Parenting

Me

1. snakes
2. chewing gum
3. lotion (i really do hate it! there are some that aren’t super greasy, but i can’t stand to feel lubed up.)
4. when i really, really, really am excited to eat at a particular restaurant and it is closed; after that kind of disappointment I don’t want to eat at all – and that’s serious
5. tomatoes
6. scary movies
7. picking vegetables from the garden (i know that sounds so lazy and ungrateful but for years i was an indentured servant to my family’s mammoth garden – it was planted in the middle of three intersecting tobacco fields – large! i resolved that i would not marry a man whose family grew a garden and i was dead serious about it)
8. having a body chemistry that attracts nations of bugs to feast on my flesh (others around me aren’t nearly as tasty – don’t understand it)
9. flying (the whole gravity-defying deal just freaks me out)
10. flat shoes (they’re fine on other people, but i am too short and curvy to be that low to the ground)
11. trash in my trash cans (someone shared this eccentricity at a Beth Moore conference and i felt so validated)
12. reruns
13. homework (this is surely recompense for my die-hard belief that students should have homework every night – yes, i know she’s only in the first grade but it’s awful!)
14. fat-free salad dressing
15. things that don’t end at a good stopping place (like i had to add this one because i couldn’t bear for my list to stop at 14.)

I also interviewed my cute lil’ fam, and this is what they had to say…

Chris

1. Georgia Bulldawg red
2. playing Baby Jaguar (which is this game he made up with the girls, but they went all nelly-nutcase on him and wanted him to play it every single day as soon as he walked in the door – with absolutely no variation from the script day after day after day after day. a dad can only take so much…)
3. CBS news
4. crabgrass
5. scary movies
6. litter (he seriously wants to be a litter patrol officer when he retires – i kid you not!)
7. credit cards
8. restaurants that serve only instant or flavored tea – we only like it brewed, straight, on the rocks with a healthy dose 0′ sweet n’ low (no aspartame warnings allowed – it’s a vitamin in my book!)

Carson

1. collards
2. cooked carrots
3. washing and combing her hair
4. scary movies
5. arising at 6:38 each weekday morning
6. anything that requires a wait

Campbell

1. anytime momma leaves 🙁
2. anytime her sister locks her door
3. anytime the spotlight hones in on her (see picture post; she doesn’t even like for the three of us to sing Happy Birthday to her on her big day)
4. scary movies
5. standing in the corner
6. replacement blankies (please don’t ever make the mistake of trying to convince her to use another blankie while her 2 real ones are being washed; she will flail about madly – like only a three year-old can – even if she has an accident during the night she prefers to go without cover than to allow a sub)

Hope you noticed my capitalization and punctuation had the night off – quite liberating for the psycho English teacher in me…

Campbell’s teacher sent a note home today. I was not surprised. It was her most dreaded day of the school year – picture day! She thinks photogs are creepy, the whole thing is forced, and she is not participating in some concocted charade of gaiety just so I can lamely whip out pictures of my two girls with acquaintances and friends from long ago. She’s not having it! At three years-old, she is not verbal enough to articulate all of that sass, but I know her well enough to know that is exactly what she would say if she could. So, let me introduce you to my Campbell…

and here she is again…

and again…

She’s a bit like Wilson, the partially-revealed neighbor on Home Improvement.

Her PaPa had a great idea. I think I’m going to start a photo album for her school pictures. In place of the picture I will slide in the note from her teacher each year. This is Campbell in 3K; this is Campbell in 4K, etc… Because believe you me (Chris hates when I bust out ole’ timey verbage), the day will come when she reams me for the insufficient photographic documentation of her childhood. I’m preparing myself…

Just consider this post Exhibit 45 to be used in my defense…