Time is a speeding bullet

The other day Connor found a hose attachment that looks like a much smaller version of a fire hose.  I have no clue where it came from, we find a lot of random things around here.  (It is an old house.)  He proceeded to stand in the backyard pointing his "firehose" to the sky and laughing hysterically.  It was the absolutely best laugh.  The sound of my little guys complete joy just made my heart skip a beat.  Those are the moments that you want to never forget.  Connor's at that age where everyday they say and do funny things.  Even the silly faces he makes convey so much.  But I don't know how to capture that in a way that I will never lose.  I know there will come a time when my children are far away and my memory is less than sharp, and I will struggle to remember those wonderful moments, instead of all the things that make old ladies cranky.  A picture just doesn't capture it perfectly enough.  Connor somehow manages to stop doing the adorable thing I never want to forget, and revert to his standby Paulitz smile (its not our best feature.)  It's like a rectangular smile. It's pretty awkward. And I'm not a good enough writer to capture it with words.  Sure I can write down the funny things he says, if I haven't forgotten them by the time I get a chance.  But I lack that skill that allows writers to capture an image so perfectly, you can see it in your head.

My favorite is his quirky facial expressions.  He does all of these silly things with his eyes that say much more than he ever does.  His mouth too.  I think that all of that time when he couldn't communicate with us led him to make up his own way.  Plus nothing gets a good laugh like Con's "that's weird or that's funny"  He'll make this great expression by lifting his eyebrows way up, bugging out his eyes, and moving his eyes around all crazy.  All this without a word.  He follows this with a completely straight faced, "that funny."

Con is all boy.  Every game he plays involves fighting, Star Wars, army guys, and of course super heroes.  He's pretty sure he has actual super powers, including flying and that Iron Man power hand thing.  Surprisingly, we haven't been to the ER in a while.  His latest incarnation is "bubble man."  He stomps around the bathtub, covered in soap singing, "I am bubble man" in his sternest voice. Every few steps he stops to do his Iron Man fire power hand thing. This is usually followed by Dave and I chiming in with a rousing rendition of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", substituting the words "bubble man", of course.

But Connor is still a sweet mama's boy.  My boys love to snuggle up with me, Greg is big on drive-by hugs, he needs his mommy fix.  Con never goes to sleep without giving me a good-night kiss.  Every night when I kiss the boys goodnight, I know the day is fast coming that I'll be lucky to get a Paulitz butterfly hug.  Before I know it, they'll be leaving for missions and I'll finally have time for that mental breakdown.  Isn't it funny that all the times in our lives when we want time to hurry up, it waits.  And when we want it to stop, it runs so fast we can't catch it.  Kinda like my kids.

Patience

I've been thinking about spouses lately.  Being married requires a lot of patience.  I'd say it's in one of my top five important things to a successful marriage.  Of course I usually think of this in terms of how much patience is required on my part.  I could probably make a long list of things about my husband that drive me crazy.  Whenever I find myself particularly annoyed I have this mental picture of myself as Debora from "Everybody Loves Raymond", rolling her eyes and muttering "idiot".  Now I know this makes me sound like a mean wife, and I fully acknowledge that I, as my boss so delicately put it, "have a low bulls**t tolerance."  I just see it how I see it, and feel free to share accordingly.  Somehow this has gotten me thinking me about the things I do that maybe, just maybe, cause Dave to exercise a great deal of patience.  In no particular order, this ones for you babe:

* Dave does not like to spend money.  What he spends on shoes, hair, and clothes in a year equals about 12 weeks of haircuts, coloring, and product.

* Before mentioned dislike of spending money.  When we got married, he had money for my ring in cash. He'd been saving because he knew eventually he would meet the right girl.  I spend money the second it lands in my greedy little paws.

* Dave has not had closet space since we got married.  In every place we've lived, he has had to share closet space with the kids.  We know have a rather large closet, he has part of a rod.

* I am a huge whiner.  If I don't feel well everyone around me knows it.  If I get a debilitating headache, I will not quietly retire to my room, I will sit on the couch with ice on my head demanding that everyone be silent.  (In my defense, laying down does tend to make it way worse.)

* Dave can be up and out the door in 15 minutes if need be.  I take an hour to get myself together, not to mention the time it takes me to wake up in bed, wake up on the couch, and eat.

* We are never on time to church. Or anywhere else for that matter.  Case in point: our children don't really know what happens the first 10 minutes of church.

* I view the speed limit as a suggestion.  I don't think why this bothers him needs explaining.

* I will flat out ignore him for a good book.  If he's lucky I'll nod once in awhile when he says something.

* I  will ignore everything I should be doing for a good book.  When I first read the Twilight series, I didn't do anything the whole time.  I would nurse Connor while I read, make Greg pbj's while I read.  When people wanted dinner, I would pick the farthest restaurant I could think of, and read while Dave drove us there.  Mind you I get extremely car sick, but it was totally worth it.

* I'm slightly bossy.

* And just a little opinionated.

* I am pretty much unable to finish a project.  Which means there are constantly projects in various states all over the house.  He usually just wordlessly moves them around.

* I usually load the movie que.  I like rom coms, foreign films, and weird documentaries.  If you know Dave, nuff said.

* I have tons of clothes, shoes, coats etc.  I leave them all over our room and the house (no one else is allowed to do this btw)  yet I never have anything to wear.

* I have too many shoes to fit in my shoe shelves.  He has zero shoe shelves, I have several overflowing. 

* I refuse to mow the lawn, check the oil, or change a tire.  I don't like manual labor.

* I make him run just about every purchase by me, this rule does not go both ways.

* I make a lot of random references to books or Star trek.  If he doesn't get it, I tell him the whole story, in detail.

* If I'm on the computer and need to do something that requires me plugging in a card or cord that I might have to move to get, I either don't do it, or make him do it.  I'll insist on keeping windows open until I get whatever it is printed.  This rule also applies to getting my phone or a drink, if I'm on the couch.  When he met me, my roommates called me T-Rex and he knew why.  So I don't feel too bad about this.

* I laugh at totally inappropriate situations.  Like wrecking the car or majorly over drawing the check book.

* When I hit the side of the garage with the expensive, heated mirror of our new (to us) car, I hit the gas and kept going.  Ripping the thing off in the process.  Then laughed hysterically. Dave did not.

* I make ten holes in the wall to hang one thing.  Then I hang it crooked and/or wrong, so he has to fix it.

I could probably make a much longer list if I thought harder, and took a poll.  But I'm way too lazy.  My dad always compares marrying off his daughters, to selling an old used car.  You love it, and are sad to see it go, but you're glad to not have to deal with its problems and quirks anymore.  I'm pretty sure that after 14 years of marriage Dave gets the joke now. 

Aunt Tara

This past week my aunt Tara lost her 5 year battle with breast cancer.  They threw everything they had at it, but sometimes cancer is more stubborn than us.  She leaves behind a husband and 4 beautiful girls.  The two oldest are heading into their teens, and are promising to be stunners like their mother.  Tara was very gracious, accomplished, and classy.  Her husband is my dad's younger brother Kevin.  When we were kids, Kevin was the fun, bachelor uncle.   He was the epitome of cool.  He went to Harvard, he lived in an apartment near the beach, he had a cool car (which to us meant not a minivan or station wagon).  Heck he lived in California, which was pretty much the coolest thing I could think of.  Kevin would fly two of us kids down at a time for a week filled with fun and all the amusement parks a kid could want.  But Kevin was still a Paulitz.  Which means major dorkdom.  Paulitz's are not smooth, in the best of social situations.  We are nerdy, clumsy, and lack any sort of filter on what we say.  So you can imagine my shock when, my senior year of high school, Kevin married Tara.  That he had somehow landed this woman, was beyond my imagination.  Our family joke is that we are the Idaho hillbillys.  We felt even more hillbilly-ish sitting in the backyard of Kevin and Tara's townhouse at their rehersal dinner. I remember being so impressed with how beautiful and elegant she made everything.    I was fascinated by how easy and seamless she made it seem too.  She even had outdoor heaters when it cooled off in the evening.  I thought she must be some sort of genius, she had every little touch in place PLUS OUTDOOR HEATERS!  I was seriously impressed by that rehersal dinner, because it was the sort of thing I'd love to hose, but never  would.  At the time, I was getting ready to go off to college, I thought if could just end up like her...Then I realized that I don't have an elegant or classy bone in my body and gave that up.  In her last years, I think Tara did everything she could to make sure she wouldn't have any regrets.  She knew her time on this earth was limited, but she didn't let it stop her.  She is leaving her girls with many beautiful memories.  I hope that she is at peace with her Lord, and happy with the life she lived.  Kevin was lucky to have landed such a kind and classy woman, and I'm pretty sure they both know it.

Warning: Kids speed the aging process

 Tonight, while hunting through some photo albums I found this picture.  My first thought was, man I look young, this must have been taken after one of the girls.  No such luck.  I had just had Connor, after 5 days in the hospital.  Sure I look tired, but I look a lot younger than this...

 Me and my Con man at 3 years old.  It seems like I look a decade older.  I have wrinkles, ginormous bags under my eyes.  I just look, I don't know, soccer mom-ish.  Like next I'm going to stick all of my kids in hockey and run for vice president.  My hair looks better, but my face, egads, OLD.  You know how you look at your kids as newborns, then as preschoolers and kindergarteners and think, wow, look how much they've changed.  They look so much older. Yeah, I think it works that way for moms too.

Coincidentally, this would be Connor a few hours old.  Notice that nah, nah, nah, tongue sticking out at the camera like, screw you parents I'm going to do whatever I want.  That would be very much my son.  Maybe that's why I look so old.

One for the Trekkies

Seems as how I was raised in a house of Trekkies, I think it's only fair that I give Star Trek a fair shot in this household of Star Wars fanatics.  We have watched the old Star Wars movies so many times, Dave can now recite what the characters say before they speak.  Having recently acquired the newer ones, they are now the boys main obsession.  When Greg found out he could go on a Star Wars ride, and a Mater ride in the same day at Disneyland, the kid nearly peed his pants. 
So the other day when Dave made the horrid error of calling William Shatner "Kirk Picard"  I realized that something had to be done.  Due to the fact that our local Blockbuster is sadly (tear) being closed, we are switching to Netflix.  Which means we can stream through the almighty Wii.  Which means that we can now stream Star Trek movies.  Which means we will now have forced family fun night of watching Star Trek movies.  Yeah!!  It's just a matter of time before the kids have turned to the Dark Side.  There is no reason we can't love both equally.  Besides, let's face it, my children are doomed to be nerds.  It's genetic.

The best feeling in the world

Connor has turned into Mr. Clingy.  He always wants to be carried and sit on my lap.  Of course he gets away with it because he is the baby.  He has a hard time falling asleep at night by himself.  He likes to sleep with "Gweggy", but Greg doesn't always want to share his twin bed with his brother. So I sometimes lay with him until he gets relaxed enough to fall asleep.  (the kid gets really hyper when he's tired)  Tonight as he was falling asleep, he was sucking his thumb with one hand, and rubbing my face with the other.  I'm thinking to myself how sweet this moment was.  I felt so at peace with the world for that moment with my little boy.  Those are the moments that I try to catalog in my brain in hopes that I will never forget them.  He rolled over, and scooted back to me.  He seemed very relaxed, and as he was snuggling right up to me, I figured he was on the verge of falling asleep.  Then he farts on me and rolls away laughing.  The little stinker just wanted to fart of me!  Sadly, he really enjoys farting on people.  So much for sweet moments.  Ahh boys.

The Ha is 9

Hailey has always been our most challenging child.  Regardless of all the other stuff, she is a strong, determined, and interesting child.  She's the kid who will one minute infuriate you, and the next crack you up.  She has such a sweet, loving spirit.  Even when she's mad at you, she still loves you to death.  (I literally mean to death, she will squeeze you until you are gasping for breath.)

 Hailey has always had her own, distinct sense of style.  If it's sparkly, glittered, or shiny, she will wear it.  She'll probably beg me to buy it.  She got the sequined boots for Christmas, and the sequined dress and purse from my sister.  Basically, if it has sequins or sparkles, Hailey will love it.  We are talking about a kid who has pleather leggings here.

 Always in full exuberance over everything.  It might be snowing, so she should be prepared to catch snow or snowflakes full on.

 More unique Hailey stylings.  She has been referred to as Pippi Longstocking for a reason.

Hailey is a great athlete.  She obviously does not get them from me.  I think she has found her niche in life.  She has a lot of enthusiasm and energy, and she's not afraid to get hurt.  Which works in her favor on the soccer field works in her favor.  If only we could find a way to channel her extraordinary energyv 12 months of the year.
Hailey is truly a special child.  There are a lot of things about her that few people understand.  But she has a HUGE heart, and love's people to the fullest.