Sofie Lyne

I couldn't resist the urge to blog about my sweet baby girl. Lili has seemingly received quite a bit press time in comparison to her little sister. I just have to say how much I love this little girl. She is SOOO cute. Yes I am biased since she's my baby but other people often mention that she's cute so it must be true. I have to say the best part of her is her hair. What cute, wild, crazy hair she has. I love it. She of course will hate it when she grows up but luckily mommy has already figured out how to tame her own wild hair so she can teach her everything she knows.

Lately her favorite thing to do is dress up. She dresses up in anything she can find. If she sees a hat, she puts it on. Shoes, on. Even Lili's panties, on. Her most creative outfit had to have been when she had on Lili's snow boots, Lili's underwear on over her pants and a pull up on her head as a hat. So cute. And she thinks it's great.

I also love the way she dances. It looks like an African tribal dance mixed with a little hip-hop. She moves her arms around and bends down and spins around. She jumps up and down like a rabbit. She is definitely entertaining. Her favorite song to dance to is "The Final Countdown" (don't ask about that one, but it's daddy's favorite song too) but anything merengue is starting to catch up in popularity.

The way she talks too is soooo cute. I have to laugh every time I ask if she wants something and she says in her cute little voice "OK". Obviously it doesn't do it justice but trust me, it's cute. And of course her very enthusiastic "Gink You" (translation "thank you") when you give her something she wants or has asked for. She says so many cute things that I would be here all night if I wrote them all. Just know that my Sofie is about the cutest 20 month old in world. I love her so much and could not even begin to imagine how boring my life would be without her. She brings me so much joy and I can't thank my Heavenly Father enough for sending her to me.

Stargazing

I thought about titling this blog "Construction (The Final Chapter)" but I thought that I might like to focus on the positive aspects of my sleepless nights. Sunday night I was again awakened at 2 am by the monster machines in front of my house. Instead of getting riled up and pacing around the house like a mad woman I decided to take my neighbor's advice to go watch the meteor shower. So I got dressed and headed out the door to make my way up the canyon at 2:45 in the morning. It felt pretty good actually to be out so late all by myself. It was vaguely reminiscent of my single days and staying out until all hours of the night. However back then I think there was probably more fun associated with being out so late and I could also sleep in as late as I wanted.

I thought I might find my neighbor somewhere but instead I decided to pull over at what seemed like the perfect spot for stargazing. It was quite beautiful I must say only I think it might have been better had I not been too scared to get out of the car. I have longed for peace and quiet so much in my world and the one time I am in absolute silence I am freaked out of my mind. I had to constantly check to make sure my doors were locked and frequently looked at the mirrors to make sure no mad man was sneaking up on me. I was parked in gravel so I kept thinking "I should be able to hear someone sneaking up shouldn't I?". So after fifteen minutes or so of psyching myself out I finally relaxed enough to at least stare out my window long enough to actually see some meteors. Again, I think I may have seen more had my line of vision not been limited to a 2 foot opening. Oh well, it was cool anyway. I even saw a meteor that looked like a big ball of fire shooting across the sky. Very cool indeed. I actually hated to leave but after an hour of staring up out of my window I had a huge crick in my neck and decided I could no longer bear the pain.

The best part of all of this was that when I got home the construction was done. Finished. OVER WITH! YAY! I couldn't have been happier. Well, I might have been happier if I had actually gotten a good nights sleep but at least I can thank the construction workers for allowing me the opportunity to see something I would not have otherwise. So hooray for big noisy machines that vibrate my house and make it impossible to sleep! NOT!

Construction (Part II)

I am beginning to understand a little why people wind up going postal. Perhaps tonight if I had a shotgun I might have myself, fired a few shots. I wouldn't really hurt anyone, I'd just want to get somebodies attention. I might have gone after the the big rolling machine that was going back and forth in front of my house all night long.

At 1:30 this morning I was jolted awake by what I thought was an earthquake. My bed shook and the windows rattled. I sat up and thought "maybe I had a dream". "Maybe I just had a bad dream and thought the bed was shaking" . I sat there for a moment and didn't hear anything. I looked over thinking maybe Ivan of Lili had shaken the bed but no one else was in the bed so it couldn't have been that. I laid back down and started to drift off to sleep again. A few moments later I thought I sensed a faint smell of asphalt. Again I thought "it must be my imagination. They wouldn't be paving the road right now, right?" WRONG! "WHAT? I thought they weren't supposed to do this for another 2 days at least." "I thought I had time to figure out a plan for me to leave for the night so I wouldn't have to endure the torture!" ARGGG! As if my life isn't miserable enough. I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep for what seemed an eternity. (actually it was about 2 hours) During that time I kept thinking about what I could do. "Maybe I could call the cops. Do they take care of stuff like this? It is disturbing the peace isn't it?" Then I kept thinking about the nasty email (or phone call) I might make to whoever is in charge of this whole stinking operation. It might go something like "Sir, do have any idea that you kept me up all night long with this ridiculous road work? WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU THINKING?" I mean really, I see no reason whatsoever why this could not be done during the daytime when everyone is AWAKE!. So here I sit four hours later, after my fourth failed attempt to go back to sleep, writing this while my frustration is still fresh (I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the real emotion behind all of this!).

The saddest part about tonight is this: tonight was the ward camp out, which obviously we didn't attend. I thought it would be too much work and too hard to do with the girls. I thought I might have a terrible nights sleep. Boy was I dumb! The only other thing I could think about while I was lying in bed plotting my revenge was the fact that I could have been sleeping peacefully out in the woods to the sound of crickets and a babbling brook.

The moral of this story: ATTEND ALL CHURCH ACTIVITIES!

SCARY!

One of Sofie's latest words is scary. I think she knows the meaning of it pretty well. Like she'll bring me a video that I won't let her watch because I have said it's too scary and she says "scary". And the other evening while playing outside a group of loud motorcycles drove by and she said "scary". I say she has a pretty good grip on what the word scary means. This morning while sitting on my lap examining my face she came across the monstrous pimple on my chin. All she could say was "scary. scary. scary." (followed by her little whine/cry). Yes Sofie, that pimple is indeed scary and I would definitely say now that you know the meaning of the word.

Mean Kids

For some time now I have worried about my little Lili being hurt by mean girls. She is a sweet kid by nature and very social. She thinks everyone is her friend and will go up to about anyone to start a conversation. I love this quality about my little Lil but have worried that one day it could make her an easy target by mean kids. Last week as I sat watching my baby romp around in her ballet class I realized that it was beginning. The other girls in the class were a little older and it seemed, had known each other for some time. They weren't "mean" per say but there were a few things that I saw that just made my heart sad. Like as they were cleaning up the orange cones and Lili was helping, the older girls wouldn't let her put hers away until after they had put theirs up. I know, it doesn't seem like a big deal but it brought back a flood of memories from my youth that were anything but pleasant.

Yesterday at the park there was another apparent run-in with a mean girl. I don't even know what she did or what she said but my Lili started crying and said she was being mean. On first impulse I got up from the park bench and ran over to comfort her. I picked her up and let her cry on my shoulder. After my initial reaction (and wanting to go yell at the "mean girl") I realized that maybe I was not doing Lili a bit of good by running to her rescue. Sure she is only 3 and doesn't understand yet why people are not so nice sometimes, but she has to start learning to stick up for herself. The last thing I want for her is to be a target like I was.

I don't remember very well what I was like as a child. I can imagine that I was much like Lili and thrived on social interaction just as I do now. Only back then when kids were mean to me I didn't do anything other than cry about it for a while. Too many times I was the subject of abuse by my peers like the time when I went swimming at Jennifer Bailey's pool (my best friend at the time) and Jan Caplis stepped on my head while I was under water in an attempt to drown me. Who knows why but I continued to be friends with those girls. That wasn't the only incident. In eighth grade some girl named Kim (luckily I can't remember her last name) spread nasty rumors about me to make everyone hate me. Like eighth grade isn't hard enough. There were many more incidents most of which I have blocked from my memory because of how traumatic they were but I do know they happened. My only defense was to become less social, less trusting and more withdrawn. It wasn't until I got to college that I was able to come out of my shell again and trust my peers. Other than a few room mates from hell, the people were nice. Maybe though it was that I had changed, that I had matured enough to know who I was and to realize that other people should not determine my happiness.

Now my challenge is to somehow instill in my little girls that other kids are not the dictators of their world, that they are.And that they can choose to let things affect them or not. What a challenge that will be for me since I myself didn't know how to do it. I'm not even sure what to teach them to do when someone says or does something mean. Maybe I'll just enroll them in karate! The hardest part is knowing that I cannot protect them forever from the harshness of this world. The only thing I can hope to do is teach them how much worth they have as daughters of God and pray that they will have confidence in knowing how much they are loved by Him and by me. And as I send them out into the cold cruel world I also hope that their run ins with mean kids are few and far between.

Who Knew

Who knew I was so beautiful? =) What an awful picture of me but somehow I came out looking like Kate Bekinsale, Heather Locklear and Jessica Beil. How great is that? Although, I'm not quite sure where the Japanese person came from. I would never think I look Japanese. Oh well.

Construction

So for the past 10 months we have been living in a construction zone. What a joy it has been. I don't know what has been the most pleasant thing about it. Maybe it was being awakened at 7 every morning to the constant banging of big steel beams into the ground. Or maybe it's been the "beep beep beep" I get to hear all day as those big machines go up and down the street ( Who knew they could do a whole days work in reverse). No, I think the most pleasant thing has been the feeling of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake shaking my house every time one of those big roller machine things stops. Anyway, it has certainly been memorable is all I can say.

Today I saw a "Construction Notice" on my neighbors door. There wasn't one on our door which leads me to believe that somehow the construction workers knew that if I received the notice I might raise hell. The "notice" started with something like "construction is nearing completion". HALLELUJAH! No news could have made my day more. Unfortunately I kept reading. I really should have stopped with the good news. Somewhere about half way down the page I saw 8 pm to 6 am. What was that about? I had to read the whole thing. "We will be paving August 13-15 from 8 pm to 6 am". WHAT???? In the middle of the night. 15 feet from my kids bedroom windows? I can just imagine what it will be like. A stench of asphalt in the air, big lights on all night and of course, the beep beep beep and earthquakes! So, I think the construction workers were right in assuming that I would raise he!! because darn it I'm going to! I haven't quite decided what I will do to raise "you know what" but I will surely think of something. Perhaps I will demand a hotel room at the Marriott for those nights which they think they can disturb my sleep. Maybe I will storm into the construction company's office and demand an explanation! Yeah, I'm sure that will get 'em. Maybe I'll start a petition, yes, a petition sounds like just the thing! Or...maybe I'll just get myself out of here.

It's times like this when I really wish I'd win that Disney Vacation sweepstakes I entered. Not that a Disney Vacation is my ideal but it certainly beats living in a construction zone!

My Room

My bedroom is by far the worst looking place I've set eyes on. No matter how hard I try it is never clean. Admittedly I haven't tried really at all lately. Lately meaning the last 2 years, OK, 3 years. But cleaning your bedroom is low on the priority list when you have 2 little kids. For real though, my room could probably qualify for federal disaster aid if viewed by anyone from FEMA. I have decided that my biggest fault actually is keeping up with laundry, or actually doing any at all unless otherwise necessitated (like we don't have any clean underwear). There is a pile of clothing on my floor which Lili lovingly refers to as "the mountain". She adores her mountain. Her and Sofie spend many an evening playing on top of "the mountain" and rolling down it. It is great fun. So who am I to ruin their fun? Besides, every time I even attempt to deplete the mountains height by doing 1 load of laundry Lili gets very upset and says "no mommy, not my mountain!"

The laundry is not the only problem area in my room. There are of course toys strewn about and even a couple of dishes. Luckily I have finally deported most of those back to the kitchen but there are a few remaining. There are books all over the floor and most of my husbands "studio" is taking up the floor on his side of the bed. No joke, the printer and scanner and...um....3 laptops, all on the floor. (All of them are broken, well, accept for this one that I'm writing on which only runs on battery which we have to charge through another laptop! arrg!) My side of the bed boasts a big bag of mismatched socks (another laundry problem) which I feel no need to go through since it's summer and who wears socks in the summer? The vacuum is also on my side in case by some reason I feel possessed one of these days to actually vacuum. (that would constitute actually having the floor clean enough to vacuum!) The top of my dresser is filled with......stuff...I don't even know what stuff...just stuff. Ivan's dresser too, and my little desk (which isn't really a desk but a sewing table I have attempted to use as a desk) is well, also filled with stuff. I have contemplated calling one of those cable shows that comes in and makes you organize your space and get rid of all your junk (I can't remember the names of any of those shows since we haven't had cable for over a year) but I think even they may be turned off by what they see. OK, maybe it's not that bad, but it is pretty darn messy.

So I've decided that today is the day. I will clean my room! I will I will I will! I need a place of refuge, a place of serenity, a place to go to get away from the world, or just a place that doesn't make me want to puke every time I look at it. I will get organized. I will dejunk. And...I will vacuum! I think beforehand I should probably say a prayer so that I can accomplish my goal since by the looks of things it doesn't seem like it could ever get clean in a day. I had been praying about it before but I guess God isn't going to send me a cleaning fairy after all. I will have to do it on my own. So off I go into the abyss. Hopefully I don't get eaten by the dirty laundry monster!

Vicarious Living

My husband says that I am totally living vicariously through my children. I beg to differ. I look at it as giving them opportunities I didn't get as a child. Liliana has recently showed an increased interest in dancing. She's has always loved to dance ,well, ever since she was physically able to anyway. As soon as she was able to pull herself up she figured out how to turn on the stereo and would then ensue to baby dance. She would bounce up and down and I must admit she had extraordinary capabilities! As of late she has really begun dancing around the house and saying "look mommy, I'm dancing like a ballerina". I just happened to make mention to her that perhaps she could go to ballet class on of these days. That's when it began. Lili would walk around the house talking about going to ballet class. So what's a mom to do? I looked into her taking some classes. Grandpa had generously sent her some money for her birthday and I thought, how much could it be, she's 3?
Well, our first thing was to look for some ballet slippers, if nothing else she would feel like a ballerina and could dance around the house in them. So after a little shopping and 40 dollars later (we wound up with a dance outfit too) I decided that now I have to put Lili in dance. The countdown began, lucky for me the first time is a trial and it's free because I would have really been put in the poor house this week with how much it costs. ( I had checked it out and knew what the price is per month but no where on the website did they mention the registration fee. Blah!) For 4 days Lili could talk of nothing else but going to ballet class. Thank goodness Tuesday finally came. Now I have to say, there are cute kids and there are cute kids. Not that I'm biased or anything but...my Lili is definitely a cute kid. She was trying so hard and doing her little plies and jumps. I just could not have been more overwhelmed with a sense of pride for my sweet baby. I've never seen a cuter ballerina! Even the other moms were laughing and commenting on how incredibly cute she was.

So I wouldn't say that I'm living vicariously. Definitely not! I just love to see my kids have fun. All I can hope for in my role as a mother, other than that my kids turn out perfect, is that they have the chance to find what they love and pursue it. If I were living vicariously I would be sending Lili to Italy to study opera! (Who knows, maybe that might happen in 15 years or so.=) )