The Fire Truck series

Monkey has drawn a fire truck every day this week. She will ask for paper and markers, get them all set up, and then say, "I'm ready for my investigation." Then she goes and plays with her fire truck for awhile, holding it in her hands, looking at the ladder and the firefighters, pushing the siren button, and pushing the truck around on the ground. Then she sits down for about 20 minutes and works on her fire truck drawing. It's always an "abstract" drawing, and she has changed around the location of the tires and the ladder every day, and put different firefighters in each picture.

She also likes to alternately pretend she is a 10-year-old boy that we know, Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton, and a ballerina.

Just another little peek into the growing brains over here . . . .

Swiper

Out of the blue . . .

Turtle: Swiper (from Dora) doesn't swipe things anymore. He only swipes Nazis.

Twin Momma, startled: Did you say Nazis?

Turtle: Yes

Twin Momma: Do you remember what a Nazi is?

Turtle and Monkey in unison: A bad soldier.

I have no explanation for this. I guess Turtle somehow connected the bad guys from the Sound of Music with Swiper. She didn't elaborate, just went back to bouncing around the house. Just wanted to share a peek into this little brain . . .

Still Here

Oh my goodness, where have I been? I'm so embarrassed by my sporadic posting that I've considered closing the blog down but I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't know if anyone will even read this as I'm sure even my most loyal readers have long ago stopped checking my website for updates.

So, I guess I can just write like no one's watching. And what would I write about if I thought no one was watching? Hmm. Let's start with Rob Lowe. He graced the cover of Vanity Fair last month and I've been meaning to tell someone that I nearly fainted in the grocery store check-out line when I saw it. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I'm telling you I saw a little black around the edges of my eyes and my heart kept jumping from my throat to my gut as I tried to catch my breath. The man is hot, is what I'm saying, and has been my #1 heartthrob since I was about 10 years old. Do you think it is just a random happenstance that I married a lanky man with dark hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones? I don't think so people. I had a Rob Lowe Tiger Beat centerfold pinned over the head of my bed that I kissed before bedtime for a lot of my tween years. Those looks were embedded into my consciousness.

As a side note, I did not buy the Vanity Fair issue. I can't have that thing around the house - it would be like looking directly at the sun all the time. The image seared in my brain is much easier to handle.

Let's see, what else. It's kind of been all-Oprah all the time over here. I am a huge fan (in substance, as opposed to solely in appearance as is the case with Mr. Lowe) and I accepted her departure with as much grace as I could muster. Having a weekly Oprah fix over on OWN will help, and I plan to save her final episode on my DVR indefinitely.

Several other noteworthy events have gone on here that are actually about me and not about my television friends. First off, I celebrated turning 39 last Sunday by completing a sprint-distance triathlon. I trained quite a bit for it and had a lot of fun and plan to do more this year. Secondly, I started doing some legal work from home on a part-time contract basis. And those two short sentences actually fully explain why I haven't posted a thing in this blog in nearly 2 months. Between squeezing training and working into the hours of 9-2 M-F and trying to do everything else that I used to do in those hours some other time and handling the resulting emotional fallout from being less available for Monkey, I stretched myself a little thin. So I'm taking a break from intensive training, and trying not to care about how "everything else" is no longer getting done. Those two things have already helped this past week with Monkey's behavior, which in turn has given me more energy, and voila, here is a blog post.

This blog is supposed to be about the kids, and next time it will be. If I could just force myself to sit down for three minutes a day and write the funniest thing they said that day, this would be a great blog. Unfortunately, now it's late and I can't think of anything I can write about them in 3 minutes or less so you'll have to be satisfied with my telling you that they are just fine. And that I'm too embarrassed to tell you how many episodes of Bubble Guppies they watched today. "Everything else" does have to get done sometime, doesn't it?