The Queen's Rambles

Remember the good ol’ days when the Queen of Rambles could ramble about anything at the drop of a hat? A nice, long rambly entry every day. Often an adventure. Boring for some, I’m sure, but it was my life.

I’ve completely lost the mo-jo. Things happen and my thought process is no longer “how can I turn this into a blog.” It’s more like “sleeeeeeep, how could I get more sleeeeeep. If these people quit talking, can I sleep?”

Sleep is not a hot topic.

I’ve been spending the last two nights re-doing our PTA website. They had a fairly decent one up, but the guy running it left our school and the guy who was supposed to take it over couldn’t get together with him and get the info on how to update it. I really don’t understand the problem. I made the mistake of asking why the former webmaster just couldn’t e-mail us the log-in info and suddenly I became the person making a whole new website, complete with a new domain. Why I couldn’t just take over the old one? I have no idea. But I made it and it’s fine. I enjoy that kind of challenge.

I am feeling guilty about my lack of blogging these days. Not because I feel I owe it to you, oh faithful reader. I like you, but I don’t owe you.

Nope. I owe my daughter the same type of intense scrutiny of early childhood that I gave my son, but she is not getting it. I don’t post every single funny little thing she does, even though she is hilarious and beautiful, fierce and sweet.

I think she frightened our friends the other day when she started growling and saying “bad boys, bad boys, bad girl, bad mommy, bad daddy.” Her growling, deep voice is a little disconcerting. As are the things that come out of her mouth. Bad indeed! It’s hard to control what she’s exposed to when she has such an older brother. For some reason he is not a protective mama bear.

She’s going to be three in five short weeks! What happened to my chubbiest, laughingest baby in the world? The Threes have already started. The defiance, temper tantrums, completely illogical desires. . . . some days are exhausting. She’s got a much better mother than her brother had, though. I know for a cold, hard fact that this is just a stage. I will not be dealing with this for the rest of my life, so I can deal with it in a much calmer manner. This behavior not a reflection of my complete and utter failure as a mother. If she loses control it is totally normal and we just roll with it. Getting stressed and thinking every bit of imperfection is FAIL FAIL FAIL is a thing of the past. Thankfully. It’s not easy to live with such high expectations. Poor Erik had a crazy mother.

Elsa is learning to share and take turns. She’s sweet with her friends, and speaks very clearly. She is starting to have conversations that make sense, not just toddler non-sense. And, of course, she’s really starting to know who she loves. There’s nothing better than a big, fierce hug while she screams “I LOVE YOU!!!!”

Erik is doing great as well. He’s really hit his stride as a wonderful little man. He has started getting himself ready in the mornings without being asked. The pride shines in his eyes as he shows me his socks are on and his teeth are brushed. He wants to help with the cooking and I usually am able to find a task he can do because I remember being that age and being shooed out of the kitchen. I know why my mom wanted to be alone in the kitchen. I would love to be alone with my cooking, but it is so important to teach these little people how to cook and be self-sufficient so I suck it up and try to be patient and is takes him three times longer to do a task.

Of course, the problem with raising independent children is that they are so damned independent and they are just children. Erik thinks he can do anything and doesn’t really understand why there are limits. After all, he can peel an onion, why shouldn’t he walk to Diary Queen by himself?

But this was supposed to be about Elsa! Will my children actually read all of this blathering one day? Will they be able to handle the innermost thoughts of their mom? I don’t know if that would be a good thing or not.

I guess I don’t write as much about Elsa because she’s not as frustrating as Erik was. I’m much more experienced and she’s more interested in typical “girl” things like coloring, painting, playing play-doh, making her dolls talk. A lot of times she just sits on my lap and I wiggle my finger around. My finger is the princess and I have to hide it. We can play that for at least 30 minutes. We also play a lot of doggie and Team Umi Zoomi. This game must be played in my bed. I sit in my spot and she faces me and says “I’m baby doggie, you’re mommy doggie.” Or “I’m Bot, you’re Milli.” And so it goes for hours. Not much ever happens in these games, except establishing our identities. It always surprises me that she wants to be the male robot, not the little girl. I’m convinced it’s because the girl has ponytails and she hates ponytails.

I need to get out my camera and take some pics. I was going to *gasp* work on my New Years Resolution and get January and February done in my yearly photo book, but I hardly have any pictures.