Big Hair Don’t Care

My hair was big yesterday. It seemed to keep growing larger as the day progressed. Reese made this side by side “who wore it best” big hair edition of me next to Robert Smith of the Cure. 

I still straighten my hair once every couple of weeks for fun, but I really can’t believe that ridiculous routine was my norm for 20 years! Now I totally love my curls and my giant hair...especially on days like yesterday where for no apparent reason it was exceptionally enormous. We’re blaming the polar vortex 🤣

Sloane’s Favorite Book

🤔🤔🤔 huh. 

Soren and Mommy

I always say Soren is 100% Aaron, but I pulled out some of my baby pics and I guess he is mine after all. The hair is for sure mine! 

I think I'll take credit for the the delightful personality gene, too, while I'm at it. ;) 

Babies Having Babies

I took this picture of Sloane "drinking" from a toy baby doll bottle and ur reminded me of this photo of me when I was 8 months old. 

Quincy, Sloane, Sloane, Quincy

Upper Left and Lower Right: Quincy 

Upper Right and Lower Left: Sloane 

Rockin' the same dress, bow, and rocking chair 8 years later. 

Mommy and Corbin Age 6

Quit hogging the gene pool, Aaron.

10 months

Left: Quincy, 8 years ago, Right: Sloane in the same outfit. These two are twinners! 

Here's Quincy 

And here's Sloane 

Our little sweet is 10 months old! She is so fun. Sloane loves:

-cruising furniture

-being held by mommy

-eating found food off the floor under her high chair 

-eating Cheerios, frozen peas, canned green beans, black beans, hummus, rice, sausage, pretty much whatever we are having. 

-nursing, but gets easily distracted by noise

-to say "Ta Daaaa!!!" (Shown in above photo), "Mama", and "all done" 

-biting! Girlfriend has 5 teeth and with them, she bites! A lot! And hard! My leg, your arm, a toy, nothing is safe! Nursing her is officially an extreme sport. Ouch! 

The kids think that she is like baby Sunny from Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfortunate Events. 

 

Likeness

My mom texted me this photo of my great uncle Mack (McKnight) Hatch.  He is 2nd from the left and I think my little Corbin Mac looks just like him. How cute are all the 1920's bob haircuts on the girls?  Reese requested one this week, and I obliged. Photos to come. She's a sweet little Daisy Buchanan, now.

Soren Beckett 2 Weeks

Somebody is starting to look a whole lot like his older brother did at the same age...

I've said it 100 times in the past two weeks and I'll probably say it a million more times.
I am so in love with this sweet sweet little baby.
I am so happy he is mine.

Waiting, Springing, and Hoping

I had my first 24 hour stretch without throwing up! This is incredible news, to us. Even though it was a short lived break, and on Sunday, the yuckies returned (and returned, and returned) it was a break. Almost 2 full days where I kept all of my food down. Before Friday, I hadn't had gone a full day without throwing up in over 8 weeks.
8. solid. weeks. of vomit.

And even though I've yet to see a repeat of that glorious puke free day, we know it is near, and we have hope.

We are so grateful to my mom for coming out to help.
I think it freaked her out a bit to see that we weren't kidding about how sick I was. Sometimes, people will see me at the grocery store or something and say, "Oh, I'm so glad you're feeling better!" when in actuality, I just threw up in my car, or the produce aisle. (yep). She got to see the Big Brother version of my life and the 24 hour life feed wasn't exactly glorious. The week that Aaron was out of town could have been a disaster without my mom. She was so helpful, and her visit provided me with some much needed rest and hope.

Even though I still have some really icky days, I feel like I've turned a corner. More puke-free days are on the way, I just know it....and pretty soon, there will be more healthy days than sicky days. And until then...well I have one great husband, 3 great kids, a bunch of wonderfully reliable friends, and one very compassionate Savior whom I know I can rely on to give me strength and relief anytime I call on them for help.

Here's to week 15, hope, and the very good people in my life!

I sent my mom back to California, today.
The drive home from the airport was beautiful and inspiring.

3 cheers for this beautiful spring. I am not blind to, nor without gratitude for the gorgeous scenery developing outside every window of my home.
The crocuses are up and the pear trees are popping popcorn all over NWA.

Spring has been lovely.
...But I've lived here long enough to know the full potential beauty of an Arkansas spring.
The redbuds are just baaaaarely starting to show color.
The tulips are up, but not open.
And those majestic dogwoods that will soon be frosting every lot in the village, defining the true arrival of spring, haven't even bloomed, yet.

Every bare tree is a message from God, "Oh, you think that's nice? Well, just wait 'till you see what comes next. You know what comes next, so just be patient, Meg. Be patient and hope. It gets even better."

I'm still working on the patience part, but we are definitely springing with hope in the Willy house.

Foiled Again!

With everything that needs to be done, today, I figured I could use a little servant help around here.

So I did what any practical person would do: I bought a box of Twinkies.
I don't know where I went wrong.

I watered faithfully.
I waited patiently.

Buyer Beware:
they did NOT grow into minions!

Sigh. How very dissappointing.
And now, I am left with only the children, who actually do sound quite like minions when they giggle, to do my bidding.

I think I will pay them in Twinkies.

Putting other kids to shame since 2004

Yoga seems to be all the rage again. But you're only "cool" now if you're doing "hot yoga".
Do not be confused.
"hot" yoga does not necessarily = hot people.
"hot"or "bikram" yoga = sweaty and super stinky people.
...right. cuz "yoga people" weren't already stinky enough.

Anyway, I keep finding my kids in yoga positions. For no reason at all.

So I took some pictures to document it. Because it seems to be a fad around here, so the irony that their funny kid thing fad is an actual fad is just funny to me.

Oh, and to all the "experts" out there, be aware that the kids are both sweaty AND stinky, so you know...this is totally legit. The real deal ;)
Here we have the classic sibling "downward dog". Totally normal.Leading today's spontaneous yoga sesh is....wait.... Aaron?

Well, yes. Yes it is. What the crap happens in my kitchen when I am not supervising?!

It's weird, right?

Moving on, let's address the other fad I'm seeing everywhere: Planking.
Our children don't know it yet, but they're super cool. They effortlessly mastered the downward dog, so now, they've progressed to the the latest hip thing.
Behold, a few more candid shots of the Willys kid doing what they do best, being totally awesome.

I call this one "wheel barrow racing with furniture gets you nowhere."

And here, we have the classic "suspended between two furniture pieces, even though there is no way it is humanly possible for it to be more comfortable than sitting on just one of them" plank.

And the grande finale, the "hot lava plank".
Did you play "hot lava" when you were growing up? Where you couldn't touch the floor because it was lava and would "burn" you? If the answer to that one is "no", then you didn't have a childhood. I can only assume that the messy floor is what inspired the hot lava version of this game in the first place.

My kids are way more hip than I am.
Uh...Namaste?

We Didn't Start the Fire!

I baked an apple pie the other day, and forgot to put a pan under the pie, and the pie juices overflowed and started to burn on the bottom of the oven. The result was thick smoke spewing out of the oven vent and a billowing black cloud in the kitchen.

Reese walked into the room, noticed the smoke, grew disgusted with our lack of action, then absolutely panicked.

It was HYSTERICAL.

Mind you, we were all walking around very calmly, opening windows and turning on fans, etc.

I wish I'd had the camera running the entire time. She shouted, "Smoke! Fire! Danger! Everyone! Stop, Drop and Roll!" Then she went limp and melted to the floor, flopped back and forth a few times and started the worlds slowest jungle crawl toward the farthest possible exit from the house. We died laughing.

She came back in and we calmed her down, but she still insisted on demonstrating proper fire safety a second time. I managed to capture a small segment of her brave leadership in our exodus. Clearly, she has grown accustomed to dealing with her idiot parents.

I love that child.

Of course, our casual laughter probably ruined all potential of any of us making it out alive in the event of a real fire.

Well, anyone except Reese. Our new fear is that she is going to go all Dwight on us and teach us a lesson that you can never be to careful when it comes to fire safety. Can't you just see her doing this to us one day?

Like Mother, Like Daughter

She has the gift.

Mockingbird

Tonight, when I closed the door to the chicken coop, I peeked inside and did a head count.
"One, two, three, four...uh oh. Where's Goldie?"

Missing.

Crap.

Did something eat her? Did she hop the fence?
Where is she, and why didn't she go to bed when the other hens did?
We grabbed flashlights and after searching the yard for her for 15 minutes, I thought to look UP.
Busted.
Notice anything wrong with this picture?

Yeah. That's a freaking chicken up in my dogwood tree. Evidently, Goldie has earned her name, as Quincy named her after Goldilicious, the imaginary pet unicorn from the Pinkalicious book series. Both unicorn and hen are fans of playing hide and seek in the dark when they are supposed to go to bed.

The problem: I couldn't just leave her up there. We have squirrels, oppossum, raccoons, snakes, groundhogs, armadillo and all sorts of predators back there. She'd never make it until morning. I really didn't want to tell my kids the story of the Little Dead Hen in the morning, so we set up a light by the coop to lead the way for her, and tried to coax her down. .

My first attempt to get her down was to shake the branch. THAT got her to move.
To a higher branch.

Then, I tried poking her with a golf club to "shoo" her down. She hopped around and bawked at me. What a tease.

So I busted out the ladder.
Goldie freaked out and hopped from branch to branch, always inches out of my reach.
The scene was not pretty: me in a skirt, at the top of a ladder, clinging to the tree, swatting at a hen in the branches with a plastic golf club, and getting pecked at and pooped on, while Goldie spazed and sent feathers flying everywhere. Add "coax a chicken down from a tree" to the list of things I cannot do. We all know that if she had been a kitten stuck up there, I probably would have gone to bed and left her up there to die. Goldie seemed to be aware of the fact that I'd rather be watching Big Brother on Hulu than fetching a hen from a tree and I swear she was heckling me the entire time.

Aaron thought this scene was just ridiculous. He brought a broom outside and tried to push her off the branch, but instead she was so spooked, she perched herself on the bristles of the broom to roost! Naturally, he tried to get her to fly off, so he started gently waving the broom around and banging the handle against the tree branch. She wouldn't budge and her claws held onto the end of the broom like a sticky booger that wouldn't fling. Now add to that me wiggin out the whole time, I'm screaming at Aaron, "No! Stop! Just bring her down to me like that! I can catch her! Bad chicken! Goldie! Get down! Aaron stop! You'll squish her!"

He slowly lowered the wobbly broom end down from the sky and Goldie plopped right into my arms. As I put her to bed in the coop with the others, I felt like one of those...those pet people.

You know the type...remember The Office episode where Dwight locks all the doors for his "fire safety" scare and Angela franticly throws Sprinkles into the ceiling with Oscar?

Maybe we'll change Goldie's name to Smelly Cat.
Yeah, I named my chickens.

Oh my gosh. I AM a cat lady! Ahhhh!

I think a series of manly grunts would be a more appropriate title for this post.

This guy:

has been happily hitting, banging, crashing, and "hi-yah!"-ing everything and everyone in sight.

My favorite new thing he does is the "slow-mo" fall. Like if he slides off the sofa, he will then continue to dramatically roll three or four more times on the carpet, saying "whooaaaaa-oooooo-ooooooooohhhhhhhhh" in a muted, faraway voice.

"Smelly Cat, Smel-ly Cat, It's All Your Fault!"

I hate cats.
We've talked about this.
Perhaps not enough.
There are cats in my neighborhood. Strays, I think. Strays that think they live at my house.

I do not love them. I do not feed them.
When they get close enough, I throw rocks or spray them with my hose.

But they keep coming back. Sometimes, they bring their friends.

Last night, there was a cat meowing SO LOUD right outside our bedroom that Aaron and I woke up, got out of bed at like 1am and went outside to shoo it away, because it just wouldn't shut up.

Except it was pitch black outside and even with flashlights, we couldn't freaking find it! Torture!

The evil cat was hiding and whining, making us even more mad, as we stood in our front and side yard in our underwear and flip flops, waving flashlights and making that "pssst!" noise you make to scare cats away into the dead of night. We were tired and crabby, the cat kept meowing, and we could not figure out where the wailing was coming from to save our lives. From our bedroom, it sounded as though it was directly UNDER our bed, so we thought maybe it was stuck underneath the house.

While Aaron ruled out that option, I heard a second cat meowing at the front of the house, outside, in the bushes below our bedroom window. We found that cat (the same one that has been sleeping on our A/C unit but is too fast to catch and too smart to trap) and scared him away, and we eventually just gave up on the other cat-the louder one- and went to bed.

30 minutes later a HORRIBLE storm whipped through, drowing out any cat noises and I sort of hope it scared the cats away forevah.

As we crawled back into bed, I said to Aaron, "I bet you anything that cats didn't exist before the Fall of Adam. Surely they are part of that whole 'sorrow and contamination of the lone and dreary world that came along with pestilence when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden."

He disagreed with good reason (something I generally lack) and we went to sleep.

I think tonight might have changed his opinion.

After dinner, we opened the front door to get a package and Corbin took off running toward our side yard. I chased after him and he stopped at the big red metal gate (another story, I'm officially a hick with a barn gate) pointed, and said, "Kitty! Meow! Meow!" I scooped him up and there they were.

Yes. THEY.

Kittens.

THREE kittens.
Two black and whites and one siamese (who was too fast to catch a photo of). ***I took these photos today. There WERE cats under our bed!!! That vent is directly below our bedroom window! My home has been violated by felines!*****

Clearly the evil spawn of the 2 horrible cats that whined at my slider all winter long, that I refused to let inside (ew! never.). Since they obviously did not freeze to death, they must have decided to retaliate and multiply in the patch of noxious weeds behind my house. I think they might be trying to start a revolution.

Why, cats? Really. A litter. Really? Why? Why me? Why MY house? I do not like you. Leave me alone! Be gone!

****Now, I don't mean for this to be offensive for you cat lovers out there (who, I'm sure, are quickly becoming both cat lovers and Meg haters). So please don't be offended (unless you are the proud owner of one of the cats in my yard...and in that case, definitely be offended because I don't have anything nice to say about them). I really do think it's nice that you love your cats. I just don't understand why the cats love ME. The reciprocity is not there.

So anyway, back to my theory:
Cats = evil.

So far, here is my supporting evidence:

1) We'll start with the obvious. Superstition: black cats = bad luck. I'll take this one step further and state that ALL cats = bad luck. Did you not read this post? I have a litter of kittens under my woodpile! Grossness. Bad luck AND evil, fo' shiz.

2) During our middle-of-the-night attempts to shoo away the moaning and wailing last night, we were eaten alive by mosquitos. I have about 50 bites on my legs alone. Now, we're all swollen and itchy---just how anyone would feel after leaving a kitty brothel, which is exactly what we have getting on in our backyard. What's more wicked than a brothel?

3) All Dogs go to Heaven, so cats go ---where? Ah ha! Need I go on?

4) Cats have nine lives. Why do they get nine? Because they pulled a Dr. Faustus and sold their souls to Satan, that's why.

5) The mean old fat nasty cat in Cinderella---what was his name? Oh, right. Lucifer.

6) There's a 90210/O.C. esque cheerleading show on CW or WB or whatever that vampire diaries network is called now called HellCats. I mean, what is that really? Hell-Cat? Is that a thing? No one knows, but the two words seem to fit together so nicely that there's a hit trashy teen drama series wearing it's title.

7) No one should ever wear a unitard. Like, ever. Head to toe spandex should only serve one purpose and Spanx has got that market covered. Unitards=wrong. Luckily, it is more difficult these days for the the innocent to be fooled into thinking unitards are a good idea, as the original name "unitard" went out of style and the evil intents and purposes of this horrendous clothing fad were revealed in the new name, CATsuit. Bad news, people.

8) Wasn't it the Ancient Egyption civilization that buried themselves with their mummified cats? Um...hello? Has anyone done any research to be sure that these people weren't actually killed and buried BY their cats?

and finally:

9) Don't even try to tell me that the pitchfork weilding comic cartoon depictions of the devil with the horns and the tail don't have an uncanny likeness to pointy cat ears and long skinny cat tail.

I'm just sayin'.

Reese On the Christmas Spirit

Reese: When I grow up, first I'm gonna be a movie star, and then I'm gonna be an Elf for awhile.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Reese: Let's play with the (Little People) Nativity.

Meg: Ok, I'm the wise man.

Reese: [sigh] Alllllriiiiight. But I'm everyone else.


minutes later...
Meg: waaa waaa, Hey Mary, your baby is crying.

Reese: No. He's not.

Meg: waah waaaaaaaah waaaah! Yeah, he is, can't you hear him?

Reese: Nope. Baby Jesus doesn't cry.

Meg: Sure He does, all babies cry.

Reese: Nuh UH. See listen...

She then pushed the button on the nativity stable that plays the music to "Away in a Manger"
When it got near the end, she exclaimed,

"See that?! Right there. It says so. 'NO. CRYING. HE. MAKES.' I told you so. The song is right. Not MY baby crying, Wise Man."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Reese: Could you tell me about the naughty list thing again? I can't remember exactly how it works.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Last night, we sang, "Joy to the World" for our FHE opening hymn. Reese was mad that we weren't singing Jingle Bells, and crossed her arms, scowled, and refused to sing.

When we got to "....let eeeaaarth receeeeeeeive her Ki-----" Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, and she intterupted our singing and shouted
"REESE?! The song just said, REESE! Did you hear it?! Another one about ME! This is the best Christmas song ever!"

That girl is such a Lucy.

I love her.

Parallels.

Q.

I guess it's better than this:

and THIS role has already been claimed by the big sister:

Maybe Quincy will spout off a monologue this year and remind us of what Christmas is all about.