To My Kids

I made the comment to Jeremy tonight that we need to write a letter to our kids, during this time of our lives, to let them know how poor we were and life was simple. You know you've heard people say how they wish they could go back to those simple days of school life- but I do not know what they are talking about.
Anyway, thinking about a letter to my kids, instead of tell you about the juicy details of financial woes or list off all the things we don't have or the things that are being forced to hang on in life because we can't afford to replace it (yeah, we're there: camera, Jeremy's glasses, a computer, many common things. At least our car is great! ;P ), let me just tell you about life these days and, well, you.
I love Lucy as much as ever. She's pulled out a few of the terrible-two symptoms; some of her terrible two symptoms are fighting with baby brother, pushing and hitting him and stealing his toys (sounds awful, huh? terrible!) She also asserts her "No"s with a flaming two-year old attitude. But she's one of those kids that loves to learn and so she's just fun to be with. I'm continually amazed how well she speaks and learns new words. Despite her first-impression being shy and timid, she loves to try new things. We've had fun doing our own home-gymnastics, she does forward rolls, forward falls, and she likes to run! Princess movies and songs are still her favorite. She's seen Aladdin way too many times, it's the only disney movie we have right now. And she already knows almost every word to all the Aladdin soundtrack! Yep, she's getting to be just like her mom!
Willie is all boy for sure. Rough and tumble, loud and...loud- that's him! I can't believe he'll already be turning one in a month! He's a fast crawler and likes to climb. He hasn't shown too much interest to walk yet, still quite wabbly when he stands. He is so into whatever Lucy is doing- or whereever the action is, he has to be there; even if it's just hearing the toilet flush, he'll come running. He's very adventurous. I hate to tell you that you play with princesses way too much (we're low on boy-kine toys at the moment) and you have no shoes (this is not so much the money thing as his feet are just too fat and no shoes fit him right now, and perhaps a little bit of the money thing). But still, he is happy. His laugh is contagious and his smile the kind you'd pay money to see. So Pogi! ('Handsome' in Philipino; on a walk the other day a philipino man stopped to talk to us, to Willie he said, Hi Pogi! And told me it meant handsome. I think that's how you spell that word, I'm not sure.)
Life for mom right now is hard to sum up. The kids and I are kind of into a routine now that mom has all the free playgroups, storytimes and other family programs mapped out. What a great mom I am, (winkwink)! I'm going to try and make the kid's halloween costumes again this year. It's nothing too wow, I'm just trying to use things from around the house.
Your dad, you know we have to hand it to him, he's working so hard. Jeremy just got offered a grad assistant position with the director of Child Welfare at UH, so we're all really excited about that. It's a great position for his experience and he's getting to meet a lot of important professors at UH that will hopefully help him get into the PhD program someday. He'll have to quit the other job he had just started, but such is life. The grad assistant job pays good and we might be getting a full tuition waiver- we're still waiting to hear back if it's full out-of-state waiver or just in-state tuition waiver- anyway, that's really good! He's been doing really well in school and is glad he came to UH.
We went to the temple yesterday and afterwards came across a little festival going on at the beach. I talked with a vendor who was a photographer (I gave him your website Shonda, and you can check him out at www.holladayphoto.com), anyway his wife is a social worker and did her masters at Columbia but they said they regret not doing it at UH. Well, besides the fact that I really do know that we do have plenty, so much more than a lot of people in the world, everything we need I'm sure. But I guess the bottom line to this little letter to you kids is, despite having the worries and stress of school life, the blessings are still pouring in. And we're glad you two are here to share in it all with us!
Until 10 years, when you're old enough to read this,
love always,
Mom Courtney