*kendraspondence*

So you want to start a blog? A word of caution: You should think really hard about what you share.

Because, first of all, no one NO ONE notevenyourmother wants to read your Epic Overseas Adventure blog. They are too busy reading Eat, Pray, Love, first of all. Second, you can’t be brief, I know you can’t, and the internet reader has no attention span for reading the day-by-day play-by-play of your arrival and subsequent pickpocketing debacle in Macchu Picchu. The pictures you take? I’m sorry, because I know this sounds jaded, but they’ve all been taken before. By someone that is not you, that went before you to that very spot and mock-leaned just like that in Pisa. So before you torture treat your friends with your travelogues, maybe you can commit yourself to posting no more than 5 pictures – 5 super fantastic pictures that at least have a picture of you with your busted Birkenstocks in them – and try to summarize one super fantastic moment of the day. In a paragraph. Please? Thanks.

The other reason you should watch what you share in the blogosphere is because, as a blogger with friends and mothers who read this here blog, I can say with confidence that people think this here website is the sum total of EVVVVERYTHING that happens in my life.

Kid you not, I have actually dined with a friend whom I hadn’t seen in years who said, “Well, I read your blog so I know what is going on with you, so let me tell you what’s been going on with me.” Baking powder? You think that by reading a few paragraphs a week about what I choose to tell you about my life that you have the full download? When you were done taking the college tour with the tour guide paid by the office of admissions, did you say, “Well, I know everything that happens on this campus, so let’s get back to talking about all the books I’ve read for AP World Lit this year”??

It’s not even about omission. It’s not even about brevity. It’s not even about what bloggers are not telling you. It’s what they can’t tell you about their lives via html that makes the assumption so maddening. The assumption that The Blog = All There Is. Oh, there is so so much more. Things that would get me fired. Stories that would estrange me from people I love. Feelings I can’t properly put words to, and questions I don’t even dare let the universe know I am asking. And then there are the moments that I’ll just keep to myself just because, I do hold a few things sacred.

Oh, and then there’s the time I said “Get the silly band out of your cooch.” You can’t just toss that out into the internet without explaining yourself, and who has time to explain herself?

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This is what I call ROLL call

As my friend Nissa says, LOVE bald men who live with their mothers!!

I am so over my mom exposing me on the interwebz.

Baby Girl has to go incognito so the world of blog readers doesn’t recognize her in real life….

Mama? You writing about me again?

We’ve had some sweet days here with the advent of summer, and I am so so glad for sprinkler park weather, and husbands who take days off to wrangle toddlers and knock out grocery lists, and wee baldy infants that caterpillar crawl up their mamas’ chest….

Of course, it has not been all bliss and baby booties.  I am still in excruciating abdominal pain, rendering me unhelpful for the majority of toddler fun-making.  I have been so guilty of being a mean mama to my toddler, meeeean and wretched!! and I have surely been forced to my praying knees. Oh mercy, have I.

I know the days will start to be better once I start to feel better, but in the meantime, I am nuzzling a downy head of a Little Man and kissing the sweet cheeks of a Baby Girl and holding fast to the Lovey Loverpants and hoping that we will find our rhythm as a family of four, even if it is an awkward, peculiar kind of rhythm…let it be one that we four can follow together.

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Adventures with Daddy…

We do not own a set of blocks.  We don’t need them when we have Walgreen’s pharmacy in our very own home.

Even Thundercats need a nap sometimes.

Oh those sweet munchy dimples!

The volunteer corps that has been tending to our sink of dirty dishes and tending to Baby Girl’s newfound interest in reading The Berenstein Bears and Too Much TV – which she subsequently wants to watch on the telly; this toddler knows irony – has left.  They arrived when we were still a family of three and now they depart and we are a family of four.

That’s madness.

I’ve been so so grateful for the help, but I’m glad for the reprieve, as well.  My guts are all still so painfully swollen and my appetite is pretty poor and my desire to just hermit-snuggle Little Man for hour upon silent hour is so great.  I’m happy to trade an immaculately clean home for a messy one if it means I can walk around our place with my milk-stained t-shirt and not feel self-conscious.

So far, though, we’re lucking out with Little Man who really is a champion sleeper/feeder and must have some copper pipes for plumbing because dang if this kid’s bowels aren’t a thing of beauty.

Baby Girl has decided to love on Little Man at every opportunity while punishing her parents in ways never before demonstrated.  Girlfriend grew a set of horns and has taken to violent outbursts, hitting Mama, and declared herself oppositional in every way.  Of course we were forewarned, but like every parent on earth, we said to ourselves, “Oh…but our child will be different!”

HAH.

HAHAHHH!

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Here’s the caveat to my bucket list.  And I very sincerely mean this.  Beyond any self-executed feat, my greatest joy in this life would be leading someone to Christ.  If I am very honest, I’m not sure what that would look like, or even if one ever knows if another has “found” Christ.  But living a life that is Christ-centered, that is hopeful for Heaven, that is enriched by blessings and moved by grace — that is everything to me.

All the rest would be but a mere notch on the belt.  But here goes:

1.) Meet Michelle Obama.  I adore her and feel we would have much to discuss about daughters and fashion and fighting childhood obesity.

2.) See Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son” in The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia, as inspired by Henri Nouwen’s journey.

3.) Overcome my fear of contact lenses.  I cannot even get close to putting one on my eyeball.  Barf.

4.) Visit the Oprah Winfrey Show before she retires.  I’m hoping a trip to Chicago for my 30th birthday will resolve this.

5.) Earn a PhD in Communication Theory or English Literature with an emphasis on Creative Writing.  I hope to embark on this once both my children are in school.

6.) Visit Anne Frank’s house and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.

7.) Be neighbors again with my best friend Lauren.  This will require moving to Melbourne, Australia.  Um?

8.) Give 1-2 years of our life as a family to missionary service, preferably in a Spanish-speaking country.

9.) Publish a book of poetry.

10.) Have my work published in any of the following:  Slate, Babble, Salon or the NYT.

11.) Construct a dream studio/study for all of my mischief making – Think: This. Yes.

12.) Read everything ever written by Leo Tolstoy, Rachel Cusk.

13.) Take a French cooking course in Provence, France.

14.) Buy stock.  Buy it low. Watch it grow.  Sell high. Planning to purchase 30 shares for my 30th birthday.  Any suggestions?

15.) Go to the Sundance Film Festival with my old man.  And my family, if they’re game.  They can ski, right?

16.) Send my mom on a cruise as a retirement present.

17.) Learn to snowboard. Well.

18.) Go to Korea with my in-laws.  See the Adventist academy where my MIL attended school.

19.) See my children make a decision to be baptized.

20.) Get back to my wedding weight.  Or at least fit into that dress.

21.) Drive Highway 1 in California with my husband.

22.) Reach a point in my life where I can play tennis at least once/week.

23.) Compile a fairly “complete” family tree/genealogical portrait of my family.

24.) Visit Prince Edward Island and do the Anne of Green Gables tour before my daughter is too cool for school.

25.) Send my husband to see the Tour de France.

There once was a weary mum with a big belly, who spent most days operating off adrenaline fumes.

That mum did not take well to the unseasonable 90 degree temps in her urbane ‘hood yesterday.

In fact, she moved molasses-like about the usual chores of life.  Including cleaning piss and popsicle off of her living room floor.

So when her daughter resisted the potty, the nutritious dinner, in lieu of spilling bubble solution all over the patio, that tired mum relented.

Later last evening, the tired mum’s tired friend came over with her toddler.  To the park they all went, with lovely picnic basket in tow.

Upon their arrival at the park, there were teens doing dark deeds on brightly lit benches.  The tired mum could only huff and find another bench with naughty teens out of her periphery.

As the tired mums enjoyed their picnic dinner, the tots played nicely.

Until.

Until a particular daughter proceeded to whiz her pants and split her lip in the course of five minutes.

As the tired mum rushed her bloody-lipped daughter back into the house, abandoning her guest friends at the park, a fleeting thought of whether or not there was a toddler-for-lease section on craigslist did pass her mind.

Bidding farewell to the friends, the tired mum scrubby dubbed the pee-stained daughter in the tub and prepped her for bed.

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Then.
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Dagnab it, Robert Munsch.

You made a marshmallow of that tired mum.

After a hardish day, all that tired mum wanted to do was watch some Oprah on DVR and wallow.

But then you inspired that tired mum’s daughter to say,

“I love you forever, mommy.”

There would be no wallowing, as she wet-swiffered the residual piss and popsicle off the floor later that evening.