When your daughter steals the camera

Not a very good picture, but the evil eyes worked. Well actually the little imp Abs told me that she was more concerned that they were going to pop out at her, and she didn't want her appetite ruined.

Surrogacy

I know that this has been hit on several different sites lately, but I found something interesting this morning.

I stumbled on a blog of a Navy wife who has been a surrogate mother to 5 children, and also given birth to four of her own kids.

My boss, way back when, adopted a little boy, and the birth mother had insurance but wasn't able to care for the child.  There are people in the military that put their children up for adoption, should they be denied having their pregnancies paid for because the baby is going to someone else?

I mean heck, Tricare is paying for a ton of people to have babies, that don't need to be having babies.  I read one comment somewhere, where a woman said she would have done it at one point, but after 6 boys and no girls, she wouldn't be able to give up a girl.  That opens a whole other can of worms for me, so I won't go there.

Anyway, check out this blog.  Fertile Inspirations

So, is it surrogacy that you have a problem with or is it that Tricare is paying for a portion of it?

Crossfit

I admit, I did it.  I tried a crossfit class.

After 14 sessions with a personal trainer, I just was burnt out on everything to do with the gym.  I was looking for a change, and so I went to one class.

After that first class, I had that "exercise high".  I even had it when I couldn't walk for the next 4 days.  So once my personal training sessions were done, I quit the Y and signed up for crossfit.

I'm 9 sessions into it now, and I am not looking back.  I have been sore almost every day.  I go 4 times a week, and I get a lot done in one hour.

The coach is incredible, the other people are very encouraging, and even though I am weak as can be, I feel myself getting stronger every day.

Call me crazy, but I can already tell a difference in my abs, arms, and legs.  Let's add the butt in there too, based on the number of squats that we do daily!

Obviously my ultimate fitness goal is to be in shape, run races that I enjoy, do triathlons that I enjoy, and be able to get out and enjoy myself.  The coach knows my goals and is going to help me incorporate those things that I need in order to be successful in what I want to do.

I still can't do a pullup or a double under.  I may never be able to climb the rope, but I do know that I am getting stronger every day, I feel much better, and I'm a much happier person to be around when I get in a great workout.  I love the feeling of being smoked at the end of the hour and thinking that there is no way that I can walk to my car.

So consider me one of the crazies, because I can see why people love Crossfit, and count me as one of those too!

The Wishing Rock

Junior has been returning from preschool with pockets full of rocks.  I didn't think anything about it since Abs is always hauling them around.

Today I picked him up and his pockets were stuffed full.

We started walking out towards the car, holding hands, and talking about his day.

Then Junior dropped my hand and picked up a tiny purplish rock and held it tightly in his dirty little palm.  (Seriously, anyone that has a boy that isn't always dirty, please tell me how you do it.)

I started buckling him in his carseat.

Me:  That's a pretty rock.
Junior:  This one will work.
Me:  Work?
Junior:  Yep, the other ones were broken.
Me:  You keep bringing home broken rocks?
Junior:  I didn't break them.

I got in the car.  Buckled up.  Started driving home.

I hear Junior in the backseat.

Junior:  I wish I wish with all my heart....for my daddy to come home.

He waited a few minutes and then I hear his tiny little voice.

Junior:  Oh man, this one is broken too.

My poor little guy....

Heroes at Home Wish Registry

This fills up quickly, so make sure you take advantage of it!

Sears collects donations for military families, and sends them out in an email to you, kind of like a gift card, and you take it into Sears, Land's End, Kmart, and a few other places to spend it.  We got two last year, and it was a great help during the holiday season!

Check it out here.

September 30 Day Challenges...October already?

I only had TWO 30 day challenges for September--eat vegetarian and clean the garage.

I thought that eating vegetarian would be the hard part.  I actually really loved it.  I did slip and have a few tamales and a hot dog when we were out and there was nothing else at the "hot dog dinner" and I was about to pass out from hunger.

Usually when I planned ahead, it all worked out.  What I found is that when I added back in red meat a the end of 30 days, I felt sick again.  I'm not saying I will never eat meat again, but I do know that I won't be eating it every day.  I'll stick with fish and all that other healthy stuff.  I haven't tried pork chops yet, but I am thinking about making some pulled pork today for dinner, so we will see how that goes.  (Update:  It's cold and I am getting sick, so I am having chicken and dumplings!)

The garage.....

It was a HUGE undertaking, and I am sad to report, that it is not done.  Once Abs had her issue crop up, I had to put cleaning on the back burner and focus more on her.  I did make a HUGE difference.  I can get into the garage from both sides, put in some shelves, and took over 6 carloads of stuff to the thrift store.  I moved piles of crap from one side to the other.  My mom will be coming at the end of the month to take Em to Japan and Okinawa for two weeks--her life is soooo rough--and I am passing on a lot of scrapbooking stuff to her, plus all the other "treasures" that she passed on to me, that I just can't deal with right now.

So what's in store for October???

I'll still be working on the garage.  It's already the 10th, so I can't say that I will blog every day.

October will be lame.  I'll continue working on getting Abs sleeping through the night, Junior potty trained, and  continue going to crossfit 4 times a week.

On the bright side, we are over 2 months into this deployment, but we unfortunately still have plenty of months left to get things done.

Still here...

Sometimes I don't even realize that I haven't blogged.  I write blogs in my head and then never take the time to actually get them online.

I composed a blog about a plate I made in second grade for my Grandma, and how it hit me one day, that it was symbolic of a relationship that wasn't there when I was 7 years old.  Now 31 years later, it's still not there, except I have exhausted myself trying to create a relationship.  Now that I have decided it's just not worth it to me to continue trying and getting hurt, I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders.  I'll leave it up to that person to figure it out and make an effort.

I've been busy with my darling little Abs.  Something happened, that was mindboggling, and we have been trying to sort through that and figure it all out.  She can never be easy.

I'm still potty training Junior.  Actually I have just given up.  He as a few boy pullups left, and when he gets out of those, he will have the choice of pink girly ones or boy underwear.  He is distraught about wearing pink on his bottom.  Maybe this will work.  If not, at least it's a different color to look at every time I change him.

Em turned 13!  I have a teenager!  It's hard to believe that she's not the tiny little baby back in Germany, who was 20 pounds at three months old and too pudgy to move or roll over.  Now she is 5'6", and is mistaken at the gate every time we go through.  The MP's smile at her and ask for her license.  I smile at them and tell them she is 12, and they stop looking.

More pictures to come, but we have hit the Botanical Gardens, the King Tut exhibit, ran in The Great Pumpkin 5k, and I tried out crossfit and loved it.  Em's had a sleepover, Abs started up Interactive Metronome again, and now that it is about to start snowing and freeze, my garden is in the process of growing.  Figures.

More to come!

Junior

Although he may never potty train and his face is never clean.....I still love him. I wish his sisters would let me take pictures....

Some Random Thoughts

Three nights ago.  Abs slept.

Two nights ago.  The 5" crack was enough for the little imp to slither through and escape.  I'm recommending her to be recruited by the Navy Seals.

Last night.  I made the crack smaller in the middle, so she managed to get out the bottom.

I give up.

While she was out of bed, she opened up a box of brownie mix and tried it out.  She didn't like it, and did what every other 9 year old does with it in the middle of the night and stuffed it under the couch.  Making a mess.  

I'm pissed.  Pissed that I can't sleep.  Pissed that she gets into the food and we can't keep anything sweet around here for anyone else to eat.

I'm pissed that her dad isn't here to help.  I'm pissed that other people have never deployed and he's going on his 5th year of deployment.  I'm really pissed about that last one.

Word on the street is that Gunner can retire soon.  At first I went into a panic.  Where would we go?  What would we do?  The only people that help us with the kids are my outlaws.  Could I handle that?

Now I am looking at the bigger picture.  He would be home.  We would make it work, and we could live anywhere that we want.  I wouldn't need help from the outlaws because he would be around more.  

In the meantime, I am at a loss as to what to do with Abs and open to suggestions.  Also if anyone wants to have her over for a sleepover.....just sayin'....

Sibling Love

Desperate for Sleep

So in the great "Quest to get Abs to sleep 2010", I decided to try a few new things.

Melatonin--what a joke!  It has no effect on her.  None.  It was a nightmare. 

I was cleaning out the garage, and found 2 baby gates.  These are the really tall ones, so I thought that they would be perfect.

The first night, feeling all proud of myself, I put one gate up.  I made it high enough where she couldn't go underneath it, but it would still keep her contained.

*****Disclaimer******  Abs knows full well that she can kick down these gates in an emergency and escape, so don't give me any grief about that people.  On the bright side, if she kicks them down, I will hear it and rush to her room to bust her before she gets downstairs.

Okay, back to the first night--SHE SLEPT!!!  Of course since she had been up over 24 hours, I wasn't surprised, she was exhausted.

The second night (Tuesday), I put the gate back up like the first night, and she escaped.  I didn't hear her, but I did hear the tv at 2 am.  I chased her back to bed, then spent the next few hours chasing her back to bed again and again and again.  

ABW 0 Abs 1

The third night, I was not going to be a fool, so I put up TWO gates, one on top of another.  At 2 am I heard Abs open the door and she called out for me because she had to potty.  No problem, I opened the gates, let her potty, and then put the gates back up.  I went back to bed.  I slept.

This morning I woke up and was patting myself on the back again about getting some sleep, and I went to get the kids up and I noticed that Abs had left her door open, but the 6 foot high gates were still in tact.  Score one for ABW.

I mean, look how tall that is!  There was about 6" of clearance at the top.  I would be able to hear it if she kicked it down.  She could call for me and I am such a light sleeper, that I could let her out if she needed to potty.

I found a solution.

I peeked inside to wake up my beautiful 9 year old well rested daughter.

I didn't see her.

I opened the top gate.  Opened the bottom gate.  She was nowhere to be seen.  

I looked in the closet, under the bed, in all the covers on her bed.  Nothing.

The little imp CLIMBED over SIX FEET of gates and escaped.  She was sitting downstairs watching tv in her bucket of beans.

ABW 0    Abs 2

What I Want....

I want to be four again.

I want to make grass angels and think that everything is right with the world.

My Wild Thing

Why I shouldn't read blogs

I was perusing a blog this morning, and she talked about how homemaking was her job, and she took it seriously.  She gets up early, cooks, cleans, prepares delicious meals, blah, blah, blah.

I wanted to choke her.

The next blog in my reader, was describing how to create HANDMADE love notes for your child's lunch box.  Seriously?  Write on a napkin or buy the ones premade, never mind that my kids always buy their lunch.

I didn't attend any bible studies this week.  Or last week.  Or the week before.

We had cereal one night for dinner.

The laundry isn't done, the floors aren't spotless, and I don't get up early to make my kids a hot breakfast.  I fix something for Junior, and the girls are on their own.

I think it's okay if my kids wear the same pajamas more than one night.  (I don't think they should wear the same clothes every day, but luckily that's not an issue here!)

I don't handmake my husband cards.  I don't send a letter every day to Gunner.  I don't make cute countdown chains or calendars or any of that stuff.

I don't water my lawn, because if it dies then I don't have to mow it or go through the trouble of getting housing to do it.

I don't save everything I am getting rid of for a garage sale.  If I didn't like the person who gave it to me, am I going to want money from the sale of said item?  Not hardly.

I do love my kids, take care of my kids, workout, keep the house reasonable clean, and make sure there is always toilet paper.  The dog gets walked, fed, and watered.

I don't spend my free minutes scrubbing, cleaning corners with qtips, or making sure the underside of my chairs have no spots on them.

I did take my children ice skating, to the What If festival, to the Cool Science event, on a walk, had a movie night, and took them to Burger King because I didn't want to cook.  (Pictures to come)

Life is good, and if my baseboards are a little dusty, at least I know it's for a good reason--Em, Abs, and Junior.

Happy Birthday Gunner!

It's already September 18th in Afghanistan.....

When Gunner was born, he was a little guy, tipping the scales at just over 3 pounds.  He was 6 weeks early I think.  In this picture I believe he was a few months old.  When he was first born, his dad was able to hold him in the palm of his hand.


Gunner with his 3 brothers.  He's the cutie on the far left.


A shot of when Gunner was home on R&R, just in time to meet his son.  (His son, who outweighed him by 7 pounds at birth, yikes!)

He's no longer that little kid.

He's a wonderful father, husband, and Soldier...and no longer the little guy.

Happy 40th Birthday Sweetie!  We love you and miss you!

P.S.  Thanks for all the great suggestions, but as luck would have it, he got this....or he will when he gets home.  It was a moment of weakness on my part....

How in the world?

I look back when I blogged last deployment, and I had a full time job, worked out like a wild woman, three kids, and was going to graduate school.  How did I have time to blog?  I never slept.  I could function on 5 or less hours of sleep, and now I am two years older, and that just isn't happening.

I could easily be happy with 8 hours of sleep a night, and that isn't happening either.

Abs is killing me.  She's up all night, and for some reason after all this time, it dawned on me.....she doesn't know how to go back to sleep.  All that self soothing as babies is useless when they are older, and she for the life of her can't figure it out.  

This should have been totally obvious to me, but it hasn't been, and I blame it on the lack of sleep.

We had a long talk about it, and I explained some things to her, and talked about relaxation techniques, and then did what I always do.

I went to Amazon.

I found a few very highly rated relaxation cd's, that tell stories, and get the child to calm down.

I'm hoping it works.

I let her listen to the clips on amazon, and she said she preferred her current cd.

Can you guess what it is?  It's a CD made from an old record, that I absolutely loved--the story of Jean Lafeyette.  I memorized it as a kid, and Abs has memorized it now.

She thinks that is relaxing.  Somehow I don't think the songs and story behind their battle of the British is relaxing, so she said she'd try things my way.

I hope it works.

I have pictures to post from all our fun this past weekend, but while at a festival, we met a Holistic Clinical Nutritionist.  After I gave her the 3rd degree on the phone today about credentials, I am taking Abs for an appointment this Friday.

Maybe this will give us some guidance.....some help....some sleep?

A Day in the Life of ABW

I meant to post this last night....

I hear Em up way earlier than usual.

Finally find out from her that she's not feeling so well.  I order her back to bed with threats of bread and water all day and she can't come out unless she's ready to go to school.

I lysol the house.  Em comes out.  I lysol again.

I get Abs moving because of course this is the first time that she has slept in, in forever.

Get Junior up and moving.  Put him in underwear, but he refuses to go potty, so back in a pullup so he won't pee in the car.  Yeah, it happens.

Load up Abs and Junior, take Junior to hourly care.  It's a new month, so that means more med cards to fill out.  I walked in, they asked his name, and the girl was like "Oh, the boy with all the allergies and meds".  Ummmm.....no.

Finish up there, race to Ab's school because I was supposed to meet with the teacher and the principal.  (I was kind of glad that we were late and it didn't happen)  Drop Abs off.  Race back to Em.

Lysol the house again.  Add more lysol to Sam's list.  Check to make sure that all bathrooms are cleaned and well stocked.

Find lost mail keys that I just paid $40 to replace and go gather days worth of mail.

Em starts rumbling that she's bored.  Finally she decides that school is better than being home.  Load her up and take her to school.  Run into principal who wants to have meeting then, but I have to get Junior.  Schedule meeting for 2:30.

Go get Junior, race home, have lunch, play, convince him that going potty is fun.  Put him in underwear.

Take Junior to preschool, go to school to have meeting with teacher and principal.

Meeting occurs.

Pickup girls.  Come home to find smoke alarm chirping.  Leave girls, get Junior, go to commissary to get "batteries".  That leads to a cart full of groceries.  Go home, insert new battery and chirping continues.  I start messing with it, it chirps more.

Kids unload groceries.

Call housing.  Housing said they will come check it out.

Feed kids.

Gunner calls.  Military one source calls to schedule appt for Abs.  Tell military one source that I will have to call them back after I have been waiting for them to call for two days.

Junior pees on the floor.

Maintenance shows up, so I pass Gunner off to the kids.  Junior lets the dog in who then goes crazy and the maintenance people are scared to come down the stairs.  I assure them he won't bite and go to get him outside.

Maintenance leaves and the fire alarm starts chirping.  I go outside to wave down the maintenance people.  Sammy gets out.  Neighbors and I are chasing the dog while I am trying to still talk to Gunner and trying not to run too far so I lose the signal.

Neighbor catches the dog.  Abs puts dog in backyard.  Maintenance comes back in and disconnects the alarm and tells me it is an electrical problem and they will have to have an electrician come tomorrow.  (I have to say that I have never met nicer maintenance men than I have at this post.)

Talk to Gunner a bit more.  Bathe Junior, supervise Abs so there are no Eiffel Bubble Towers, and rotate Em through before the hot water is all gone.

Call back military one source and put kids to bed.  It takes an hour to get through their process.  More on that later, because we can do a self-referral with me looking someone up in the phone book for a lot less of a hassle.  She was nice though.

Kids are still asleep.  I might need a glass of wine tonight.  I want to run tomorrow to try out my new forerunner.  I hope I can fit it in.

Mail Question

While I am sorting through 16 years of crap in the garage, I came across tubs and tubs and tubs and tubs or mail.

When Gunner deployed to Bosnia, he was gone for a year, and we had little to no communication by phone and email was not available.  We wrote hundreds of letters.

Now that you can add three deployments to Iraq in there, and in 11 months a tour in Afghanistan under his belt, that leaves me with more mail than I can haul around.

So my question is.....what do you do with it all?  What do you do with his letters?  What about all the other mail that he was sent while over there?  People have sent letters, cards, cartoons, etc.  No worries, he kept it all!

When I say tubs, I mean those big blue rubber maid containers that are about 36 inches x 12 inches x 18 inches.  I haven't ever gone through it, and I know it contains a lot of memories for him, because some of those cards and letters from random strangers appeared on a day that he really needed them.

If I mention them, he might just tell me to toss them, but I thought maybe y'all would have a better idea of what to do with them.  I'm open to any and all suggestions....except scrapbooking, I am getting rid of my thousands of dollars worth of supplies because I have no room or time!

Is there a way to organize it?  Do you just keep the stuff that y'all write back and forth to each other?  I'm sure our cards and letters back and forth are 2-3 tubs alone.  We've been apart for 4 years and this will make year number 5.  Help!

Life With Abs....

It's never easy, and lately it has been harder than hard.  It's not one thing in particular, but a million things at once.  How does that child sleep at night?  Oh wait, she doesn't.  A non-sleeping Abs means a non-sleeping ABW.  I'm worn out.

I'm in the throws of personal training.  I did a 5 K this past weekend and took this girl.

She wanted to run around the track to warm up.  I told her to conserve her energy.  Good thing I did, because .1 miles into the race she decided that we should go the pace of a dead snail.  I did what any parent that wanted to finish would do and put Abs on my back.  I carried the girl for 3 miles, all 68 pounds of her.  I'm still sore.

I've been tackling my 30 day challenges head on.  Remember this picture...

Well I worked on it for about 8 hours.  There's a slight difference.  Two trips to the thrift store.  A full trash can.  I sent the after picture to Gunner and he said "Boy, you have a long way to go".  Thanks babe!

At least you can see some of the floor!  See all those bikes?  This is what happens when you step over the same bike in the same place, and fall once each day because you can barely maneuver due to all the crap.

It looked worse when it happens.  Darn mountain bikes.

I don't want to move anything out of the garage, but I need to in order to get to the front right corner to make some headway.  How come I don't want to?  Because when I am tired and want to quit and not move it back in, I don't have Gunner to come help me.  This might turn into a 365 day challenge at this rate!

The vegetarian eating is going well.  I grabbed a piece of Em's beef jerky yesterday and spit it out when I realized what I was doing.

I took Abs to get her haircut again today.  She had it cut a week ago, but it seemed all uneven, etc.  My girl did it, and explained to me what happened.  She's got my thick hair, and it's straight as a board (that's from her father).  You could cut my hair a million different ways and never be able to tell, I guess that's one benefit to curly hair!

I have a meeting tomorrow morning with Ab's teacher and the principal.  She's actually not in trouble (that was Friday), but I am still not looking forward to it.

Oh, I also had to go get new mailbox keys.  My new garmin gps is sitting in the box probably, if someone didn't find the keys and go take everything.  It's $40.  I will be putting each of the three keys on different rings, in different locations, and not near Abs.  Apparently the one time I sent her to check the mail, she lost the keys on the way to the box, but had forgotten to tell me on the way back.  Did I mention this trip took 20 minutes?

The dotted line is representative of how Abs travels.  She once told me that straight lines were boring.  (Don't bother enlarging, I borrowed this from chamotlabs.com, and the wording was changed to fit their company and makes no sense to me)

Maybe tomorrow I can get Ab's Mr. Potato head project back so I can share some pictures from it, it's cute!

Milspouse Friday Fill-In

1.What is a weird/funny superstition that you have? (from A{muse}ing Mommy on a Pink Park Bench)
I don't have any superstitions I don't think, but I do put my left sock on first, put my left leg in pants first and put my left shoe on first.  Okay, maybe it's a little weird.  

2.What are your hopes and dreams for the years AFTER the military? After all, we aren’t in it forever! (from Stetsons, Spurs and Stilettos)
The after part is coming up sooner than I would like to think about.  I just want to travel, do things, and have fun.  Since this is right around the corner, I need more direction than that, so it's on my list of things to do.  

3.Since [this] month is National Apple Month (no really!), I’d probably ask: What is your yummiest apple recipe? (from NH Girl Displaced)
I don't eat apples very often, so I can't help you there!

4.How long have you gone as a military spouse without talking to your husband/wife during service? (from A Navy Princess and Her Little Sailors)
Two months.  When they first got to Iraq and they were living in tents, pulling missions all the time, and phone service sucked.  He called once for 5 minutes near the end of the two months, but we couldn't understand anything.  That's why when I say it's okay if he goes a few weeks without calling, I really mean it.  

5.I occasionally watch When I was 17… on MTV. So, what was something that was significant about your 17th year of life? (from Ashley Amazing) 
I started college!  I headed off to Baylor with a ton of hopes and dreams.  I worked as a lifeguard and at the bakery.  I mowed lawns, and picketed all the money.  I still knew I had to save back then!