hola, isabel

Did any of you notice that my blog disappeared for two weeks?  The fact that only two people asked me about leads me to believe that, as far as the interweb is concerned, I am dead to you.

Being that I haven’t posted for almost two months I have nobody to blame but myself.

(Stupid, stupid self.)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, can you even believe that it’s been over ten months since I gave birth to Rerun?

The kid is freakin’ adorable and I love him more and more every single day.

My favorite cousin got married last weekend.  We were able to spend the day with my family celebrating!  Rerun was more then happy to sit on the dance floor listening to The Wedding Singer and watching Babboo and his second cousin dance around.

Babboo was happy just taking pictures with the camera my dad let him use. 

Overall I think they were both enamored with their second cousin.  Babboo was convinced that because she had “a wedding dress” on it meant that somebody needed to marry her. 

He said he’d marry her.

I figured it wasn’t worth it to try to explain genetics and social rules and all the other reasons for not marrying your cousin.

And in other news, just to prove that I’m still alive, here’s a picture taken at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

So there, my dear interweb, proof that I have not vanished.*

What have you been up to?

*I know you don’t want to hear it but honestly my life is twice as busy as it used to be. Thanks to being the mother of two kids and my project at work doubling.  Put the two together and you have “OMG I CAN’T FIND THE TIME TO CLEAN MY BATHROOM HOW CAN YOU EXPECT ME TO DO EVERYTHING ELSE?”  Forgive me.

Rerun finally got a chance to take a ride on an airplane last weekend.

He could have cared less about the whole thing.  And I’m pretty sure he’s look back at this trip in years to come and be upset that we didn’t wait until he could actually remember any part of his first time in Disneyland.

Oh well, we had a blast.  And I’ll remember.

Size matter not.  Judge me by my size, do you? – Master Yoda

Man, how time flies with the second kid.

Last Saturday was The King’s 39th birthday. (Happy Birthday, Baby!) The King has been known to be a very thoughtful gift giver and so I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to get him for his birthday.  I like my gifts to him to be The Best Gift Ever.

The Lululemon manifesto came to mind.

When The King first saw this manifesto at the end of last year he was really inspired by it. He thought about it as he worked on his New Year’s resolutions and used it as inspiration to become a better person and so I thought that maybe a nice framed copy of it would make a good birthday gift.

I printed one out and looked it over.  I decided the lady doing yoga on it might be a little too “girly”.  So then I had an ever better idea; how about our own family manifesto!

Naturally I e-mailed May, my duper bestest friend. She loved the idea and told me she’d be happy to design one for me for The King’s birthday.  We worked out a trade, she’d design the manifesto and I provide her with a mix CD list and the money on her Amazon account to download the songs with.  (I’m pretty sure I got the better end of this trade. Although I did put quite a bit of thought into the songs I chose.)  (I haven’t heard back from here on what she thinks about the mix.  She probably hates it.)  (Oh well.)

May and I discussed the design over a few days.  I had her take out some of the original statements from the Lululemon manifesto and added some that were more specific to our family.  I wanted it to represent our love for the Savior.  May suggested pictures of the boys in lieu of the yoga lady.

I just about died when May sent me the final product.

Seriously, how awesome is this!!

While I think that The King liked the manifesto, I’m convinced that I like it even more.

And in other totally awesome news The King and I (and his friend that he’s known since second grade) went to see Girl Talk last Wednesday night.

If you don’t know who Girl Talk is.  Stop reading this right now and go and download his latest album “All Day”.  It’s FREE.  While that’s downloading go and read about him on Wikipedia.  (He’s a biomedical engineer by day and a DJ by night.)  (I guarantee you will thank me later.)

I’ll wait while you go and do that.

————-

Welcome back. Girl Talk’s awesome, right?

This is what I learned that night:

The show was insane.  Totally 100% off the hook insane.  We had so much fun.

I am too old to go to show on a week night.

While the show was “21 and over” I’m pretty sure the majority of the kids there had fake ID’s.  Either that or 21 year old are getting younger and younger.

I really didn’t know what to expect before we got there.  I think it wouldn’t have been as magical if I would have known how full of energy and awesomeness it would be.

If Girl Talk is coming to a venue near you, go.

But back to The King’s birthday present, tell me, what would you include in your own personal manifesto?

I walked in on my mom in her room crying one night after dinner.  I was only eight year old but I was old enough to know I didn’t like seeing her cry.  I quickly shut the door and went to ask my dad what was wrong.  He told me she was upset because she had yelled at my older brother earlier.  Besides that incident I can’t really think of a time when my mom truly yelled at any of us kids.  This isn’t to say that we were perfect kids who never gave her a reason to yell or that she was a push over who let us do whatever we wanted.  My mom meant business and we knew it.  It was just that she always kept her cool around us.

Years later when my older brother was away at college I called him at his dorm late at night.  I could hear my parents fighting and yelling at each other.  I don’t remember what they were fighting about, I only remember it being loud and me being scared enough to call my brother.  I was so scared because I never heard my parents fight like that so I figured it must be so bad that they were going to split up.

I can think of one other time in my childhood that I remember hearing my parents raise their voices at each other.  This isn’t to say that my parents had the perfect marriage.  They had issues just like any other couple.  Some pretty big issues.  They just always kept their cool around us kids.

I am not my mother.

Almost five years of being someone’s mom and I’m now just realizing how impatient I am and how frustrated I get.  These last week’s I’ve been paying attention to the way I handle situations with Babboo and comparing it to the way my own mom would have handled it.  For the life of me I can’t figure out how she could be in a similar situation and not raise her voice.  Not only am I made up of this woman’s DNA but I was also raised by her.  She was a stay-at-home mom during my formative years and so I would think all of my own parenting skills would have been learned from her.

I get frustrated with Babboo a lot.  A lot, a lot.  He also gets frustrated with me.  It’s not unusual to hear him raising his voice with me.

“You’re not understanding what I’m saying!”

He’s right, I’m not.  I’ll ask him questions to help me understand and that frustrates him which then frustrates me more and we get both get upset.  I’m fighting with a four year old.  And not usually winning.

Last night I was playing “pizza”* with him.  He wanted to use some of my craft supplies and got upset when I told him he couldn’t use my fancy paper and instead gave him some other paper to use.  This set off a whole chain of events.  I tried to think about what my mom would do in this situation.

“I’m getting frustrated so I’m going to go and take a break for a minute.”

I left the room which just made Babboo more upset.  Eventually The King had to get involved and calm the situation down.

That didn’t work out like I thought it would.

And it’s not just situations like this.  Babboo has heard The King and I raise our voices at each other.  He’s seen us fight.  It doesn’t seem to faze him. Which I’ve realized means that he’s so used to it that he thinks it’s normal.

I don’t want my children to think it’s normal to hear their parents fight.  I don’t want them to look back at their childhood and only remember that their mommy was always yelling.  This isn’t your typical Mommy Guilt.  This is me trying to figure out how to be as good of a mom to my little kids as my mom was to me.

My mom and dad are coming out to visit this weekend and I’m going to do something I should have been doing all along.  I’m going to watch them interact with my kids and with each other and try to learn a little something.

So tell me, what positive parenting skills did you learn from your parents?

*Someone pretends to be the “pizza maker” (Babboo) and the other person is the customer (Mom).  The customer comes in and requests a pizza and then the maker quickly makes a pizza, and toppings, out of paper to sell you.  It’s just about as fun as it sounds.