Introductions

     Friends and family who read this blog will obviously know their places in its stories.  I'd like to clearly state that I have a horrible short and long term memory.  Honestly, I don't remember if my memory has always been this bad.  But lately, it's been horrible.  I felt really bad for that guy on Oprah (James Frey) who admitted to making up some of his "memoir".  That being said, I'm also a really bad liar.  Let me clarify: I have a hard time lying.  My inner voice of consciousness is intolerant of lies. Therefore, if I tell something unlike reality... it's either because I was (a) too lazy to remember it correctly or (b) remember it wrong or (c) imagined a different scenario so often that it became ingrained.  If you know the correct version of the story, feel free to post a comment.  Truly, this would be best for all of us involved. 
     This being said, I thought some introductions would be in order.  My family lives in a sprawling suburb of a small city.  Both my husband and I commute to other sprawling suburbs close to this same small city.  Not quite what two small town high school sweethearts had envisioned but we love it just the same.  And to elaborate on that high school sweetheart note, my husband and I have been together for a whopping 16 years which means about half of our lifetimes.  We were "dating" (I use this term loosely to include sitting around watching movies, sharing one bagel at the local bagel shop, hanging out at our local Quick Mart -also a Taco Bell-, going to his fraternity parties and taking walks in our favorite parks) for about 7 1/2 years before we got married.  It kind of made the whole "How does it feel to be married?" question a little irrelevant (I specifically remember thinking that when asked the question for the first time at our wedding).  Bill and I were once referred to as "The wall that is Bill and Jessica" although now that I put that it into print, it doesn't sound right, was it supposed to be "rock"?  No bother, it meant we were a pretty strong force when paired together.  Or maybe it just was a recognition that we're both so damn stubborn... 
     And so we are settled into our approximately one acre of fenced in goodness, happy to simply have a small strip of "woods" in our backyard (but not happy with the skunks that come with living next to the woods).  We waited until we were married and had a house before we thought about having kids. This is highly responsible of us. But it means we never got to spend much time partying in all of our region's hip glory.  If you didn't already get the message, I'm a dork. So even if we had taken time out of our life-planning, we wouldn't have been cool enough to hang out with the hipsters (or at least I wouldn't be. Bill is pretty easy going and therefore could hang out with anyone from a bunch of paranoid alien hunters to a group of high anxiety bankers on a lunch break). 
     After all of that responsible waiting and far too little actual "saving", we had our first son, Liam.  Liam is now 4 1/2 years old.  Liam is wildly outgoing.  He talks constantly and when he can't think of anything else to say, he'll just ask "Why?" which often degenerates into something along the lines of "Why because?" or "Because why?"  Liam is a very intelligent, insightful child.  Just yesterday we talked about how a haunted house is imitating a cemetary, not the other way around.  And he actually got it!  He barely knows all of his alphabet letters but demonstrates more "literate behaviors" than many kids in grade school- or even high school- (asking questions, connecting to other books we've read or TV shows, etc...).  Liam loves to do science experiments. He can spend an hour wasting water from our spigot- splashing it everywhere, "cleaning", experiementing with the nozzle settings and then sweeping it all up with a broom.  He causes trouble quite frequently.  It was bad enough when we caught evidence that he had been standing on his dresser.  We soon found out he was sitting on top of his (unstable) bookshelf too.  A few days after that and after numerous rational discussions about the dangers of standing on furniture, he arrived upstairs (during prime naptime) wearing an airplane kite that had been hanging from his ceiling thus begging the questions (1) how did he get the airplane kite down from the ceiling and (2) if he was able to shimmy himself into the kite, why was it so hard to get him out of it?
     Our second son is about 1 1/2 years old.  His name is Joshua and he is adorable.  I didn't always think he would grow up to be so adorable.  He was born with one long tuft of hair at the top of his head and then the "monk hairdo" growing along the base of his head.  While Liam is clearly a string bean, Joshua was more of a tomato (but a plum tomato, not a beefsteak).  He's got a little bit more "squishy" to him but he's growing out of that.  Once Josh grew his straight, soft, light colored hair and began to smile we realize what a knock-out cutie he is.  He has enormous brown eyes with long lashes.  He often wakes up... happy.  This is a very strange concept to Bill & I who are veteran parents of a more "intense" child.  Our second one is mostly content, especially if being held.  My friends make fun of me when he throws a mini-tantrum and then gets over it when I give him a blueberry.  Maybe it's just my mommy-haze, but it seems to me that Joshua is just a popular, lovable kind of easy-going guy.  I love that he is still opinionated though.  He nags and whines just like other kids.  He wants to play with whatever Liam's got and he just won't be satisfied until someone reads him a book (over and over and over again). 
     So this is our family.  When we start craving another special someone, we plan on going to the local animal shelter and looking into a friendly pet. Because, quite frankly as a mother, wife and full-time work-a-holic teacher, things are pretty busy here and I may be losing my mind.