Nostalgic

   I'm feeling very nostalgic this afternoon. I'm not sure why. I decided to make a digital scrapbook of some of my favorite Halloween memories. The kids are SO MUCH bigger now than even just last Halloween. Scary stuff. Brooke has already started making plans for when she moves out of our house. :-(   We were riding in the car the other day and she told me (again) that she won't be living with me when she's a grown up. Her main motivator? "Girls that live with their parents are fat." Where does she get this stuff? I'm kinda concerned that she worries about the whole fat thing too much for a 6 year old.

 Of course, the other day she was self-concious about her teeth too. She told me, "Mom, I really do have horse teeth. They're too thick like horse teeth are, but they're only midget horse teeth 'cause they're shorties. They're  short & chubby baby horse teeth."  Who knew you could use the words "horse teeth" so many times in only 3 sentences?

Oh, and you should have heard her trying to explain why I shouldn't be upset with her for being awake WAY past her bed time. It sounded like this: "I'm the kind of person who's body just does whatever it wants to. I can't control it, so you can't be mad at me. Just be mad at my body, but not my head. My head is mad at my body too, but I'm not the kinda person who can just make myself go to sleep even if I want to. If my body doesn't want to sleep only God can force it to. I can't force myself to sleep, you know, 'cause I'm not that kinda person."  She really does just babble on and on repeating variations of the same phrases all the time. It cracks me up. I swear she didn't even know how to talk like... yesterday. Now she never stops. Where did the last 6 years go and are the next 6 going to fly by as quickly? I hope not!

 Then, the other day my friend Jenny and I were talking about what our kids prefer to sleep in (because her adorable son Niall was here for a sleepover with Russell) and it reminded me of what Tatton used to sleep in. You see, Tatton decided that he wasn't getting a good nights sleep due to always waking up cold after he kicked the blankets off. He decided it would be best to start getting dressed for school the night before and wearing a coat to bed. To him, this was an ingeniusly effecient plan since he was saving time in the AM and staying consistently warm. I let him do his thing and just chuckled at the way his cute little mind worked & never gave it a second thought. That is, until I went to foster parent certification classes and there was a chunk of class devoted to "what to expect when you're expecting foster kids" as in what problem behaviours were common. They made a big deal out of how a lot of foster kids "prefer to sleep in their clothes instead of pajamas". The reasons that they listed off (being homeless, being sexually abused, having become accustomed to unpredictability/ the need to pick up & run at a moments notice all made sense) but I still felt a little defensive about the sleeping in a coat thing. I didn't want people to just assume that there was something "wrong" if they found out that Tatton slept fully clothed including a coat. LOL  Now, he's a sleeping in boxers man and it seems kind of sad that this is just a memory to be pulled out of the archives for a good chuckle.

Anyway... just thinking. Wow, they're growing up fast. Lane keeps talking to me about how concerned he is about the economy and his views on Obama's health plan and of course, whether or not shaving will help his peach fuzz grow in thicker. *sigh*

Make a Smilebox scrapbook