Colorado Crockers

Addilyn was being a butt-head today. This might not be so surprising to those of you who don't know Addilyn well, she is after all a five year old girl and we all know five year olds are prone to butt-headed-ness. She isn't a butt-head  At least, not usually. She is my happy, go lucky, roll with the punches kind of kid. Until shes not. Then she is a pain in the butt. Moody. Grumpy. A pest to her sisters. General butt-headish behavior. And that is when I know I have messed up. We could call this an Addilyn problem, and, on some level, that wouldn't be entirely inaccurate. I believe we are in charge of how we deal with our emotions. But she is 5. And I am her mom. And I know adults who don't do that whole "emotion" thing well so it is a tall order for a short person. Addressing the need behind the behavior is the quickest way to root it out. So even though I want to thump her and tell her to pull herself together, I ...

My kids think they have chores. Ok, so they kind of do. I hate free loaders and I won't be raising any so I do put my kids to work in all sorts of ways. We don't really call them chores, just kind of "hey, you live in this house so you are expected to help keep it up, it takes a team". Except for J, but he is really cute and bald and toothless and that really gets you a long way. No, the chores my kids truly kevetch about are referred to as their "5 things". Each day, some time after they have consumed the breakfast lovingly prepared for them by one of their parents (who are we kidding, we all know Matt is the breakfast guy around these parts) my children are expected to do the following: get dressed, brush hair, wash face, brush teeth and make bed. Whoa. Am I a mean mother or what. Here is the catch; there is no screen time of any sort until they are all done. High stakes, my friends, high stakes. Each day when I take a shower, I leave Eliana in c...

I am an introvert. OK. Maybe that is a misrepresentation. I am PART introvert. I live in a weird tension between being someone who loves people but needs space. I have been out of my space, my home, my life rhythm for the last month as I spent time with my family and friends in Colorado. I loved it. I loved having coffee with people I usually am forced to only enjoy over the phone. I love hugging my niece and harassing my nephew. I shopped with my sister. I went out with my dad. I spent lazy mornings with my mom.  I hugged on my friends kids, slept in their beds, and spent hours of quality time with people who matter to me. And now I am grumpy. I am home, or at least where my possessions happen to reside, and I feel like I need to curl up with a book and lock myself in a room to "recharge". I have lost my balance, I spent too much time OUT and not enough IN. I don't really have good words for it, for the feeling of wanting to hide from the world. ...

Sleep deprivation. Loosing the "pre-baby" body. Less "me" time. No time alone with hubby. These are all the sacrifices people talk about when you have a baby. These are things you are expecting, anticipating, freedoms you know you are giving up. The there is the other stuff, the "second string" sacrifices you may have only heard when eves dropping on mommy friends. Things like never getting to pee by yourself or getting puked on or children running off with important things like cell phone or key or wallets. Then there is the dark side. Things mothers don't often talk about because you just can't bring yourself to discuss it over a cocktail or even at a playgroup. Things you can't say out loud least your children repeat them. Things that sacrifice our very pride. It goes beyond the humility of our children looking like booger crusted hooligans at church on those mornings you just can't seem to get your shizit together. It goes further...

The accident was on my mind all night. In my dreams I was trying to save them or I was crashing my car or.... This morning I woke up feeling anything but rested. I spent a nice morning at a friends house while our kids played. We talked about the accident. I am still trying to find the right "box" in my head to put it in. Death? Things you never hope to see again? Pain? Car safety? Through the wonders of technology and firmly filed under the heading "small friggin' world" I saw a friends post on Facebook. RIP. My stomach sank. I got that cold feeling. The one you get when watching a horror movie and the stupid blond girl is about to go for a walk. At night. In the graveyard. By herself. Stomach in my feet, I started to put together pieces. I knew him. The man who died while we waited for help to come. The man who I talked to, who I told everything was going to be all right. The man who I couldn't help. That man was Ryan. Ryan who graduated the same y...

Ok, so I suck as a blogger. I am long over due for a post. I am sorry, friends, that I have done a crappy job staying on top of this. It seems wrong to have the first post of a year be a sad one. I feel like I should be talking about all the hope I have for a new year, a clean slate and blah blah blah That would have been my post, but life doesn't always go the way you think it is going to. We watched the Broncos game today. I am not a fan of football...or really any sports. I didn't grow up in a household that's pulse beat to whatever sports season it happen to be. And I pretty much suck at sports. The game was a good one though we lost and our season is now over. The devastation of Broncos fans sent ripples through Facebook. The creeping crud has been making its way around our family, today it was Jamison who was feeling sickly and we were all out of Ibuprofen.  Despite the single digit weather, I was off to Target fo...