97% Humidity

For those of us from the desert, the hot and humid south is hard to imagine. So this my friends is what 97% humidity with an outside temperature of 78 degrees. I saw this the other morning and thought, "This must be what ice cubes see when they look out of a glass that is wet with condensation."

Daddy's home

Playing dressup with dad's solider gear

Vivian the soldier pony, of course

Hop on pop. Dustin is sick and jetlagged, but happy to have his kids fawning over him.

Its ok to be different

Logically we know that each child is different. Vivian is a spirited girl who doesn't like order. Logan is silly but has a strong sense of order. So here is an indication of these kids' differences. I cleaned both of their rooms on this particular day. The photo was taken in the afternoon.

Vivian's room



Logan's room

Kids have my camera

I just downloaded pictures to my computer for the first time in a month. Apparently 90% of the pictures were taken by kids of kids...and cats. Please enjoy what these little people do with my camera when I'm not looking.



Big Logan and Little Logan cruisin' the 'hood.



Big Logan wears safety gear when he rides. Of course its pool gear, but its safe right?



Jumping with a sprinkler under the trampoline



Apparently Logan has a wee bit of leprechaun in him.

It is what it is

There are words, phrases, that from person's lips mean one thing and something completely different from another mouth.

In the past months the Johns family has suffered two great losses: Grandma Bernice at 89 1/2 years old and Justin James at only 15 years old. I've not been able to go West and join my family for either funeral. I spent the days after learning of the losses talking to my mom, dad and sister. We did our best to talk each other through the mourning process. How do we remember the woman who shaped us with her love, humor and (frustratingly) deep bitterness? How do come to terms with the loss of a young man who's pure heart and joyful spirit was a beacon of love and compassion for not just our family but for our entire community?
It's not cut and dry.
...
I've found myself in conversational lulls with my family. We've talked a topic to death (no pun intended) and one of us says, "You know, It is what it is." Between us it says so much.
"I don't know what to say."
"Nothing we can do to change it."
"My heart's a little broken."
"Lets ride this out and see where life takes us/this."
"It's in God's hands now."
But mostly 'it' (sorrow, love, heartbreak, acceptance, love, joy, redemption...) simply is beyond explanation and definition.

Too many use this sacred phrase to say that they are lazy, useless, apathetic, or impotent. Shame on them.

In my heart, "It is what it is" is my phrase of surrender to my deepest and truest emotions.
Its what we say when even the most eloquent of us are lost for words.

Reading

Reading to your kids every single night...it works!!! A while ago, Vivian started pointing to words in books I read to her. "That says 'Jack' and that says 'Annie'." One day at the clinic, she was reading every word she knew on a sigh. It finally dawned on me that maybe I should get her some sort of books to help her learn to read. I found the BOB books on Amazon. I think they've been around forever. That's because these things work.

Vivian read the first book out of the box with no problem. She has been able to sound out words, and is just about through all twelve books in the first collection. She is has been confusing 'b' and 'd', but that's common. Practice and not reading when she is tired will help.

Tonight I started to read a library book with her and asked her if she wanted to try read this book. Well she did! I had to give her words like 'bulldozzer' and 'brother'. But she did awesome!

Vivian read this tonight

One additional tidbit about reading with the kids...

When Dustin is here, bedtime reading is his territory. I'm not sure I'm willing to give bedtime reading back to him. We will probably have family story time.

What I'm loving about story time is that I'm cramming a bit of my literary knowledge into little minds. Tonight we covered the topics of alliteration, personification, and compound words. There is nothing that makes a mommy swell with pride as when a five year old can understand personification. She will tell you, "Person-f-cation, is when animals are like people. It makes stories better." Close enough for five, right?



The past months

As you all know, Dustin's job has caused me to be a single mom for the past many months. I'm happy that Dustin's had this job opportunity. Each week, he has some new experience that makes me say, "Seriously this is our life!?! That's so awesome." For a couple kids from super small town America, its what we dreamed of when we dreamed about getting out and away from all we grew up with. Now we're going to work toward doing this diplomatic service thing as a family.
That said. In many ways this has been the most difficult deployment we've had. From my end...being a stay at home single mom of two preschool children...well its more work than I've ever done in my life. Days start at 6am and I don't really get a break until 8pm (on a good night). Before Dustin left, I had lofty goals of cooking healthy and going to the gym four times a week. I would get the kids into gymnastics and go to storytime at the library every week. I'd paint the interior of the house, and tile my bathroom. Well turns out that I can't do it all. Especially on my own. I've had to set aside a whole lot of my good ideas, just because I needed to keep my head above water.

This blog has been one of the many personal joys that had turned into a chore and thus was set aside for a while.

Dinners lately have been uninspired. Pancakes, snack plates, leftovers (of what, I know not because I only cook once maybe twice a week), homemade pizzas, cereal and corndogs are our typical meals. I dearly miss going to yoga, but I just couldn't get myself to the gym as often as I wanted, and I can't get enough time alone to do yoga at home without a kid or cat crawling under me.
But enough of the bad.
Cutting life back to the necessities has brought some unexpected progress.

Coming up....those unexpected progresses.