Favorite Things, Right Now

It's been a long time since I blogged, for a lot of reasons.  But certainly not for lack of material.  Charlotte is such a funny little person, and I definitely owe the blog a post of Charlotte quotes.  But to ease into things, here are some things that Charlotte is really into right now:

* Pirates.  Charlotte is into the tv show Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but also the book The Pirates Next Door, and Talk Like a Pirate Day, and anything piratical that isn't "too spooky."  This includes certain snippets of The Pirates of the Caribbean movie (enough to recognize Captain Jack Sparrow).  She even had a vaguely pirate themed birthday party for her classmates, and wore a pirate shirt to her family birthday party.  She has a "pirate playlist" in Spotify, and she's going to be a pirate for Halloween.  Here she is at her birthday party, in the museum's dress up clothes.  (We should have taken that jacket, I swear.)  When she really likes something, she gives it "two hooks up" - holding her thumbs up, but curved like hooks.

* Making Books.

* Representational art, finally.

* Reading.  I can't believe I have a kid who is old enough to read, but she is.  Charlotte is pretty good at reading short words, and sounding things out, and very good at remembering words she's seen if someone tells her what they are.  She's constantly surprising us by saying, "Oh, that says X," and we say, "How do you know that?" and she says, "I read it."

* Pre-school, friends, and marriage. Specifically, she wants to marry a boy in her pre-school.  Luckily, he wants to marry her, too.  When I dropped her off today, he said, "It's Charlotte! Hey Charlotte!  You wanna come sit next to me?"

* Family.  Grandparents and cousins especially.

* Playmobil, LaLaLoopsy, anything else small, plastic, and with a million tiny pieces.*

* Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.

* Holiday planning.

*  Music.  Imagination Movers, Blues Brothers Soundtrack & Nightmare Before Christmas (soundtrack only).

Going on behind the scenes: Part 1

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because it's been hard for me to post brief, anecdotal things while a bunch of other stuff has been going on in my life & brain.  I have a hard time just posting brief bloggy things here; probably too much Twitter & Facebook.  But I miss blogging, and I miss tracking what's going on with the parental side of things, and I always get annoyed when reading back I realize I missed huge chunks of what was going on.  So I'm working on getting back in the habit.  And to fill in some of the blanks, here's some of what's been going on in my head and stoppering up the blog posting process.


Every few months or so, I go through the baby-wanting cycle.  It was particularly bad this year after Charlotte's third birthday.  She's so grown-up now, such a big kid.  She's not a toddler anymore, she's definitely (and defiantly, as I accidentally typed it at first) a child, a kid. 

Matt and I hashed it out, all the eight million reasons why it doesn't make sense to have another kid right now.  And the eight million reasons are really just one, and in my mind the tackiest and worst reason to do/not do anything: money.  (Which is a whole other entry in itself, that I do not feel like getting into at the moment - I'm depressed enough as it is.)

And I was accpeting it, moving on, and doing so well, when December came, and former co-workers & high school friends started having babies, and my facebook feed is full of babies.  Tiny newborns, haggard moms, first Christmas outfits, the whole nine yards.  Big sisters holding onto babies, proud grandmas, bewildered dogs.  And I love looking at it, but it makes me so envious & sad.  A blogger who I've been following for three years posted that they will be actively trying for a new baby in the next year.  Her oldest son is the same age as Charlotte, her second son is my nephew's age.  At Christmas I snapped my poor mother's head off as she hinted, yet again, that it would be great if someone else would have another baby.  I apologized pretty much instantaneously, but family stressors being what they are (lots of sick family members, uncertain grandparent health) she was slow to get over it.  I ended up apologizing again but saying firmly, "You have to let it go, it's a very sensitive subject."

I feel like time is running out.  I mean, on paper it looks fine - I am 31 years old, no known fertility problems, but I am overweight (okay, FAT) and I do have elevated blood pressure.  Both my doctor and my ob/gyn said to me when Charlotte was born that I was definitely fine to have more kids, but they both said that it would be better to do it sooner rather than later.  Charlotte is three - I never wanted my kids to be that far apart in age.  Matt & his sister are just about 7 years apart, and while they love each other intensely, it's not quite the same as me & my sister or my sister & my brother or me & my brother.  I think the larger age gap can make it harder for siblings to be close, especially when one moves out, and it can cause the parents to lean too hard on the older sibling.  Just everything in me is screaming, "If you are going to do it, it needs to be NOW."  Everything externally is screaming, "That is not a good plan AT ALL."  Hence the tears and agony and fretting and beating on this poor, poor, poor deceased equine.