Nostalgia and Timehop are ruining my life

I am already a sentimental person. One that loves to look at old pictures, reminisce, and what-not. I would estimate I take 1,000,000 photos per year (this number is a gross exaggeration). And I'm not even that excessive. I bring my big camera to stuff, take a few pictures, call it a day. I use my iPhone for pictures, but even then I just snap a few and move on with my life. Despite what I consider moderation, my daily Timehop typically includes 2 dozen photos. And I hate it.

Every day, I have 2 dozen reminders of how little my kids used to be. How tiny and perfect, how sweet and innocent. How freaking ridiculously small and cute. Frankly, I'm tired of it. It disgusts me.

Take this picture, for example:

 This is 2 year old and apparently topless Ava. LOOK HOW CUTE SHE IS! Look at her tiny face and brown eyes. DO IT! I cannot look at this picture longer than 10 seconds without getting sad. This baby girl couldn't read. She didn't write and make me curl her super thick hair and give me maximum sassiness when she disagreed with me. She was nice, and I miss her. 

Here's another example, much worse: 

Alana was only 3 months old in this picture, and the worst part about it isn't that I can't remember her as a baby, its that I paid Sears a large sum of money to take it. I had no idea how fast she would grow up, someone please tell 24 year old Jennifer to stop wishing her first baby was a toddler already, because you can't get that time back. This little baby will be 8 and talking about boys and wearing braces before you know it 24 year old Jennifer, I know that's crazy because she doesn't even have teeth yet, but don't blink. Don't even think about it!

Another thing that no one bothers to mention in the whole pre-kids peptalk? With each kid, time goes faster. You think that time went fast when your first was a baby? When you probably had nothing more to do each day than sit around and stare at their face and watch old episodes of ER? WRONG. When you get to your second kid, and you want to sit around and stare at their tiny baby face while they sleep, you can't. Instead, you will have to put them down so that you can feed and clothe and keep your other kid alive. Then, when you think time cannot possibly go faster, your third kid comes along. Its highly possible by this point that at least one of your previous children will be in school, you know, because of the time warp thing. So each day, while your baby should be sleeping and being stared at by you, instead they are being placed in a carseat and brought along to pick up somebody from school. Instead of sleeping in and being held early in the morning, they are laying on the floor screaming while their mommy puts someone's hair in a ponytail and packs a lunch (this scenario is only until their daddy gets out of bed and picks that sad baby up). And then, because of the school errands and the field trips and the tons of early mornings and afternoon homework, you turn around and your third baby isn't so little anymore. He's 3, and he doesn't want to sleep on your chest while you stare at his face. He's a man now, he has no time for that. So then Timehop, because its a huge jerk, is like Look at your little baby, he'll never be this small again blah blah blah go cry in the bathroom now. 

That third baby and his insistence on growing up stings a little. And Timehop just has to rub it in. 

By the grace of my fourth baby not being one yet, he is not included in my daily nostalgia and pictures of sadness, save the occasional ultrasound or picture of my belly from last summer. This only means one thing, Timehop is waiting about 3 months to start torturing me. Mid-November it will start in with the hospital pictures, pictures of Liam and his siblings, the 1,000 pictures of him sleeping, all of the pictures and heartache combined in one convenient (and free minus the cost of your tears!) app. That space/time paradox of your first 3 kids is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, compared to your fourth. With number 4 you likely have 2 kids in school, a very active 2 year old to keep alive/stop from smothering the baby, and tons of crap that doesn't involve staring at your baby to do. Even if you're lucky and your husband does all of the grocery shopping and buys you tons of cookies and soup from Panera, you will still have to do the dumb stuff, because he will go back to work. That stuff shouldn't even be necessary, staring at your baby should be number one on the list of priorities, eating is a close second and showering doesn't even rank on there. You can shower when they're grown up, or when you start to smell, whichever one comes first.

I am already bracing myself for the influx of tiny Liam pictures, but I don't think it will help. I don't think when I wake up 2 1/2 months from now and my guy is 1 that any mental preparation I have done will have me ready. Every picture will make me sad, every faded memory of holding him for the first time and squeezing in the maximum amount of snuggles with him will seem insufficient, because I will forget. Just like we forget the bad things, like contractions and stitches, the memories of the good stuff fade too. That fleeting time when their tiny butt fits into your hand and they're so sleepy that they lay on your chest and snore without any effort, that memory will become distant. All of the times that they pee all over the place and you have to change their clothes and yours at midnight, it will seem like another lifetime ago. And then Timehop will come in, acting like it owns the place, and let you know that guess what? Your kids are growing up! And you can't remember what they used to be before they were wild preschoolers and first graders and third graders, not without all of these old pictures that will make you sad! So we'll help you remember, the only catch is that you will be sad afterwards! 

This tiny guy is crawling now, and by the time he's a toddler I'm going to need Timehop and the depression that accompanies it, to remind me of a time when he did not try to eat anything left on the floor or pull my hair. So I guess I won't delete it just yet, maybe next year.

I Hate Time

So this happened yesterday:

Do you know why this happened? Because time is a jerk. My baby, who used to be little and small and not a giant 8 year old, is halfway grown up. Because time hates me. You know what time? I hate you right back. I hate you more. You make me sick. Your face disgusts me. Let's never talk again. 

This girl used to be little. Now she's tall and she reads chapter books and she has too many opinions. She cuts up her own pancakes like she's a freaking adult. She can shower by herself and wash her own hair. She can tie her own shoes. She can find what she wants to watch on TV or put on a DVD without adult assistance. Its like she doesn't even need a mommy anymore. 

This girl climbs to the top of stuff and can swing without being pushed. She can get her own bowl of cereal and then read the box while she eats it. 

This girl has hair down to her waist and mosquito bites all over her legs. She has crazy patterned nail polish and an undying love of lipgloss. This girl is very contradictory when it comes to fashion. She wears dresses and Nikes, or t-shirts and the girliest jewelry she can find. She has an Avengers lunchbox, and even though mean boys teased her about it (who I will find and punch in time) she stands firm that girls can like the Avengers too. 

This girl is in no hurry to grow up, even though time put her in second grade already. Dang you time. This girl has no plans to stop playing with toys, even when she is taking a shower by herself and washing her own hair like she's all grown up. She still intends on playing with Barbies and coloring every day of her life, try and stop her. She takes ridiculous videos of herself on my phone, she sings louder than the car radio, and she giggles nonstop at the dumbest TV shows. 

This girl is a sweet to everyone and gives unlimited hugs without even being asked. The only person she ever disagrees with is her sister, but they quickly make-up and go right back to playing/fighting again. This girl does not have a mean bone in her body, and she is the kind of friend and sister and daughter that reflects that. 

If only time would stop making her grow up so fast, I would have more time to just watch her. Watch her be an honor roll student, great big sister, Barbie and Frozen lover, lipgloss fanatic, wearer of chipped nail polish, expert hugger, and frequent giggler. Time keeps making her grow up, but I'm going to keep buying her Barbies and hair bows and markers and pretending that she will never grow up, because I don't want to face a world where she isn't my baby anymore. That's why no matter what I will never insist she just hurry up and act her age, because that age is always too high of a number for my comfort. 

Real Life

Four days left till school starts, and I think my children are glad about that. They are, to put it bluntly, sick of each other. One minute they are playing fine, and the next they are fighting because someone fake kicked (whatever that is) someone else. One minute they are asking to help make pancakes, and the next they are whining because I told them to clean something up and why do they have to do everything around here?!!

Nothing in our real life is ever perfect, but that's fine. They don't all smile or even look at the camera when I take a picture, but whatever, they are in the picture. Motherhood isn't perfect, sometimes I let them eat a piece of candy at 7 am, which mostly happens if they catch me eating candy first and I buy their silence with another piece. But they are cute, so that helps.

This one needs a haircut, and at some point she will need braces. But she's sweet, smart, helpful, a good student, and she almost always loves to help. She is obsessed with flipping the pancakes at breakfast, and although she kind of makes them disfigured, she is learning. She loves swimming every single day, and her hair is less than fun to brush out afterwards. She thinks she is 14 and needs to wear lipgloss everyday, but does not care if her hair is a mess, women are crazy. She yell-sings constantly, even in the car, to her iPod. She is so loud that we have to turn the car radio up to hear it over her loud voice. She is perfectly wild and I cannot believe she is going to be a second grader on Thursday.

This lady goes to kindergarten in four days. She won't even be 5 yet. So sad for me. Ava is the girliest child I could ever imagine. She will not ever under any circumstances wear pants. She has to be forced to wear leggings on the coldest days of the year, but only under her skirt or dress. All skirts, all the time. She loves to accessorize with every piece of jewelry and headband possible, and I know she will never go to a day of school without earrings. She is surprisingly bossy for a middle child, and when she and Alana pretend to be iCarly or whoever Ava is constantly telling Alana what to do, and even more surprisingly Alana listens. She is still kind of a picky eater, with the weirdest aversion to rice, even though we eat rice at least one a week, she still holds out in her dislike for it. She is sweet, loving, smart, funny, has the cutest little squeaky voice, and gives out hugs like she has an endless supply of them. My little kindergartener will probably cry the first day of school, but I know she is in good hands and she is really happy to see all of her friends from preschool again.

Now this little boy, he is a wild man. He loves to talk, and yell, and even sing. The amount of talking that he does constantly surprises me. He just turned two, but I cannot even keep track of how many words he knows. He will repeat anything you tell him to say, then surprise you by yelling Giddy-up cowboy! at the top of his lungs. I don't even know where he came up with that. What a weirdo. He constantly insists that he is dying, and the only cure for what ails him is a band-aid on his finger, which he then takes off five minutes later. He must heal quickly. He loves playing with the girls, but is also content to play by himself with his huge collection of cars and trucks and action figures and balls. He also loves to watch infinite amounts of Peppa Pig and Max & Ruby because he says "Mox" is funny. He is wild, then he will catch you off guard with his sweetness. He insists that I am pregnant with a baby dog, not a baby boy, and you cannot change his mind on that subject. He is wild, sweet, smart, stubborn, and very opinionated for such a small person. I don't know how bored he will be when the girls go to school next week, but I know that he will keep me entertained while they are gone.

Even though these bratty kids keep me awake all the time, and make me watch dumb stuff on TV, and think they need to eat so much sugary cereal that I actually had to make a rule of one bowl per day, I wouldn't trade them for anything. Even the one in my belly that keeps kicking me and giving me heartburn and making me buy him more blue clothes, despite Ava's insistence that girl clothes are cuter. I can't even argue with her on that one, girl clothes are way cuter.

Summer is Here

We are two weeks into summer and so far, its been pretty fun. Our schedule is less hectic, although there has still been tennis camp and summer school dance classes for Alana, but all those made me do was brush everyone's hair which isn't hurting anything. 

I was amazed at the end of the year how much both of the girls had grown. Those dorks are already asking how many days until school starts again. Sadly its only 44. 44 days until I have a kindergartener and a second grader. Yikes.

Alana did really well at tennis camp this year, I noticed a big improvement from last year and I think part of that is that she's older and slightly less uncoordinated. Slightly. She enjoyed it, even if it was already like 90 degrees outside at 9 am.

Witten is determined to spend a lot of his summer without pants. Whatever, less laundry that way.

Before summer officially started the girls (and their cousins but they're not pictured) had a lemonade stand. It was pretty successful, they took advantage of all of the yardsale customers and Alana offered each of them lemonade. She was the only kid who stayed out there the whole time, and she earned $10 for her efforts (the stand total was $20 and she got half because she did most of the work). Of course she spent half of her money on video games at Peter Piper, but whatever.

Maybe the most exciting thing so far this summer for my kids at least because I find it a little annoying is the small pool we set up in our back yard. They would spend all of their time in it if they could, but I prefer the air conditioned indoors so we don't live out there. Either way they have got some decent tans already and its only part way through June.

I'm looking forward to sitting on my couch some more this summer, besides on the weekends when there is an endless stream of birthdays or weddings or movies that David must go see. Other than that, we will be at home in our pajamas, not brushing our hair.

Happy Football Day

If we're being perfectly honest here, the only things we care about on Thanksgiving at our house are football and food. David is Team Football, I am Team Food. He cares about the Cowboys winning, I care about eating pie. Its a nice balance, and it has served us well over the years.

When it comes to Alana on Thanksgiving  Football Day, she cares about both football and food, but more about playing. Playing outside, and playing with whatever cousins are around. Playing is number one for her.

Ava also cares about playing, but I think she's more grateful for pie than Alana is. She gets that from me.

I think my girls are more thankful for each other than either one of them is willing to admit. Don't tell them I know...

Witten is only on his second Thanksgiving, so he is still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about. He likes football, because he is a man, but he also enjoys eating pie when the time comes. After he is done with those activities, playing outside is next on his list.

David always watches the Cowboys play on Thanksgiving. There is no getting around it, it is going to happen. He always wears a jersey too, its like his own personal tradition. He has to represent his team ;)

I have two priorities on Thanksgiving: pie and pictures. On holidays I'm kind of insistent on taking a family picture. You can't fight it children, its going to happen. David has his Cowboys to watch, I have my picture to take. Nobody can stop me.

Although Facebook and the incessant "thankful" posts drive me crazy the entire month of November, I really am grateful for everything I have. I have 3 healthy and bratty kids, a husband who takes care of me, a house with air conditioning and a dishwasher (I love those things), and everything I might need and more. Except pie. I need more pie in my life. I guess I'll have to do something about that...