Cheating The Littlest One

Even though The Biggest One was born in South Texas, she was raised in San Diego.  Middie was raised there, until we moved here.  Though she was young when we moved, I think she will keep a lot of memories of our time there, and certainly the impact of all the things we did, and her experiences will carry forward with her.  The Littlest One, though, she won't remember San Diego, at all.  She was so small, that the fact that she was born there will just be something written on a piece of paper to her.  She is a Native San Diegan by word only.
That really breaks my heart.
I love San Diego.  I love the culture.  I love the atmosphere.  I love all that there is to do with my children.  I tried to take advantage of a lot of that, too.  As a result, I think I gave The Big Girls a pretty well rounded life experience before they started kindergarten.  I don't really believe that preschool is in any way necessary for a young child's development, and as long as you give them a great, well rounded life experience before school starts, they should be just fine, and maybe even fantastic, by the time they are ready to start school.  I think I was able to provide that for The Big Girls.  We did Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.  They were able to see all sorts of fantastic animals and shows.  They were able to learn a lot about the world around them.  The San Diego Zoo, one of my favorite places on earth, has a great program for moms groups.  They bring you in a little early before the zoo opens, and take you on a special tour of the zoo.  Each month there is a different theme and you get to learn about something very cool.  There was even story time at the end of each session.  It was fantastic.  The kids get to be exposed to so much that way.  We were doing that with our group every month before we left, and it was  seriously great.  We went to parks all the time.  We got out.  We played with out friends.  We got fresh air and exercise on a regular basis.
All that life experience is invaluable.
Now, though, we aren't in San Diego.  The weather is crappy most of the time.  We don't get to see the sun much, and it is freaking cold here during the winter and spring.  That means no outside time.  We rarely go outside, unless it is to run from the house to the car.  It sucks.  There is a Zoo, but it is more like a petting Zoo.  Besides, no other zoo compares to the San Diego Zoo.  IT really is the best.  There certainly isn't a Sea World anywhere near by.  We do have an aquarium, but there were a few of those in San Diego as well.  The fact is, there just isn't nearly as much to offer here as there was there.
The culture is also much different.  We are seriously lacking in cultural diversity here as compared to San Diego.  Seriously.  I went to the best Asian market we have here.  It was about the size of a convenience store.  That was it.  I guess I should be thankful we have one at all.
We just don't have what we are using to having in San Diego anymore.
I feel like The Big Girls got so much by living there, and by moving here, we are cheating The Littlest One out of all those opportunities to explore the world.  It isn't fair to her that she won't get to see dolphins any time we want, or check out a polar bear on a beautiful, sunny day. I wonder how it will affect her development as a person later on in life.
I can see a stark difference in the children who were raised here and The Biggest One.  They are already very close minded when it comes to anything that is different.  Telling them that a food is from another culture makes it gross, not interesting.  When they meet people who are new are different, and it takes a long time to welcome them in.  They simply haven't been exposed to anything, and have parents who aren't opening their world up, either.  It makes me sad.

The other day,  The Biggest One and I were watching Chopped.  One of the contestants said that she really needed the money because her partner was about to have a baby.  The Biggest One said that was really nice that she would just give that money to her friend.  I very simply told her that wasn't what partner meant.  It was more like a girl friend or wife.  The Biggest One's reply was "Oh, ok."  She just didn't get the term.  There was no big discussion needed.  There wasn't an astounded reaction.  She knows that any one can love anyone they want to because she has seen it with her own two eyes.  She knows there are two mommy households, and that isn't anything new or odd to her at all.  It's just a part of life as she knows it.
That is what I want for my kids.  I want them to love and respect diversity, and I fear greatly that they will miss out on all that by being here.

I'm really trying hard to find the good in our new home.
We do have some fantastic lakes, two huge ones really, with tons of parks around them, and even a make shift beach.  We have some other nifty attractions like the Lookout Mountain.  There is a lot of camping and hiking that can be done.  We also have a great Discovery Center that I think would actually put the Reuben H. Fleet to shame sometimes, or at the very least rival it well.
That's it, though.  So, I will have to seek out the best of our area that I can to try be the best parent that I can be here.  We can go down to Atlanta and visit their Aunt, to see what Atlanta has to offer.  We can hit the parks when it is warm.  I'll do the best that I can do with what I have, and hope, that I can give her what she needs, even if it isn't what I want.

When We Get Our Own House

One of the big upsides to moving, and the whole uprooting our entire lives, is that we hope to soon buy our first house.  I don't want to put the cart before the horse, or jinx ourselves in anyway, but we hope to be in a new home of our own before the next school year starts, if everything goes according to plan.  Big if, but still, that is what I am hoping for.

My husband and I have been married for twelve years, and we have always been renters.  We are renters, though, who have always dreamed of being owners.  We do dream, a lot.  We talk about what we would do to every home.  Now, I dream with The Girls, too.  I would consider myself at least a little crafty, and there are a thousand things we want to do to our own home, together.  The Biggest One and I often make trips to paint departments just to look at color samples and get more ideas for her room.  We see tons of aqua and turquoise things headed her way.  While it is true that we could have done many of these things before we buy, I don't want to put a lot of time, effort, money, and especially love into things that we may not be able to fit into her room once we actually buy.  She has a very large room right now, once the master of this house when it was fist built.  So, if we create for her room, it may mean pairing down when we move to our own house, and i don't want that.  Instead, we build ideas.  Pinterest is getting going to get a ton of pins from me in regards to ideas for each of their room, because for the first time, I actually feel like we may be close to a real dream.  

I will say I am scared, but not of being a home owner.  I realize that comes with a lot of responsibility and work, but I am totally up for that.  I'm scared of having the dream taken away from us, again.

We all want to finally find a house that we have have to make do with as home, but a real home of our own.  

Oh My Ears

After My Husband and I were married, it took a couple of months for me to move away to be with him.  He was in schools, and in between a real duty station.  So, I was waited.  When the time came, I moved to Norfolk, Virginia to be with him.  While that is closer to northern VA, and not the same as the real south, it is  still in Virginia, and it wasn't so different that I was taken aback by my surroundings.
Our next big move was to Corpus Christi, Texas.  That did bring with is some serious culture shock.  We often called it Northern Mexico.  It was different.  It wasn't bad, though, at all.  It was just an adjustment for this girl who was born and raised in small, fairly homogeneous, town in Tennessee.  That area of Texas is a little strange in the culture.  Its sort of like if the south and Mexico had a baby, they would have that region.  It is a mix of the cultures and traditions, I suppose.  So, in some ways, it still felt familiar while opening me up to a lot.
We lived in TX for a few years, and finished out his tour there.  Then, after a more short stints for school, we moved to San Diego.
Talk about culture shock.  That was it.  I'm not sure that moving to a foreign land would be that much more.  It wasn't something I was prepared for, at all.  Nothing felt familiar, and people automatically pointed out how different I was the moment I opened my mouth and spoke.  I had a southern accent, and it set people off everywhere I went.  I got grilled all the time about where I was from.  Sometimes it was uncomfortable.
The crazy thing is, compared to my home town, and most of the people I know, I have very little accent.
Seriously.
The longer I was away, the softer it got, too.  My friends could tell when I had been around my mom, if she had been visiting, because it would flair up a little.
I began to really work on my diction, and I hoped that it was as clear as possible.  In fact, when we first moved back here, people had a hard time understanding me.  They still do occasionally.  I spoke quickly and with little affectation, making me sound different from them.  During Girl Scout Cookie training for my parents, I had one Dad who could not understand me.  I tried to speak more slowly.  I tried to speak more clearly.  I think that made it worse.  Eventually his daughter started repeating everything for him in the typical slow southern drawl and he got it.
The thing is, the longer I am here, the more I hear myself returning to that.  It is impossible not to.  That is all my ears hear.  My brain will rewire itself again and eventually I will start sounding like that.
I am already using more colloquialisms.  The other day, at the end of a phone conversation with a CA friend, I said "Well, go on then".  When you read it, it could sound hateful, but when said in the Southern way, it is simply a way to say good bye, without any hint of ill feelings.  Its just the way they talk.  I realized when she laughed that she might have thought I was being rude, but in fact, its sort of a common phrase that I have already started to use.
I hear the girls say things all the time that amaze me, and not necessarily in a good way.  In particular, I realize that The Littlest One will have a strong southern accent.  She will probably be the only native San Diegan to speak with a southern drawl.  Already, she says "byyeeee" instead of bye.
I hope to go visit San Diego this summer, if possible.  If we do, I plan on re immersing myself in the culture there.  I want to hang out with my friends, visit Balboa Park, and do a lot of the touristy things we shun when you actually live there, but most of all, I want to just listen for a while, and soak up as much of the sound of speech as possible.

And That's Why We Moved Here

Moving from California was hard for us.  Or course it was physically difficult.  I doubt that anyone would think packing up everything you own and moving it yourself across country with three children would be easy.  Far from easy.  I would tell you that it is far less than pleasant, in fact.  Mentally, it was challenging, deciding what would go, what would be given away, how to pack what and where, and making sure we were well within our time line.  On top of all that, though, was the emotional factor.  California was really home to us, at least The Girls and I.  I don't think My Husband ever loved it like we did, and let me assure you we did, but he had lived there, at least when we wasn't deployed, for the last eight years as well.
The thing is, sometimes life gives you choices.  In our case, it was a choice that had to be made quickly.  When the opportunity rose, My Husband and I chose to move our family thousands of miles away, to an area that neither of us had ever lived in before, to try to make a better life for our family.
We chose to move here for a couple of reasons.
First, there was a job.  That happens to be a big deal right now.  He was retiring from the military, and while there were other jobs that looked like they would work in California, they weren't in San Diego, where we were.  They were pretty close.  None of them seemed perfect, though.  Then, this location popped up, gave him a call, and said they wanted him immediately.  Seriously, they said he needed to there in about a week and a half.  That was impressive.  Furthermore, they were totally impressed with him.
The location seemed ok.  The area looked decent.  Not a small town, but not huge, either.
The kicker, though, and what really clenched it for us, was that all of our families would be close.  His family was about two and a half hours away.  My sister was two hours in another direction.  My mother, brother, and the few other family members I actually want to speak to are about three hours in yet another direction.  That put us just about smack dab in the middle of everyone.  With three children to travel with, being in the middle of everyone seemed like the easiest place to be.
So far, I would say that is correct.  In the very few months that we have been in this house, my sister has come in twice, my mother twice, and we have gone to see all of them once each.  That means we have already seen more family than we have in the past few years.  This past week was Fall Break for The Girls at school.  We had a full week, and I would say that we used it to it's fullest.  We took the first weekend, and drove up to see My Husband's family.  We went to a unbelievable pumpkin patch.  The kids got to spend a ton of time with their cousin.  We got to hang out with my Sister-In-Law, which was nice.  Then, they got to spend some great time with their grandparents.  We had a fun few days.  After that, we came home to work on a few very important things here.  First, there was a science project to complete.  The Big One needed to make a model of a plant cell.  She and I spent a few days working on that, with me mostly guiding, but helping out as needed.  Second, there were Halloween decorations to start.  We love Halloween.  Decorating is a big deal for us, now that we have an actual yard to decorate.  We only got a small start, putting up the first part of our cemetery in the yard, and two of our inflatables, but at least we got started.  There was also a leaf or two, or two thousand, that needed to be taken care of.  We five bags of leaves just from the driveway, and one side of our curb (we have a corner lot with two curbs to take care of).
Once we were done here, we drove three hours in the opposite direction as our first trip, and we to go see my family.  It was also awesome.  We didn't do a lot, but we got to hang out, and that was fantastic.  The Girls got to see their other cousin, The Dangerous One, and play.  We went to my brother's house for dinner one night.  They had a Nerf war with them.  The Big One spent all night loving on, aka torturing, one of their cats.  It was seriously great.  My Sister came in, and almost every one was there.  That usually only happens once a year on Thanksgiving.  So, getting to do it on just a random weekend, was so incredibly special to me, it was just awesome.
Being able to just see our loved one, and finally getting to let the girls really be with their families, makes all the hurt of missing the ones I love, my chosen family back in San Diego, and  my home in general, dealing with all the things that are so much harder for me when living in the south, and really the Bible Belt, so much better.  This is why we moved here.  For the love, for the family.  I'm glad we did.

They are Out of Here!

Our house is always chaotic in its own way.  The Girls are usually fighting.  I'm usually trying to either referee or hide if that isn't working.  There is a ton of yelling, and pleading.  The TVs are always on.
Even with all that, we aren't the loud ones around here.  I've blogged about it many times before, my neighbors are the loudest people on earth.

The past few days,though, have been really nice.  I thought the neighbors went out of town.  Actually, for a couple of days, I thought they were drugging their children.  Around 9pm or so, the house would get really quiet.  I mean super quiet.  We were all able to get to sleep with no problems.  It was amazing.

Then, I thought they must have gone out of town.  They had a smaller Uhaul trailer in their garage for a couple of days.  It wasn't a moving truck.  So, I, with my very pregnant brain, never even thought that they might be moving.

Turns out, they did.

There is a lock box on their door.  My husband noticed it this morning.  I was so excited, I kissed him for being the bearer of great news.

Those days where it would get quiet at night, they must have been going over to their new house.

They probably moved into a five bedroom house, because they actually had 4 kids stuffed into the old one.  Hopefully, they got a house that wasn't attached to any one else.  That would be great for all.

Regardless, I wish good luck to their new neighbors.  I hope it works out well for all.  As for me, I'm just hoping for a new family that won't smoke pot in the back yard, and will at least respect the quiet hour at 11:00pm.  While it would be nice to have people move in that we could become great friends with, I'm keeping my expectations low, and hoping not to be disappointed.

Going Outside Again

As I have been posting, moving has had its up and downs, as usual.  This time, one of the ups we planned for is really turning out to be fantastic.  We have usable outdoor space again!
At out last house, we were supposed to have a yard, but thanks to the ridiculous lack of care that was put into designing our home, we ended up with 5 massive concrete steps with no railing on one side, and a lot of prickly plants.  The Girls hardly ever got to go out if we were home.  Those steps scared me.  There was really no room for them to play safely.  About the only thing they could do would be to chalk on the tiny cement landing we had.  That was fine, but I still had to watch them to make sure no one fell off the steps, especially when The Little One was really little.

Now, though, that has changed.  Our yard area is level.  It is still mostly concrete, but that's ok.  They can play.  Thanks to the dollar store box of new chalk I bought, they go outside and play hopscotch just about every day.  Yesterday, The Big One ask to take her books outside to sit and read.  As soon as I can get someone to carry it for me, I'm going to go get a couple of bags of sand, and set up their sand box again, which has sadly lain up against a fence for two years.  There is so much they can do!  I keep finding bottles of bubbles, and later today, The Little One and I are going to have a bubble-palooza fest outside in celebration of the fact that we now have a place to chase them again.  Well, she can jump for and chase them while I blow them from my seat.  Still, it is really fantastic to be able to go out and do things, even in our little space.
My husband and I have a few plans, aside from the sand box, for the space.  We are also going to be setting up their playhouse again once we clean up a little of the barky landscaped area.  We hope to get a new patio swing and a little patio set for them.  I can't wait for picnics in the back yard this spring.  Ice cream will now be eaten out there.  Just the amount of potential mess moved from in the house to outside makes me all giddy.

On top of that, they both go outside, together, at the same time, and leave me alone, in here, to get things done.  I have never had that before.  I open the blinds and windows.  I can hear them and see them, though they often can't see me due to the sunlight which makes things a bit more fun for me.  They go.  Safely.  They are not underfoot.  They are not on top of me asking me to entertain them.  They are not sitting in their rooms fighting.  They are at least outside fighting, and even though the neighbors can hear that, I don't care.  They are  there and I am here!  Woot for that!

Seriously, this is fantastic.  I think we all look forward to lots of fun time in our own little outdoor space again. I see a much sunnier future for us with our little yard.