I can't hear you, or anything else

Hadley usually does a good job of keeping her voice to a reasonable level.  In the middle of the night she'll whisper.  During the day she's at the normal level, unless she's trying to be heard over her sister.

Brynne, on the other hand, only seems to have one level.

Like Spinal Tap, Brynne turns it to 11, but she keeps it there.

She can walk up to me and request the most mundane thing.  If she happens to be right in front of me when she speaks I feel as though my hair is being blown back.

We very nearly lost a 50 year old oak tree when Brynne spoke at it.

I wasn't surprised the other day when she informed me about something she had just done.

"Me went poop on the potty!"

It just might have been more appropriate to use her quiet voice at this particular point - seeing as wee had about a dozen people over at the time and I was standing in the middle of them.

Oh well.  At least she wasn't cursing.

Bathtime fun

Bath night used to be the girls sitting in the tub while we washed them.  This would be followed by them trying to escape our grasp as we toweled them off and prepared them for bed.

At some point, it became more about playing than cleaning.

They HAVE to be in the tub when the water is running so they can hold toys under to flow and clean them.  If they're not in the tub, they'll be standing at the edge, leaning precariously over the deepening water. 

I protect the faucet from little ones and little ones from the faucet.

Once the toys have been rinsed, a wash cloth is used to scrub them clean and dry them.  Sometimes, they are lined up on the side of the tub and at other times they are tossed back into the water.  The two larger animals, dolphin and turtle, are guided along the edge of the tub and up the shower walls.  For some reason, they make a VROOM sound like the cars and trucks do.

In the past, if water so much as touched one of their faces, they would be reduced to tears and screams.  Now, they stick their faces in the water to blow bubbles, pour water over each other's head, or use a "water gun toy" to spray one another.  Typically, as soon as a face is wet, the wash cloth is used to dry it off. 

More often than not, the first attempt to dry a face is done by grabbing the wash cloth straight from the bottom of the tub.  It's a funny thing, wet wash cloths do a poor job of drying things off.  So after they wring it out, they try again.

Once they're all clean we need to dry off.  They MUST get a dab of lotion on their hands so they can rub it in themselves.  Actually, they need to get a little dab about a dozen times.  Once they're dried, lotioned, and dressed, they INSIST on putting everything back in the proper drawer and putting the rolling drawer thing in the closet.

Only then can we brush hair and leave the bathroom.

It's turned into one big game.  Most of the time we have fun, but not on the days they don't nap well.

The only thing I can say to share what that is like is to quote one of Brynne's favorite sayings:

"Uh-oh"

The Golden Rule

Being in the financial services industry, I deal with privacy concerns every day.  There are so many rules and regulations surrounding most everything I do. 

• I can't send, nor would I, social security numbers, account numbers or anything similar in nature through email without having it encrypted.
• I can't speak to a husband about his wife's accounts unless I have her permission.
• If I mention my company's name on my facebook page or Twitter, I have to have a disclaimer stating that the opinions are mine, and not that of the company. 
• I can't let one client know another person is a client of mine, unless I get his authorization first. 
• I can't even tell one person if the friend of theirs they referred to me became a client without the other person's permission first.

There are a lot of rules to follow and they all have strict penalties for failing to adhere to them.  Blogging does not have any such rules.  I can do almost anything I want.  But I don't, and neither does Julia in her blog. 

When she first started blogging, we discussed what was fair game and what was not.  We've stuck to those rules for anything and everything we've written whether it's for her blog, my blog, or my upcoming book.

We agreed:

1. Not to post any naked or semi-naked pictures.  That goes for the girls as well. 
2. Not to post anything that would indicate when one or both of us were out of town.
3. Not to post anything if either of us is uncomfortable with the content.   
4. Not to publicly bash any person or organization.  

I can't think of one instance where either of us have failed to live up to our end of the bargain, and I don't expect it to happen. 

While it may seem as though our lives are an open book, they aren't.  Most of the truly intimate details of our life are kept between us.  If they're written down, it's in pen, in the journals we keep for the girls. 

  

I still see the occasional blog post or facebook update of a little naked one running around, the moaning about how one spouse mistreated the other, or how one's friend has wronged them.  I usually don't comment on them, because people are free to do what they want - even if I don't agree with it.

For us, we try to keep one thing in mind - once you hit submit it's out there, and will continue to be out there.  You can't take it back. 

Sure, you can attempt to delete it, but if one person has seen it, or if technology doesn't work exactly as it should, the damage is done.

Why risk it?