car keys. Pssh. Fine. Sitting right outside the room and watching the whole session like a hawk will have to suffice….but the car keys? They stay within reach.

So, that is my last month in a nutshell. What have you all been up to?

Why do I love this picture?
This was taken in a mirror in our dining room. My daughter is sitting on our dining room table. She appeared behind me as I was checking out my fancy new camera strap in the mirror. I started taking pictures, but couldn’t get one with both of us looking at the camera at the same time. These smiles are the result of a joke told about a certain stinky bodily function. She loves those jokes. And I love her. The focus is off, but I still love this picture. I also love the fact that you can see my wedding ring and the watch that belonged to my stepfather, who passed away 8 months ago.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone!

But as much as I hate the way time keeps speeding on by for me, I am completely not digging the momentum that my kids have built up in the whole getting older thing. I swear it feels like The Girl was just born and The Boy was just starting kindergarten. But now The Girl is the one ready for kindergarten and The Boy is ten. Holy crap. Ten. The Girl has given up the Wiggles in favor of Hannah Montana, and The Boy has a cell phone. There is not an ounce of baby fat left anywhere on my daughter’s ever-lengthening body, and my son’s perpetually messy hair grazes my chin when he stands next to me. Needless to say, I am not enjoying the sheer velocity of their growth.

I also lost two people that were close to me this year. I made a trip back to where I had grown up, and was pained at the effect the passing years had wrought on the place I knew as home. I was confronted with the effects of aging on the faces of those who had cared for me when I was small.

At some point in the last few years, I came to the decision that the passing of time was to be met with dread. The days are whizzing by me at a frenzied pace, and I picture myself standing with my arms extended rigidly toward my invisible enemy, and yelling, “Stop!” I long for a rewind button, or a time machine, perhaps. I tell myself to savor every moment, and am making an effort to do just that, but sometimes it just is not enough. Sometime I don’t only want to enjoy the here and now, I want to reclaim what once was. I am at a place where an old photograph brings heartache just as easily as a wistful smile. So what does one do to get past this particular issue? How do you overcome a phobia of time? Tell me your thoughts, your insights. But do it quickly, please…I’m not getting any younger.

Before you are kind enough to educate and enlighten me…look upon these photos and feel my pain. Weep with me Internets. Weep and eat chocolate.

This picture of The Girl is my submission for Love Thursday at Shutter Sisters. I had planned on using a completely different photo. I spent about an hour today trying to get that picture just how I wanted it. I took my shots and planned on editing and choosing one to post after The Girl went to bed.

The kids had been running around like maniacs, loud balls of energy, ricocheting off of walls and furniture. They had been pushing limits and my sanity all day. Finally, the chaos had gotten intolerable and The Husband called for a stop to the antics. This didn’t sit well, of course, resulting in The Boy being sent to his room, and The Girl spewing a bit of nastiness. Now, The Girl has enough attitude in her little body to rival even a PMS’ing fifteen year old. She will say things in anger, without pausing to think, and then regret it almost immediately. She spends a lot of time trying to love on you and smooth over whatever it is she has done. Tonight was no exception. She had stormed off to her room, only to return a few minutes later with something clenched in her tiny fist. She crawled onto the ottoman, in front of the armchair I was sitting in, and stretched out her hand. A single penny sat in the center of her palm.

“Here,” was all she said, looking contrite.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Just…here….,” she crawled closer.

When she saw that I didn’t seem to be angry, she climbed over the ottoman and went to sit on the arm of the chair, which she had done many times before. But in her anxiousness to give me her gift, she reached her hand out to me before she had balanced herself properly on the arm, and tumbled backwards. I reached out for her in slow motion, but only managed to graze her leg. I leaned over the chair arm just in time to see her land squarely head first on our ceramic tile floor, and to hear the awful Crack! that accompanied it. Oh, that sound. I think it has to rank up there as one of the worst sounds I have ever heard. Ever. She hadn’t managed to break her fall at all, with her hands, elbows, shoulders, anything. Her little head hit the floor, and her body crumpled in a heap on top of it. There was a million years second of silence, and then she screamed. I scooped her up, while simultaneously assessing the damage and yelled for The Husband to get some ice.

“I am going to be sick!” she wailed between howls of pain and gasps for air.

We draped ourselves over the sink and The Husband joined in the melee with the ice. The howling subsided and we moved to her room to get her dressed. She kept telling us she would just feel better if she could go to sleep. On the car ride to the emergency room, she clutched a bowl on her lap, afraid to throw up in our car. She was willing to talk now, but her speech was a bit slurry. She again pleaded the her case about going to sleep.

The ER was very busy. The waiting room was stuffed full of hacking, wheezing, and crying bodies. My germ-phobic nightmare. We waited in that filthy petri dish of an ER for two hours. Two hours. By the time they got around to seeing us, The Girl was doing much better. Her stomach was mostly better, she wasn’t trying to fall asleep or mumbling. In fact, she was playing solitaire on The Husband’s cell phone, asking for a snack, and complaining about the dirty waiting room, and crappy customer service. That’s my girl. We were offered the option of a CAT scan, or to leave and observe her. Since she was doing so well, and was pretty resolute in her opinion that McDonald’s would make her feel better, we chose to observe. So, I am observing. Or will be in another 35 minutes when I go to wake her up again.

So The Girl is going to be fine. Although, it may take her dad and I a bit longer to recover.

As I sat down at my computer, waiting for my first waking, I went to the pictures I took for Love Thursday. In the middle of the twenty or so shots that I took trying to capture The Girl’s small hand with mine, I saw this one. It was a spontaneous moment. One I almost missed out on in my determination to get the shot I had in mind. What a loss that would have been, because it is my favorite shot out of the bunch. In fact, it is one of my favorites, period….and not only because I am tired, emotional, and covered in the germs of a hundred strangers. Well, okay, maybe a little, but for right now, this picture is love to me.

This is my submission for Love Thursday. Have you seen the Shutter Sisters yet? You should check it out.

The Boy watches Nickelodeon and all those made for kids movies. While I don’t think there is anything wrong with these as entertainment choices…I don’t think they are the most accurate portrayal of reality. For the past month or so, The Boy has been piecing together bits of different things he has seen to form a very interesting “cool” persona for himself. What do I mean?

Well, he spent at least three days last week exiting rooms with, “Word to your Gram and Grandpa, Yo!”

The week before that, every time he saw me, he thumped his fist on his heart and then made the peace sign at me. You know what I’m talking about.

Never mind all of the times we’ve had to endure his, “yo, yo, yo, yo,” and use of the word “peeps.” We are, in fact, his “peeps,” in case you were wondering. Oh, and his whitey-est of white guy break dancing. It’s like living with Vanilla Ice.

But as disturbing as that all is, the newest development disturbs me far more. Apparently, cool guys (like Drake from Drake and Josh - his favorite “cool guy”) like The Ladies. To be said, “Tha Laaay -Dayz.” So now,The Boy has been piping up with “She’s a hottie,” or “Look at that hot chick!” Skinny, little ten year old say what?!? And a couple of weeks ago, he hit on our waitress at dinner. Let me say that again…He hit. On our waitress. At dinner. How? When she walked over to give him his drink, he raised his eyebrows and said, ” Rowrrrrrrrr,” complete with the purring, rolled “r.” What the? The usage of bad slang I can tolerate, but the chicks?….That just may be too much. Eh, now that I’m thinking about it, he is still pretty confident in the fact that when he grows up he wants to marry one of our cats, so maybe we’re okay. I’m just looking forward to when this phase is over, and everyday doesn’t feel like a bad trip through the urban dictionary. Ride it out, baby. Ride it out.

“How you doin’?”