I'm Still Alive I Think

See, they can practically teach themselves while I run away to Mexico!



Things have been all shades of nuts lately but here are some quick updates.



Clementine is almost eight months old and I'm still acting like she's a newborn! I don't know if I'm just trying to soak up every minute of her babyhood because it's been so long since I've had a baby or what. All I know is I'm carrying her around every minute of the day, haven't ever left her for more than an hour or two, and do everything in my power to prevent her from crying. It may sound loving but it looks a lot like crazy. I'm very attached to her and she to me, even though I think we are driving each other insane. I really do think I need to start taking more time for myself though, so I'll work on that.



Homeschooling is probably best left to people who have no other option but to stay in their houses at all times while they are waiting to be transferred into witness protection. People will tell you how much fun they are having with their children all day and how the joy is just reigning down upon them - #blessed. Well, as Maury would say, the results are in and it has been determined that that is a lie! At least for our family. Homeschooling IS fun, about 10% of the time. The rest of the time it is a lot of work, my friends. I'm not even talking about the school portion. The actual schoolwork is hardly a problem at all and truly one of the best parts of it. The actual hard part is the having your kids around all day so that, in order to be alone (EVER) you need to hide in the bathroom with the doors locked, stuffing chocolate in your face. It's having your kids, who previously got along so well, start to be at each others' throats because of how much time they are now spending together. It's having to take them all grocery shopping. Every. Damn. Time. It's my house that is in such a state it could give the people on hoarders a run for their money. As an added bonus, I also get to listen to them have philosophical arguments all day, with titles such as Stop Looking at Me, Don't Look out my Car Window, I've Never Seen that Toy in my Life but All of a Sudden it's my Spirit Animal, and my personal favorite I'm Not Singing That Song About You I am Singing it To Myself. Needless to say, it's killing me. I will say that there has been some good in all this. I have been able to see Theo start to read and spell and the excitement that lights up his face when he realizes that. I have been able to spend deliberate time with them every single day. We have gotten to spend a lot of time with our fellow homeschooling friends and had many new experiences. We've read some great books, I was reminded that I should never ever go into anything involving math because its the worst, and we don't have many early mornings. I have also been able to get to know myself even better and confirm that I am indeed an introvert, who loves silence and cleanliness and organization. The jury is still out on whether all of that and my burning desire to torture myself are going to be enough to make me do this to myself again next year. I thought it was only fair to come clean so that all of you who thought I was losing it for attempting this experiment can feel really good about yourselves for being right and all those who are saying, "I don't know how Tara does it!" or pondering trying it for themselves can do so with eyes wide, wide open.



Someday soon I am going to get up the nerve to post a fitness update. My hesitation in making myself get up to take progress pictures should give you a good idea how it's going. It's going lazy. I have good spurts and then a day or two will go by where my workout just doesn't happen. Soon those days are weeks and here I am! Re-watching The OC like I'm twelve instead of squatting this butt into a shape that actually resembles a butt. At any rate, progress has been made, many pounds have been lost, and a new and exciting workout program has been found. More on that soon.



We're renovating our basement into an actual useable space. This means re-arranging my house a bit which is both thrilling and stressful. Pictures to come. I am more than overjoyed to have a place to shoo the lego, googly-eyed craft supplies and my children.



It's almost Christmas and for once in my entire life I can say that I have successfully finished all my shopping well in advance. This was mainly due to me realizing that online shopping is the greatest thing in the world. I just couldn't even with the actual mall this year. I basically step one foot in there, immediately feel overwhelmed, and start crying and blowing my nose on a stranger's sleeves. I thought I would do everyone a favor and stay home this year and I will never do it any other way! We have successfully forgotten to use our new Advent wreath every single night, my kids have those scandalous Advent calendars with actual chocolate in them, and we haven't made a single manger craft that wasn't arranged by someone else at a kid's program. So if you feel like an Advent failure, you're not alone. My cure is to stop pretending like it's going to happen and just accept that this is who I am. A big fat Advent failure who can read Christmas books, maybe make ornaments or bake cookies to give, send up some extra "HELP ME, GOD!" prayers and participate in the events the church is offering. Finally, I am ok with that and am a calmer mom for it. Feel free to stay off Pinterest and be an Advent failure along with me!



Well, I better go clean something so that someone can come and make a mess of it twenty-one seconds later!

Name Talk

Oh where to begin. I love names! I want to ask everyone about their names and their kid's names and their kid's doll's names and all the names! My baby stalking habit on Facebook is getting a little creepy. I spend far too much time on naming sites, checking name popularity stats, and reading birth announcements like only a true fellow name-lover could understand. I could probably talk about baby names for hours and of course they've really been on my brain these days. As with nearly everything I do, I'm always obsessed with making the most perfect decision ever known to man. If I make a mistake, I'm sticking my kid with it for life!

When I was younger, I sometimes wished that I had been named Emily or Ashley or something that ten of my friends were named. Now I don't mind having a different name and I actually kind of like it. Ok, my name doesn't seem all that different but the Irish way my parents pronounce it is different than the regular pronunciation. That part gets a little annoying but I've just stopped correcting people. The introvert in me doesn't think it's worth the mortifying moment of having to correct someone. At any rate, my parents put alot of thought into their decision and I've always appreciated that and the story behind it.

There are so many things to consider and I think that the motivations behind choosing a name are different for everyone. For us, it started out as

1. A name we both liked.

2. Something recognizable but different. Nothing popular or requiring our child to be known by first and last name to identify them.

3. A nice meaning is always good.

4. Family name for a middle.

With Theo, we didn't have any trouble at all. It's a name we have both always loved, we definitely didn't know any other Theo, it means "gift of God" (being 18 and pregnant, it never hurt to shove this fact in people's judgy faces...oops, did I just say that outloud) and we gave him my dad's name for a middle, which just happened to be a name that we both liked as well. We weren't sure if calling him Theo was too nick-namey, so we gave him the full name of Theodore, just in case he wants to use it when he becomes a doctor. No eyes were really raised with this one. I mean, maybe a few but I was completely sold and didn't care. We had to forbid a few people from calling him Teddy but no blood was shed. He's such a Theo and it was a perfect pick.

Then came Tallulah. To this day I cannot tell you how that name came about. I've always liked it but I had sort of forgotten about it until I was pregnant with her. If Theo had been a girl, his name would have been Norah. Tallulah wasn't even on the list. Somehow, I stumbled across it again and loved it. Loved. It. The look of it, the sound of it, the spunkiness. To me it was a unique but easy-to-say name that was a little retro, full of personality, and pretty. I didn't actually think it was all that out there until I tried it out on my husband. He thought I was nuts and wanted to "just call her Sarah or something." I tried to fall in love with a more conventional name but it just wasn't going to happen. I spent hours on the millions of name sites I pour over and nothing felt as right to me as that. So I started to try it out on my baby bump to see if I could turn Matt around. At first there was a lot of "stop calling her that!" but when she finally arrived, he said "So let's name her Tallulah then?" and the rest is history. It suits her perfectly. I had originally thought she would go by Lulah and wasn't a huge fan of Lu or Lulu. As names do, it changed with her and now she goes mainly by Lu or Lulu and a whole bunch of other nicknames that I never could have predicted. In the end, Matt seemed alright with Tallulah, so that sort of fit the first criteria. We definitely haven't met any other Tallulah's but people never seem to mishear it, probably thanks to Bruce Willis and that actress Tallulah Bankhead which I have tried to avoid finding out too much about because I heard she was rather wild and didn't wear underpants or something. Again, not about to look that up. Tallulah means "lady" or "princess" which seems to suit how very girly she is. Matt chose her middle name which honors his grandmother, so that box is checked off as well. Bonus: it's also super satisfying to say when she's in trouble AND I know that when she's running away from me, she knows exactly who I'm talking to!

I would say that I don't usually share my babies names before they are born but I don't think that that's actually true. My lack of self-control usually leads me to tell a few people and there are always a couple of close friends who I try it out on or corner to make them listen to my pro-con list. I think the problem with this is that if you put it out there for opinions, you actually get opinions. Duh. This can be really great and help you to think of things that you haven't thought of. It can also be really confusing and make you doubt your choice. Sometimes, there are good reasons to re-think (i.e. naming your kid after a Game of Thrones character, taking a normal name like Jake and turning it into Jaiyyke with a silent X, naming your kid something you completely made up on drugs at the birth, etc) but sometimes, it comes down to personal taste and I think you really just have to go with what you think is right for your kid. I put on this whole you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do air but really at heart, I think I'm a huge people pleaser and when it comes to something like this, I really really want everyone to love it as much as I do. I'm realizing this time around that a baby name that absolutely no one could have a problem with just does not exist. Which is great actually, because if that name did exist, everyone would be called the same thing and how boring would that be!

Our criteria has changed a bit over the years. When we picked a name for the baby we lost, we realized we had unknowingly added

5. No more T's. (Complete coincidence the first two times. I loved Tallulah's name too much in spite of the T but it irks me to this day.)

6. Full, possibly three syllable name with a nickname is a good option.

We ended up choosing Augustus (Gus) Matthew. Another name that seemed so very right to us and it meant a lot to me that we gave him a name that reflected his siblings'.

So what do you name a sibling for Theo, Tallulah, and Gus? I feel like we have really parked ourselves into a naming niche now. We almost need to add:

7. Kind of quirky or retro.

8. Something that goes with our other children.

Sibsets might not be important to everyone but they are too me. I've always sort of done a (hopefully sneaky) head tilt when someone says their kid's names are Peter, Anne and Jagger. What happened there? How is Jagger going to feel about his name being the one that doesn't go with the others? My feeling also extends to having an Isabella, Sophia and Sloane. It doesn't seem fair to give the two daughters such girly names and have Sloane stuck with a more masculine sounding one.

Plus, you can write off all the names that rhyme with your kid's names and anything that doesn't go. For example, we will never have a Theo and a Leo. Naming a child something like Lila wouldn't make much sense either because that's a lot of of L when you're calling Lulu and Lila across the playground.

Do you see what I mean?! It's like a name spiral. It makes my head hurt but I can't stop thinking about it! With this baby, we also don't know the gender so I really have to be on my game. My first instinct for a girl's name was actually much more of a classic choice than the one we seem to be heading for. Surprise! That was actually Matt's doing. I couldn't believe my ears. I'm trying to love our more classic choice and get Matt on board as well because, depending on how many future children we have, I'm going to have a really hard time coming up with many more individualistic names. We're still sort of waffling around but we seem to have at least solidly landed on a boy's name, much to my relief. I was worried for most of this pregnancy that if it was a boy, he would be nameless. Once again, when we found the name, it just fit. I mean, I hope it fits! We always have a few backups, just in case....

A Baby Nook

I've been trying to listen to everyone who keeps telling me to relax about baby prep (actually, that's a lie. I've just gotten really good at smiling and saying mmhmmm while still going over my to-do list in my head). I knew though how fast this due date was going to sneak up on me and here we are, just over five weeks out. It's not that I'm one of those wishful delusional people that thinks I'm going to have the baby early or whatever. It's just that I don't want to be spending my last few uncomfortable weeks organizing blankets or waddling and sweating around the mall looking for the ever allusive perfect first outfit. Even running errands has gotten ridiculously frustrating because all I want to do is accomplish something but the amount of time it takes me to do anything is laughable. Can you tell I'm getting grumpy?

Anyway, this weekend I managed to actually complete a project I have been working on for way way too long now - the baby nook. After many a roadblock with the making of the mobile (damn it, overly-expensive Michaels! How can you not have double-sided gold paper?), among other things, I put the finishing touches on with the aid of my best friend that I always sucker into helping me.

As usual, when I started this project, I got too excited to remember to take any before pictures. Basically it was a closet with mirrored doors in a boring vanilla work-in-progress master bedroom. That's all.

We are reusing our old change table and to make that more interesting, I did a small knob upgrade which made a huge difference. We took the bulky top off eventually as well.

This before photo is of half the dresser because I had already replaced the knobs on the other drawer before I took the photo. I wasn't about to put those cheesy little animals back on, so this is what you get!

We are lucky to have a large master bedroom which was easily divided by one of my favorite and most versatile pieces of furniture - the Ikea expedit. We didn't know where we were going to put this when we turned the playroom into a bedroom but I was really excited about using it as a room divider and baby storage. I never know what to do with all the tiny socks and washcloths and such so the bin system works really well for me.











There you have it! Simple, calm, and pretty. I was really happy with how it came together. Matt was looking at it the other night and saying, "You know, we've never had a room to decorate for a baby." He was right! Every time we have had a newborn, there was some sort of weird circumstance that meant our baby got the ugly sad end of the stick (ie. a bassinet at the end of our bed. Oh the tragedy!) The baby won't have their own room for a while, on account of their siblings needing to be kept apart in their own rooms so that we can at least pretend to get sleep over here. It was a great feeling this time to prepare a space while we wait for this little one to arrive and undoubtedly have a poop explosion all over that nice white crib sheet.