Rocking out!

So since it has been quite some time since I have posted anything that wasn't a cry for "feel sorry for me because..." attention. I thought that since the whole point of this blog was to share pics and stories about the ever charming and dynamic Olivia Marie...maybe I should write something about her. Novel idea, I know.

Psfffttttt, what is new with the Div!? Hmmmmmm well she is 19 months old now and huge as ever! I talked to my sister the other day after Liam had his 12 month old appointment and waited with "hold your breath" like anticipation to hear that he was WAYYYY bigger than Olivia was at that age, NO SUCH LUCK!!!! She was taller than him by an inch and heavier than him by 3 pounds!!!! Aren't boys supposed to be bigger? Sheesh, if I ever have a son he will probably be even more enormous! Whatever I guess she is just gonna be a tall girl. Where she gets this from, who knows! I was looking at my baby book the other day and when I was the age she is now I weighed 19 pounds!!!!! What? Can this be right, could this be a classic mom exaggeration? Olivia was 23 pounds at 12 months and is tipping the scales at about 28 pounds theseadays. Whatever!

So Olivia is amazing in all aspects! She is becoming more and more smart by the day and I cannot believe how fast she is growing up! She is still taking a bottle before bed and still loves the pacifier....hmmmmm yeah I know, I know...bad mom! She is super in love with everyone she knows and is becoming really shy around the people she doesn't know. It's crazy how loud and nutszo she is most of the time but try introducing her to a new person and her eyes immediately hit the floor and she clings to you like static! But she's such a cutie!!

I cannot wait for the Halloween costume reveal, oh it's gonna be so cute!!!!! This was a tough decision...I mean really when you start out as an Octopus for your first Halloween you set the bar pretty high as far as uniqueness and originality goes. And since she still doesn't care I figure I am going make her be whatever I want cause pretty soon we might just venture into all varieties of Disney Princesses for the unforeseeable future. Not that I am anti-Princess, I just was super super girly as a kid because my mother made me wear all kinds of bows and ruffles and frill and I was not so into it...so as long as I get to decide she is gonna be less girly. Which by the way my mother hates!!!!!! "You are making her a tomboy Emily, for goodness sakes put a bow in her hair". Oh mother....no way am I doing that! Besides I am pretty sure it is what is going on below the belly button that makes her a girl...not a giant bow on her head or ruffley socks! But anyways the Halloween costume is gonna be good!!!! Now I just have to start making it....whoops it's already the 15th! Here is a hint...it's an animal and I have already taught her how to make the noise of said animal!!!! Yay!

This is last year's Halloween costume


Okay next topic and the meaning of the post title. Olivia is OBSESSED with rocks! Is that weird or what? In the backyard on the other side of the deck is a row of huge Redwood trees. My mother recently filled the area around the trees with rocks. Not like gravel but smallish to medium sized rocks. A month or so ago while exploring the backyard she discovered this sea of rocks and she loves nothing more than gathering them one by one and setting them on the ledge of the deck. She just lines them up and then either throws them back over the ledge or takes them over to the cat like he should be soooooo excited about her little offerings! So here is my little Geologist at work.










And here is the not even mildy amused look of Shiloh when she lays all her treasures down before him. She really worships this cat...he tolerates her. It's a love/keep away type relationship.

I'm having trouble trying to sleep, I'm counting sheep but running out....

I don't know what is wrong with me. The past week I just cannot sleep!!! I lay there alone and tired but just spinning with thoughts about my crazy life. Monday and Tuesday night I just kept waking up every couple of hours and it took forever to fall back asleep. I thought it was only anxiousness because of the new job I would be starting on Wednesday, which went fine and was actually pretty fun to be around another adult who wasn't a family member....that is if you consider an eighteen year old an adult, lol!

Anyway so the most exciting part of the workday was when Mitch came to pick me up with a very tired way past her bedtime Olivia. She was sooooooo excited to see me, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy holdy holdy Mama holdy pease". Oh my goodness it killed me! She is never all that thrilled to see me. She gets excited for Nana, Boppa, Daddy, Sparky, Papa, Ashy and Mickey but never really me. I guess it's true that absence makes the heart grow fonder! It made me feel like a million bucks baby! Usually she is just with me 24-7 and is like...."Mom is boooooring". This is one of those amazing moments as a mother...this is probably the first time I have felt it since she was a newborn and just liked me best because I was full of milk!

But anyways last night I literally was awake ALL NIGHT LONG!!! Oh I am so tired but even now I should take a nap or something cause Olivia is down...but I just can't. I feel so anxious! Trying to find a place to rent, starting a new job, being secretly really afraid to live alone....since Mitch's job keeps him out of town 5 days of the week. I am so freaked out that I will really be alone with Olivia 5 days a week. I think about staying all alone in our apt in Santa Barbara when Mitch would occasionally go out of town. And I know I felt some nervousness about it and it was a really dark neighborhood and pretty unsecure house. But thinking about living anywhere around here and being alone all night long with Olivia really terrifies me.

What if I hear a weird noise, what if something happens, what if there is an emergency and I am somewhere where I know no one....since Mitchell really wants to live in downtown/midtown Sacramento. Granted Sacramento isn't that far from Roseville or Orangevale it's a lot further than down the hall. I'm both excited and scared that Olivia will have her own room. Excited I won't have to share a room with her and I can finally decorate a room that will be all her own. Scared that she will be a separate room and if someone breaks in or something what if they go into her room and I am unaware asleep in the next room. Oh I can't even think about it! My sister always tells me that I worry too much about all the things that could happen...but I can't help it my mind just goes there....everywhere and anywhere were disaster and tragedy strike.

I can't sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jeepers Creepers...

Where'd you get those peepers? So lately, in an effort to be inspired to actually print out some of the thousands of photos of Olivia over the last 19 months, I have been perusing my photo galleries on the computer. I don't know if you have noticed but Olivia's eyes are a very odd color. I have never seen anyone else with the same color! I have seen kinda similar but nothing as unique as what my girl has going on.

First they are very dark...in a lot of pictures from a distance they look like they must be brown because they are these big dark orbs staring out at you. They are not brown. In some photos if she is wearing blue they look like they might be a dark blue....they are not blue. And then there are some photos where they look green...they are not quite green. They are not hazel.

Mitch has a deep amber brown. Kind of like the color of the Carmel center of a chocolate candy.

I have....well mine is harder to describe.

Sometimes they look blue, sometimes they look green....most of the time they look green. Which is funny because when I say I have green eyes people are always surprised, check it out and then say "hmmm I always thought you had blue eyes". I think it's because most people who claim to have green eyes really have hazel eyes and so they are used to a more brownish yellowy green as opposed to a bluish green...which is what I have.

So what color describes Olivia? They are like a slate gray color from afar....upon closer inspection they are like a muted brown in the center and on the edges are the blue/green of my eyes. So strange, really unlike any other color I have seen. But the are so pretty! Someone once described them as marble like....they really are exactly like a marble or even the stone marble.

Here is my pretty girl!

You might be wondering...

Where have all the cowboys gone? Wait, no that isn't right...where have all the pictures gone? Yeah that's what I meant...Smileyface.....



Ehhhh I just haven't felt like posting any pictures and I haven't taken any pictures and I know it makes me hypocritical because my favorite thing about other people's blogs are the pictures. I mean sure we all enjoy a cleverly written post...but pictures are like the well proportioned seasoning. If we are relating this to myself, which it's my blog, it would be pepper. I'm a huge advocate of black pepper...I like it, plain and simple. And while mashed potatoes, any variety of soup, salad...what have you, may be good without pepper...it's much better with the pepper. I get it, I know...believe me I know. But again I haven't taken many pictures nor do I know where the cord is to my camera. So shame on me, maybe you'll enjoy the post with just the bland words without any pictures to spice it up?



Whatever I don't care.



So what is this all about? What kind of ramble will I ride today or tonight rather. Or if you are being very technical...this early morning. Hmmmmm I don't know. Just felt like writing, again. The sound of the keys plunking away, the way my head whirls trying to think of something to say...it's all very soothing. Okay let's do the list thing.



1. After months of complaining that my hair is driving me crazy I think I may have finally found a happy place in this growing it out process. Or maybe it's actually putting an effort into doing something with it on a semi-regular basis? I somehow found this hair blog that has been well...kinda an obsession. Remember how I mentioned I tend to get kinda enamored with pretty people? Well this hairdresser is pretty and has cool hair and cool clothes and what appears to me as a pretty cool life. Which is rather unimportant but anyhow reading all her "hair thoughts/ideas/suggestions has really opened my eyes about how to get my hair to look the way I want...or at least as close to what I want. Like did you know you aren't actually supposed to used a flat iron to straighten your hair? That it's like super damaging, that is just supposed to be like a finishing tool. As in all the time I have spent dragging that stupid iron over and over the same section of my naturally wavy/unruly hair has been doing me more harm than good?!!! That if I blowdry my hair and just run the iron over the top part of my hair to get the smooth effect but not stick straight look that my hair actually looks better? Who knew? It literally cuts my hairstyling time in half! And I get to keep the volume and body my hair naturally has...it's making me so much happier....well hairwise. I'm still kinda over the dark hair look...but I really don't want to fry my hair or cut it and so looks like I'm gonna be a dark haired lady for a while.



*Sidenote: It is super weird for me to think that I have always considered myself a blonde, even when it's dark and Olivia has really only known me as a brunette. It's super strange to think that someone as important as my daughter has never seen me as nature intended. Well not entirely true my hair was blonde when she was born and stayed that way for the first 3 months of her life. I remember she was kinda wigged out when I came home with dark hair...but she was super little and I still smelled like her "meals on wheels" and in her baby mind that's all she needed to know.



2. It's almost Halloween. I love Halloween. I mean I have never been all that big on dressing up, well at least not since like 6th grade. But I just love the time of year, who doesn't? I was thinking that in my younger more carefree days, ie like 2 years ago before Olivia was born, I would have like a mini movie marathon during the month of October. I LOVE SCARY MOVIES! Even the bad ones! I would watch a different scary movie every night of the month! This actually started with my roommate Jmo about 8 years ago....WHOA 8 years ago!!!! I wanna do this again, even if it's by myself and we are already 8 days deep into October.....being a Momma makes this sort of thing kinda hard...but we'll see maybe I can start late and at least squeeze in some good horror movies! Too bad I have long since lost any real contact with Jmo, besides Facebook. But again this is my fault I tend to be a hard person to be friends with unless you live with me or I see you everyday like maybe a coworker. I think I have some social anxiety issues but again it's not something I really care too much to do anything about...I have never been one who needed a lot of friends.



3. Okay I have not worn makeup regularly in quite some time. I have pretty good skin, at least on my face, Ha! I mean besides looking extremely pale all the time I have an even complexion and when I do wear makeup I don't tend to look much different than when I don't. Also I only really see Olivia all day and she doesn't care and Mitch doesn't like makeup anyway. Also I am lazy. Also I think that I have forgotten how to apply makeup, if I was ever that skilled to begin with, which I probably was not. Mascara tends to be the only thing I will try to wear...so I at least look like I have eyelashes. Since I am not naturally dark haired I have lighter eyelashes so putting on mascara really does make a difference. So anyway what I have taken a long time to get to is that since I don't wear makeup I don't really see the need to wash my face other than when I am showering. But lately I have felt inspired to wash my face at night and run toner over it. Why? Who knows. But here is what I am noticing. My skin looks worse when I "care" for it. All these facial products claim to help your skin but I feel like it's hurting mine....how does this make sense? I mean I hardly ever break out, like maybe a pimple around that time of the month once in a while. And it tends to not even be anything as serious to even call it a pimple or zit...it's like what Nozema or Clean & Clear or Neutrogena would call a "blemish". Something had I left it alone would go away...but I like to mess with those slightly raised bumps until they end up a zit. And the thought that my teenaged self or even young adult self would consider leaving the house without makeup or not washing my face morning noon and night a fate worse than death is really laughable at this point in my life. Oh young Emily, what a silly girl you were!



4. I am super obsessed with "The Tudors". A warning to any family members reading this...you would not like this show. I mean you would like this show, cause it's super super good, but not "clean" as you would prefer. When I first started watching it someone said "Oh that's such a sexy show"...and that is exactly the right word for it....it is truly sexy! Not like there is some torrid sex scene in every episode....okay maybe every other episode (Wink)...but it's not all about sex that makes it "SEXY"...It's got beautiful costumes and beautiful people and just....well it's nice looking I guess. And it makes me remember why I loved all the AP history classes I took in highschool, why history was my favorite subject. Then I remembered why all the passion for history died...Sierra College. Oh I took a European history class there with who can remember the name of the teacher and it was sooooooooooo BORING!!!! DRY!!!!! BLEH!!!!!!!!! History is really about who teaches it. I had a great history teacher in High School. And not that this "Tudors" show is historically accurate all the time....but enough to remember that crazy shiz went down and goes down all the time and people tend to be the same no matter what the time in history. I LITERALLY CANNOT STOP WATCHING THIS SHOW!!!!!!! Check it out...well if you can handle the occasionally boob, bum or steamy make-out sessions. Annie, don't go near this ;)



5. Being a mother can involve a lot of guilt. Maybe I should make her something that isn't mac and cheese....but she will eat mac and cheese, she never eats anything! Maybe I shouldn't let her watch so much NickJr....but what else I am supposed to do when I just don't feel like moving because I stayed up too late watching "The Tudors". Urghhhhh is that her waking up from her nap...I'll just pretend I don't hear her until she gets really loud. I should be better about brushing her teeth....but she freaks out when I try to get her mouth open. Crap I didn't write down the exact date she got her teeth in her babybook....I'll just put down the closest guesstimate. I have not printed out one picture of her for a photo album....well I have thousands of pics saved on my computer...what if it crashed and I lost the files? Urghhh I really feel like I am doing the best I can on most days and then some days I feel like I could do better, and then I just feel like I am not being honest with myself when I think I am doing okay. Being a parent is hard...who knew?




Okay that's enough of the nothings...have you even read this far?