Deuces

Most mornings you come down the stairs, and trailing behind you is your "soft blanket". It is funny only because it is a queen size blanket- your favorite for the last year or so- and not a smaller, more managably-sized blanket. Sometimes you struggle and grunt. Sometimes you wrap up your babies in the blanket and take them down the stairs for the ride. If it is a cold morning, you will opt to call for me, instead.   I'll try to negotiate and call you to come down because going up the stairs to retrieve you can be an *awful lot of work for this 7 month pregnant woman.  But I always lose that battle. Eventually you ensure I come up to find you still wrapped in your soft blanket, waiting for me to hold your hand as we make way down the stairs (since I can no longer carry your 35 pound frame on top of the 25 extra pounds I'm carrying in my mid-section...) Usually you are naked or in another state of undress- sensible pajamas never being your thing.  From birth you would ...

It's the start of a New Year, and it makes me so incredibly happy. I don't put much credence into the start of a New Year.  It is no more or less special than the start of any new day that offers promise and hope, great weather and unexpected surprises.  Opportunities can come on any day, and it is perhaps just a coincidence that today, the first day of 2016, I feel especially excited by the great unknowns of this year. It has started with breakfast in bed- a treat from my husband who has been on staycation with me. It has been a morning of purging my phone of old messages and text streams because according to Jeanette they are why I can't download any more apps on my iPhone... Instead of reading through them and reminiscing, in one fell swoop I delete them.   There is no going back. I hold onto a few voicemails from 2013-2015 that I can't yet get rid of... Maybe tomorrow... I sit in my clean bedroom, alone, as I often do, and poring through a new book that Lloyd bought...

I wish you could see you just as I see you in this moment. We're eating skittles and gummy bears, carefully trying to eat slowly enough that Lloyd doesn't miss a portion before getting home from work (I bought the gummy bears for him, after all, but we were just too impatient to wait on him...) I love the way your soft curls hang gently around your face. Your hair is just messy enough to be adorable, bed head from sleeping on the car ride to pick up dinner.  I love the way your hair sometimes parts itself to the side creating a sweeping bang to frame your forehead. I love your happy smile, happily sampling all the flavors of the rainbow in our treats.  I love your sweet voice, and the way we talk about the candies so seriously as though we were talking about war or famine.  I love the way you encourage me to try a new flavor, holding it out with a convincing grin and overzealously saying "mommy, you HAVE to try it, it's SO good!" I wish you could see you just as I...

The weekend was full- Saturday night spent with a 5 hour dinner to celebrate Sueann's 33rd birthday at Lola Gaspar. Just 4 gals trying to appreciate one another's company, while feigning to be agitated by the disrupting rounds of drinks sent our way as the evening progressed.  Small, liquid reminders we aren't completely washed up messes. We still gots it. And as Sunday rolled around there was no stopping Sayler and I from a visit to the soccer park to watch our favorite MGFM player score a goal (that wasn't allowed, but whatever...) and an invitation to our family to visit with us at our home after our team loss. It was nice to spend time with my sister and kids, and everything was going quite perfectly until Sayler slyly, yet loudly decided to announce " sometimes my daddy gets in the mood...." She smirked while my family stared, eyes wide. I paused. I shifted the weight from my feet to the lump in my throat.  Certain I had misheard I quizzed ...

We ate dinner on the patio.   The patio that desperately needed cleaning, on cushions that needed a spanking. (What do you call it when you dust out cushions?... Certainly it's in the spanking family). As I slowly bit off my bean and cheese burrito I looked sadly at the overgrown shrubs and flowers that spilled out over each other, crowded behind the hidden retaining wall. Our garden has been neglected.  Lloyd's been working overtime and I've been... Just working, I guess. And the garden has suffered considerably.  But the garden is mostly his domain. "No one's touching my backyard" he compromised when I asked him if we could hire a gardener for our front lawn.  (Best investment ever.) And so when things get unruly out back I usually just have to say... "The garden..." And he knows it's time to put on his gloves and pull out all the tools and contraptions that wait patiently in our garage for such laborious moments.  It's nearly 7:30 pm on a ...

It's the best way to start a weekend. A 7 a.m. laugh. At some God-forsaken hour earlier I heard my husband's alarm go off.  Still half-asleep, I wondered "is it not Saturday?..."  and realized that an early morning alarm for Lloyd on his day off is not uncommon. An English match for his sometimes winning, oftentimes losing hometown team that he insists on watching win (or lose) live. But I slept in, curled up next to our little girl who likes tosleepthisclosetoyouatalltimes. And when hunger finally beckoned me to get up, the way it does every morning, I retreated downstairs and knew my husband would be in the garage watching soccer and/or playing music- enjoying the quiet of the weekend morning to himself. It was at that 7 a.m. moment I opened the garage door to find Lloyd laid out on the concrete, acoustic guitar clutched in hand still echoing a chord though he was not strumming.  He was somewhere between the fetal position and ab crunch and I was at a lo...

Celebrated Amanda's bridal shower with Charmaine and the girls over the weekend.  Love my niece, Cheyanne! Ready to start her sophomore year of high school, Varsity letterman her Freshman year in soccer, so smart, funny and confident.  She brightens our days. The best gifts my parents gave me was siblings to give me such wonderful nieces and nephews: Chey and Say Charlie, Aidan and Cambria at Say's 4th birthday Ariel with Sayler: Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto