Flashback Friday

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Amy

I have been looking for this picture for about a month. I was talking to someone one – it’s been so long ago that I can’t even remember – about praying manti (is that mantis in the plural form?). I mentioned that I had taken a really cool photo of one that was hanging out on the tree in our front yard when we lived in Iowa.

I thought I had posted it on Facebook and after searching through about 700 photos, I realized I didn’t. I assumed it was saved on my external harddrive which quit working about a year ago after it jumped off the table onto the floor. (If anyone knows a good external harddrive repair man, I would like their number.)

I figured the picture was lost until I could check the harddrive, but since this is the first time I have really wanted to look at something on there, you can understand why I haven’t been in a mad rush to get it fixed. As it turns out, the picture was on a flashdrive that has been right in front of my face all along.

Anywhooooo, these bugs are so prehistoric looking, I just stared at it for a good 20 minutes. And, if you look closely, he or she was looking right back at me. I didn’t notice that until I looked at the picture.

Flashback Friday – Random Feet Stories

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Amy

This is Kamryn, about a year and a half ago, eating pretzels with her feet. I find this completely disgusting.

I don’t like feet. I don’t have a phobia or anything like that, but I do not like people touching me with their feet or touching other people’s feet. I don’t really like anyone touching my feet either, but foot massages just feel so damn good.

Ryan’s feet are some of the ugliest feet I have ever seen. His toes are all different shapes and sizes and his 3rd toe is longer than my pinky finger. I do have small hands, but even so, that is a freakishly long toe.

You can’t argue the freakishness of Ryan’s feet.

A story I often tell – and just told last weekend involves what I thought was an endearing moment between me and Ryan. It was very early in our relationship, probably within the first 6 months, and Ryan and I were sitting in our little apartment watching TV. I was sitting on the floor and he was lying on the couch behind me…running his fingers through my hair.

We were talking about something and I turned and looked up at him as he laid on the couch, his hands behind his head. He was combing my hair with his feet! YUCK! He, of course thought it was funny. I did not.

What stemmed this whole post about feet was who else, but Rory! He chose to eat his snack mix with his feet.Since everyone else has had their feet and disgusting activities displayed here. Here is a picture of my foot. No one ever tells me my feet are ugly, but they do tell me that they are freakishly small. And I guess they are, but I would rather have teeny tiny feet than finger toes.

My toes are so small and close together I can’t wear Vibrams. I also can’t use those toe separators that they sell to paint your toenails – it feels like my little piggies are getting ripped apart.

That reminds me…Rory and I were reciting “This Little Piggie Went To Market” the other day. I asked him if he knew what a market was. He lied and said he did and then retracted it and said he didn’t. I told him it was like a grocery store. He changed his rhyme to “This little piggie went to Ralph’s…”

Flashback Friday

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Amy

I have been talking a lot about how big the kids are getting and even though Rory is only 3, it seems like forever since he was a little baby. And Kamryn, well she might as well be 30 years old because I can barely even remember when she was an infant.

One thing that is so shocking is how much both of them have changed since they were babies. Rory is still holding on to some of his baby characteristics in his face, but I think Kamryn has officially lost all of her baby traits. In fact, when I look at the pictures side by side, I’m starting to wonder if they gave me the wrong baby at first and snuck the right one in later one.

I tell everyone that Kamryn was born with a ton of black, curly hair and as crazy as it sounds, here is the proof. Her hair is so blonde now – with all of the swimming and sun she has been getting.

Poor Rory – he doesn’t have nearly as many infant pictures as Kamryn. Definitely a second child. He was in the NICU for 2 weeks after he was born and so all of the pictures of him during that time were mostly taken with camera phones and aren’t very good. This picture was the day he went home from the hospital. His hair, or what hair he had anyway, was also fairly dark and he is my little woodhead now.

Flashback Friday

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Amy

Last month, after tromping around in some muddy strawberry fields, I found Rory in the bathroom cleaning his shoes. Kamryn tends to like to clean her shoes as well. I would always find her in the bathroom with a sink full of water and shoes floating around.

I never insisted that the kids have clean shoes and I don’t even recall ever telling them not to step in mud, but for some reason, having clean shoes is a must for my children. And then I remembered something.

I had a flashback of my own after seeing Rory cleaning his shoes. I recalled a time when I was about 6 or 7 and I was cleaning my own muddy shoes. I really liked cleaning my shoes. I preferred to let the mud dry and harden in the treads of my shoes and then chisel it out with a butter knife.

During this particular shoe de-mudding, I was scraping away when the knife slipped and I stabbed my left wrist. When I say “stabbed”, it was more like scraping off that top layer of skin. It didn’t even bleed, but I thought I was going to die.

Around this time I had heard about or seen something in a movie that had to do with someone slitting their wrists to kill themselves. I obviously didn’t understand the logistics of how one ended one’s life in that manner.

This is what I find really funny. I was sitting on the driveway, by myself. My mom was just inside – I could hear her in the kitchen, but I didn’t run in to tell her I thought I was going to die. I just sat there, glancing at the door, then back at my wrist. My adrenaline was pumping and I was close to crying. Nothing hurt, I was upset at the thought of my impending doom.

After about 5 minutes, I was still alive and I took that as a sign that I just may pull through this inadvertent suicide attempt. I continued chipping away at the dried mud on my shoes, careful to keep my left wrist well out of the vicinity of the butter knife.

Obviously, I don’t find suicide funny, but the mindset of a child. Kamryn will come up with bizarre things to be worried about and at times it can be exhausting trying to explain to her that she has nothing to be concerned about. Having a memory like this is a reminder that kids just don’t understand everything yet and while it seems like common sense to me, as an adult, my kids haven’t quite gotten to that point yet.

Flashback Friday

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Amy

I had a conversation with a couple of friends today about how I am no longer worried about what I look like. It wasn’t until I turned 33 that I finally decided that I would no longer be concerned with what someone else thought when it came to my appearance.

When I say I don’t care what I look like, I’m not throwing in the towel in regards to trying to look nice, but the things I do, I do because I want to. For example, I highlight my hair. I think I look better with brighter blonde hair than my normal, dishwater blondish/brown color. If someone told me they thought my hair looked better natural, I wouldn’t care. It’s going to stay blonde because I like it. I also use special face products to minimize wrinkles, but again, that’s for me. Not for you. I run to try and keep in shape, but I do it because I kind of enjoy it and I know exercise is good for me.

I have friends that wouldn’t wear shorts in the summer because they were embarrassed of their legs. It would be 95 degrees with 100% humidity and they chose to wore jeans. WHAT?! I have never had slim legs, in fact I have had my legs compared to tree trunks and that was when I weighed 130lbs, but I refuse to be uncomfortable and so my tree trunk legs will be bared for all to see. I wear a bikini to the beach and that is after 2 kids, both of them c-sections and 2 subsequent abdominal surgeries. There are scars galore and I don’t care – I like to have a tan stomach in the summer.

Speaking of tan stomachs in the summer, I wore a bikini when I was 8 months pregnant with Kamryn – and then I took a picture. I showed this picture to my grandma once and she said “Oh God, Amy! Look at that!” And then she laughed uncontrollably. Hee hee – it’s kind of shocking.

So go ahead and take a gander. Bear in mind that I did not deliver that baby for another full month and 5 days after this picture was taken. Yep – just one little 7lb, 1oz baby girl. If you are fearing swimsuit season and concerned that someone might be judging you because you don’t look like the model that wore the magazine in the catalog, just remember some people like to wear a bikini with a freakishly large belly hanging out.