In the begining

I'm new to blogspot, but not new to blogging. I have a MySpace account that I'm totally addicted to, but I spend so much time tweaking my profile and answering messages that I forget to blog every now and then. And also, since my profile is set to private, only my friends list gets to read my blogs. I thought I'd try this avenue to get some of my blogs read by others, since most of my friends have been too busy to read my ranting and tales from spending the majority of my time with a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a 4 month old (ie my children).

I'll start with a little back story on my life, to get everyone up to speed. May 26th will mark the one year anniversary of my marriage to my awesome husband and love of my life, Steven. We met in fall of 1999, when I was a sophomore in high school, and he was a senior. We began dating in April 2000, and stayed together until 2002. We split, went our separate ways, but never lost the love that we had for each other (it's a long and weird story). During this time, he married and had a son, and I had a daughter. In 2006, we finally started talking again (he had divorced his wife and I had split from my dead end relationship with a man who was cheating on me with Jim Beam and Budwiser), and we got back together. He proposed to me on New Year's eve going into 2007, and we married in May. We had our beautiful daughter, Brenna, in Jan. of this year.

So here we are. Nathan is about to turn 4 on the 21st, Ellaina turned 2 in Feb., and Brenna is almost 4 months old. Life is busy, to say the least. I'd love to see how much money I would have if I got a dollar for every diaper changed, every cup of juice made, and every time I've watched Aristocats and Blue's Clues on DVD. I'm sure it would be a lot. :-)

Nathan is my husband's son. His mother hardly sees him, which breaks my heart, because I have to see his sad little face when he starts to miss her. He's a great kid, though, he has a very advanced vocabulary for an almost 4 year old, and he tends to act a little big for his britches. We've had some behavior problems, mostly due to a mother in law that won't listen to a word we say, but that's getting a little better everyday. He gets quite a few time outs in a day's time, but at least he actually goes into the time outs now! haha He's a great kid, though, and has an infinity for making up knock knock jokes, most of which go "Knock knock! -Who's there?- Uh....apple. -Apple who?- Uh...apple, working on a fish tank!" Seriously folks, he has a million of these, all of them ending up with random objects working on fish tanks. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a preschooler... I recently taught him the one that goes "banana, banana who?" and ends with "orange you glad I didn't say banana again?", but he'll encore with an ad libbed fish tank special a la Nathan. It's a trip, really. :-)

Ellaina is my 2 year old daughter. Her father works in Yellowstone National Park (where we met in 2004 when I went out there to work retail as well), so she sees him like once a year. So of course, Steven is her "daddy", because she sees him on a daily basis. And personally, that's the way it'll stay until she's old enough to comprehend that Dave (ex) is her biological father, but ultimately, Steve will always be her "daddy". She's an amazing girl, so so smart. On Christmas day, I bought her some magnetic letters and a marker board so she could start learning her alphabet. Now remember that at the time, she was 22 months old. She started out sticking the letters to the board, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, she picks one up, shows it to me and says "A". Of course, it was the letter A. Amazed, I said "Yes, very good". I thought "Hey, wow, she knows a letter, cool." But it didn't stop there. She picked up another one and said "R", and another and said "D". She showed me that she already knew how to read about 10 letters. It just got better and better after that, and by her 2nd birthday, she could read all 26 letters, and recognize numbers 1-11. I can't think of a moment where I was more proud than that. She's the brightest thing I've ever met, and loves to reenact movie scenes now. Her favorites are Aristocats and Finding Nemo. She is constantly making me laugh. Maybe she'll grow up to be an actress and buy me a house somewhere...you never know. ;-)

Brenna is almost 4 months old and a great baby. She never cries, unless she's hungry, tired, or wet. She can lift her head while on her tummy, and already smiles, laughs, and "talks" to you. She's started sleeping through the night, which is awesome because I was starting to get a little loopy there for a while from sleep deprivation. I feel very blessed to have such great kids.

I also have a cat, Jakers, who is by far, a whackjob. He's a great cat, very affectionate towards me, but every night, around 11PM or so, switches to "LSD cat-mode" and runs around like a maniac, swatting and freaking out and attacking you at random. It's never a dull moment around that animal. He also loves to go "fishing", which consists of him knocking the thin plastic piece off the back of the top of the aquarium and sticking his paw in the water and waiting for our brim, Everett, to swim by. I'm gonna laugh when that fish bites the crap out of one of his fuzzy little fingers.

So there you have it. A little background on the whole gang. Stay tuned for future updates and just random rantings, which I tend to give out from time to time. Enjoy!