Proud

It’s been difficult in the parenting jungle lately. Lots of tantruming, demands and general cantankerous three-year-old behavior. To include several counts of public parent humiliation.

But today was the dutchkid’s first dance recital. It was much to be expected, lots of dazed looks by the young ones decked out in tights, tutus and feather boas. Very little actual “dancing”.

Except for my girl! I might be *slightly* biased, but even dh said after he watched the video how amazed he was that she followed the music (and the teacher’s direction). Sadly, he couldn’t be there because the recital was held in the morning.

I only put her in dance in the first place because it was offered as part of her school day, but on the drive home I found myself pondering if I should seriously look into dance classes after we move. It’s amazing how quickly thoughts of a brilliant future in ballet pop into your head.

Feel free to shoot me if I ever become one of those stage mothers, but it was amazing to see her up there on the stage. I thought I was going to cry. This parenting gig does have its perks.

bawk bawk bawk

As of today, I only have two piano lessons left with my current teacher. It’s really starting to freak me out.

I have been playing pretty well. I’m still doing remedial work on my scales but that’s just grunt work really. I have the Prelude and Fugue memorized (finally!) and of course Clair de lune. The school I’m thinking about auditioning for only requires two contrasting selections of my choice… so really I could do it. My teacher’s philosophy is that I should continue to work on memorizing my Haydn sonata and the Chopin etude and then give them the option of what they would like to hear. He thought that their requirements sounded very easy, that normally for the university here you must play something from each time period and they’re quite specific (ie you must play a Prelude and Fugue by Bach).

I honestly feel sort of torn. I mean, I love music and I want to study it, but I don’t want it to come at too much of an expense in terms of time with my young daughter. (I want to have my cake and eat it too). I’m wondering if I wait until say, December, if my pieces will have deteriorated without a teacher. I’m thinking of auditioning and then going on to be a very part time student, if they allow that. In the meantime, I’m getting ready to move and now there seems to be conflicting info on when exactly dh will be deploying. The military definitely throws a monkey wrench into planning things like this… I don’t even know if we’ll be there long enough for me to finish a degree.

I’m wondering if I am about to bite off more than I can chew. Mostly though, I’m feeling chicken-like and indecisive. It’s a whole lot easier for me to just let life get busy and not think about it for awhile rather than staying focused and really going through with it. Blah.

Oh, just because

This year the dutchkid had a great time Easter Egg hunting. She managed to get several hunts in, so we’re still eating the candy. My favorite one was the one held here on post. The new CG allowed it to be held on the grounds, and it was just kind of cool to have this sort of a backdrop:

Please ignore the face on my darling girl, that’s what you get these days when you ask her to smile.

Dh found it absolutely hilarious that I wanted to take the Holga with me (we are a two camera family these days, he takes the big digital monster and I am usually dragging a film camera of some sort). Lately it’s been feeling like my get-out-of-jail free card, if the pictures don’t turn out? Well, I was working with a toy camera after all. And he was in charge of the serious memory photos. I kind of like it that way.

News from the missing

Sorry about my writing and commenting absence lately. But I have a pretty good reason for it! My mom came to visit. It was so good to see her, we didn’t “do” one thing, but we had a great time. The dutchkid is still mourning the fact that Grandma is now gone, you should have heard the wailing in my car driving home from the airport.

It felt really good to unplug from the internets for awhile and reconnect with her. I know that I’m lucky in that my mom is one of my favorite people on this planet. She just gets me. And it’s so much fun to watch her and the dutchkid.

It kills me sometimes to live so far away. I’ve given up hoping that dh will relent and live in Michigan, so for now I’m hatching my evil plan of how I can convince her and Grandpa Tom to move to wherever we retire.

Neutral, like Sweden

I am a peacemaker at heart. Which is a bit odd because supposedly that’s a middle child role, and I am an oldest. I detest conflict, perhaps because I grew up in a home that had more than little of it.

The small realm of the military spouse blogosphere that I read suddenly seems very divided. I won’t say much more about the details of that, other than that I hate it.

In life as a military spouse, you are so different than your civilian counterparts… Struggles of dealing with loneliness, separation, raising children in that nebulous land of “sometimes single, sometimes not”, the endless moving… things that only another military spouse can understand.

It irks me that political views can so effectively divide us. I hold political views, just like everyone else does. I am squarely in the center, annoyingly so. I respect people on both sides, and I will continue to refuse to choose. I have read things on both sides that have offended me. Which is fine, that’s the great thing about blogging, you have your own personal megaphone to the world. I’m not saying that anyone should quit talking, although I did want to post a gentle reminder that we have more in common than that which divides us. And in this life, I believe we’ve got to stick together.

That was all.

I confess.

I bought Diet Coke this week. Since now it’s not Lent anymore. I was at the commissary and well, I thought I would just buy some to see if it still tasted as good as it used to.

It doesn’t. (shocking, I know!)

Although yesterday it did hit the spot when I had the option of drinking it instead of my normal coffee fix. I just had to state for the record that I didn’t cheat at all over Lent. Even my dh can vouch for me, although he thought it was partially cheating to drink lemonade and other caffeinated beverages instead. I think that he would not want to live with me if water was the only option.

I must have an addictive personality, because I can easily see myself going back to drinking it full tilt again. I think I’m going to stop keeping it in my house and just have it when we eat out. I didn’t do as much spiritual reflection over Lent as I should have, (I did just give up Diet Coke, after all) but if I can finally figure out some sort of moderation, it will have been worth it. Now if I can just stop eating licorice a bag at a time, I’ll be golden.

Adventures in Easter eggs

Last night, someone’s mama realized that she had an Easter egg dyeing kit laying around from last Easter and that if we were going to color eggs, we had better get on that.  So I boiled a few eggs while fixing dinner:

Things began well, except the mama had the old prime lens on the camera, so all exposure and shutter speed has to be done manually, and the mama in question isn’t very good at that so that pictures are a bit dark.

The wax crayon was fun. And then we started the dyeing process. At first she looked like this:

But sadly it quickly degenerated into this…

Not that anyone’s mama would find this amusing. No, not at all.

Here’s our finished project this morning:

Next year we’re sticking to chocolate bunnies. He is risen!!! Happy Easter!

We have a winner!

We’re home, and we have a house to live in when we move this summer! 

I think this was the most painful househunting trip that we have yet to experience. They say it’s a buyer’s market? Why is it then that no fewer than THREE houses we wanted were gone before we could offer on them, and our house-to-be almost got away from us as well? (it had another offer in on it but thankfully our offer was better). I guess everybody is moving to the mountains.

Crazy crazy. Almost as crazy as taking your three-year-old with you to look at nearly 25 homes in 3 days.  Our realtor was fantastic, if you are moving out to Colorado, email me and I’ll give you her name.  She actually took the time to fill easter eggs, and when she would open up a house for us to see she would “hide” the egg so that the dutchkid could find it.   So sweet.  And she knows her stuff.  This is our 5th home purchase, so we’ve been around the block a few times with realtors, she’s one of the best we’ve ever had. 

In a bit of irony, after looking all over the place we ended up in our old neighborhood we lived in 8 years ago.  At first I was really resistant to that, just because it felt a little like we had been there and done that… but it’s close to dh’s workplace and well within our price range, along with having a great view of the mountains, a decent backyard and a newly renovated kitchen.  We only had our old crummy camera with us, and I’m too embarrassed to put those rotten images up here, so you’ll just have to wait until we get there to live and I can do it justice. 

I’m finally more excited about getting out there!  I still have to make a decision on the school situation for the dutchkid, but it feels like everything’s coming together.  As the saying goes: “Pikes peak or bust!”

Just one more thing…

I have been debating with myself whether or not to post this all week.  It just seemed sort of braggy.  It’s about that sewing project I mentioned that I had finished up last weekend.

Well, it was something sort of special and not just the ordinary stuff I make for the dutchkid. I read the blog My Charming Kids, written by a very popular mommyblogger. Her youngest child has been hospitalized with a very dangerous heart rhythm for almost two weeks now. I am not normally even a commenter at her blog, it’s just big for me… often when a blog has a zillion readers I don’t feel the need to add my thoughts. I’m content to be an observer.

When Stellan, her son, was very unstable, I found myself drawn to his “name gallery” where people have sent in pictures of themselves with Stellan’s name written in some way. They are from all over the world.  It’s pretty incredible. 

So that’s what my sewing project was…

I decided to write this, not to blow my own horn, but because Stellan is still in the hospital.  He’s a lot more stable, but he could use all the prayers and positive thoughts he can get.   I know it’s made me even more thankful that my little dutchkid is a happy healthy girl. 

And now I’m going to to go finish packing.

Off to see the wizard

We’re heading out for our househunting trip this weekend, so the blog will probably be quiet for a while until we get back. I’m so excited to get out there and see how much the community has changed since we left almost ten (TEN!) years ago.  That makes me feel old. 

If you’re curious what I’m up to, I’m going to attempt to use Twitter from my dh’s iPhone. I’m just too impatient to try to write posts from the thing.  That makes my thumbs hurt thinking about it. My Twitter widget over there ——–> hasn’t always been working, but if you click on the title it should take you to my Twitter page.

Wish us luck on finding the perfect house!  Hope you have a great weekend.