Facebook rules but what about when my kids want one?

Do you ever stop and think about how different the world is since Facebook?

No, I'm totally serious.

When I was in elementary and middle school I participated in pen pal programs. We would write to kids in other states or other parts of the world and thought it was soooo cool. Think how silly that must seem to kids today. Wow. Write a letter to a kid and then wait two weeks to get one back? Gosh, why? Now we can have a video chat with kids on the other side of the world instantly. You can do video tours of museums, landmarks, zoos. You can see the world from your computer desk. Heck, with tablets and smart phones now, you can see the world from a park bench, a local cafe, heck, while using the john!

How bizarre our children will think our childhoods were.We didn't even have cell phones until we were teenagers. They'll wonder how the heck we kept up with all of our friends. How we got in touch with someone. What we did with our free time. How we survived without apps and navigation and games at our fingertips all the time. It's wild to think about.

Technology is one thing. But Facebook. Now Facebook is amazing. And scary. And has really changed how society functions.

I admit I'm absolutely obsessed with Facebook. I post pictures all the time, I update my status several times a day at minimum, I'm friends with people from work, college, high school. I get status updates via text message from my close friends and family and I have the Facebook app on my Droid. Yeah. Obsessed.

A lot of negative can come from Facebook. Hi-tech bullying for example or stalking. But a great deal of positive as well.

My church's women's group has a page where we post prayer requests, talk about issues and events in our lives. We support each other, offer up advice and plan benefits. It's a great way to keep up with events going on at the church. Since our church is kind of large, its a wonderful way to get to know all of the other women better. I've gotten to know some of them much better and it has really made me feel more at home in the church.

Another benefit from Facebook is keeping up with my family from across the country. I get to see pictures of cousins and new babies and know what's going on in their lives. I get to offer support when something goes wrong and celebrate when things go right. It helps keep us close when the busy bustle of our daily lives doesn't allow us the time to talk. And with all the kids and hurried schedules, we don't frequently have time to talk.

Facebook even offers the chance to reconnect with friends you haven't spoken to in years. People from high school or college that you just haven't been able to stay in touch with since you've moved away and started your life in the real world.

A lot of the time, we focus on the negative aspects of Facebook. People getting in trouble for things they post about their boss, people over sharing about their lives, people posting some really inappropriate pictures, or kids seeing things they shouldn't see. We think about how much it has taken away. The barriers people used to have in the lives and the privacy we thought we all needed. Those don't exist now. Not for those of us in the Social Network generation. For better or worse, that's what we deal with.

I really dread the day that my kids want a Facebook page. I don't know how I will handle it. And I know with the way things move, that day will be coming sooner rather than later. A lot sooner than I want. I don't see how I can not let them have one when I spend so much of my time and energy with Facebook. Of course, their Facebook usage, and internet usage in general will be very closely monitored. I'm going to be one of those mean parents that has parental controls on all the computers and blocks. I'll be reading text messages, emails, status updates, monitoring pictures. I've seen how much a hasty upload can do to someone's future. The wrong picture could turn up on the internet when they're trying to get into college or get a job.  It could ruin them.

There are a lot of complications for parents in the Social Network generation. With technology more and more advanced...I can't imagine what will be around by the time my girls are starting school. Compare technology today to technology five years ago. It can blow your mind. I get a little panicky just thinking about it. Especially with two little girls. I don't know, I just worry more about girls than boys.

But who knows, maybe the Facebook thing won't last and by the time my kids are old enough to want a page it'll have just died off.

Yeah...right.

UPDATE: Duck Grows

So, last Saturday, Evie acquired her first "for her" pet. I took the girls and met Mimi at the local Tractor Supply and we bought some chickens. Six to be exact and one of those has spots on his back and became Evie's chicken.

That chick's name is Duck. And I know you're all dying to know how he's doing.

Well, he's great. He's grown. Evie is still infatuated with him. She wants to go check on him every day first thing when we get to Mimi's. It's positively adorable. This summer we are planning on letting her interact with the chicks a lot. I hope that as a result when the chickens are adults they are still friendly and approachable. I am really excited about the future friendship for Evie and these chicks!

When our children surprise us

Before Elly was born I was afraid of how Evie would change when she was no longer an only child. I worried that she would be jealous. Regress. Become mean or lash out. I tried to prepare myself for a less-lovable Evie. I fretted over whether or not the negative changes would be long-term.

Shame on me for never even considering that Evie could mature a bit and become even sweeter and more affectionate than before.

Shame. On. Me.

Well, I have learned. Evie has adapted and overcome any odds and is just loving life as a big sister. Her latest accomplishment: feeding Elly a bottle. I wish I was able to get a better picture but I have to help hold the little baby while making sure that the big baby isn't shoving the bottle down her throat.

 Evie is just the sweetest big sister.

This morning I marveled as Evie brought Elly some baby toys from her room after I commented that "Sissy seems bored." Evie even put them in Elly's hand and showed her how to shake the rattle and tried to help her chew on a teething toy.

Elly just smiled and cooed and giggled. Doing the happy baby leg kick the whole time. It was adorable. That lil girl ADORES her big sister. It melts my heart to see the way she watches Evie.

 

Of course for Elly there has never been life without Evie. I don't know if Evie remembers a life without Elly or not. If she does, she won't by the time Elly is up walking and talking. Since Evie is virtually always with Elly, more so than anyone else in her life, Elly is unbelievably attached and devoted to her big sister. 

Although Evie has her less than altruistic moments (don't we all?), she seems to by-and-large feel the same for Elly. She frets when we leave Sissy with Daddy or Mimi. Or whenever the two of them are separated.

I had hoped and prayed that one day, when Evie and Elly were older, they would develop a closeness and a bond that I always wanted when I was a little girl. I imagine sisters to share a connection that no other relationship can rival for the rest of their lives and when I was young I had always wanted a sister. I had hoped that this bond would be forged once they were older and able to share activities and hobbies. To my surprise they seem to already share a close relationship. I am overjoyed. Shocked. Amazed. And incredibly happy about it.

Isn't it funny when our children surprise us? This is the kind of surprise I like.

Life is like a box of chinese food

No really. I've decided. It's just like a Dinner Special #1 with an egg roll.

Since I'm sure you don't have the local Chinese menu memorized, like I do, let me tell you what a #1 is. It's Sesame Chicken and pork fried rice with choice of egg roll or cheese wonton. It was one of my favorite meals when I was pregnant and I probably ate it two or three times a month when I was at work. One of the best parts is that the meal is so big that even preggo me couldn't finish it and there was always enough left over for my hubby to have a meal.

The typical "I need to lose 30 lbs yesterday" diet doesn't encourage you to eat Chinese food. In fact, I haven't eaten Chinese since I was pregnant. And last night I simply couldn't bring myself to "eat" the SlimFast shake that I'd brought to work. I tried to convince myself. Tried REALLY hard. I promise. But I couldn't do it.

So at 6:30 I broke down and called in an order. My usual #1 with an egg roll. I thought the restaurant smelled incredibly delicious when I pulled up to pick up my order. I was so excited! The anticipation was palpable. I could practically taste the egg roll. It was going to be so tasty! Well worth the extra calories.

I paid for my order. Returned to work. Got out my chopsticks and ate a bite of chicken.

Egag!

Hmm. What on earth?

Tried a bite of egg roll.

Ick! 

The food that I was looking so forward to was barely edible! What was wrong? It looked and smelled fine. But it was so greasy! And the few bites I was able to eat felt so heavy in my stomach. I put the lid back on, slid it into the bag and let Josh know he would have plenty of Chinese for supper.

I don't think anything was wrong with the food itself. Josh said it was delicious and had zero problems eating all that I didn't. I think it had been so long since I'd cheated on my diet that my stomach just really couldn't handle all that deep-fried and greasy food.

To make it worse, I had been so excited about eating Chinese that I'd really built it up in my head beyond any reasonable expectation. And as a result the let down was hard. I could have cried I was so disappointed! And all over some stupid Chinese food.

I think I do that sort of thing a lot though. I set my expectations too high. And as a result I'm disappointed. With Chinese food, with my dieting, with my husband and children, with work. I expect myself to lose this baby weight so fast and as a result I get so frustrated and fed up with the slow-but-steady results. I expect my husband to read my mind and know that what he's doing is aggravating me, or more often what he's not doing is aggravating me, but I don't ASK him to do something. I just get mad. I expect my children to know that I have a headache and act accordingly or know that I had a bad day and be darling cherubs. Of course I'm going to be disappointed!

So now that I know I'm doing this, I wonder if I'll be able to change it? If I can I think I would be a much happier camper. We shall see...

Baby wearing - An update

I know its not even been a week yet, but I think that baby wearing is going so well that I just have to let someone know.

I absolutely love it! And Elly does too. When you find yourself with two children less than 18 months apart, there are some unique challenges that you have to find a way to address. One of those is taking both babies out in public.

I love to go to Walmart. I know, I'm insane. But I'm serious. I love going to Walmart. Since I had Elly, my only trips to Walmart have been when I had back-up. Either Josh to take care of one baby at the house, or Josh to go with me and we each get a shopping cart and a baby. But Saturday, I took both babies to Walmart by myself and it worked great. Other than a couple of smart ass comments.

When we got to the store, I put Elly in her sling (feeling a tad bit silly but that's mostly because I haven't 100% got the hang of getting her into it yet) and went around to get Evie. I debated grabbing a cart and pushing Evie in but figured the workout might be good. So I put Evie on one hip and we hiked across the parking lot. It was a hike. And although I was carrying both babies, with Elly in her sling it was pretty comfortable and incredibly easy. I kept worrying about Elly falling out, which is silly because there's not really any way for her to. But we made it inside without issue. I grumbled that the Walmart greeter wasn't there to get me a cart out, but I got Evie safely installed and we were ready to shop. As I was walking across the store a couple of people made comments that I looked like I had my hands full. Thanks, Statement of the Obvious. I am too Southern to be rude to my elders so I smiled and nodded in agreement, biting back a venomous retort each time.

One genius asked me if "that thing" really worked. I raised my eyebrows and asked if she was referring to the sling. Again, I'm Southern. So I was polite and told her that it was great for babies, especially if you had more than one, and that I really recommended it.

Shopping continued and I continued to marvel at how simple it was to reach down and replace Elly's paci and check on her while still pushing the cart and interacting with Evie. Elly slept part of the trip and part of the trip she spent in awe of the light fixtures and the people and everything around us. Evie enjoyed it too. She seems to like having Sissy with us but she doesn't really like having to share "our" stuff with her. And going to Walmart is typically one of "our" things. But this didn't really feel like she was having to "share" me. I didn't feel like I was splitting my time between them. Because Elly was right there I wasn't having to leave Evie or interrupt what we were doing or talking about to take care of the little one.

Getting everyone into the car was a bit different. I put Elly in her seat first but didn't strap her in because it was too awkward to lift Evie out of the cart. I was afraid Elly would get kicked or squished. And I didn't like leaving Evie sitting in the shopping cart while I was on the other side of the car. Then I put Evie in her seat, went back and strapped Elly into hers. Then loaded the groceries. All in all, the shopping trip was great.

I also did some house work while wearing Elly and she just seems to be much happier and more content in that little sling. She's so needy and it makes it so much more handy to just reach down and return a spit out paci or say a soothing word when she's right there. Rather than stopping what I'm doing and going to assist her.

There are still a lot of times out in public that the double stroller will be better. Long mall trips for example. Trips to the park. Etc. But short outings and around the house, the sling is AWESOME!

Of Dying Ducks and Buying Easter Eggs...Err...

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday weekend. If you didn't, well, you might not want to read ahead. Because I did. And I'm going to tell you all about how fabulous it was! No. Really.

I had a fabulous holiday weekend. Absolutely splendid! One of the best weekends I've had in awhile. It ended poorly, but the fact that they end at all is kind of a bummer. But I'll get to that later. Anywho.

My holiday weekend started on Friday night. After I finally got the girls in bed and asleep I boiled eggs for Evie.

I only boiled a dozen. I figured a 20 month-old wasn't going to have the attention span for any more than that. And I'm too old to color eggs for my own entertainment. So, an even dozen. And although it only rarely happens if I'm boiling eggs to eat, four of those eggs split. I was a little aggravated. I mean, Evie really wasn't going to care how pretty her eggs were. But I kind of did.

I plucked them from the water and plopped them back into the carton. Popped it into the fridge. And trotted my butt off to bed. It was after 11 by this time and I was EXHAUSTED. I had really high hopes for egg coloring on Saturday. And of course the chicken purchasing adventure was planned.

After our Walmart excursion and chicken purchasing, me and the girls returned home for lunch and some time with Daddy. I got everything set up for egg coloring and after lunch stripped Evie down and let her have at it.

Evie was incredibly impressed by the fizzing tablets in their clear cups. How fortunate I was to have these clear plastic cups on hand as well! I'd love to say that I had planned it this way. But it was just luck and my husband remembering that we had them while I was digging through the cabinets cursing my general lack of small, squat cups.

"Why don't you just use those clear plastic cups? Do we still have them?"

I had to pick my jaw up from the floor to go dig through the pantry to find them. I couldn't believe my husband had this idea and I hadn't! But next year, I hope to remember this, because it worked perfectly. No stains in my cups or mess to clean up. No extra dishes. Just throw them away! It was great.

The eggs looked pretty, soaking away. Evie was impressed. However, Evie wasn't particularly interested in coloring. While I had anticipated having to wrestle her for dye cups and a tremendous mess all over my kitchen, there was practically none.

Evie marveled at the little eggs scoops when it was time to get the eggs out. But otherwise, she happily sat in her high chair munching on one of the hard-boiled eggs. Yeah. Right off the bat, she reached into the carton, grabbed one of the ugly eggs, peeled it and started chomping away. Go figure. I've never seen her express any interest in eggs before. Now she'd rather sit and snack on one that make a huge mess with cups of dye. But she was happy. So I put eggs in the colors she indicated. We waited while they turned. Then I placed them back into the carton, letting her point to the ones she liked. Then it was clean up and nap time.

It was all incredibly laid back. Nearly disappointingly so. I had the video camera on standby to record the wild hilarity of it all. And there was nothing but Evie eating an egg while I colored 11 others.

When she got up from her nap on Saturday, she wanted to call Mimi to ask how Duck was. She went to the door and pointed outside and started yelling "Duck!" until I called Mimi. It was adorable. But the rest of the day was without incident.


Sunday was incredibly hectic. This was my first holiday with two babies. Getting the three of us up, fed and dressed for a regular day when the babies' appearances don't matter is hard enough. Getting us all out the door dressed to impress in our Easter best...(I didn't mean for that to sound so Suessy) wow. What a challenge! I don't know if it is more or less of a challenge that Elly is still so young. She's easier to dress and I don't have to worry about her falling down and getting her dress dirty. Instead I have to worry about her puking on herself or deciding she's hungry when it's time for us to leave. I was afraid to dress Evie too early, afraid to dress her too late. And of course, Josh was at work and therefore no help!

Believe it or not, we made it to church on time. The girls in their adorable matching dresses. Me...well, I was dressed in a dress. But it was nothing to write home about.

After church my parents came back to my house for Evie's very first Easter egg hunt and some lunch. I couldn't believe how quickly Evie picked up on Easter egg hunting. After a brief debacle where she had to fight the beagle off of one of her eggs and we discovered that the beagle had gone and eaten the eggs she could get to, it went quickly and smoothly.

Lunch was ham, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, macaroni and cheese, and yeast rolls. Carb heavy but simple. And delicious! Josh got home before supper time and we had a great family evening.

Then yesterday I took off work to take Elly to another doctor's appointment with the plastic surgeon about her hemangioma. Got great news there. No growth and the doc thought that since it wasn't growing yet it may not. Another great evening with my little family since Josh was off work.

So all in all, the "duck" buying and Easter egg dying went fabulously! It was an awesome weekend. Wish I could take three day weekends more often!

Hope you enjoyed yours as well.

Evie's first "Pet"

Every year during the spring the local farm supply store, Tractor Supply, has what they call "Chick Days." Several weeks where they sell chicks and baby ducks. Some stores even sell rabbits, turkeys and guineas. But being a small area, we don't quite rank that sort of selection.

A few weeks ago I sent Josh and Evie to pick up dog food from Tractor Supply. They're honestly the cheapest place in town to get decent quality dog food. And when they got home Josh told me that Evie absolutely freaked out over the chickens. She loved them! I know Evie loves dogs and she is open to liking cats, but I didn't know that her affections extended to our feathered friends as well. Of course she likes watching the birds out the window on the bird feeders. But then they're flitting around and flying. They're pretty interesting. But chickens? I had no idea.

Well, my mom has been wanting to get some chickens for her back yard. She's got a fenced in area and wants to put chickens and rabbits there. Although my step dad doesn't really want farm animals he doesn't have the ability to tell his granddaughter "no" so when my mom told him that the chickens were for Evie...well, he caved.

I spent some time researching what kind of chicken we wanted on the website. The Dominques were supposed to reproduce and be pretty docile. They were a blackish colored chick so they'd be easy to pick out. 

The day before Easter seemed like the perfect time to go get Evie a chicken. So this morning I dressed her for the occasion and asked her if she wanted to go get a chicken. Her answer was of course, "Yeah, yeah!"

So we met her Mimi at Tractor Supply. She beat us there and called to tell us they had already sold out of everything but the little yellow chicks. Ah well. Evie wouldn't know the difference. They keep the chicks and ducks in these huge metal tubs under heat lamps. Evie saw the ducks first and stood pointing yelling "Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck!" The other customers were pretty amused. Several stopped to watch her pet a couple of baby ducks.

Then it was time to pick out chicks. We got one with brown spots on its back. That's specifically Evie's chicken.

She was very fascinated watching the chicks. Although she did keep calling them ducks.

But she quickly moved on to "Mine, Mine, Mine."

After we told her a few times to be easy and to just pet the chicken, she got the hang of it.

Then after every time she managed to pet one of the chicks, she would clap her hands excitedly.

It was adorable.

So meet Evie's first pet. The first pet bought solely for Evie. He (or she) is a chicken. And I think she's going to call him Duck.

Happy Easter everyone!