Times have Changed - And Then There Were Three!

I don’t claim to know all things, some things…well most things (at least that’s what I tell my kids), but not ALL things. I do know this though. I know that the decisions I have made in my life are not based purely on selfish needs, I know that I have thought them through and determined a course without haste. I know that every day I try a little harder to smooth the path that got so bumpy, to steady the little footsteps of those that walk beside me, to help them over the roadblocks, to pick them up when they fall, to hold them when they cry. It’s not always easy feeling responsible for the direction of the lives you change, the burden can feel heavy, the fears can be suffocating and the anger can seem never ending. I also know that I do not need anyone’s judgement or opinion. I need only your love and support or your complete distance.

 Adulthood is so far from the reality of what I thought it would be as a child. I couldn’t wait to grow up, to get married, to have a real job. Now I just wish I could take a nap and run around outside in just my undies if I want.

 I do not believe in self ­pity, I do however believe in compassion. In a world where we are judged by so many and known by so few it just seems so off balance. When I first got separated from my husband of 16 years I knew that decision would come with some negative judgement, with people talking, assuming and making up their own version of whatever story they wanted to tell. I tried really hard to stay true to the motto I wanted to endure those times with, “Those who know me and love me will know the truth”. It held tight. Those who know me and love me do know the truth and those who don’t know me and judged me are wrong and misinformed. There is a small twinge of satisfaction in knowing that too.

 My kids are strong and brilliant, funny and outgoing. They are the reason I wanted something so much better for my life. We as society put everyone in the same box with the same set of rules for the game of life. I have no interest in playing by the rules to avoid judgement, I would rather be an example of how changing the rules can make it better. I do believe in marriage and all the wonderful things that come with it, don’t get me wrong. I never in a gazillion years imagined this would be my life. I never imagined a day without the man I married. But life happens and when we fall so far that we think there is no way out we have to change the rules.

 I don’t know all things, but I do know this. I know that happiness is important, those who love us will always be there, those who don’t, well we don’t need them. I know that my children are strong and that I have not ruined their lives forever. I know that childhood is hard, as is life and no matter what choices I make I can only do the best I can for all of us. Judge me if you must, but before you do, at least know me.

 And in the words of my eight year old son put so simply “Happiness Wins”

The Things They Say!

Well 2009 is under full swing now, today marking the first day of February already. It's hard to imagine where the time has gone already.

January has been a historic month, so much has happened, so many new seeds being planted, now we are just waiting for the growth. I'm excited that my kids get to grow up in a world where colour seems less important than the character of a person.

Well onto the happenings around the Robl household...Ethan is in a "big boy" bed now. We got Skylar a twin and moved Ethan into the toddler bed. I decked it out with cars and trucks linens and he LOVES his new bed. He - for the most part - even stays in it. I think he feels less trapped now, he loves to climb in and out of his bed throughout the day too, it's like his own little space that he now has complete access to whenever he pleases. I'm so glad the transition was a smooth one. My little boy is growing so fast it makes my heart sore. But at the same time, I love the age he is at, he is so full of personality and character it's a treat getting to know him. He is definately stubborn and stands his ground which makes for a challenge (and a laugh) every now and again.

So, I apologise for the following story that I am about to tell, I try not to bring "potty talk" to the table when I write my blog but this is too funny to pass up. Skylar goes #2 yesterday and after a little bit of a struggle decides she is done. She gets off the seat and turns around to peer into the bowl where there lies one lonely soldier. She remarks "Oh Mommy - poor little guy...he doesn't have any friends!" Ha ha ha ha...OMG, I'm still laughing. I had never thought about a poop being lonely, I guess these are things that concern 3 year olds. Too funny I tell you, too freaking funny.

I am eagerly awaiting Spring, although it seems like it's been a mild Winter, I am so done with cold weather. I long for the warm glow of the sun.

Tonsils...Frosty...Books...Chocolate and other stuff

Phew!!! I survived the holidays in one piece. It really was a nice Christmas this year, quiet but very enjoyable. The kids had a blast and love all their new stuff. There were no gifts this year that required assembly so I had no cause to break down in tears of frustration like I did last year. The packaging seemed a little more parent friendly too this year, easier to get things out and a lot less paper cuts at the end of the day. It was a good time all round.

So one of the gifts the kids got was a snowman making kit, all the stuff you need to decorate a Frosty. We (yes-me included) couldn't wait (makes me sick to wish for snow) for the first big-enough-to-make-a-snowman snowfall. Well yesterday it finally happened. Skylar woke up and saw the snow and immediately asked if we could make a snowman. Of course I said we could as soon as she got home. So I waited for it - I rang the doorbell to daycare, got her coat on, said our hello's and goodbye's, headed out the door, down the stairs, almost to the car "Mommy can we make a snowman?" I knew it...I knew she wouldn't forget!!! So the minute we came home we marched straight out to the backyard and build our first snowman of the season. We decorated him with all the fixings and he looked splendid to say the very least. Then Skylar asked if he was going to move...I sure as hell hope not, that would just freak me out. Frosty looked so good on the patio glowing in the moonlight last night, this morning however paints a different picture. He has some melted spots that are strangely tinted yellow...hmmm, wonder what that could be? I guess the dogs have no respect for the visitor we have in the backyard, or perhaps they were just welcoming him to the yard. Poor guy!

6:40am, Ethan roused from his not so deep sleep and sits up and asks for books. Really? Already? Can it wait just a moment while I try to pry my eye(s) open? Ughhh, fine we'll read. Then he wants down, so he gets down, "come on" he says, as he toddles down the passageway toward the kitchen. "cocalit" he says, as he reaches into the cupboard for a bowl. So books and chocolate, all before I'm awake and all before 7am. This is my boy! Last night for some reason he was yelling about wanting juice all through the night. I'm not sure he was even awake as he was yelling about wanting juice. I know his favourite things in life are...Mommy, Skylar, Daddy, cars, juice, chocolate and books. At a friends house the other night, Ethan picked out a very nice pair of pointy-toed high heel shoes that he strutted around in all night, this Ethan of mine - he's a strange (but incredibly cute) one.

So the news is in - the tonsils must come out. And really, while I'm a worry wart and hate the thought of my child enduring pain, even if for a moment, makes me sick to my stomach, I'm so grateful they are going to yank those enormous suckers out of there. Free up her airway and let her finally breath as she sleeps. And perhaps once she sleeps more soundly, so too will I. So the date is set and now we just wait. My poor baby girl :(

So with a new year having rolled in, I'm excited for the adventures of 2009. Happy New Year everyone, I hope this is a very blessed and happy one for all.

Did Santa come yet??

Says Skylar as she runs inside after being picked up from daycare!!! It's Christmas time again-and oh how I love Christmas with kids. it's just so much fun to watch them get excited with all the things leading up to the big day.

We have taken Skylar and Ethan to see Santa twice now, both times Skylar was in love and had no worries hanging with the S man, but Ethan on the other hand, terrified! Poor little guy. He wants nothing to do with this Santa business. He screamed the first time and the second time I didn't even push the issue, I asked him if he wanted to sit with Santa, he said "no" and shook his head and that was that. Skylar has been telling Santa she wants a kitty, since Tyson passed away last year, she really has wanted another kitty. She won't be getting that this year, but sometime soon we hope. So her sleeping bag that she sleeps on at daycare broke and she needed a new one, so she says to me...thinking first..."I have an idea, maybe I can ask Santa to buy me one." ha ha ha ha, I love it!

So the tree has been up, ornaments have been tugged on, rearranged, some have gone missing, but it's still up. Two kids, two dogs and a cat later - the tree is still standing. I think that's pretty impressive. The moment I am waiting for is Christmas morning when they come into the living room and there before them will be the big moment, Christmas Morning in all it's grandeur. I loved being a kid and waking up on Christmas morning, the tree having bore the fruit of every child's dreams - presents...the all magical presents.

Of course we recognise Christmas for what it is, but as a kid there is nothing more magical than that moment, that first moment of realisation on Christmas morning, the moment when you feel the world around you stand still momentarily while excitement takes hold of every inch of your little body, the moment when you believe in the magic of Christmas. I can't wait to share that moment with my two little people this year. For them it's one thing, for us as parents our magical moment is seeing that happiness in our children, that excitement and knowing that somehow in some small way, other than our every day actions we can make their dreams come true. Being a parent is the best gift I could wish for this Christmas, having 100% patience 100% of the time is a gift I hope to one day receive :)

Merry Christmas everyone.

Deep Thoughts

Lately I find myself watching my kids and I will just stand there and watch them play and laugh and copy each other. They are so carefree. I think back to a time in my life when I was a child and my brother and I would run around the same exact way, laughter would follow us wherever we went. We would spend mud-covered days romping in the dirty dam water with the dogs on the farm, we would ride our bikes down long dirt tracks. Life was good, simple, it was childhood. And then one day we woke up and life as we knew it was never going to be the same. We watched our Mother being carried out of our house, never a thought that that would be it, that we would never get to say goodbye...and just like that, for my brother and I childhood ended that day. Every day since then I have wondered what things would have been like, how different things would have been. It's a hollow echo in my heart day in and day out.

At the end of every day when I go to pick my kids up from daycare, the look on their face is priceless, the love they throw at me overwhelms my very being, and there they are, two little people who rely and depend on me every day for everything. I cannot imagine if something were to happen to me. I never want my kids to have to feel that pain, that loneliness, that emptiness that I have felt every day since the day my Mom died. I wish I could wrap these little people in a huge big bubble and protect them from life, it hurts me to think of the pain they are going to go through in their own lives, I wish I could protect them from that.

My consolation is that as my little people grow they attach to each other it seems, they are getting closer by the day and I hope that in life they always have each other to lean on. Nobody understands you like a sibling does, because nobody else but them experiences the home life that you do. For me, sometimes I feel like, while I'm part of a family, we aren't close, I mean close in terms of talking to each other every week or even emailing every week. I feel close to my family in that I love them all very much, but I feel distant in that I don't think any of them really know who I am as a person, truly know me. We all went our separate ways early on in adult life and I think in a sense as we were finding ourselves we lost sight of each other. It feels lonely sometimes.

All I want is for my little people to grow up in a home that is full of love, a home that makes them feel safe, secure and a home where childhood is childhood and one day as they are adults and telling their kids stories of when they were little, I hope they can remember it, the happy times, the good times. I don't remember childhood, or much of it, I remember that things were once uncomplicated, childhood was once fun.

Sorry for the heavy load. It's hard to explain how much I love my kids and want to protect them and it's only escalated with my own childhood experiences.

Skylar and Ethan are best friends these days, and honestly I thought it would be Ethan who would want to copy Skylar and not the other way around. Well Skylar likes to do things that Ethan does. For example the other night she is crying in bed so I go up there and she is crying because she wants pajamas like Ethan's. In the morning she wants to wear a coat like Ethan, and really the list goes on. It's funny. And he, well I suppose he does everything she does too. It's almost funny to watch them, they are practically clones of one another, only Ethan is a boy and Skylar...well she's a girl of course. DUH!

So the problem lately is that Ethan won't leave his ...in his words "pee-pee" alone. The boy loves it, plays with it all the time. My Hub seems to think that we have a freak son who is obsessed with his boy bits. I keep trying to reassure him that all is fine and it's a normal thing for little boys to do. Hub is not buying it. As per the doc though, it's normal. He's a little Al Bundy, hands down his pants every moment he can find. It's a phase, it will pass. Wait a minute...I don't know a grown man that has outgrown that phase. Oh well. As long as once he gets older he learns the "pee-pee" etiquette and leaves it alone in public. Then we are okay!

Skylar has started preschool and is loving every single second of it. She cried the first two days she went and now when I drop her off she barely says goodbye to me and is off playing with something. I love that she loves it. She needed it and she is thriving on it. She is so excited in the mornings to go it makes me know that it's a good place for her. She cannot stop talking about her teachers and her new friends and all the neat things they do. For Thanksgiving they were asked what they were grateful for, Skylar's read as such "My Baby Brother (first), Mommy, Daddy, Grandmas and Grandpas" I just about died when I read it on the wall of thanks! How darn cute is that? Of course Ethan came first.

Well I really could go on and on and on and on, but I won't. Perhaps I will just start to blog my once weekly (heard that before?) like I am supposed to instead of trying to fit a whole month of little people love into one blog entry.

Luf You

So the other day I'm standing in the kitchen and Skylar comes over and puts her arms around my legs and squeezes me and says "I love you Mommy". Melts my heart. Then Ethan who does everything his big sister does comes over and puts his little arms around my leg, rest his head on my knee cap and looks up at me and says "luf you" OMG! Is it possible to love these little people anymore than I already do? It's moments like that in life where you just want time to stop and you want to keep the picture and the feeling in your heart forever.

It's been a busy time with pumpkin patches and pumpkin carving and all the Halloween festivities. We went to a pumpkin patch and there were scarecrows all over the place. All the scarecrows that were sitting on the ground, Ethan pile-drived. He jumped on every one of them-too stinking funny.

Skylar has been asking me to go to school F-O-R-E-V-E-R and so one week from today she will be starting preschool. Last night she is sitting on our bed and promptly announces that she doesn't want to go to school anymore. What? We have been building up to this moment for the past year and now she doesn't want to go anymore. I'm guessing she was just tired and cranky and blurted it out without meaning a word of it. Arghhh!

Grandma and Grandpa will be arriving for a visit this week, Skylar is about bursting out of her tiny little body. It's going to be a fun time.

Ethan is talking up a storm these days, it's so fun to hear all the fun things he says. Whenever he sees Elmo he is especially enthusiastic and blurts out "ELMO" he also loves trucks and cars and when he heard the fire engine sirens the other days he said "fire truck!" He's at such a great age where every second he is doing something new.

Skylar is still the same beautiful little spirit she always is. Lately she seems a little quieter. I can't help but wonder what is going on in her little head. I wish I knew what they did while I was gone all day, I wish I knew if she was truly happy every day at daycare. I wish I knew everything. For the sake of the hub-I DO know everything BTW.

There is so much beauty to my life, I try to appreciate all of it, the hub, the tiny little people who wrap their little arms around my legs and say "luf you Mommy". If I have nothing else in life I have my family and really I think that's enough.

Scary Guys in the Closet

There is not a day that goes by that I don't look at my kids in complete awe of their innocence and chilhood sweetness. I love how there is so much new stuff to learn and to explore and to discover, the world is so new and full of promise. Each thing they do, each new thing they discover, each new fear...it all just amazes me.

The Hub thought it a good idea to let Skylar watch a snippet of ET (no-not Entertainment Tonight) the other day, yep he sure did! Anyhoo, she sat glued to the TV watching some strange (albeit cute) alien -like creature for about 5 minutes. Five minutes is all it took to have her terrified out of her little mind. She burst out crying right then and there on the spot. Of course I said it wasn't a good idea!!! Did anyone (i.e. hubby) listen? Phhht, of course not. So off to bed she goes, 15 minutes later I hear distraught screaming from her room. I run in there to find her bolt upright in her bed with the most terrified face. I asked her what was wrong and she proceeds to tell me how there are scary guys in her closet. Poor little baby. And why may I ask are the monsters always in the closet? Couldn't they hide other places, like behind the door or under the bed? Does it always have to be in the closet?

Why do boys have a naturally adventurous spirit where they have no fear and think they can do anything without any kind of consequences? And why do big boys remind us of little boys so much, is it that they never truly grow up? I have found many similarities between the hub and the little mini hub. I will list them, and I apologise ahead of time for the use of the word shhh*penis*shhhhh. So with that said, I will start out on that point. Do they ever learn to leave it alone? They take up most of the bed at all times without any regard for the other warm bodies fighting for a sliver of mattress. They love boobs. They believe that they and only they are right at all times (oh wait..that could be me!). Okay so I thought I had more things to list but really what it boils down to is this...my son and my hub seem like the same person, only Ethan a tiny little version of his Daddy, I just wonder, do they ever grow up?

There is nothing like watching siblings learn about each other, watching them grow close and bond in a way only siblings can. I, in the last two weeks or so, have really seen Skylar and Ethan come together, she-watching over him, he -just watching!