Independence

Tylie has recently started to explore her independence. She has always wanted to do things herself but these past couple of weeks she has officially put me on the sidelines and is calling all of the plays herself. This has especially impacted her daily fashions. She goes in her room, instructs me not to look, closes the door, and carefully selects what she is going to wear out of her dresser. She then lays it out and begins to methodically get dresses piece by piece, accessories and all. It is such a proud moment for her when she can bound into my room, backwards underwear and all, pronouncing that she once again did it by herself. I have been fortunate enough to catch a few of the latest upcoming trends. Watch out Vogue!

The backwards snow hat with the long pajamas.


The sweater under the princess dress. This is a trend that I would only expect to see on Halloween since all paranoid mom's bundle their kids up under their constumes.



The tshirt tucked into the underwear.


The ever popular sweater with sundress accessorized with lacey sunday socks.


And finally, wearing twelve pairs of underwear at one time. Who needs "Depends" when there is a fashion statement like this?


Tylie also has a fear of the dark. She hates to have her bedroom door closed and rarely will fall asleep if our room door is closed. I guess she feels that as long as our doors are open, she still has a connection to me in one way or another. I have thought about getting her a night light for a while now but everytime I am at the store I simply forget. Jake found a Christmas lawn candy cane the other night and figured he would give it a go with Tylie. Much to my dislike, she loved it and now will not settle for some lame care bear night light. Why take one tiny light when she has about twenty twinkling little lights encased in something as fun as a candycane. So, we are playing it ghetto-fabulous at our house and going for a "Christmas year round" theme in Tylie's room. Hopefully this will wear off soon.


I decided to try and capture a picture with my two kids at one time. It is a very rare occasion that we are all together in one place and I thought that I would capture one of those moments that I would look back on a few years from now and sigh- reminiscing the good times. This is what I got:

Tylie ducking out of the picture right when I took it. OK- let's try again.



Tylie angry because I wouldn't let her duck out this time. We go for another try.


Tylie putting on a fake smile hoping to get out of there as fast as she could and Mason is just trying to figure out what this flashing light is that keeps going off in his face.



Mason looking like he is going to beat Tylie in the head.


Tylie looking like Mason succeeded in beating her in the head and Mason looking like he took a few beatings himself.


After so many shots I gave up. When my children started looking more like drunken pirates instead of spry innocent souls, I decided that maybe these weren't memories that I would like to cling to when I am an "empty nester". I had started to feel like one of those chicks that plaster themselves all over "facebook" and "my space". They look completely ridiculous and you know they went through about 50 pictures before they got that perfect shot. The one where their head is cocked just right, their lips are pouted just enough, and their hair in gracefully laying around their face. C'mon- don't act like you don't know "the shot".


After trying to force some memories and giving up, we went outside to enjoy some sunshine and have a picnic in the back yard. As I am sitting there snacking on my jelly sandwich and looked up and this is what I saw.

Shame on me for trying to force my kids to be cute. I need to just back off and let them do their thing. No fake memories needed.