I am

I am a girl.
I am a woman.
I am a sister.
     And a sister-in-law.
          And a step-sister.
               And a pretend sister.
I am a niece.
I am an aunt.
I am a Bostonian.
But still a Chicagoan and maybe just a little bit of a Phoenician.
I am a mother.
I am a student.
I am a volunteer.
I am a worker.
I am a friend.
I am a voter.
I am an earner.
I am a saver.
I am a court-appointed guardian.
I am a former subject of the State.
I am a wife.
I am short.
I am blond.
     But you wouldn't know it.
I am a college graduate.
I am proud.
I am a fighter.
     And a lover.
          And a survivor.
I am a beach bum.
I am a daughter.
     But not to my parents.
I am not the person you think I am.
I am getting closer to being the person I want to be.
I am a composite of the people I love.
     But still myself.
I am happenstance, I am fortune.
I am effort, and I am talent.
I am curious.
I am confident.
I am stubborn.
I am friendly.
I am a listener.
I am a cynic and an optimist.
     I think those can co-exist.
I sympathize but I don't pity.
I think.

I love.
I care.
I cry.

And I blog. 1,000 times.

This is 999 posts, which means that whatever I write next will be the 1,000th (math lesson, eh?). That is kind of a lot of pressure, especially for someone who has struggled a lot recently to blog at all, let alone write anything worthwhile. I sort of feel like I have been wasting Internet space for a while now, and now I am faced with the desire to write something important and deep and reflective and full of meaning to commemorate the occasion.

But really, I am having trouble finding time or desire to blog lately, and that may be a sign in itself. I think of all the things that this blog has meant to me, and all of the things that I (used to?) love about it...and I am not sure that I still feel the same way. This stands as a (somewhat scrubbed) account of a very important part of my life, recounting a whole lot of day-to-day activity, a whole lot of thoughts and feelings and a whole lot of me that would probably be lost if I hadn't written it down. Do I risk losing those things going forward because I don't write them anymore?

I actively chose not to make this into a "baby" blog, and to leave out the minor details about what they ate and how long they slept for and how many times I changed their diapers. Largely, I did that because no one cares. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot else to write about...that takes up all of my time. And beyond worrying whether others care, maybe I have to ask myself whether I care? I don't know the answer to that...right now I don't, but will I someday regret not having a day-to-day account of their first years? I don't have an answer to that.

Normally, people give advice like "write about whatever you want," or "write about whatever you are thinking." If I am being totally honest with you, I don't know what I want to write about, and I don't really care to document what I am thinking. I may change my mind later, but I don't really care to go back and re-read forty straight posts about how I can't get them to sleep all night in their cribs.

I also have a confession to make...I have decided how I am going to "end" this blog. That doesn't mean I am thinking strongly about actually doing it, or that I have any desire to, but I have already written the last post. While I don't know when I may decide to post it, should I be worried that I have even thought about it? I dunno.

But I do know that I feel like I owe you a doozy of a post next, and I am not feeling terribly confident that I am up to it.

Is it bad of me...

I think that I might like Sarah Palin just a tiny bit more if it turns out that she was banging basketball players in her younger years...

Baby Car Sickness

So, I think that LK gets car sick. Sort of weird for a baby, but we are running out of other explanations. The good news is that she spends very little time in the car when she isn't asleep...but we still have to figure out whether this is the case or not.

On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks one of us has had her in the car to drive some place or another, and she seems to get sort of seasick looking and ends up throwing up a lot. It makes me very sad:-( It definitely is worse if she hasn't eaten anything, and some Goldfish and crackers help...but she still seems to get some motion sickness. Again, fortunately, she isn't in the car very much at all.

Totally unrelated note, chicken fingers tomorrow night! I am extremely happy that Munchkin is not too old for this;-) I asked her yesterday, a little hesitantly, if she was still up for it. Given her incredibly busy schedule and her increasing level of overall coolness, I was worried that maybe she wouldn't want to go any more. But, she seemed almost offended that I would even ask:-).

I definitely sort of lost track of her a bit last fall by over-extending myself, and this is one of the things that I plan on doing to make sure that doesn't happen again. The babies take up an awful lot of time and effort, and she is pretty good on her own...but I like to think that she still needs me at least a little bit:-). So The Boy gets a date with his girls every Thursday and I get a date with mine!

Maybe we can talk about the fact that she can get her driver's license in three weeks!!! Oy!!!

Oh yea...blog

Yeah, so I kinda disappeared for a week there, huh? Sorry about that (humor me...pretend you noticed).

Anyway, nothing fantastic to report, I just got really busy with the first week of school, getting into a new routine, etc. That was moderately complicated by The Boy being away for a couple of days at a conference. Good news is that we should be past all of that nonsense, and hopefully settled into something of a routine for the next couple of months. So you have that to look forward to;-)

And...um...with that, I have nothing to say right now. But hopefully I will later on!

How about a baby update?

Holy shit, where did the summer go? I guess maybe I go through this exercise every year around this time...but I never seem to follow through on my vows to slow down and enjoy summer. Actually, that sounds bad...I definitely enjoyed the summer, I just wish it lasted longer:-) And I wish that Tinkerbelle had come to visit (never wrote about that, but the timing never worked..she is coming out soon, though!)

But, alas, this will be the last weekend of the summer. The beach house is busy for weddings each of the next three weekends, and beyond that it gets less and less likely that we will make it down. If there is a weather forecast calling for exceptionally warm days in late September or October then we sometimes make the trip, but that is pretty unlikely as the season wears on. And the end of the beach season always makes me sad...that house is my most favorite place, and this now represents the moment when getting back to it is the furthest away! A little fatalist of me, I suppose...

I feel like I haven't given you an update on the girls lately...but they are doing awesome. MA uses all kinds of words (not always correctly, but she tries to say them:-)). She is really good at Mama and Daddy, and up and down, and water and bottle. Those ones she actually uses right...some others, like Elmo and purple, she says but doesn't really use them right. If you ask her to show you her belly button she will lift her shirt, point to it and say "button".

LK doesn't talk as much, but I think she understands words better (or she is just more obedient;-)). And they teach them some sign language at school, and she is really good at "please", and OK at "thank you". She also has a full awareness of her belly button, along with mine and The Boy's. She loves to bark at dogs, not sure what that is all about...

They are great eaters...they will eat anything we give them. I still give them the vegetable purees, because I know that once they have eaten them, I don't have to worry about what else they eat...they will have gotten plenty of the good stuff they need. But there is very little they won't try. They at about a half pound of salmon between them the other night, and will just pick up and much on green beans or asparagus if you give it to them. They are just starting to figure out how to use forks and spoons to pick food up by themselves. And of course, Goldfish and Cheerios are absolute staples:-)

I would like them to drink less from bottles, but we haven't broken them of the habit. They drink water from sippy cups, but not really milk, and they still need a bottle to fall asleep every night. I have a feeling that the doctor will tell us to just stop giving them bottles at their 18 month appointment next month...that seems about the age when they should be done with them.

It would be nice if they slept better;-) They still wake up during the night too often, usually because they want to sleep with us! I'd let them cry and put themselves back to sleep, but then they wake each other up and then everyone loses... Also, I kinda like sleeping with them:-)

OK, then...everyone enjoy the weekend! See you next week:-)

Blogwhat?

The new blogger interface...not sure how I feel. It is very white, and it doesn't seem terribly intuitive. I guess I will give it a couple of days and see how I adjust. Anyone else have any thoughts? I feel like there are extra screens involved to view and approve comments and stuff...

Am I missing stuff?