Did I Ever Tell You About the Time We Ate Bugs?

Broccoli is our family's favorite vegetable. Steamed, raw, plain, sauced, roasted, or casseroled, everyone gobbles it up and asks for more. We easily eat it 3 times a week in some form or fashion. I buy it fresh in the produce section and choose the organic variety when it's on sale. It's a staple in our house.

It used to be a staple, that is. All of that changed when we ate a hundred million black bugs embedded in broccoli florets for dinner one night. Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew.

It happened back in November. I am just now able to write about it because it has taken me months to get over the disgust and shame of feeding my family insects for dinner.

In my defense, I had no idea my broccoli was infested. I bought the organic variety, washed it, quartered it, and steamed it for 10 minutes. I served plates. I called everyone for dinner. We thanked God for the food set before us. We began eating.

Everything was fine until I forked a too-big piece and bit half off. Then my eyes beheld the horror of the situation. I saw hundreds of black bugs. Everywhere. They were all dead of course, but who cares. Bugs are bugs, dead or alive, I certainly don't want to eat them. And boy, did I ever eat them. As well as JD and Beatrice and Penelope.

The worst part of this story is that we ate a lot of bugs. Our plates were almost completely empty before we discovered the infestation. "How could one not know they were eating bugs?," you may be asking yourself. Well, we never use the overhead light in the dining room. The light from that thing is bright and abrasive so I turn on the wall sconces and a buffet lamp instead. Also, I overcooked the broccoli a bit so the tiny little buds at the end were dark green. The bugs were the same size and tightly tucked into the branches under the florets, totally out of sight. In our dark dining room, those things were impossible to see.

After I bit off half of my too-big bite and saw the bugs, I went into the kitchen to investigate under the light. It was then that I saw dead bugs everywhere. In my broccoli, on my plate, in the pot I steamed it in, on the serving spoon. Everywhere. If I had a mirror, I'm sure I would have found them in my teeth too. How could I not see this earlier??? I told everyone to stop eating immediately.

I was in denial for half a second and asked JD if the sesame seed sized black things in my broccoli were bugs. He cut into his remaining portion and saw thousands of them. I turned the lights on. Bugs were covering our plates. We ate bugs. We fed our kids bugs. We didn't know how to move on from that moment, so we laughed and cried and held each other.

Months later, we are still traumatized. JD said it would have been better if we never discovered them in the first place. At least then we would still have our innocence. And could sleep at night knowing that we fed our kids bugs. 

I have still not bought fresh broccoli since the incident and I'm not sure that I ever will again. I have purchased frozen broccoli that is diced into small bite sized pieces, but honestly, JD and I are so skeeved out by the fact that we ate bugs, we barely eat it. Thankfully, the girls are oblivious and still eat it with carefree abandon. Mommy's so sorry, girls. 

Upon googling, I learned that tiny black bugs are pretty common with organic broccoli. Washing them out is often futile since they hunker down deep into the florets. I should feel better about feeding my family organic bugs, right? I mean, if one's going to ingest hundreds of thousands of insects they better not have any fillers or preservatives. That's always been my motto!

Anyone wanna come over for dinner?

Friends

I've never been the girl with a ton of friends. I have always had a handful of really close girlfriends, but never can come up with more than 10 or so folks to invite to my baby showers, birthday parties, or the like. I'm more of a few-close-best-friends kind of person than a whole-lot-of-people-I'm-friendly-with kind of person. Neither of which are bad by the way, I've just always managed fewer friends at once better than having a bunch in my speed dial. And just so you don't think I'm pathetic or anything, I have lots of people that I consider friends - they just aren't people I would call in a crisis. There are only a few of those. I also have 288 Facebook friends. That should prove something. What - I'm not sure, but it's a big deal. Trust me.  


One of my biggest fears about moving away has been that I won't make any friends. The friends that I have I've had for 10+ years and my sisters in law are in my family. I haven't made a new friend in ages because honestly, how does one go about making friends as an adult? Do you introduce yourself and say, "wanna be friends?" Or better yet, how does one go about making friends as an adult when one does not work outside of the home, has 2 small children that require a lot of home time, and has very little time to invest in a new friendship? "Hi! Wanna be friends and never see each other but possibly babysit my kids next week?" 

When you're a kid, friendships just happen. On the first day of school, there was always someone you clicked with. At work, people buddy up almost immediately and effortlessly. When you get married, you inherit your spouse's friends and their wives. It's easy to make friends when you spend a huge chunk of your days with other people. But when you're at home most of your life with little kids, the task becomes much harder. It takes a lot more effort to cultivate a relationship when you don't get to spend the majority of your time with people other than your family members.

I have only been in California for 10 days and am desperate for friends. I think that this big, faraway place will feel smaller and closer with people to laugh with, cry with, and help me go places with my babies. And maybe babysit while I get my hair done every 8 weeks or so... I have met some moms on the playground and have high hopes that we will hang out on purpose soon. I also met up with a friend from back home that misses her friends like crazy too. She lives in Los Angeles too, in case that was confusing. I feel pretty confident in saying that I think we will be fast friends. Partly because we had a great time catching up, but mostly because we texted each other afterward asking if the other wanted to be friends...What? I really want to make a friend, y'all.

Seriously though, how does one go about making friends as an adult when one doesn't work outside the home or know the area?

Big Letdown

When I was a kid, I remember having a pretty sweet Barbie doll collection. I had a Barbie canopy bed, a Barbie car, a Barbie hotdog stand, Barbie furniture, and tons of Barbie clothes and accessories. I remember feeling so blessed with Barbie stuff, that I gave away some of my Barbies to friends who had less. I had a Barbie collection to be envied. Or so I thought.

Today, I thought it would be fun to get some of my old Barbies out for Beatrice to play with. My mom and I dug deep into the boxes containing my childhood and found the collection of all Barbie collections. Except it wasn't as awesome as I remember it to be. It was quite pathetic actually.

Meet Barbie. She's a nurse. And she has a huge orange afro, circa 1964. She belonged to my mom. I remember her blue eyeshadow to be more exotic than it is today. And her orange afro.

This is her Ken. He is a doctor with really skinny legs and short shorts. He also moonlights as a tennis pro and a lifeguard. He looks like a marine.

I did have some new Barbies back in the day too. Peaches and Cream Barbie was my favorite. And Hawaiian Barbie. I named her Claudia because I thought that was the most beautiful name ever. She had cool hair and cooler clothes. But as I dug through the box containing all of the treasures of my youth, I realized my Barbie clothes sucked. They were homemade, but not cool homemade, makeshift homemade. As in I used old socks to make skirts and dresses. Old socks.

At least I fringed the hem.

In addition to the sock dresses, I also made clothes from scraps of lace and fabric that my mom had in her sewing kit. I omitted sewing altogether and instead just cut holes for arms and heads. I wonder if my lesser fortunate friends appreciated my handiwork and ingenuity...

I did find some authentic Barbie clothes. I remember this dress being my favorite because it was sparkly and racy. I always got in trouble though because I would pull it under Claudia's boobs and make her work the hotdog stand topless. My mom didn't approve.

She had the hots for Ken. He is also a doctor. But he moonlights as something else.

Ken was not monogamous. He liked all of my Barbies. He really liked Keira and her head to toe denim ensemble. See. I had some cool Barbie clothes that weren't made from old socks.

My Barbie furniture consisted of my mom's 1960's dresser and this plastic couch I covered with flannel. Did I mention that I was making sock dresses and reupholstering furniture at 6? It actually explains a lot about who I am today. 

Today was kind of a let down. I realized that the Barbie collection I once was so proud of was actually pretty lame. My Barbie car was one of my brother's toy cars, my clothes were made of socks, and my furniture was either 45 years old or not meant for Barbie at all. I also realized that we were a lot poorer than I ever knew. The sock dresses gave it away. But you know what? My childhood was fun, ghetto Barbies and all. And Beatrice doesn't have a clue how ridiculous my collection is. She thinks my Barbies are awesome.

She likes their boobies. And their hair. And their clothes. And their accessories. And their furniture. Just like I did.

How I Feel

Since revealing our news about moving to Los Angeles, I have repeatedly been asked how I feel about it. Which is really nice, I liked being asked how I feel about things. It's the way that I am asked that has prompted me to write this post. Most everyone asks me how I feel about leaving our town and family with a look of pity and sadness on their faces, like I am about to burst into tears and tell them that I am in agony over it and cannot possibly see how I will ever survive it. That is not the case though.

This is how I feel:

I have fears. I am afraid that I won't have friends and will be lonely. I am afraid that I won't trust anyone to babysit and will be stuck in hypothetical emergencies. I'm afraid that JD will be gone too much and I will have no one to talk to, no one to enjoy our new state with. I'm afraid of not finding a church that we love and feel shepherded in. I'm afraid that my kids will not know their cousins and aunts and uncles. I'm afraid of the cost of living. I'm afraid that my mom is going to sneak in our luggage and secretly live with us because she cannot handle the thought of me taking her grand babies away. And I'm afraid of celebrities. I have this weird star struck thing happen to me when I see a celebrity of any caliber. I gawk. I can't speak. I point and laugh maniacally. It's not cool. At all. And it scares me. So I know it scares them. Awesome.


But more than my fears, I am really, stinkin' excited. I cannot wait to move. I cannot wait to live miles from the beach and have world class shopping and restaurants at my fingertips. I can't wait to sink my teeth into a new place. I can't wait to experience the adventure of uprooting our lives and starting over somewhere new with my husband and babies. I am really excited. About all of it. And I'm starting to get the feeling that it is not okay for me to feel this way.

From the reactions I get, I'm guessing that I'm not supposed to be happy about the move. I get a lot of sad faces. Faces that wouldn't trade places with me for anything. Faces that make me feel weird, like I am weird for being excited. I'm not talking about any one person in particular. Strangers give me the faces too. The older lady that walks her dog by our place every afternoon around 5 gave me the sad face today when she asked why we're selling. I am seriously wondering if I'm going about this all wrong. Maybe I should have a sad face too?

I know I will have moments of sadness during and after the move. Everything as I know it will be different. But that's kind of what excites me. I'm not afraid of the unknown enough to make me not want to go and do it. I have not always been this way, but I really want to embrace change and make the most of it. I am proud of my husband and his ambitions to do something bigger than the local PD. But I feel like I have to defend that. Because for some reason, that is not how the majority of my people think that I should feel. And it's starting to make me feel weird. More weird than usual. 


I get that a lot of the sad faces from family is about them missing us. I will miss them too, terribly. But I suppose I don't allow myself to focus on that. Things can't stay the same if they're going to change. Does that make any kind of sense? What I mean by that extremely cryptic statement is if more opportunities (financially, professionally, etc) are to become available to us, things have to change (like our address, career, etc). To me, that trade off is worth the sadness of missing family and our familiar life here. Please don't let that sound heartless, please don't let that sound heartless! Plus, we can visit. And Skype. And blog about missing each other. So see, it's all gonna work out!

I'm not bothered by the sad faces and negative reactions I get when I tell people that we're moving 2000 miles away. Some people have different plans for their families, and that's okay. Ours happens to involve moving away from everyone we know and love. And that's okay too. But regardless of how traumatic it may be for all of us, I'm feeling okay about it. I just thought everyone should know. Commence sad faces in unison if you must. I kid. 

I Need My Mommy

I have never felt comfortable being called an adult. I don't feel like an adult. I feel the very same way that I felt at 16: old enough to drive and kiss boys, but not old enough to have a mortgage or a child. On my wedding day, I seriously thought that someone would interject and say, "Come on. She's just a kid. A child bride. Alyson, take off that veil and all of that makeup and go clean your room." I felt like a kid, even though I was 26. And I still feel that way.

Don't get me wrong, I am responsible. I pay our bills, I save money, I brush my teeth before bed, and I eat my vegetables. But when faced with grown up decisions, I get uneasy. My stomach hurts and I get anxious. I do not feel qualified to make such huge decisions. Not as a child bride and teen mother.

JD and I have been talking about making some huge decisions lately. Huge financial decisions that make me want to puke. And even though JD is older than me (36), he feels the same. We are 2 kids terrified of all of the grown up things we have managed to avoid, but really should deal with head on. You know, since we have a child now and everything. 

Things like our house and our need to grow if we ever want to grow our family. We live in a 2 bedroom townhouse. We own said townhouse and have made it our home. Our home however, is just the right size for a family of 3. Add a cat and things start getting cramped. Add in more children and things start getting ridiculous. No, we're not having any more children right now but we would like to soon and if we stay in our current place, it would be difficult. Our place is so perfect because financially, it is at our comfort level. We are settled in our budget and any big changes feels like the scariest thing ever. I don't feel qualified to make this decision. Neither does my teen husband.

I have spent all day scribbling out our budget on the back of some pink paper. See, that's an indication of my never ending youth. A grown up would've made a spreadsheet in basic font. JD and I are going to talk about it tonight, but I know it's going to be awkward and weird because we feel silly making these decisions. Maybe our moms will come over and figure it out for us, then make us go to bed early. But we'll show them who's boss by staying up late and watching T.V. Because that's what mature adults do. Oh, and then go buy a house too.

Christmas Cheer

I love the holidays. I love the excitement of gifts given and received, I love spending too much time with family and getting way off of baby schedules for the sake of hearing one more story of Christmases before I was born, and I love decorating. I also love holidays celebrated by the whole world that have Jesus smack dab in the middle. Because even if everyone isn't purposefully celebrating His birth, THAT is what the holiday is about so it's impossible to celebrate the season without celebrating Him. Sorry atheists.

JD and I have talked long and hard about what our family Christmas traditions will be now that we have a family of our own. We know that we won't be doing most of the secular things of the season. We want Beatrice to know the Reason for the season and not be obsessed with fat men in red suits so Santa won't be appearing at our house. Don't worry, my brothers and I never had Santa at Christmas and we are all normal, well-adapted adults with only a mild aversion to the fat guy. Plus, without any firsthand experience with him, I wouldn't know how to do Santa. And JD and I can't get past the whole lying to your kid thing. Fun or not, we don't want to lie so when Santa comes up, she'll know that he's not real. Still fun, right? We also decided that every Christmas morning will be spent at our house. Both of our families live in the same town as us so we have always traveled to and fro to be with them. Now that Beatrice is old enough to care about toys, we want her to grow up opening gifts under her own tree in her own living room, then head off to family at lunch time. I love this idea.


With only 42 more days until the Big Day, I have begun preparations for the best Christmas to date. Here are some things that have inspired me to spread the Christmas cheer this year.

Christmas jammies. They are snug, festive, and so cute on skinny, little, diapered bodies.

I love nice towels and these 100% linen kitchen towels from Mud-Pie are fab with the little ribbon tree and ric-rac ornaments.

Prepare yourself to freak out a little at the cuteness you're about to witness. Tree and ornament bloomers from Mud-Pie Baby. Is it weird to have bloomers that match kitchen towels? Yes? Oh, well pretend that I didn't get them to match and then pretend that you don't think we're weird for not doing Santa because you know you're giving me the side-eye right about now. I can feel it.

Because the flamingoes are our favorite animals at the zoo, we had to get this pink, twinkling lawn flamingo.

And just to up the gaudiest house on the block ante, we also bought several of these pink light up candy canes. Know that I will post pictures of the finished decorated exterior once JD quits being a Scrooge and puts all of this stuff out. 

Christmas smocked dresses make me the happiest of all. Beatrice has 3 in the rotation. 

 Purple fuzzy stockings make me smile.

And finally, all of my new Christmas decor inspired me to make this candy cane striped earflap hat with festive pom. Will it up my weird factor if I admit that it came to me in a dream and I woke up and made it? You can buy it in my Etsy shop.

Christmas makes me happy. Cheer like this needs to be passed on. 

Mean Mommy

I made Beatrice cry yesterday. I was rushing to get out the door and had a diaper bag, purse, bag of toys and Beatrice balanced in my arms while I was frantically trying to locate my cell phone. If you ever want to see me lose my cool, come over when I'm trying to leave the house with Beatrice and no help. I always end up dropping half of my load and talking out loud to myself about how unfair it is to carry all of my crap without help. It's not a pretty sight. And it happens all of the time. She was super clingy and every time I set her down, she whined and cried for me to pick her back up. Finally with moments before I was going to be late for an appointment, I set her down and said, "Beatrice, you're going to have to deal with it while Mommy finds her phone." Except I didn't say it very nicely. I said it kind of frustrated. She bawled. It broke her heart. Not only did I put her down, but I yelled too. I felt horrible and immediately picked her up and hugged her. She was fine, I found my phone (it was in my purse the whole time), but I beat myself up all day about it.

I know that there will be moments where I lose my cool. I can't be patient all of the time, despite my best efforts. But I am prone to lose it in really dumb situations. This is not how I want to teach my daughter to be. And the way that I act shapes her perspective on women, wives, and mothers. I am her first example of all of those things and if I overreact, I am teaching her that it is normal to do so. Plus, if I overreact at really small things, she is sure to expect me to overreact at really big stuff too. There is a pastor at our church that has counseled with us a few times who gave some really great advice. He said to not freak out about things. If she falls down and gets hurt, don't freak. Deal with it calmly so she comes to expect that from you because one day, there may be a boy who is pressuring her to do more than she's ready to do or a friend who is offering her drugs. If she thinks that we're going to freak out, she won't come to us. We need to be relaxed and even keeled so she can expect that we are not going to lose our cool when it comes to the really big things in her life. I like this advice. I have failed at this advice.

I have also come to realize that Beatrice is very sensitive. She cries when I take too long to get her up from her nap. She cries when she falls. She cries when I take her milkies away. She wants to nurse ALL THE TIME. She cries when she can't figure out how to build a block tower higher than 4 blocks tall. She is sensitive and I need to remember this when dealing with her. This is her little personality and instead of ignoring it, I need to nurture it.

So here I am once again saying how I want to be different and how I want to be a better mother. I am not discouraged though because just as I remind myself every time I load us up to go somewhere without any help, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" Philippians 4:13. I don't have to go it alone. I can be the kind of mother that I strive to be with His help. And hopefully I won't make Beatrice cry anymore along the way. No one wants to be a mean mommy.

This Is Going To Be Awkward

I had a good cry today. I cried with just the right amount of ferocity and then I felt better. And because I feel better, I hesitate to write this post because things are about to get awkward for everyone.

Eleven years ago today, my dad died in a plane crash. It was a single engine plane and he was the pilot. I was seventeen. I thought about the anniversary of his death all week and tried to decide how I would feel today. Eleven years is a long time to come to terms with death and I can positively say that I have dealt with my grief. But still, I cried. I didn't cry for my dad today though, I cried for me.

When my dad died, I felt like I forever got stuck at seventeen (emotionally). I was still a kid and needed my parents. After he was gone, my family sort of imploded and I felt as though I suddenly had no parents. No one to guide me, no one to care about my grades, no one to answer to when I missed curfew. I was hurdled into adulthood before I was ready and I handled it very, very poorly.

I blamed God for many years. He knew what my dad meant to me and how prolific of a person he was, yet He still took him. I didn't know how to deal with this. I spent a lot of years trying to get back at God by dating the scum of the earth, drunk dialing my family to talk about Dad and shutting myself off to every relationship in my life. I became an emotional cripple. And for many years, I stayed there. Not the scum of the earth and drunk dialing part, just the emotional cripple part.  

Today I cried because I have wasted a lot of years being distant to people that want to love me. I cried because I have not moved past a seventeen year old's emotional state of mind that day in October when I suddenly had to face the world without my protector, without my spiritual leader, without my big, strong dad. I cried because I made so many bad decisions because I didn't trust God to carry me through the grief (that I did overcome, praise Him). I cried because of the brokenness my family has experienced because none of us knew how to talk about it for the longest time and because of the reckless decisions I made to smother the pain. I cried thinking about how different my life would be if he were still here and I hadn't had to grow up before I was ready. And I cried a little because I miss him. And now I'm crying again....


Several years after Dad died, I remember driving down the road and hearing in my heart God say "I am the Father to the fatherless" (Psalm 68:5). That began my recovery from the intense grief and pain that mangled my heart. That promise best summed up what I had feared being for many years: fatherless, vulnerable, without spiritual guidance. But my Heavenly Father did not abandon me and leave me fatherless, he stepped up and placed an abundance of godly men in my life as fatherly figures. On my wedding day, I missed my dad terribly but I had two brothers give me away. Several pastors and their wives have taken me under their wing and mentored me. And JD. My strong, sensitive husband that tells Beatrice stories of Grandpa Leigh fishing in Heaven. He reminds me of my dad in so many ways that sometimes I look up at God and say, "really? This is my husband? Cool."


I no longer have grief about losing my dad. He was a man after God's heart and lived in a way that I do not doubt for a second he is in Heaven. I have sad moments every now and then because I wonder how cool it would be to know him as an adult and see him with my child, but I no longer have that pain in my heart because of grief. Today's tears were for years wasted on rebellion and pain, not on losing him.

I hesitate publishing this post because whenever someone loses someone, there is always that awkward pause of not knowing what to do. Do you say you're sorry for their loss? Do you give words of encouragement? Do you wish you never read this post because now you don't know what to do and I'm totally calling you out on it but because you read it, you feel obligated to say something? I hate making anyone feel awkward but know that I probably made you feel that way anyway, so I'm hesitant....

Well now that everyone feels awkward, I am just going to end this and say that God is good. He sustained my life and loves me immeasurably. And for that, no one should feel awkward.

Now, the awkward montage of photos...


Dad and me the summer before he died:

Dad being a great parent:

Dad fishing in Heaven:

I love you, Dad. See you again one day.