...It's probably because they DID give me unrealistic hair expectations.

In preparation for our Disney trip I've been listening to a cd on Grooveshark of all the music from the Magic Kingdom Halloween party.   It's music from the fireworks show, the parade and some kind of dance party thing.   I thought it would maybe be fun Halloween music to listen to and also a way to get super excited about the trip.

The dance party and parade music is pretty fun, especially knowing that my niece Tivoli apparently danced to it the whole time.   But friends... I'm here to tell you, the firework's music is just. absolutely. obnoxious. You heard me.  I just admitted that something Disney is obnoxious.    I shouldn't be surprised, though, because Carey and I can hardly stand to sit through the EPCOT and Magic Kingdom's regular fireworks music.  I've actually had to tell Carey to just not listen to the words, otherwise he continues to kill the experience.  He has a knack for making up his own lyrics to any song that completely ruins it for everybody.   There are several other reason we don't like it... However, I won't tell them to you because you might like that part and I don't want to spoil it for you.   I'm just thoughtful like that.

Anyway, all this made me think of an old Universal commercial.  A little girl is standing in front of the Hulk ride and says "if I saw one more princess, I was going to puke".  That was always a funny commercial to me because as much as I love Disney and Mickey and Winnie the Pooh, I equally dislike pretty much all the princess stuff.   I can't explain it...  Maybe it's partly because I think them telling millions of kids that "you can make your dreams come true if you really believe" is extremely mean.   Because when those kids hear that message, all they want to be is princesses and pirates.  And let's be realistic here, friends and neighbors...   the chances of that little girl actually becoming a princess, even though she wholeheartedly believes she will, are nil.   She can believe all she wants.

I'm just sayin'.

All that being said, we have a little girl now and I know that many, many Disney princess things will be in our future, whether I like it or not.    I also know that I used to say I would never let our little girl go to the Princess boutique and get her hair all done up and glitterfied.   But I'm also here to say that if my 2 year old sweet little Piper begs to go get her hair done, I'll probably have ridiculous amounts of fun taking pictures of her afterwards.

That is unless she doesn't have hair til she's 3. (like Carey)   Then Disney World will have a bald headed 2 year old running around leaving a trail of "Pixie Dust" behind her.  

Moral of this pointless story.   Never, ever say never.

YOU think of a creative title.

We're going to Disney World soon for the Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween party.  It'll be a first for us.   I've never been more excited about something in my whole life.

Sadly, that last statement is almost true.  

Piper will be going dressed as a bumble bee and I will be a lady bug.   When I say I'll be a lady bug, I mean I'll have a headband with antenna glued to them and wings strapped to my back.   ...In Disney World.  ...A place where people don't understand personal space.  Or deodorant.  In fact, if it goes well I might end up wearing these wings every time I go and just twirl around a lot.  It seems like the best way to keep them out of my sacred personal space.

I don't like people in my personal space, did you know?  

...Unless it's Carey.
...Or Piper.
...Or really any family member.

Well, I'd rather Lindsay didn't touch me, but that's a story for another day.

And while we're on the subject.. Am I the only person who thinks it's rude for a perfect stranger to touch a baby?  I probably am but it's really starting to irritate me.   Like for example, a really young girl at Rack Room suddenly appeared in front of Piper's stroller and proceeded to hold her hands, stroke her face and rub her head.  She almost let Piper pull her finger to her mouth for gravy's sake!  I still don't know what I would have done if she'd have asked to hold her.

I'm sorry, friends.  Call me over protective and crazy but it's flu season.

And everybody seems to have some kind of virus right now.

And I don't know that you're not one of those crazy... I mean misguided... I mean ill-informed people who doesn't get immunized and might infect my not-old-enough-for-all-her-shots-baby with some deadly but preventable disease. (I did. I said it.)

And let's not even mention that I have no idea where she or her hands have been.  I can only assume, AT BEST, they've been in shoes that loads of people's funky feet have been in.  At worst...   I can't.  I just can't think about that.  

Sorry, I have to go take a shower now.  Good day to you.

I said good day.

When the dog bites.. When the bee stings.. When I'm feeling sad...

My friend Sara recently wrote a blog post about her son's favorite things.   I like the idea so I'm gonna copy it and list all of Piper's current favorite things and some of her not-so-favorite things.  

Let's do this thing..

1.  Me -  cause I'm awesome, let's just be honest.
2.  Carey -  cause he's possibly more awesome.
3.  A doll we creatively named Dolly.  - she goes with us every where and Piper passes the time in the car talking to her.  However, Dolly recently has started taunting Piper, which makes her angry.  I have to threaten to separate them.
4. Sucking her thumb. - she does it when she's sleepy and when she's trying to go to sleep.  It.   is.   adorable.
5. Her sound machine.
6. Darkness - she did not get that from me.
7. Bedtime - she loves going to bed at night.
8. Bathtime - except when she's sleepy and tries to quickly put her thumb in her mouth and in the process swallows a ton of water.  She does not like that, not even a little.
9.  Sitting up - although it makes her spit up.  Which is not my favorite.
10. Mickey Mouse - I know this because she talked very loudly to a gift bag with Mickey's face on it while we stood in the back during a Weight Watchers meeting.  Subsequently, I have no idea what was said during that portion of the meeting.
11. Walking around in the sling. - even though it makes her hot.
12.  Not wearing clothes - cause she gets hot easily.
13.  Sitting up in the stroller.
14.  Disney World - she hasn't gone yet but I'm just anticipating her love for it.  
15.  Hearing herself talk - Carey says between me and Piper, his ears are going to fall off.

She's our happy little sunshine and I don't remember what we did without her.

Don't tell me I can't have a cookie

All of Savannah's Great American Cookie Company's have closed.   We used to have two.  Now there are none.  As in zero.  As in, I had to go through a period of mourning.

I tried to see where the closest one is to Savannah.   It's in Jacksonville.  If you ever hear that we've gone to Jacksonville you know what for.   Don't let the reason we give fool you.  It will be so I can get a double doozie.

I actually looked up Great American Cookie Co. website to see if they will let you order and ship a cookie to your house.   They don't.   I went through another period of mourning.

Now I've arrived at the conclusion that I will just have to go rob one of their stores.  When I would go get a cookie I would always watch the girl go back to the large vat of icing they keep in the back, so I know exactly where to look.   I'll need somebody to drive the getaway car, though...  Any volunteers?  I can pay you in icing.

So now the one thing that I look forward to about my birthday is no longer available to me.   Now it's just another day in the stupid, depressing month of January.  No more chocolate chips... No more calling and telling them to forget writing a message on the cookie cake "just take the icing and paint the whole cookie about three layers thick, please."  No more eating all that cookie in 48 hours and then swearing I'll never eat another again, only to go back in two days for a double doozie.   No more whispering sweet nothings to each slice.  No.  Life is all emptiness.   It is nothing but a vapor in the wind.

Woe to me.

Woe I say!

Pointless stories are my thing.

Piper woke me up at 4am.   She wasn't crying but she was talking very loudly, so I went to check on her because it's unusual for her to even wake up, much less be talking at 4am.    She had rolled from her back to her stomach and from what I could tell was just laying there complaining about the predicament she had gotten herself into.   When I rolled her back over she stuck her thumb in her mouth and went right back to sleep.    I stood there for a minute trying to decide if it was worth the trouble it would cause if I picked her up to hug her.   I decided it wasn't.    So I went back to bed. 

The end. 

When I grow up, I wanna be....

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a teacher.   We would have career day and all the other kids would come dressed up as astronauts, doctors...  the president.   I, however, would come to school in a sweater with a Poodle stitched on the front, bright red jeans and some of daddy's old humongous glasses.    The teacher would look at me and say "what are you dressed up as, Bevin?" and I would say "A teacher" and then she and all the other children would laugh.   I'm not sure if they were laughing because that was what I thought all teacher's looked like or because I was so content with mediocrity when everybody else wanted to be such grand and amazing people.

Not that teacher's are mediocre! Or that they aren't super important...   or as amazing as an astronaut!    ::sigh::    I'm just saying it's not exactly considered reaching for the stars on career day, is all.

Anyway, once I got into high school and started having people ask me where I was planning on going to college and what was I going to major in, I'd think "teacher... I guess..."    But then I had a little bit of experience babysitting and working at Sylvan Learning Center and decided that probably wasn't my calling.   As Kaylyn would say, more often than not I'd find myself wanting to roundhouse kick a kid for being obnoxious than caring about the furtherance of their mind.

So I graduated and went straight to work.  I decided I didn't want to go to college if I didn't have any idea what I wanted to do. I'd thought of every career out there and decided I didn't want to be every one of them.   Ok... maybe not every career out there.  But all that appealed to me.     I went to work and pretty much just worked in several secretarial jobs.    And hated every one of them before it's was over with, if you wanna know the truth.  I mean, let's be honest here... it doesn't exactly take a genius to be a secretary.   Not that secretaries are dumb!   Or unimportant...  I mean, there's a lot of people who depend on secretaries.

::sigh::   ....I am saying many things today....  

ANYWAY, in each job I would reach a point where I'd think, "what exactly am I working towards?"   As a 20 year old who has no education beyond high school and is pretty naive on top of it, you don't really expect to move up any. You just move to another area with different things to learn. All that is to say, I had a lot of time during those few years of working to think over what I would want to be if I wasn't working in that particular job.

And then one day a wonderful thing happened.  Carey got a job at a consulting firm and was required to travel a lot. Yay for us because we love to travel.   So he started traveling for work and I quit so that I could be able to travel with him. And also because it had always been my dream to just be a homemaker.  And I loved it.   Loved every single minute of not having to go to a job, frankly.    But even then, there were a lot of times that I would wonder "what am I supposed to be doing with my life?"  Everybody has a purpose, right?   Most people my age have some kind of career goals to start out with... right?   At least most of my friends did.   I could have gone to school for anything during those years. I thought about it a lot.    But I never did it because I still had no idea what I would be going for.    I know most people go and then figure out what they want to be but I just couldn't see going without knowing at least some kind of direction I was headed in.    So life was fun.  ...Not working is great fun.    But I always wondered what I was SUPPOSED to be doing.

Then came Piper.  And now I know what I'm supposed to be doing.   And it feels good.


I don't wanna grow up, I'm a toys-r-us kid.  There's a million toys at toys-r-us that I can play with.  From bikes to trains to video games at the biggest toy store there is.   I don't want to grow up cause if I did, I wouldn't be a toys-r-us kid.

That song came to mind as I was writing.   Thought I'd share.

My fellas

Piper just had a heart to heart with the fellas for the first time. 

Buddy sat majestically... like a lion... taking in the honor that is being spoken to by madame.   

Ferb sat licking himself in innapropriate places.



My heart is full.