A perfect explanation

Taken out of a newspaper:

TELL ME ABOUT IT
Why don’t friends with kids have time?


Dear Carolyn: Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy, no time for self, no time for me, etc. Me: (no kids: what’d you do today? Her: Park, play group…. Ok, I’ve talked to parents. I don’t get it. What do stay at home moms do all day? Please no lists of library, grocery store, dry cleaners… I do all those things, too. I guess what I’m asking is: what is a typical day and why don’t moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events); I manage to get it all done. I’m feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy, but if so, why won’t my friend tell me the truth? Is this a contest (“my life is so much harder than yours”)? What’s the deal? I’ve got friends with and without kids and all of us child-free folks have the same questions? –Tacoma, Wash

Dear Tacoma: Relax and enjoy. You’re funny. Or, you’re lying about having friends with kids. Or you’re taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven’t personally been in the same room with them. I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that the only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you is disingenuous indeed. So, because it’s validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, cleaned, dressed; to keeping them out of harm’s way; to answering their coos, cries and questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired, or bored, any one of which produces checkout line screaming. It’s needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15. It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier. It’s constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends. It’s resisting constant temptation to seek short-term expense. It’s doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything – language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity, empathy, everything. It’s also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn’t judge you, complain about you or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand, or keep your snit to yourself.

Silly girl

Well, our vacation was wonderful! We came back after about 4 days. Genevieve got sick about a 30-45 minutes into our like 5 hours of travel time (by plane). The first time she has ever thrown up, just had to happen on an airplane! Geez. And it was A LOT. I honestly feel a lot is an understatement. It was all over me, herself and the polite lady next to us who was on her way to Mexico for her wedding. AWESOME! Luckily she was very sweet about it and her and her friend brought us some wet paper towels and every flight attendent on the flight helped me with cleaning up and gave us blankets and everything. I only had a change of clothes for viv, but that was fine. I just had to sit with food chunks stuck to the back of my thigh for the rest of the flights lol. The flights home Genevieve did great. She slept most of the two, and when she wasn't sleeping she read stories to me. She missed her daddy and puppy alot. She would walk around Alicia's house going "daddy? daddy?" and I had Andy send a picture of Kingston (our dog) to my phone and she just lit up when she saw him. She enjoyed playing with Laela (Alicia's daughter), even though Laela seemed a little unsure of Genevieve at times. It was icky warm down there. About the only thing we did was the zoo down there, but it was a great zoo. You really got up close and personal with the animals. I liked it. On the first day we also (the kids were asleep in the back seat lol) drove along the Chesapeake Bay Tunnel Bridge. It's this awesome highway that goes over and under the Chesapeake Bay. By under I mean big long tunnels that go under the water. It was a little nerve racking as both Alicia and I have huge fears of drowning, but it was beautiful to just be surrounded by water.

Here is one of the pictures from Virgina. This was taken from Alicia's patio, perfect view of the ocean about a block away. <3


Things have been great since we got home. I started my summer quarter for school yesterday. So far so good, but then again it's the very beginning of the quarter. I am trying to get down to the bottom of a problem from last quarter though. I looked at my grades and for some reason I received an Incomplete in my math course, when it should've been an A. I get a feeling the teacher was slacking off yet again and still hasn't turned in grades, but I have no idea. I've emailed my instructor and also my student rep twice now. If I don't hear from them tonight, I'll be taking a trip to campus tomorrow.

I planned a ladies night for a few weeks back. It started out as just me and my cousin, Carla, to go see the midnight showing of Eclipse (yes, I love twilight lol). Then the night of the showing it ended up with me, Carla and two of my friends. Dinner and drinks before hand. And another stop for another drink at the mall while waiting in line. It was a wonderful night out, something I definitely needed. And now we have plans for a girls night out every 2 weeks or so.

We had a fairly relaxing 4th of July. We went down to Andy's sisters place. And while I won't comment on my feelings about things there, Andy seemed to have a good time. Genevieve was exhausted so we headed home before fireworks. I also knew she wouldn't be able to sit through fireworks. Her ears have been super sensitive lately, so I knew fireworks would most likely hurt her ears.

Genevieve is walking more smoothly now. She can even bend down and pick stuff up or crawl and then stand herself back up with no help at all. She has thinned out so much now that she is standing up tall and walking. Tall and skinny, just like her daddy. She looks like such a little girl now and not so much like a baby. Her hair has gotten pretty long (when it is straight, it is past her armpits), and it has gorgeous little girls. The top of her hair is finally growing in thicker too. She loves to put stuff in bags. If I'm cleaning and picking up stuff and putting it in a bag, she comes to help. She is not into everything, luckily. She loves to "reorganize" our dvd stand, and by that I mean she goes to our dvd stand and takes the dvd's off and stacks them on the floor.