My first post as a blogger.

So...this is my very first post as a blogger. The first time I typed that word, it came out as "blooger." Would that be someone who's just obnoxious as a blogger? According to my 5 year old's vocabulary, it would be.

About me. I am a stay-at-home mom ("SAHM"). A lot of my friends over at Willow Traders have blogs. It finally dawned on me that this might just be a good way to keep my family and my husband's family in the loop of what is going on in our lives. Plus, it's just a good way for me to journal about what the kids are doing from day-to-day. You know all of the cute things kids to that you mean to write down, but then forget before you can find that notebook, the expensive one you bought for the sole purpose of recording your kids' antics? Yeah...those. I'll just write about them here, then (hopefully) remember to scrapbook about them later.

Which brings me to scrapbooking. I call it a hobby. DH ("dear husband") considers it an obsession, very possibly an illness or a cry out for help. But I really love it. I'm trying to make the shift from acquiring scrapping supplies to using scrapping supplies. That, however, requires organization. Not my forte. Definitely my mother's forte. Have I yet mentioned how much I love it when she comes to visit and organizes my books for me? Seriously! She claims to enjoy it, and I hope that's true, because I just loooooooooove having my books alphabetized within genre. I think that is the only way to go! But....I just don't ever get around to it.

Have I mentioned that I ramble? You've probably figured that out by now.

We have three children: 5, 3, 18 months. Becuase the main purpose of this blog is to record stories about them, I should probably get around to discussing them. Our son is 5. He's a veritable firestorm of energy. I recently sat next to a British man on a flight. We talked about children, and he described his 5 year old son's presence as "an atomic bomb that's just gone off." I thought that was a pretty good analogy. Every night our family room looks like weapons of mass destruction have been tested there. Five light sabers strewn across the carpet in a seemingly-innocent rainbow of weaponry. The football wobbles on a bit of sticky granola bar (despite my rule of no eating in the family room). The basketball is under the rug, creating a safe haven for any other toys that are hiding under the rug. The cable picture is fuzzy because the TV has taken too many hits from the basketball being thrown at the hoop established up above the TV and VCR. Couch cusions are lumpy and flattened from being used as battle platforms for the staged light saber duels. Really, I think if governments are concerned about cleaning up weapons testing sites, they should offer to pay SAHMs. We're used to it.

One daughter is 3. She is her daddy's princess. Or her daddy's little gingersnap. Or her mommy's snickerdoodle. Or her mommy's little cuddle-monkey. Depends on what given moment she chooses to inform you of her identity. She's recently decided that the world can just operate at her whim. I tell her it is naptime. She very seriously informs me of the following: "Mommy. I will eat my Fruit Lops(sic), then I will watch Rolie Polie Olie. Then we will have naptime." "But honey, that is an hour away. We need to have naptime now." "No, mommy. We will have naptime when I am finished."

All right then.

The other daughter is 18 months. She has inherited/adopted the most dramatic and stubborn characteristics of her siblings. You don't tell her no. Telling her no is buying a ticket to the most dramatic show you've ever seen. It involves wailing, collapsing to the floor, fat tears rolling down cheeks, actual kicking of the floor and gnashing of the teeth and rending of the garments. (Okay...maybe not the last two, but you get the picture.) Her hobby? Eating toothpaste. Yep...eating toothpaste. More flouride the better. Every morning I have to fight her to extract the toothpaste tube from her fierce grip. Then, when she reaches her peak volume of screaming, I try to sneak the toothbrush in and give most of the teeth a quick swipe. That fit can be expected to last a full 10 mintues. And she won't stay put. She'll follow me around the top floor, screeching, wailing, kicking...generally letting me know that by refusing to allow her to swallow vast quantities of bright pink princess toothpaste, I have broken her wee heart.

I should probably close this up with some pictures. I'm afraid I'm going to get an error message telling me I've just written too darn much to include. More later!