day 1 blog 2 woes of a spirited child

i swear i will have no lack of material if i opt to focus on the woes of raising a spirited child...in fact, i was thinking i should just try and have free time (i.e. write this blog) while letting the children entertain themselves...as an example, the following literally happened within a couple of minutes of signing back on:
(i'm cheating by posting an old photo of story covered in food...but this will help you visualize part of my list)

sea bit story. hard. broke skin with a little blood and left deep teeth marks.
sea poured story's lemonade on his head (sprinkling it out of his sippy cup).
sea smeared story's over-ripe apricot all over his face like the work he did himself in this photo.
story found frozen peas in the freezer (that he opened himself) and poured them all over the floor.

i'm glancing over while both children are happily eating peas off the floor (to which i am grateful) and while waiting patiently for more material sea instead sings a pleasant little made-up song like nothing ever happened...story is opening the freezer again so these two minutes are all i can post for now...

p.s. did i mention story's latest word is a dramatic "UH-oh..." to which he gets a lot of practice...

here he is waving goodbye:

"help mama, story is eating ice cream..."

day 1 blog 1 blogging challenge

blogging makes me feel alive...chronicling my life generally...a live and more active combination of a daily journal (which i've kept since 3rd grade...regularly since junior high) and family photo albums...except when i haven't blogged in a long time and then i feel guilty, sad, a sense of loss, missed opportunities; like the memories somehow aren't there anymore...

i began this blogging journey back in the day with a post about "blank pages"...explaining how ever since i started keeping a journal i would leave space to fill in missed information or go back to ideas i wanted to elaborate on...more often than not there is more blank space in my journals than writing...in this instance i feel like i should have an entire blank journal to fill in all that i've missed blogging about in the past few months...

so i'm challenging myself to blog every day until...well, no untils...possibly until the end of the year? in fact i'm thinking of making this a challenge to all my blogging friends (or friends who just started blogging) to see how far each of us can go with it...but i want it to be more like a contest with the prize being all participants will post an entry about the winner? so that way we will be motivated to get more readers?

so i will start each blog from now on with the day and the blog # (i'm hoping to do more than 1 blog a day sometimes) and as long as there are more blog numbers than days i will consider myself caught up with the blog a day challenge...i'm hoping to invite other blogging friends to join this challenge and will figure out if there will be a prize or just the satisfaction of regular blogging will be prize enough? i do want to blog about blogging advice i've received (and i'm open to hearing your comments on how to improve my blog or my blogging experience)...and about redefining my identity (an ongoing issue for me)...and maybe even catch friends up on my life (hawaii, sea's birthday, days at the beach, coop preschool...are the big ones that come to mind)...and maybe a blog about why i blog at all? i don't make money doing it...i'm not trying to promote anything...much to think about...

this photo doesn't have too much to do with this "first" blog in the series...but this blog is about my journey as a mommy so an endearing family photo (appropriately a little blurry) taken at the end of a very long day at the beach for sea's 4th birthday seems like as good as any to jumpstart what i hope will be a fun journey to keep up on writing...hopefully it will make for enjoyable reading, too...i look forward to pairing this commitment to blogging regularly with keeping up on your blogs, learning from your journeys and sharing the experiences with one another...

something

i love the hazy quality of this quick shot taken by my sister...sea's eyes draw me in...i want to get lost inside of her sometimes. i had something to write about but it got lost...i didn't write it down while i was driving, packing, waiting, chasing, singing, laughing, calling, eating...wish i was going somewhere with these ideas. i really wanted to blog tonight with both children asleep but instead the night has gotten away from me and i have restless energy and nowhere to channel it. so i just wrote something.

living life as if i was writing about it

i love this photo of sea taken on our trip to hawaii recently...she reminds me a lot of myself but mostly it is just classic sea...i haven't updated this blog nearly as much as i've intended to. sometimes i get caught up reading other people's blogs/lifes and sometimes i just don't think my life is interesting enough to write about but really i am beginning to realize that i just want to LIVE my life as i would want to write about it in a memoir (or on this blog) more than i want to actually keep up with blogging...a conundrum i'm always struggling with...works well for my obsessive tendencies....well sea is fast asleep and story is wide awake so i'm going to go tickle him, wiggle around, sing, spin in circles, turn lights on and off, make "ding-dong" sounds, let him hang from my legs, fall down laughing, roll around...whatever he wants to do until we both crash...

precious moments and precious words

in one of my many journals...to do lists...ideals...i came up with the idea of a blog post of sea and storyisms along with my favorite photo of the two of them from the previous month...i'll label it with "little things" so i can find them all later... if i can get myself to do this the first of every month i should keep up on many of the adorable things they say and do that i swear i must record before i forget...so some of the ones on this list will be old but i feel compelled to get them down anyway...this photo (yes, story is nursing) was taken at the wedding in hawaii...sea was a flower girl and story was a last minute ring bearer but we were busy chasing them and didn't get any good photos of them in action together...honestly i didn't even think of trying to "pose" them together but wish i had in their matching white...

so story is 16 months old. he is at that age where there is an explosion of new words and concepts going on and i'm going to forget them all...yesterday he said "ing-ong" over and over when he was pushing the "ding-dong" doorbell. last night he was pushing a stuffed train around and choo-chooing. he will also quack when playing with a rubber ducky but not when i'm trying to show off this trick...sea and story both love jumping on the bed; falling backwards on to their backs...they were chasing one another and giggling and then asking to be tickled at the same time. sea is just learning to swim on her own. maybe i'll post a little video of her holding her breath, doing doggy paddles and kicking all at once...

more cute things off the top of my head (wish i'd sat down to make a list and organize it before writing this post but then it wouldn't be in my typical free association long winded style...)...sea refers to manuel's facial hair as "furries", she calls her brother "brudder", both children love playing outside in the dirt, watering the garden...

sea likes to count and still thinks "twelve-teen" comes after 19 even though she'll say "twenty-one" afterwards...there are so many things we work to remember and help her hold on to when much of the world is trying to "correct" these mistakes...

well unfortunately my list of memories has to be cut short so i can get ready for our busy day celebrating the fourth of july. my dad loved this holiday and i have wonderful memories of family usually spent locally but sometimes at the beach or river...i'll watch for the sparkle in my dad's eye when the fireworks reflect off sea and story's bright faces tonight...

missed opportunities and the loss of mj

stories of michael jackson's death and life and effect on the world were swirling on our television last night. i had a sense of shared sadness...being part of something bigger than myself... similar to how i felt when i found out that princess diana had died. the sense that many people could relate with one another over a loss of someone they didn't know personally but somehow impacted their lives. i could free associate about mj...the king of pop influenced my generation in many ways and i have my own memories of his music at key points in my developmental years. but i suppose on a grander scale i am sad more personally for him. he fought so many demons and i felt like he had a good heart and wanted to give to others what he himself couldn't achieve. mostly i can relate with how misunderstood he felt and am sad he may not have achieved resolution in fundamental aspects of his life. this is yet another reminder to me to not miss opportunities to clean out my own skeletons and focus on those i care most about. i love this photo of my family...m watching the mj coverage, sea snuggling up to him and story laughing on his back oblivious...

sea the baker

i've been having blogging withdrawals...since my last post a month ago we went to family camp for a weekend (pine springs ranch, near idyllwild...where i went as a child), hawaii for two weeks and then after being home only 24 hours we were off to my cousin ally's high school graduation...hope to have updates of these excursions with photos if i can get caught up enough once the children are asleep...

for now i wanted to just do a quick post of sea as a baker. "hayno" (hazelle) our neighbor growing up as children, bought her this outfit/cupcake set. sea is really in to cooking and i suppose role play in general. today i hosted coop preschool and one of my favorite aspects was having the children help with aspects of daily life...picking a variety of veggies out of the garden, washing them, cutting them, cooking them, serving them, setting the table, eating together, washing the dishes...i want to get sea more involved in these tasks while they are still fun for her...i'm off to do more tasks myself...hope to post more later tonight...