Two Homes

I fully intended to do another post last week, but got sick around Tuesday and was pretty much down for the count. (I only missed two days of work but Wednesday was ROUGH.)
Backtracking, I must say I am very impressed, yet saddened, by how grown-up Camila is becoming. I toted both of them to church with me again Sunday and she didn't do as well in the service this time but she made it through the song time and the offering.
At offering time my brother gave her a dollar. I whispered in her ear, "Are you going to give that to Jesus?" (I've been trying to work on her concept of God lately.)
She turned to the elderly man seated next to us and held out the dollar. "Here you go!" Apparently our concept needs more work.
She was squirmy through the singing so before the sermon started I said, "How about we go to the nursery?"
She clapped her hands. "Yay! Nursery!"
Emi was content in my mother's arms so I walked Camila back. There were only two other children so after giving her a minute, I told her I was going to go listen in church then I'd be back for her in a little bit. She wasn't concerned so I left her there.
When I came back she was happily playing. They said she had only gotten teary eyed once!
Tuesday we went to play at a local play area and she played extremely well, both with a little boy with Downs Syndrome and with a very pushy older girl. I'm so proud of how well she gets along with others.
Then later this week, I got sick and a babysitter came in to help while I was out (bronchitis, I think). She did well Thursday but Friday she was so hard to deal with that her mom let the babysitter go early. That night her mom asked if she liked the babysitter. She said she grew serious and said, "Baba [her name for me]? Baba coming home?"
She thought maybe I had left her and the other girl was my replacement. She thinks her home is MY home too. Her mom explained that I was sick, so she promptly fetched the Vicks for me! I felt like a horrible person for being sick. :(
But I go back to her tomorrow, and hopefully she will be happy that I am "home".

Ricky's Birthday

I apologize to Ricky and his little gerbil cousins for taking so long to post pictures. It has been a busy week. Another working weekend (this time my girls Saturday and Sunday and another job tonight, which is Saturday...sometimes I wonder what I'm thinking) which means more scrambling in the evenings to have everything else in place. Lucky me, it's not only Father's Day but it's my turn to bring Sunday school breakfast. But being the awesome person I am, everything is all set. ;)

So anyway, yes, last Friday, we celebrated the birthdays of Ricky, Sydney, Salem, and KJ. I had to stay home with my parents' dogs so Rachel and I could not go anywhere. We couldn't decide what to do until I realized it had been almost a year since we bought our pets. They were 6-8 weeks old when we got them therefore their birthday is likely in early June! We went all out but had a great time!

The party table

The proud mommies!




Possibly my favorite picture EVER. He looks like he wants to KILL me.




His cupcake! He didn't really get to eat it but it's a cute picture.



Sydney, Salem, and KJ: the gerbil cousins

More Fun Days

Things have been very busy, but we are all enjoying ourselves. The girls' grandfather is here visiting all the way from Brazil. He's a sweet man and dotes on them, even if he sometimes forgets that Camila doesn't want to be treated like a baby. He tries to feed her when she can use a spoon and fork by herself very well, does the airplane trick, etc, and all she wants to do is eat her lunch. I've gotten her to let him do it anyway since no one can seem to explain to him that she doesn't like it. He enjoys it and he's only here a few more days.

Although Camila just turned 21 months recently, she is already very much two. She thinks she can do everything grownups do, which in some cases is a good thing (for example, we are potty training very soon). But in others, it's becoming dangerous. She wants to let the dog in, sterilize bottles, cook dinner, and it's only a matter of time before she tries to pick up Emi. She takes care of "Baby Goofy" very well, giving him his bottle, burping him, changing his diaper, putting him down for a nap, and taking him for walks (which she also wanted to do on the road like we do one time). It's definitely one of those don't-take-your-eyes-off-her-for-a-second phases.

But thankfully, except for occasional showings of toddler attitude, she isn't doing things to be bad. She is just trying to help. For some kids the terrible 2s are much more extreme, so we are blessed.
Emi is still growing quickly and I'm pretty sure she's discovering her will. She fought sleep several times this week, growing very angry when we tried to put her down, but we knew she was tired. She just didn't WANT to go to bed. Then she went on a hunger strike when she decided she didn't want a bottle, she wanted to nurse. She usually does when her mom is home, which is why she didn't want the bottle. For a long time she got one bottle a day (which is actually recommended if you plan to use bottles we found), but the last week or so, she has mostly nursed. Considering I have them all weekend next weekend, we decided that had to be fixed so we kept trying and yesterday she was taking a bottle well. And she isn't even 4 months old! Thinking of her at 2 is kind of scaring me.

But still, she is a sweet baby overall, it's much easier to make her smile than it was Camila, and her baby giggle is so sweet. She's always happy to see me and this week I have taught her to give me "kisses". I love her even when she's bad. :)

This was a spontaneous moment, not posed, but it turned out PRECIOUS.

In the car on the way to the park, the poster child for Toddlerhood.

The outfit is not her fault actually; I dressed her, then let her pick the bow because there are many colors in the skirt. She picked the biggest one we had but I was like "Okay." Then her mother put the socks on her. Then we put her sneakers on. Then to top it off, the sunglasses her mom had bought because they reminded her of the big sunglasses I always wear and Camila likes to wear sunglasses like me. Altogether it looked bizarre, yet adorable. Especially with Goofy tagging along.

Camila recently saw my Disney pictures where Rachel and I are making scared faces on the Dinosaur ride and she thought it was hysterical. So when we met Rachel for lunch, she kept saying, "Rachel, dinosaur! Rah! Dinosaur scary?" So for a picture, I said, "Camila, can you be a dinosaur and scare Ms. Rachel?" She giggled and said "Raaah!" and Rachel made the face and she thought it was GREAT. She thinks we are probably the coolest people ever for having met Mickey Mouse and the gang in person.

For anyone who hasn't seen Finding Nemo, you may need to watch it to get it. She has found this very funny for a couple days, starting at the park when we were feeding ducks and seagulls, and I did it for her. It was all I had to do to get her to smile for a picture yesterday. I love it when she does it!

The Good with the Bad

It was a pretty good weekend. I had a few days off and had lunch with pretty much everyone I could think of. :) My friend Rachel and I got to hang out over the long weekend. She went to church with me Sunday night and then we watched a movie. Monday we went to the beach. The weather said thunderstorms all day but we never saw a drop of rain!
She got some pretty cool pictures. I think they've very "me". (See below)
Then came this morning. I was ready to see Camila and Emi but woke up to see that I should have left the house 15 minutes ago. That's always a great start to a morning. I was only 20 minutes late for work (but I HATE being late EVER) and they had no plans to leave the house anytime soon. Camila was a little shy today with everybody (it was kind of weird but she met a LOT of people on vacation and was just done with people I think) but we had a good day overall. She's putting longer sentences together now and starting to talk like such a big girl. It's hard to believe in 3 months she'll be 2 years old! And today, for the first time, she told me "I love you". It was soooo sweet, I almost cried!
Emi grew up so much. She's so agreeable; she laughs at just about everything you say. I had this awful headache (sinus I think; we had thunderstorms today instead of yesterday) with a shooting pain in my face. When it hit I screwed my face up and she laughed. At least, as much as she laughs. It's still this spastic "Ha!" but it counts.
And tonight I am going to bed at a decent time and setting THREE alarms instead of the two I set this morning. (Can you believe NEITHER went off????)

Me & Rachel

Yes, I am fully clothed.

So the water was all seaweed-y so we kept saying we weren't going in but every time it's warm & I start going just a little farther I end up getting soaked. Eventually I gave up and just sat down & let the waves crash over my back. :)

Rachel was thrilled when I got into her car soaked and covered in sand and seaweed. But it came back to haunt me. I stunk like seaweed the entire 2-hour ride home.

Spirit vs. Flesh

For some reason, I have always suffered from "the Bad Boy effect." Because while I am the quintessential good girl, I am always attracted to the "bad boys" in the media: Fonzie from "Happy Days," Rhett Butler in the book Gone With The Wind (not the movie), and more recently, the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. Even my favorite good guys were fairly violent, always getting into fights defending the woman they loved.
It took me a long time to recognize this trend in my life, and when I did, it troubled me. Why did I, a Christian, find myself attracted to not-necessarily-Christian people and characters? Then again, I had always been level-headed in the romance department of my real life. I had one major crush throughout my entire teen years. I had a two-page essay on the standard I was looking for in a man. Maybe I had it all figured out.
Then came a random guy in a random place at a seemingly random time. We were at my friend's house at the same time. He was hardly anything on my list. He was short, didn't go to church faithfully, drank, partied, smoked, had a practically X-rated MySpace...but he had brown eyes, a charming smile, a horrible childhood, and set his sights on me. To top it off, my parents were totally against it.
A real Romeo and Juliet.
For the first time in my life, I was truly tempted. Satan had laid his trap well.
But Jesus, in spite of it all, was looking out for me too. I definitely believe He allowed this temptation for a specific reason. He let me get just close enough to this guy to see what I would be "missing," to let me see that I didn't want to make that leap, not really. I envision it like a parent lifting their child up to see over a railing, to see how far they will fall if they don't obey warnings.
That summer, I had the most chaotic friendship I've ever had. We enjoyed each other's company, though never alone by mandate of my parents. We spoke on the phone almost two hours a night. But we constantly disagreed, on major things that matter. Our commonalities were over trivial things, such as ordering the same nachos and loving A Muppet Christmas Carol. (This led me to declare to my friend one night, "He doesn't understand! You can't build a relationship on nachos and A Muppet Christmas Carol!" She has declared this her favorite quote ever.)
On top of that, he was irresponsible, unreliable, and unpredictable, and I grew tired of it. He became frustrated when he couldn't wear my defenses down. Eventually he declared it was a dating relationship or nothing and he wound up with nothing.
Satan tried to use that. While we hadn't been dating and it wasn't a breakup, it did leave a void. Suddenly my evenings were empty. The phone was silent. I sat alone in the pew on Sunday morning (although there had always been a brother between us). Whereas before I had felt not-quite-so-single, I now felt more single than ever. Satan tried to persuade me it was my fault, that maybe I could have had everything I ever wanted and I blew it.
Once again, Jesus saved the day. He reminded me that yes, I could have had a boyfriend, but I would have had to forsake everything I truly ever wanted--Jesus and a life in God's will--to have it. I would have grown even lonelier in a relationship where I was the only one interested in serving God. (Recently I heard of a lady whose husband doesn't share her faith and he drank and they fought and now, they haven't heard from him in over a month. She has no idea where he is and if he's okay. I reminded myself that I could very well have escaped that same fate.)
I thought maybe all that would cure me of my bad-boy attraction but it didn't. I fought it again and will probably fight it till my wedding day. (Lucky for me MOST of the time my bad boys are decent people, not punks with their pants around their knees, but bad is bad nonetheless, right?)
But I have come to see it as a very tangible representation of Spirit vs. Flesh. Our flesh will always want the world and the Spirit will always have to help us make the right choice. However the Bible says God is with us every step of the way and I try to cling to that, as should all of us single people. Even those not attracted to the "bad" ones may find themselves attracted to the wrong good ones! In the end, it's God's will that matters, and I know it will be worth the wait!

Taking Risks

It's a very long story but I've found that over the last year or two I've shut down a lot emotionally, particularly in my writing. I have a hard time being open and honest when it comes to me and my REAL emotions. Even now, there are some family and friends that still don't know about this blog because I hesitate to let them see how I am feeling. Sometimes it's easier to trust strangers and distant friends with secrets and emotions than people you see every day. I really don't even know why.
It was actually difficult for me to publish that last post. I wanted to share it, I needed to make it public, to put it in writing. But when it came time to push the button, I hesitated. Then I read over it again and wondered why. There was nothing really BAD in it, nothing people would judge me over. It was just that I was putting myself out there a little that scared me. But I did it, and I felt better for doing so.
Then a reader, whom I had never seen or heard of before she found my blog, left a comment saying that she feels the exact same way and thanking me for it. Most importantly, she said that she needed to hear it too. It struck me that for the first time in a while, my writing had made an itsy bitsy difference to SOMEBODY. Pictures of the kids are cute and fun, especially for people that know me and people that want to know what being a nanny is really like. But sometimes God leads to write other things and honestly, I have been resisting.
Not only is that soooo wrong, but I think it's hurting me. Writing was once my outlet, and I think I had healthier ways of handling emotions then. Now I keep most things locked inside, and I have developed some less-healthy habits. (Don't worry, no drinking, smoking, or anything like that! More like sulking and denial...) I think I try to be perfect too much, when the fact is sometimes being imperfect, or at least acknowledging the imperfections, helps more people. So while there are a LOT of things that will stay locked away in a Word document no one ever reads, I am going to try to be more honest about things.
One thing that led me to this was an assignment I wrote, the very last elective lesson in the Journeyman course for the Christian Writers Guild. It was on "The Speaker as Writer" (or possibly vice versa...this was a month ago), and in it I had to take a speech or devotion I had recently delivered and turn it into an article. I don't speak pretty much EVER so I had to modify it and wrote a lesson I would LIKE to give at some point and turned it into an article. (I did inform my mentor, who was cool with it.)
I wrote a personal story that only my very close friends and family know about, at least details. It was okay for me because only my mentor, who has never met me and is miles upon miles away, would see it. She loved it though and strongly encouraged me to blog it. So, in the spirit of taking risks, I am going to post it tomorrow. (Although it's so late it will probably be today by the time most of you see it.) I don't know what it will mean to anybody, but I do know that I have a young person following my blog. I haven't the slightest clue if anyone else reads it, but maybe the story will be an encouragment to her. Or maybe it won't and I will just have the reward of having done what I feel God wants me to do with my talent and with the experience He provided for me.

A Modified Version of Real Life

So I haven't had a lot of time lately, or at least, not time in which I have internet access to blog with. But I have been doing a lot of thinking on a lot of things, one of which is my job and my life in general.
It hadn't occurred to me how much two years has changed me until I went to visit my friend. We've been best friends since we were eleven but hadn't seen each other for two years. The last time we saw each other was also only for a night. She's been away at college and I've been busy with work and sometimes it's very hard to find time to talk. If it weren't for texting we wouldn't talk at all for huge chunks of time.
I guess we both kind of lost track of how much the other had changed. Not that it's been a bad thing; contrary to what she believes. ;) She was the one that first pointed out how confident I had become, in a roundabout way. We got a hotel for a couple nights in Williamsburg. I researched a nice one. I made the reservations. I went in and joked with the desk clerk, asked for everything we wanted, and eventually secured a small discount. And I was totally comfortable with all of it. (Now he was a very kind, good-humored desk clerk that was very approachable but still.)
The last month or so has opened my eyes to the fact that I am a fairly well-rounded person that is living a good life. For so long I have wobbled between letting others make me feel like I'm not living life because I still live at home, and feeling like I am less of a person because I'm not on a huge "life path" or engaged or anything. But you know what? I LIKE what I do, and it's serving me well. The money is good, and is enabling me to travel and learn and see and do things that will add more to my education and character.
The experience is good on many levels. In a lot of ways, I am getting a "dry run" at motherhood, at real life, only a modified version. (Mothers don't get paid to do their job, they don't get vacation, etc.) Last night I was up every hour with the kids because one was sick and the other is an infant (that only woke up twice, which was impressive, but her sister made up for it). I had to get up this morning and make breakfast and move along and help them pack for their trip and continue living. That's real life! That's what people do. (Granted I get to go home and nap for a bit after I take my check to the bank; so maybe I'm living a posh version of real life.)
It's also giving me the opportunity to meet many different kinds of people, different social classes, personality types, nationalities, religions. I learn a lot about people and places and even human nature itself just getting to know their friends and relatives, and meeting people at playgroups. I get to see how people handle themselves in different situations and in some cases (such as a big fancy hotel) I have learned how I need to handle myself.
I feel guilty for not writing as much. Yes, I need to work on that, but I am also garnering so much more knowledge and experience that is helpful especially in fiction writing. My job is good for me, my life is good for me. I love my life! It has taken me a long time to realize that (and I apologize to those of you who have tried to tell me before), but I do. I have to remind myself of that sometimes when I'm falling asleep at 8 o'clock at night and I'm only 20 years old. But who wrote the rule that just because you're 20 years old you can't go to bed early if you need to? Years ago, everyone did that because everyone worked. And I work. I am tired because I work, and that's a good reason.
So this is long and rambling, but I have been wanting to share it for some time. All in all, while I want to keep pressing forward and getting older and wiser, I think I'm in a good place. :)