Halloween!

The kiddies had way too much fun! It was hilarious to watch The Pony Girl and the Monkey gleefully toddle from door to door with a tumbling Lady Bug following close behind. Estelle didn't even know what she was getting in her bag, but whatever it was she didn't care! A couple of times I tried to carry it for her because it was getting heavy, but had to give it up to a worried little voice ranting "bag, bag, bag!". She was a total trooper throughout the night and walked almost the whole route by herself, side by side with her sister.

Camille was awesome in her horsey costume, sound effects and all. She gleefully trotted around the neighborhood and was just stoked that people were handing her candy just because she looked cute. Before and after our excursion she happily handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters who came to our door, it was so cute and by the end she totally had the hang of it and was handing out BIG fistfulls.

The next day we binged on candy and Camille decided to give Riley's lady bug costume a try. It was actually her costume from last year, though it fits a little differently now!

Horsies and pumpkins

Here are the picture from Victoria's Garden (finally). This week has been a crazy busy week, though it seems like I always am saying that! Today was Great Grandma Bloughs birthday so we spent most of the day up in Oceanside to celebrate. She turned 89, which means she was born in 1917. I can't even fathom what our world must have been like back then! It's crazy to think that someone so close to us has lived in a time so far away. One day I will be like that, too. It's scary and exciting and a little mind-boggling all at the same time.

I will be starting to teach cooking classes this Tuesday at Horizon Prep in Rancho Santa Fe. That's exciting and will be a good change to our life, though definitely a bit of an adjustment. It'll definitely be good for our whole family for me to get out of the house a little, I think.

Camille has been quite rambunctious this week, she seems to go through cycles. Usually she is so helpful and willing and curious and fun, but sometimes she goes through these phases where she is just grumpy and mean. I guess we all do. This week she has seemed to be testing the waters a lot and beating up on her sister and getting angry and lashing out more than usual, but God willing we will learn where this energy is coming from and have more success this coming week in channeling it into a more positive outcome. To her defense, I have been going crazy trying to organize the house more (we are still wrecked from the move-in) and make Baby Shower invitations for Chrissy and get prepared for my cooking class while still babysitting Riley, hosting a dinner/ bible study and hosting another dinner on Friday night for out-of-town relatives. Jeremy has had a crazy work week and not been around really at all, so it may all be from lack of attention this week. Anyhooo- tomorrow is a new day, right? :)

These pictures are great- well, the one of Estelle on the horse didn't come out so hot but I had to post it! We are really looking forward to Trick-or-Treating in another week and I'll definitely have pictures of that to put up, too!

dinner & pumpkins

Tonight we had dinner with the Holford clan, which was a lot of fun. Camille and Porter are about 6 months apart and have known each other for longer than they'll ever be able to remember. Tonight was the first night that Camille ever has cried because she didn't want me around :) What a milestone... madness! As we were winding down the night Natalie and Jason were loading up kid one into their car and Porter was saying he didn't want to leave. They soon came back to get him and wrangle him into the car and no sooner did they get out the door when Camille began to wail "I want to go to Porter's, mama, I want to go with Porter!"

"Camille," I said "I'm not gonna go with you, though. You'll have to go by yourself! Are you okay with that?"

Wide eyed Camille looked around the room. She was silent as she was contemplating and then she figured it out. "Sissy go too. Me and Sissy go." And that was that. Boy, was she upset when she realized that it wasn't her decision to be made :)

The pumpkins are another story and it was so much fun! Sabrina decided it would be fun for our playgroup to take a "field trip" to this place called Victoria's Garden to go pumpkin picking! It was really cool, it was this farm that is set up with fun stuff for kiddos during different times of the year. During the autumn it is a pumpkin patch that's got all kinds of other fun stuff for people to do. The kids got to ride their first real pony ride and a hay bale ride. The petting zoo was awesome and Camille and Estelle got to pet their first alpaca. Estelle LOVED the duck in the petting zoo and insisted on chasing her around the pen and pointing and yelling "duck, duck, duck!" Camille fell in love with some soft little bunny rabbits and a baby goat. The bouncy house was fun, as always, and all of the kids took pride in choosing their very own jack-o-lantern pumpkin to bring home (Camille was determined to find a "yittle tiny baby one" and Estelle was just so excited to pick on out to call her own and carry it all by herself. I still need to upload the pictures from that trip and search the ones that other people from playgroup post to find a couple of good ones. When I do I will definitely post them for you to see. All in all it was a ton of fun and highly recommended for any kids in the SD area.

The pictures that I posted right now are just random - I thought they were cute! They are from the last time we painted which was Wednesday. They decided it was more fun to paint themselves then the paper this time, which made for pretty bathwater afterwards ;) I swear, that easel is the best investment we have made for them thus far! They love it, and who knows - maybe one day they will both be famous artists. Or, if they get in trouble for doodling in their notebooks in high school instead of taking notes we'll know where they learned it.

Now that I put those pictures up...

Ode to the sparkly shoes, part deux. Thank you, mom, for updating Camille and Estelle's look with some new different colored sparkly shoes :) They love them and I love cleaning up red glitter from different corners of my house.

Painting was awesome and Camille has been talking about it ever since, though I haven't pulled the paint out to let her do it again. Once in a blue moon is enough for me at this point! We did get some one on one time during Estelle (and Riley's) nap time today to color, though, and that was really fun. I think today I learned the importance of coloring with my daughter. It doesn't happen enough. I once heard that working mothers spend the same amount if not more quality time with their children than mothers who stay at home. The statement made me so sad because there was a lot of truth in it. I think those of us who stay at home find that we are constantly busy with everything else in our lives that we lack the ability to step back, breath, and spend some real fun quality time with our children. Especially with two of them, I think that one on one time with each of them is almost impossible - although not really. The day seems filled with a jumbled mess of trying to pacify children, trying to get away from children to get five seconds to breath by yourself, trying to cook meals and clean house and unpack and organize and and and, well, and not really succeeding at any of it. Nothing really gets the quality that it should. I think that working parents spend all day away from their kids that by the end of the day they can't wait to see their family and they make the minutes count more. Maybe we should learn to put things on the back burner sometimes and not try ot do everything at once. Maybe we should make our minutes count more instead of trying to make them pass so fast. Maybe our children would be better pacified if real quality time was spent with them every day in the first place. Maybe a fifteen minute quality "breather" by myself would keep me going longer and stronger for the rest of the day, and maybe dishes would get done faster without two kids crawling up my legs. How do you do that, though? Maybe that's the point of parenthood - to go nuts trying to figure it all out and to become a better person because of it.

so much

It seems the days don't like to slow down! Every day that passes by, I think of all the wonderful, beautiful, insightful things that I want to blog about. The days just pass so fast that by the time it's time for me to be here again there is too much to say. I write nothing because everything won't fit. I have some beautiful pictures today, though, and maybe they will update you on what's been going on in our lives. I'll try to put them in order. I just hope that one day I'll find the time to not let it all slip past so fast, to stare at the beautiful eyes of my daughters and huband and get lost and write about it and remember it and grasp it so that I won't regret it or forget it. Here are the pictures.

Can we keep her?

It was the cutest thing ever! Estelle just woke up from her nap and Camille heard her, so she ran into the bedroom and jumped into bed with her. I soon wandered in and jumped into bed between my two girls and Camille reached over me and patted her sister on the cheek. "Ohhh, how cute sissy. Can we buy her? Can we buy her, mama?" Camille asked. It was so FUNNY! I was like "Ummm, buy her? You mean you want to keep her?"
"Uh huh" Camille said
"You like having your sister around, Camille?"
"yup". And she jumped off the bed, and that was that.
It was pretty cute.

sparkly shoes

Okay, so I have this dilemma. I don't want to fight with my children over frivolous things, things that don't need to be fought over. I also don't want anybody to laugh at my kid! At what point to you draw the line? Sometimes Camille thinks she looks real hip - I think it's cute. She LOVES these sparkly shoes and wool black and white checkered pants. Summer, winter, too hot, too small, who cares? I've fought with her all summer about wearing these pants because it's been so hot but finally the weather's cooled down to the point where I can't use that excuse anymore. She "lost" these shoes for a while because they are completely too small for her, but now she's really excited that she found them again.

How do you say no to an over zealous 2 and a half year old? She's not bothered by too-tight shoes, as long as they look good. And she thinks she looks pretty hot. Which brings me back to my original dilemma...

nailpolish

I am so excited that I was blessed with the gift of having girls. Or I suppose I could have put nailpolish on a boy. At this age he wouldn't have known the difference, right?

The joy that painting tiny fingernails gives me is unsurpassable. The chubby fingers and plump, sticky hands grabbing at the bottle, the toothy smiles and the squeals of delight just completely fill my heart with a sense of contentment that I've not found in anything else. When we first had Camille, I was in love but I had a sense of guilt. I watched her play in the middle of the rug, alone, and it tore at my heart. I felt so bad that this little playful angel of a being was alone! I mean, I was there with her but I had my own stuff to do and couldn't play with her all of the time. She never really complained, she just sat and read her books to herself and played with her toys, but it made me so SAD! I couldn't wait to make her a little sibling! I grew up in a close-knit fairly large extended family group and I loved having other souls to interact with all of the time. I grew up knowing that nothing was as important as family and that nothing could come between blood, when it all came down to it. So we HAD to make Estelle, and we did. So this picture brings me complete joy.

It's been amazing watching them interact. Estelle turned 1 in June, which makes her about 15 months old now. It's only been recently that they really are interacting like sisters. I mean, they have always been aware of each other and tried to play with each other but they were at such different developmental stages and lately Estelle seems to be catching up to Camille. It's really cool and really fun to watch their interaction as they become playmates instead of just siblings. They are growing into friends.

I guess that's really why I wanted to start this blog at this moment. I feel the desire to capture their interaction now, before it's lost and forgotten to time. I know that there are always ups and downs with siblings and that you can't force them to get along if they don't want to. I know that just because they are sisters doesn't mean that they will be best friends. From the beginning, my biggest prayer and hope has been that they will have that connection, that I could give them the best gift in the world - each other. I hope above all else that one day they realize that. I know that the only thing that I can do is try to be the best teacher I can, to facilitate and to nurture and to try to show them how important this connection and the connection of all family is. Unconditional love and acceptance and help and growth within it. Family is what you've got left when it all comes down to it. It's ALL you've got left. And sisters - pshhh - you've got a built in best friend right there from birth.

yogurt monster

It was just for a second, I swear! I guess that's all it took. Check out this pic. and see what I've had to put up with while TRYING to unpack and get us settled into our nice new home. Yeah. I suppose I should have known better considering that something like this happens, umm, all the time! It's moments like these that I wish I would keep track of better and take more pictures of. Yes, for the intrinsic value of the photo, for the joy of being able to look back upon the times that passed so fast and to laugh at the hilarity of it all, but also for a reason that many of you may not be thinking of... for the shear purpose of defending myself.
Okay, okay, I know it's kind of silly, but photos like this need to be taken and stuck away as PROOF, proof that I, as a stay-at-home mom, really do have a lot of work to do all day. Something to show to Jeremy when he comes home at the end of a long day of work and asks, in disbelief as he looks around at the remnants of a house that was semi-clean when he left in the morning, "What did you do all day?" Those six little words that I'm sure every stay-at-home mom has heard at some point in her stay-at-home career, those words that make you cringe and begin to boil and lash out at the poor, aloof and unknowing hubby. Those words that every man soon learns NEVER to say, especially after you decide to leave him home all day to cook for, clean-up after and pacify children all day without even a warning to beware the yogurt monster.

MOVING

Sucks. Other than that, it's pretty fun to clear out the crap and start anew. Sorry I've been away for so long, but I decided to start a blog at the most inopportune time since we just bought a house and I think I disconnected my computer the day after I first blogged :). I am finally up and running again and even though times are hectic I will try to make the time to get on here atleast every other day. I have a feeling that things never slow down. Two girls, man, they keep you running.
More on that later, though. I'll post pictures soon too!

In The Beginning

First came Camille. She was little and squishy and pink with a mop of dark hair and squinty eyes. She weighed 8 lbs. and 12 oz., which is BIG when you consider how she came into this world. She took our breath away and was beautiful.

Nine months went by and I got the hang of things a little. I decided that life was good and that babies were cake and that Camille needed a little sibling above all else. Nine months after that came Estelle.

Estelle was little and squishy and pink with an even bigger mop of dark hair and even squintier eyes. She looked like a tiny sumo wrestler. She weighed 10 lbs. and 2 oz., which is HUGE when you consider how she came into this world. She also took our breath away and was beautiful.

Now Camille had a little sister, and our life was complete. So we thought. Little did we anticipate the tribulations that lay ahead, the stories and the memories made and yet to come. Little did we know the angst or the elation that accompany parenthood and sisterhood. My wish is to chronicle the lives of these sisters that we created so that one day they can look back on these days that they don't remember, the journey from egocentricism to a polycentric world and laugh and cry and love the way things were and are. Thanks for reading and letting me write.