Sister Love

August 15, 2012 nk3306 Comments

First of all, I was just thinking how crazy it is that our one year anniversary of moving to England is quickly approaching. I can’t believe how quick that went. That whole first day of our arrival is an exhausted blur. Since moving here, I haven’t felt homesick very much. Yes, it was hard around the holidays, but we managed. And it’s rare that I actually feel sick for “home”… it’s usually just family that I miss.

In the years that I lived in Milwaukee for college and then life after, it was a big comfort to know that I could pretty much go home whenever I wanted. It was roughly a 90 minute drive to my parents’ house, so I really never missed holidays or birthdays.

December 24, 2005 — Eating breakfast – Christmas 2005

My second sister stayed in the area after high school, so I always got to see her when I was home too. But then in 2009ish, my dad took a new job in Tennessee. I was not happy! My mom stayed in Wisconsin for my youngest sister to finish her last year of high school, but then she moved down to Tennessee to join my dad. Sister #3 went to Tennessee as well, and my youngest sister went to school in the Chicago area. And then Andrew joined the Air Force, we got married, and plans to move to another country started coming together. Basically, in about 2 years, my whole family got torn apart geographically. How sad!

As it turns out, I will be going “home” (somewhere in the States!) at least once a year while we’re living in England. The sole reason is weddings, haha. But that’s a lot less face time than I’m used to… and I don’t like it! Thank goodness for Facebook and phone calls, but once in awhile I get really sad about being away from family. Like this weekend. My sister, Amanda, and my mom met halfway (somewhere in Indiana) for a girls weekend of shopping. I was so excited for them, but I was so jealous for me! And when my mom posted something about when we all lived under the same roof, I just got sad. Sometimes I just REALLY miss my sisters and my parents. I think we are just an awesome family!

I know I did a whole post about Kelsi on her birthday (I had a lot more time on my hands then, haha!), and I’ve been feeling bad that I never wrote anything for Manda & Becki. So, since I’m missing my family a lot right now, I’m posting some sister (and family) love. 🙂

Best friend since as long as I can remember? My Manda Panda. 🙂 She was born just after my 2nd birthday, so I really don’t remember life before that. She’s always been my playmate and best buddy.

Oh, we fought like cats and dogs once in awhile, but I think we got along pretty well for the most part. We were pretty much opposites growing up, and our grandma always said Manda wasn’t naughty, she was “spirited.” 🙂 And a story I heard a lot growing up was how I was a very particular kid. I liked things just so, and I would spend a lot of time organizing the play kitchen I had. And then Amanda would crawl over to it, pull herself up, and shake that little kitchen! All my little teacups I had lined up just right… ahh, it was awful, haha.
I can honestly say that, despite how close we were in age, Manda and I never went through that phase of hating each other as teenagers. I mean, like I said, we were pretty much opposites in terms of what we liked, the activities we got involved in, and hobbies, but she was always my closest confidante.

scan00205 — Summer 2001 at my grandparents’ house — I would have been 16, Manda: 14, Kelsi: 10; Becki: 9

It was probably more fun to hang out once I was in college (woohoo, no parental supervision!), but we were pretty well-behaved. 🙂 And we’ve stayed close ever since! She was even my maid-of-honor at our recent wedding blessing:

Kelsi is my next sister, and I wrote about her right here. 🙂 Since there’s nearly a four year gap between Manda & Kelsi, and then only 18 months between Kelsi & Becki, my youngest two sisters were really close growing up too. Becki was my parents’ last shot at having a boy… but they got stuck with us four crazy girls!

I kind of remember Becki being born… I remember waking up one summer morning to find the neighbor lady instead of my parents! I don’t remember going to see her in the hospital or anything though. She was kind of a naughty kid, haha! Letting her watch “Dennis the Menace” was probably a bad idea…

I remember it driving me nuts that Becki would put together the strangest combinations of clothes. Remember up there when I talked about being a nut about organizing my play kitchen? Well, I really liked clothes to match too! Here’s Becki being Becki:

Spring97 — Becki (4) & Kelsi (6) with two girls my mom baby-sat for

Really? Polka dots and floral? Like I said… drove me nuts, haha. She definitely keeps you on your toes. From a young age she was really independent and a leader… never one to follow the crowd. I went to college when she was 11, so I had a few weekends when I would have one of my sisters visit. One-on-one time is pretty awesome when you have three sisters!

April 30 00028 — Spring 2005… Becki was 12 and I was 20

Once Becki turned 18, I think it finally sunk in that she was not a kid anymore. She was already off to art school and exploring Chicago by then! I love seeing the photographs she takes as well as the ones she models for (many talents, this one!).

557427_350280581715905_852950651_n — How many cameras do you think she owns? 🙂

I’m sure you can see why I miss my family… they are amazing people! We’ve been through a lot, and we’re adding every year (babies, marriages), and I could not ever ask for a better family. We are silly, sarcastic, supportive, and honest. I know Andrew has always thought I was a little quirky, but he had no idea how goofy I can be until he met my family! As he said, “Wow, I thought you could be ridiculous… but your family really brings it out in you!” Yes, I take that as a compliment. 🙂

Daily living

Baby Bucket List

July 19, 2012 nk3306 Comments

Wow, my poor neglected blog… I’ve seriously been slacking! Part of the reason is because I’m too lazy to deal with the hundreds of photos on my camera. And I really like to include photos in my blog posts. The other reason is because I want to post something about Kiel Wedding Part 2, but I haven’t gotten the CD of the files yet. So stay tuned for that! 🙂

So what have I been up to lately? Mostly the same ol’, same ol’, although I have decided to once again try to get into working out/running. This time, instead of just getting out there and running, I’m trying out Couch to 5K. I think I was only 1-2 weeks into running when I started having a lot of knee pain the last time I decided to start running again. Andrew told me I was pushing too hard too fast. Yeah, I have a tendency to go by the “no pain no gain” philosophy, even though joint pain is generally a bad thing. So after finding a link to Couch to 5K on Pinterest, I read through the whole program and thought it seemed more gradual and do-able. Shockingly, Andrew agreed (yes, he’s my go-to guy when it comes to fitness). Having set time/distance increments really has helped me stay motivated and (so far) pain-free. I’m not quite done with Week 2 yet, but so far so good!

One of my favorite parts about running/walking/jogging is that it’s a good time to just ponder. I always seem to be pondering something, but being out in the woods really seems to be a good place to just think without distractions. Anyway, I came up with a brilliant plan! A Baby Bucket List! Okay, not that I’m equating getting pregnant with kicking the bucket, but it was the first things that popped into my head when I compiled a list of things I would like to do before we start a family. Here it is:

1. Get Healthy

This is a two-part thing. First I would like to finish up Couch to 5K and run a 5K somewhere in East Anglia (our neck of England). The plan after that is to continue to run regularly. I hate the gym. I hate sports (part of that is because I have absolutely no skill with any sport). So running it shall be! The other part of this is losing weight. Along with regularly working out, I am trying to be more aware of my portions at mealtime. It’s important to me to be physically healthy before we even talk about having kids.

2. Go to Italy

Okay, more specifically, drink wine in Italy! I would be really sad if we went to Italy and I couldn’t sample as much wine as I wanted. Our future trip to Italy is going to be a belated honeymoon, and I’m guessing pregnancy would kind of kill the whole “honeymoon vibe.”

3. Go to Belgium

Um, yeah, this one has to do with alcohol consumption as well. Don’t judge me for appreciating good booze. 🙂 There are six breweries in Belgium still run by Trappist monks, and apparently, they’re amazing. I don’t love beer nearly as much as Andrew does, but I know I would love to go to a monastery to drink some beer!

So, yeah, short bucket list. But they are things I want to accomplish/experience yet, and that’s important to me. And maybe I’m a little nutty for giving myself a to-do list before starting a family. I’m sure I’ll come up with other crazy things to ponder out in the woods… 🙂

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage…

May 7, 2012 nk3305 Comments

I’m NOT pregnant. I’m NOT trying to get pregnant. There. Got that out of the way first!

Never before have I thought about having children as much as I do now. There are some obvious reasons for this: I’m closer to 30 than I am to 20, I’m married, and, well, I happen to like kids. Usually. But I never really felt terribly pressured to have kids. I would have to say that the majority of my close friends are either married, engaged to be married, or in committed relationships. But the majority of my close friends do not have children. Do we talk about having kids? Yeah. But I don’t think any of us are mapping out our ovulation cycles yet.

And then I moved to England. More specifically, RAF Lakenheath. At first, I generally just felt old. Nearly all of Andrew’s new friends were under the age of 20. But a lot of them were also newlyweds, so there was still common ground. Now that we’ve been here for nearly 9 months, I’d say our friends now cover a variety of ages, but I’m often still surprised when I hear how young some people are. And they’re usually surprised to hear how old I am, haha!

Once I got a little more settled here and started just living (versus unpacking, freaking out about driving on the other side of the road, and trying to figure out what the heck rocket was), I started noticing something new. Not only are there a lot of young people and young couples here, there are also a lot of pregnant women and kids here! Sometimes I feel like this is what I see all the time:

If it’s not very pregnant women I’m seeing, it’s a young mom trying to wrangle 2-3 kids while having lunch or coffee with her girlfriend who is also trying to tame her little ones. Sometimes I smile and think, Oh, those kids are so cute! I can’t wait to be a mom. And then there are times when I give The Death Stare and think, If you can’t keep your kid from shrieking every ten seconds, perhaps you’re not supposed to have him in public! And please do something about your other kid eating fries off the floor!

Don’t worry, it’s not just me. When I bring it up, everyone agrees that if you’re not wondering when a woman is going to go into labor, you’re trying to maneuver around a herd of strollers. I’ve been told that we are at a “young” base, so I have no idea if it’s like this at bases back in the States.

Clearly, I am torn between wanting to start a family and relishing our just-the-two-of-us lifestyle. And I end up thinking about it more than I would like to, since I’m visually reminded about it every time I’m on base. So I really didn’t think twice about ordering a book that I came across on Amazon regarding parenting. More specifically, a book about an American trying to parent in a European country:

I mean, with all the oops-I’m-pregnant situations I hear about, why wouldn’t I want to get a head start on learning some parenting tips? And with the military dictating where we live for the next 20-ish years, why wouldn’t I want to learn how other cultures approach child-rearing?

“Bringing Up Bebe” was not only interesting to read, it also was pretty funny! When I wasn’t laughing out loud (usually in public…I’m sure they all think I’m nuts), I was reading whole paragraphs to Andrew and musing about how we will raise our future little ones. In a nutshell, American parents tend to be a little over zealous in their approach to parenting. According to the author, French parents just don’t understand why American parents drive themselves to exhaustion and completely give up their adult needs to being parents. When I read excerpts to Andrew, his usual response was, “Well, yeah, why wouldn’t you do it that way?”

A lot of things that French parents do are just common sense. They don’t read parenting books like they’re preparing for the GRE. They trust themselves a lot more than American parents seem to. And they don’t freak out if little Billy isn’t walking at 12 months, reading before kindergarten, and involved in extracurricular activities every afternoon. They let their kids be kids more than they try to push them to be one step ahead of their peers.

So am I ready to fully embrace French parenting? Nope. While I agreed with a lot of things I read in Druckerman’s book, there were certain things that I knew I just wouldn’t be able to do. I still plan to breastfeed my infant until at least 6 months of age. I won’t let my child have a pacifier in her mouth until she’s 4 years old. I won’t starve myself to fit into my “skinny jeans” just 3 months after Junior is born. But I hope to be diligent in enforcing a sleep schedule early on. And I hope we can be patient but persistent when it comes to introducing new foods and not letting our kids be picky eaters.

One thing that seems very important to French parents is remaining people first and parents second. And while I do agree with that, I know it will be easier said than done. At this point in my life, I’m excited to just be a couple with Andrew and go explore England and Europe (eventually) sans children. I still think about having kids pretty often, but for us, the “then comes the baby in the baby carriage” part of our life is still a ways off. For now anyway. 🙂