In a hurry....

"Momma" she said last night.

"Yes, Claire" I responded.

"Will you paint my nails?"

"Why do you want to paint your nails?" I asked.

"Well, tomorrow is my field trip and I want everyone to see how pretty I am" She said. "We always have to look our best, right momma?"


That's my five year old going on 25. Always in a hurry. She crawled at 6 months, walked at 10 months, spoke in sentences before her first birthday. Every time I turn around, she is growing up a little bit more. She is wild, free-spirited, determined and she refuses to compromise her ideas for anyone. We are in TROUBLE.

We didn't paint her nails, btw. We decided that nail polish is for play only and not for school. When she is a big girl, she can polish her nails.


Last week was super busy for my family. My parents flew in for my Grandpa's wedding. He got married on Valentine's day. He's in his late 60's and the wedding guests were comprised of a mostly geriatric crowd. I have never seen so many wrinkles and liver spots. And as my brother, Jim, so eloquently put it....The placed smelled of death. :) I thought that was funny. Warped but funny. I mean..these people were OLD, ya all. One foot in the grave old. Depends wearing old. You get the picture. It looked like a nursing home convention but the people were better dressed.

Speaking of old..When I am of old age, I hope to GOD that somebody tells me that drawing my eyebrows on is NOT cool. I mean, Old Ladies of the world, know this: You are not fooling anybody. We know you took a pencil and drew your eyebrows on. It's not some great make up trickery. We can see it. And while you are at it...try actually hitting your lips with the lipstick. I am pretty sure clown faces went out with 1980's bangle bracelets, blue eye shadow, and side ponytails.

The best part about the whole wedding was the Best Man. He was this old...and I do mean OLD guy. He just stood up there with a stupid grin on his face. I am pretty sure he didn't really know where he was. The minister had to remind him to turn around to walk out of the sanctuary. I couldn't stop laughing at his stupid grin. It was almost like his face was frozen like that.

On Sunday, we had a family gathering for my mom's side. Over the years, since my parents have lived in Florida, we have found it's easier on my parents to have everyone over to my house at one time. This way, they don't spend the entire time running around and go home more tired than they were when they got here. It's supposed to be vacation.

And I have to say...we had some surprise family show up. My cousin and her 6 kids. Seriously...she is 28 and has 6 kids. And her delinquent little brother. Actually, I like this cousin. She has made some bad choices but all and all, she's a pretty good person. However, I realized just how sheltered my kids are. Her kids use words like fag, freak, jerk...they threaten to punch each other in the face. They fight and wrestle just because. Poor Jayden didn't understand why they were so...."mean" as he called them. At one point, Jayden was starting to get pushy and mouthy to the kids and Greg looked at me and said "you better get your son before he gets his butt kicked by Liz's gang of boys"

Don't get me wrong. Her kids were well behaved and respectful. They just come from a different world than mine.

If this weekend showed me anything, it showed me that life is short. We are young for only a short period of time. We spend the first 20 years of our life trying to grow up and rest of our life trying to be young. So, if I shelter my kids a little. SO WHAT. If I don't want my kids to know the evils of the world just yet, am I bad mother? Just because I don't sit them in front of a TV every chance I get, or let them watch R rated movies...am I a prude? If I don't let them spend time with adults that don't have similar values as us, is that so wrong? They have the rest of their life to experience these things. Before I can blink, they will grow up. They will see that people come from all walks of life and that's OK. They will see the good, bad and the ugly things in this world. Just not yet. Let them be innocent for just a little while longer.

I am in no hurry.

Much love.