Trouble, Trouble

That's right, double trouble. Anastasia has taken several steps completely on her own, but they are still quite hesitant to walk. Maybe they spend too much time in slippery footed pajamas. When we we hold their hands to have them walk, she says "wakwakwak." But none of that is really any trouble.

The trouble is, our electronic components are all at eye level for them, and they love buttons and lights. We moved the coffee table to in front of them to deter them, but since it is a lightweight bamboo, they have figured out how to push it out of the way. They know now when they are doing something wrong and will check to see if I'm looking before they get into stuff. If they find that I am looking they rush doing whatever troublesome thing they were going t-o do so they get in as much trouble time as possible before I get to them.

Remember, there are two of them. One will be told no and be removed from the place she is not supposed to be and the other one will rush to it and make sure that the rules apply to her to. This is what is commonly known as a tag team. -**-*-* that is Amelia- tou-chi+ng the+8 +-88keyboard while I try to hold Anastastia off and continue typ*ikn*g. Fun game she -thinks.

Now you know why I don't blog so much these days. Today, though I am also starting back to school, so that is one more reason to be on the computer and not blog. I will probably post writing assignments for you on occasion, but my first class is math, so I would++ not expe+*ct to have much of interest to post on that. (The extra baby type is less because- th-e*+y-********************ach- +++++++++++++++ HAD been pulling everything out of the desk drawer.

Love y'all

Where is Everyone?

I think blogger is getting a lot less activity these days. I know I have been kind of out of it and my regulars have not been commenting as much as they used to. But I'm here anyway.

I am starting back to school next week. It is a good way to keep from having to repay my student loans. My degree will be in organizational management. I don't know how much I have left to do, but it should be getting pretty close--especially if I test out of some of my general courses. I just hate the headache of filling out the financial aid paperwork.

Friday I will be going to support Emylie in her Solo and Ensemble competition. Saturday my voice student will have hers. This is the first time I have taught one-on-one voice lessons. It was a bit of a challenge for me to translate my own skills into lessons. How do I sing? I don't know, I just always have. I think she got something out of it, though.

Isaac's birthday is on Friday. He will be 15. I am not sure what we are going to do, but he will be here with me.

Before

Just for the record, both Anastasia and Amelia could dance before they could walk. They have excellent balance and will stand unsupported (usually with something in their hand for security) and bob up and down or sway from side to side. And yet they refuse to take more than half of a step.

They are 13 months old and have yet to be determined to walk. I really would prefer not to carry around 23x2 lbs. regularly. I do have a little bit of extra tricep bulge, but I would rather have the weight training be purely optional and not mandatory.

They are starting to really play with each other. I have not captured any of it on film, but but I say "Say Hi sis!" and stick them together and they put their heads together and giggle at each other. They have started hugging and tugging at each other. Amelia is really cuddly and she will initiate loving on her sister. They aw sigh and laugh at each other as they do it.

They also are picking up a whole bunch of words and actions. Whenever we are sitting at the table to eat, when there is a lull in the "conversation" they will look to the window and woof at the sound of the neighbor's dog. They can also say dog. We are working on bird and "tweet." They are starting to mimic hand actions to Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

But, again, for the record, they could sing before they could talk. They have ah ah ah'ed little pitches in response to my singing to them for a long time.

They have both overcome their fear of navigating the stairs from the top, so they are downstairs playing the piano this morning while I am up here blogging. I suppose I should do something about that. Bye

Rain!

Last night around 5 am it started raining. I have been hoping for that all week. I have some berry bushes to plant and I want the ground to be soft and delicious for the little sprigs. I am yearning to do yard work. It has been 3 years since I've gotten involved in my flower beds. I also hope to plant a few vegatables this season.

I do fear that spring has come to Texas. Puxatawnee Phil is on the east coast. What does he know about Texas? The cold happened in December. My heating bill was lower in Jan, and I haven't turned on the heat here in 5 days. I expect there will be a few more cold fronts this season, but I am seeing some ant activity and the amount of green grass in my back yard is increasing. I only fear that because it means having to worry about pest control and A/C sooner. But I am looking forward to planting and digging in my new yard and making it distinct from those of my neighbors with colorful blossoms instead of this bland contractors landscaping.

I hope we have a really wet spring, because it has been a really dry winter.

Glory, Glory, Halleluia!

In The Overworked American by Juliet B. Shore, she reports a study on the usefulness of household appliances, and their ability to reduce the number of hours a woman spends doing domestic tasks. "Studies of US women also found that those with more durable equipment in their homes, work no fewer hours than those with less. Only one major appliance has been shown to save significant amounts of time (the microwave oven). Some actually increase housework (freezers and washing machines)." (p. 88)

If you will recall, it was several months ago that I reported our microwave had blown up and was no longer working. Shortly after we contacted Maytag who sent someone to look at the microwave and repair it. That was in October.

By the way, the reason the Maytag Man of commercial fame does not have anything to do, is not because the machines never need repairing, but he was fired. There is no such thing as a Maytag man. Maytag contracts their repairs through private companies.

So after 2 different repair companies, 5 different service calls, 10 replacement parts (and 5 back order holds on those parts), 3 major holidays (and 3 minor ones), and, most notably 4 months without a microwave, glory be! we have a fully operational machine again.

We celebrated by popping a whole box of microwave popcorn. My babies can have warm baby cereal in 9 seconds, instead of me having to let the water run until it gets hot. I can defrost meat that I need for dinner right now since I never think of it ahead of time--again, I save time and water by not having to thaw it in the sink. My husband can have his beloved melty cheese hot dogs. I can use the storage containers I put my leftovers in to reheat them instead of having to dirty a pan to warm it on the stove (which usually means having to wash it out first, since I have such a limited quantity of cookware). 1-2 minute reheat calculates to much less than all of that.

In short, I was skeptical of the findings of the study when I read it a decade ago. Though I was able to maintain food quality and care without a microwave, I am satisfied that there is some validity to the conclusion that the microwave is an actual time saver, and I am ever so thankful to have one that works.

Baby's Got Bum Bum

This is how they sleep in the morning. I usually do not peek in on them until I hear them, but this day we had a lot of things to do, so I went in to make noise.






The camera is the kind of noise that wakes them up. They have gotten to the point where they realize posing for pictures is appropriate. *Snap* *shing* "Someone wants to take my picture? Why yes you may."

By the way, I am really irritated with the way my layout is publishing, but I have no interest in taking the time to play with it. You have a ton of pictures to look at, so quit complaining. I know, I am the one who is complaining, but I can project myself onto you if I want.

Is that a Skembo, or what? I don't know if it is Craig's baby picture or Consie's, but I call her Anastasia, and I pretend she's mine.

Same Box; Different Day

Sure it looks like the same pink outfit in all the pictures, but it is not.

It is better if you click on the pictures and get the full size image to see how ADORABLE these kids are, all the way down to their rosy, chapped little cheeks.

Their cutness today is only slightly minimized by nasal drip. They have what Mike and I had, but other than sinus issues and a little more neediness they are okay. We just have to keep them hydrated and their noses cleared out so that crud doesn't get into their lungs and cause problems.

Babies in a Box

I have been working on refinishing the remaining DRMO bookcases that I bought for $9 each when I lived at Ft. Huachuca 14 years ago. The lighter one has been sanded, but I ran out of stripper and coarse sandpaper, and my one-coat stain and polyurethane is too thick to work properly anymore. I guess that is what happens when you put off projects for so long. Neither bookcase is completely done, but I am just going to make use of them as is.


Of course, you would never have known about the project and its incompleteness and failure, but for the artsy backdrop it is to curious, playful babies.

They are too young to learn miming "stuck in a box" so I am training them to do it for real while maintaining the theatrical "fourth wall."

I started this post 24 hours ago, but I did not finish it because I got stuck playing Hexic. It is a bitter truth: brightly colored hexagons have taken priority of my beloved blog readers. What have I become?

Got a game I gotta play. Peace out.

Birthday Cake

As a special birthday present, I let the girls lick the frosting beaters. Between the two of them, they could not blow out a candle, though they have started blowing on their food when it is hot and they can blow simple woodwind instruments for music.

They really liked their chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. Because I am a person of integrity, I will record for history that that the Birthday Cake came a few days after the actual birthday. I refused to have anything like a birthday party for people who had no idea what birthday even meant. Yeah, this is not my first child's first birthday. We get more reasonable with experience. Doesn't mean we love the kids less. This time I am just saving up Birthday excitement for kids who appreciate it. I burnt myself out on birthdays before the kids have memories to appreciate it.

Physical Therapy

Just before Christmas, I took pictures of the girls at physical therapy. Christen does the work on Anastasia, and Lyndsay plays with Amelia. We spend about an hour there. About as much playing goes on as anything else.

You can see Anastasia's new collar as she eats grahm crackers, and Amelia as she pretends to need the head straightening collar. Actually, I have tried to start playing the game with them both where you tip your head to the side and mimic each other so that Anastasia will voluntarily learn how to use those muscles. The muscles is stretched enough to give her full range of motion, but it still too weak to help her keep her head upright. The whole point of the collar is to create something irritating that she wants to pull away from, thus strengthening that muscle. She is supposed to wear it for 2 hours, 2 times a day.

Ketchup

Just to catch you up on my week. I have not blogged because I became addicted to Hexic. My thumb hurts from using the XBox controller so much. I hate myself. I don't have things in my life that I am addicted to. I know the things I could get addicted to in a hurry, and I usually avoid them altogether. I was not strong this time. Now I must pay the price. Apart from the self-loathing, there is the knowledge that all that time spent could have been used to complete any number of projects that I have been working on or have hopes of doing.

There is a small advantage to having played the game. My spatial visualization skills have improved and I have been able to work out some staging problems with the theatrical production I am working on. Another advantage is the bonding I have had with my husband. He thinks it is funny. He encourages me because I don't get on his case so much when I am so obviously flawed myself. The trouble is, we stayed awake too long, way too many nights with one playing it online and the other on the XBox. I have had the highest score so far, but I take a lot of time to calculate my moves. He can score almost as high without taking the amount of time I do.

In other news, the motherboard failure caused the loss of all data on the two hard drives it was attached to. The good news is that we had not been using that computer for long, and did not have a ton of data on it. To clarify, that was Mike's new self-built computer. MY computer that I have had since 05 crashed when we moved and we still have not hooked up the hard drive to see if that data has survived.

One thing that is obvious is that I need to post more pictures more often so that fewer are lost should such a thing happen again. Mostly, I am endeavoring to have hard copies of all my pictures--which I had actually started doing before Mike's crash. Today, however is not the day for me to post those pictures.

Anastasia was fitted yesterday for a Tot Collar to help her strengthen the muscles on the left side of her neck. Physical therapy has given her full range of motion, but she does not have the strength to move it herself.

Both of them are adorable, though as they nod their heads yes and no. Amelia goes nuts with it. Sometimes it is in response to a question, sometimes it is headbanger dancing. Whenever they are watching adults talk and they start nodding in acknowledgement of each other, the babies raise their eyebrows and start bobbing their heads as well. They are picking up on so much so fast. We were pretty sure that Amelia was going to walk first, but Anastasia is catching up.

This morning the girls were helping me wake Mike up. I put Amelia on the bed and told her to kiss Daddy. She moved to his face and made the kissie sound without any visual cues from me or him. She knew exactly what I was talking about and did it.

4 of the 6 In and Out Kids were here the extended weekend. I played Legos with Andrew and helped the girls sort out their clothes. The babies love having their siblings around. Isaac's new friend, Colton went to church with us on Sunday. They were together all weekend.

My belly is full from a big fat homemade bacon cheeseburger. That's the end of Ketchup.

First Birthday

Anastasia and Amelia are now one year old. Sunday was their first birthday. They got new Sunday Dresses. While they were sitting at the breakfast table dad and mom spoke in our high pitched voices with our smiles and eyebrows raised and said "Happy Birthday" at the same time, and the knew it was a special day. They smiled with ignorant innocence at our antics and sensed that something very special was happening. Then it was over. They returned to manipulating cheerios with their chubby little hands, maneuvering the cereal into their rounded mouths.

After church we did video instant messaging with Grandma Skembo. After their late nap they were very grumpy and remained that way most of the evening, so I just held them both in my lap in the recliner and watched Thomas S Monson on BYUTV.

The days become months, which become years that are remembered in brief moments and mostly lost to our view, but love remains.

All Day

The whole day was wasted. Utterly wasted. I wanted to be creative with my blog, but after searching hours for the right template, I realized I was going to have to redo all my gadgets and blog lists, etc., so I decided not to do it. But I had already done the lethal editing that removed my existing blog except for the basic template. I figured, what the heck, if I have to redo it anyway, why not get one I like. I searched again. However, I could not get my computer to open any of the html text that I downloaded. It turned it into ridiculous gibberish. So after endless attempts and angles that I tried from to do something a little out of the ordinary, I ended up having to go back to a basic blogger template and recreate my blog rolls. I don't know who I might have forgotten, but I had to pull it all from memory. If you want to be on the list, let me know.

I figured it would be okay to have a basic template and I could personalize it with pictures, etc. However there is not a single personal picture on my hard drive. My entire library is in four hard drives, all of which are not connected to a functioning PC. So I could personalize my blog with the sample pictures that come in Microsoft OS packages. *Sarcastic half-smile with head tilt*

Enjoy all my new features *repeat*

*Later*
I grabbed a couple of pics from old posts. I realized I don't post pictures very often.

In Case You Were Wondering

I'm still alive, but our main computer is not. My computer time has been limited, and I just haven't wanted to climb the stairs to the secondary computer. I spent yesterday in the car going to Anastasia's PT appointment, back home, and then to the other side of town, and Monday I spent all day doing dishes and laundry--7 loads to be exact. I am still trying to catch up on the house from the kids being here. To complicate, the babies have been a little fussy.

I have taken some pictures that I would love to post, but this computer is not good for that. Sure, I could do it, but it is just more work than I want to do right now.

Anastasia has two more teeth on the bottom for a total of 8 in her mouth. Amelia probably has a few days before hers come out. It seems that Amelia is one of those kids who will be regularly marred. Andrew always had a knot on the left side of his forehead. Amelia has her third black eye in two months. Even her 4 month baby pictures have a scratch below her eye.

I could do more of what I need to do if I woke up a little earlier. That would be easier if my husband would let me go to bed a little earlier. At least the babies are sleeping okay at night.

Blah blah bye blah

Vacation

The kids have been here all week. It has been blessedly uneventful. Everyone is getting along beautifully. The weather has been gorgeous, so the majority of getting along has happened outside. Isaac found a best friend down the road. Many of the neighbor kids hang out in our back yard on the trampoline. There are not very many trampolines on this block.

The babies have adapted to the commotion and are taking their regular naps and sleeping at night. They love their siblings. I am not looking forward to having to fill the void of attention they have become accustomed to when everyone is gone.

Now I have to go make breakfast for everyone so we can spend the day touring downtown Dallas for our last full day together.

It's Over

Greeting cards have all been sent (not by me, of course), the Christmas rush is through. Our delayed Christmas is over with no fanfare. The kids are all here for the whole week. Isaac will be going to the New Year's eve dance and the girls will be going to stay the night with our next door neighbor from Coppell. We will probably play games with the two remaining boys after we get the babies in bed.

I really like New Year's Eve. There's not as much hype as with Christmas, so there is less let-down if it doesn't turn out. As a young person it was great to be able to stay up so late for it. Even though I stay up till midnight pretty regularly, there's just something about New Year's that makes me happy. I like the idea of big get-togethers and organized parties, but if that doesn't happen we can just watch parties on TV.

Maybe it is just all the great memories of playing Monopoly and whatever with friends, or going to the church dances, or there was the year I spent at Disneyland. More recently I went to my friend's anniversary ball and got to party with my husband for the first time. That is one of my favorite memories with him so far.

Then there is the anticipation of the coming year and the sudden (if unfounded) belief that empowering change is possible. I don't know. I just like it. Have a wonderful and blessed new year.

Christmas Ditty

I love Christmas and I love all of my faithful readers (and even my unfaithful click-by's), so I wanted to give you a little something. I had the idea to do this a couple of days ago, but I couldn't do it while the babies were sleeping because they would wake up, and I didn't want to do it while they were screeching in the background. Since Christmas is upon us, we just have to take what we can get, so I let them screech in the foreground. You probably wanted to see them more than you wanted to see me, anyway.



Have a most Merry Christmas. And be excellent to each other.

My Honey

I took the big girls to the mall recently. Their main hope was to find Twilight T-shirts. As I was looking at the group shot T-shirt, it struck me that Emmett looked a lot like the pictures of Mike as a strapping young man that I had been looking at over Thanksgiving. Maybe you can't see it, but I can fantasize.

Family Reunion Revisit

My family met Marla's family for the first time last year when we went to Utah for the Lay family reunion. Yeah, that's how long it takes me to upload a video.



Some Dinosaurs are scarier than others. And some people are sillier than others. It's a magical leopleuridon, Charlie. He's showing us the way. Thomas, sorry about the rated ex content.

The Truth About Blending Families

This is stinking hard. It doesn't matter how good the kids are, how everyone gets along or how much you all love each other, there will be conflict. When there are only four days a month that everyone is together, progress in conflict resolution is exceptionally difficult. That is compounded by the fact that there are other parties involved outside the home who have concerns about the children, and often differing views that may be in direct conflict with your own goals and resolutions.

Fairness. It doesn't matter how hard you try, the biological children or the step-children will feel like you are showing favoritism or being somehow unfair. You absolutely cannot discipline a step-child as severely as you do your own children because the history of love isn't there to balance out the severity, so any correction to the step kids makes you the wicked stepmother. Then, because you are not as harsh with them, your own children feel like you love them less. Somehow balancing that is an extraordinary feat.

But the children are the smallest part of it. The biggest problem is having two different child rearing perspectives (same as any parenting relationship) and then having experience-reinforced child-rearing opinion. That may not be such a problem in a relationship with passive, amiable people. Two stubborn thick-heads in this situation multiplies the difficulty. Mike and I spend an average of 20 minutes every weekend that the kids are here, locked up in our room discussing how to deal with a child or situation. It is rarely a calm discussion.

It's just stinking hard.