Monday, January 24, 2017

Look at that mess!  She absolutely LOVES walking around in my most fabulous shoes. I can’t keep her out of my closet. And she’s really coordinated. She puts on the highest of heels and struts around like she owns the place (which, of course, she does).

The light was really pretty as I was leaving the office this afternoon. I had to take a picture.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

We all got ready for church this morning, and Selah June and Mommy looked super cute in their coordinating grey and black.  Very modern/chic.

SJ got ahold of one of my necklaces somewhere along the way and started having a blast twirling it around and around. She didn’t want to wear shoes, and I didn’t want to fight over it. She was the one kid in the nursery who looked like a little ragamuffin.

When we got home I noticed for the first time this amazing tree in our yard, and while I was at it I took a picture of our front porch with the camellias in bloom.

And here’s a fish.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Jerrmy was taking a shower, and Selah June and I were snuggling in bed. I decided to take a few selfies for fun. These are my most precious moments.

Friday, January 19, 2017

Selah Juney loves her new school. Each of her teachers is special for a different reason. Miss Kiki does all of the girls’ hair every day. SJ comes home with different hairstyles that have somehow managed to stay in place, but the first thing she does when she gets out of the building is yank the hair band out (no matter how hard she has to pull on it). We’re dealing with an incredibly high pain tolerance and degree of independence/stubbornness with this little one.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Selah June cherishes her baths. I think they relax her, and she likes to play in the water. It’s become our ritual at about 7:00 every night. For Christmas she got some foam letters and numbers meant for the bathtub, and she has fun organizing them by color or all on one side of the tub and then moving them all back into the water or her bucket.

Tonight for whatever reason she was wanting me to take her picture. As of late, that has not been something I could do EVER!!!

im taking her bath time as a great opportunity to ritualistically wash my face.  It’s a win for everybody.

Unless she poops.

Monday, January 16, 2017

On a whim, we rounded up all the horses and headed with six kiddos to the beach! Grammy and Grandpa, Mimi and Aunt Abigail, and all of the cousins got good drinks and caravanned to our favorite spot. The kids were thrilled to be outside in January, and the older ones even played in the water. Sebastian wasn’t too sure about all that. The surf was rough.

Selah June and Jules had a blast building sand castles with Grammy, and I enjoyed a quiet spot in a beach chair halfway between the umbrella, towels, and cooler and the water’s edge. It’s absolutely wonderful that we live here and can enjoy a winter day soaking up sun and playing in sand.

Selah June did not have much interest at all in getting wet. On the very few occasions the water swept up near her, she would yell “Get back, waves! Go home! Don’t come over here, water! Go back to your mommy!” It was a hoot.

She also really was into the little beach chair that Grandpa brought in the Pilot just for her. It was pink, and she spent a great deal of time dragging it over to sit with us and then dragging it back to sit with Grammy and Abigail and then dragging it back over to us and then dragging it back over to the umbrella. That’s hard work when you can’t put down your blue blanky or your towel!

Wednesday – Saturday, January 11-14, 2017

This little monkey had a whole lot of fun having a sleepover party with Satie and Sebastian while I was away at the Southern Political Science Association meeting in New Orleans. Apparently, she took full advantage of dinosaur chicken on demand, access to boots, a whole toy room, and loads of attention.

Sunday, January 6, 2017

One of my favorite things about the weekend is wearing pajamas all day long. Selah June just over the last week or so has really gotten back into wearing pjs. She likes the footed ones too (after hating them for a while). And they seem to be fitting her better. I think she might have had a growth spurt and gained some height on her that trimmed her a bit. Her arms seem to fit better in the sleeves of her footed pjs.

She wanted me to play in her playroom over the weekend, and we had a great time having a picnic.  I think this adventure was triggered by Ceara babysitting last night. Jeremy and I actually went to the movies and saw Star Wars – Rogue One. I can’t tell you the last time we actually went out together for a date-like period of time. It was soooooo terribly cold Saturday night – down in the 20s with additional windchill. We were so cold in the theater that by the time the movie was over all we wanted to do was go through a drive-thru and eat food in the comfort and heating of our own car. Sad times…

Back to picnics.

Ashley taught her to use her cloth that came with her picnic basket to make a setting for plates and utensils and food. Somehow this was important work to that end.

We have a huge bag of plastic food because Grammy sent a bunch home with us when Selah June got her kitchen for her birthday.

I asked her to fix me a plate. She busily got right on it.

You see her purse? It’s full of Chucky Cheese tickets. I don’t know why those are important for a picnic, but if we need bargaining chips she’s totally prepared. We’re also sitting ducks if any toddlers break out of juvy looking to hold somebody up for something of real value.

I just can’t get enough of this joy. Her smile is really infectious.

So my latest struggle (probably the most ongoing one of them all) is that so much of her development is happening without me around. There’s no good answer. I want to spend good meaningful quality time with her and watch her learn to color inside the lines, count things, learn new words, do fun crafts, start to read, and all the other amazing things that kids do at such a young age. And I don’t want to give up my academic career. In so many ways I feel like a better parent because of my job. Teaching college kids, dealing with emotional crises, managing complex tasks one step at a time — all these things are directly related to raising a 2 year old! You’d be shocked at the striking similarities!!

I wrote a book this year. I coordinated a massive collaborative service learning project across 60 city parks working with a class of 70 kids and multiple faculty across 4 colleges. This work is turning into several journal article publications. I coordinated a really cool downtown lecture series, bringing in a renowned contemporary composer and have even bigger plans for this next season. I covered bases for chairs throughout our college so that they could take maternity leave, deal with family emergencies, or survive to fight another day. And now I’m cohosting a podcast! What??  With the vice provost of UWF… I get to work on his pet project.

So I guess what I’m saying is that life is super rich. There’s just so much about it right now that I want to savor that I’m feeling regret over the morsels that I miss. It’s just so hard. I know that she will never be this age again. I totally get it.  We waited a really long time to be parents, and I knew that this one-in-a-million chance would be the only chance I would have to experience all of these developmental milestones.

I know I need to focus on the blessings rather than the lost opportunities. I have so much joy in my life, so many tender moments, and so many awesome adventures because of this little one. And I am incredibly lucky to have a job that I enjoy and the flexibility to prioritize family first. How many people can say that? I have to get better at dealing with this nagging guilt. It’s due in large part I’m sure to the huge sacrifice my mom made for us. And that sacrifice was due in large part because of the luxury afforded my parents of being able to live on the income of my father’s job. We’re a family of educators. It’s in our blood. But I just never really expected to be in the place where I would be spending my days educating other people’s children while my child went somewhere else. There’s a lot you don’t process until you’re in the middle of it. And there’s so much of our perspective that’s conditioned by our own lived experiences. Jeremy’s experience and perspective is completely different. This is definitely guilt I put on myself. And it’s exacerbated by living in my hometown with so many family members and friends who deal with crappy area schools by homeschooling their own children.

Well…. more for tomorrow. Now I need to sleep.

Monday, January 9, 2017

So you will never believe this.  I might have already mentioned this little issue, but today it reared its head in a funny way. Last week, the teacher in her classroom and the education majors working with Miss Annie made a point to really slow down and clarify how to say Selah June’s name and whether or not we had any other names she might go by. I said that at home we always call her Selah June. Others call her Selah from time to time, so that would be fine too. And they asked again… Any other name? No. Selah June.

Why such heartburn? Because there is a little girl in her class named Saylor. This is so funny because my autocorrect on my phone always changes her name to Sailor. There are only about 4-5 little girls in her class…and a Selah and Saylor? Really???

So today I went to pick her up, and she was outside playing. She saw me and came running to greet me. I immediately noticed that she was wearing a long, off-white sweater that did not belong to her. The teachers looked at each other with panic and thought aloud that it must have been Saylor’s. And then we went to get SJ’s green jacket, and it was missing. Their eyes were as big as saucers. It must have gone home with Saylor. Now we all know Miss SJ doesn’t let anybody touch her stuff. This only happened because the green jacket was knew and everybody was busy having fun outside after being cooped up inside from the freezing cold.

What are the odds???  Really… What are the odds?

This was our first week back from the break and at our new school.  For whatever reason, it seemed like a very long one. At UWF, the enrollment for spring is significantly lower than it has been, and our office has been doing everything in our power to get to the bottom of it. We’ve also been trying to mitigate against budget shortfalls due to declining tuition revenue. And the governor mailed all the deans directly asking for specifics on recruitment strategies and efforts at job placement post graduation.  ?

At home, Selah June has been pretty pooped. Shorter midday naps and long days full of hard playing have left her running on fumes from dinner to bedtime. I ran out of drugs this week, so a night of no sleep also left me feeling ragged.

Jeremy’s foot has still not heeled, but the doctor still thinks he’s making progress. I’m ready for him to feel better and not be so tired all the time. And I know he’s ready to be able to take a shower again.

Selah June has really enjoyed us singing to her lately. I always sing Rock a by Baby to her as we snuggle and she drifts off to sleep, so that has been her request. She also likes me to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider. And sometimes she’ll let me sing the Wheels on the Bus, but she then has to open her eyes to make sure I’m doing the hand motions properly.