It's Been Great!

I have to admit....I've have had the best time visiting with my sister, Andrew and the babies. It has been especially nice this time because this was where I wanted to be and with the people I wanted to be with.

Now that I'm unemployed AGAIN...this time, by MY choice...I have a bit of time on my hands so, here I am. Being able to come here to visit with them has been good. I have been a bad aunt! I have spent the majority of the time playing with the babies and teaching them things that their mom and dad will curse me for in the future! I have taught Sean to growl! You know how you like to nuzzle the babies and pretend that you are chewing on their sweet little necks and giving them kisses and all? Well, now Sean does that but when he "Nuzzles" he growls and acts like he is going to just eat you up! He is so cute! Maia does the same, although not quite as forcefully as Sean does!

As of this date, I am still living in Baton Rouge but....we will see. It would be good for Kim if I were to move here. It would be good for the babies to have the Aunt that will spoil them in a good way....it would be good for me, in the long run, if I were here....but...I guess time will be the teller. I do eventually want to move back to New Orleans. It is the place I chose as my "Home" when I left Pensacola but.....

Anyway, Happy Holidays to everyone out there!

What I've Been Doing

My sister has been in town since the day before Thanksgiving. It's a treat, in so many ways.

She is the middle kid, to my youngest, and when we were growing up, we were closer than I am to my older sister. Partly this is because when the oldest sister got married, she lived in another state while J (middle sis) and I lived together for many years. I helped her raise her two kids... in a big way, I was their "second mom."

We certainly had our differences. There were times when I would write in my little notebooks how much I hated her and we got into huge fights about it*-- but this was just a factor of living in too close of quarters in tight situations. And being sisters. I'm sure there are very few sisters out there who have not gone through that at one time.

So she's here, and I have help with my babies, one of the people on my rankings list who I trust almost as much as I do myself or Andrew. In the morning, when Andrew is off to work, I can pass one baby to her for that extra hour of sleep we can squeeze out of them (most of the time) if they are cuddled instead of lying in their cribs.

We went to see Santa Claus today, to take pix with him. If you have kids and haven't done this yet, I highly recommend NOW. We didn't wait in line at ALL, at the most popular of malls in town. These babies totally LIT UP as soon as they got on Santa's lap. Maia twined her fingers through his beard-- not pulling, just exploring its cottony texture. Sean's eyes could have powered New York on energy and light. This was a great Santa, too--no fake beard here. (Where do these fellows hang out the rest of the year, anyway? I once had a math teacher who coulda been a Santa-- when I told him that, he smiled mischievously and said "who says I'm not?"). If you want more pictures of the Wells clan, by the way, let me know and I'll send you an invite to the Kodak albums.

We also shopped a bit. I spent entirely too much money in the "DEVIL STORE" (AKA Gymboree. I have a serious addiction to that place's baby hats. I seriously bought like four hats today for them). We did some practical shopping too. But man, it was a lonnng day. And fun. The babies are worn out, lying on the floor with daddy while he watches the Spurs game.

I can take twenty minutes to browse the internet for a baby book (I've decided the one I have is inferior). Or a lonnnnnng shower. And not have to worry about how Andrew will do after having worked a 10 hour day and then having to help with the babies. It's very nice.

This is the sister who lost her home in Katrina, and who is considering moving here to San Antonio to help me out so I can write and finish my dissertation come January. If she comes, my plan is to try to get her to come in a few hours in the morning every weekday. It would be so great, especially considering my much quicker than I thought deadline. But aside from the help with this pressing deadline, it'll just be nice to have a family member of my own in town. Andrew's family is great, but I have no history with them beyond the almost 13 years we've been together. It's good to have her around.

Besides, she owes me one (two.)

So if you pop in and feel you have any influence with the deities of the universe, drop me a wish/prayer/thought to convince her that San Antonio is the place to be....


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*To be fair, my notebook (functioning as a journal/diary) did warn her on the cover not to read it. So there.

Halloween Treats

I know it's way past Halloween. But I've been busy. :) These are the twins' Halloween costumes. They were Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat. My good friend Patti knitted the hats for their hair which made the costumes PERFECT. Once I found the red onesies it was pretty easy to put together the costume, and I was so excited to be making costumes again. Back a long time ago, I used to make my neice & nephew's Halloween costumes for them every year. Back then, with our limited resources, it was a challenge, I'll tell you! But fun. Reason #1 for me to get better at sewing.

They were soooo cute. In the final version of this costume, the "Thing" labels were sewn on... this was a test photo with the labels I made just pinned on. I have a version of the photo that I took out the pins with some careful photoshop editing; apparently I forgot to upload that corrected version. Silly of me to do all the work and then not use it but oh well. That's the way it rolls around here nowadays. Their eyes also look very dark in this photo. In reality, Sean's eyes are still very blue and Maia's are hazel. I think they are dark because of the anti red-eye stuff on the camera. Or maybe I edited them with one of those red eye things... can't remember.

We had a small dinner party; nothing like our last few years' huge events. But it was very nice, and in some ways more fun than the big parties. At least at this one I was able to hang out with everyone who was there-- not the case with the big parties.

This last weekend we went to Shreveport and we got stuck in an "off base" hotel. It was literally the worst hotel I can remember staying at in forever. There were literally several pubic hairs in the bottom of the tub when we got there. I couldn't stop thinking of those stories about hotel rooms seen under that light that shows all the body fluids that are left in them... this one, I'm fairly sure you could see some of them without the special light. Ugh! Luckily for my sanity, I had a can of Lysol which I sprayed on everything. We don't have a choice with where we stay, and for some reason (perhaps leftovers from Katrina?) we have been getting crappy room assignments the last few times we've gone up there. It was pretty awful & I was sooooo glad to get home last night. But the plus is that Andrew drove the majority of the trip, and the babies slept, and I snuggled down in the last row of the minivan and had the longest naps I have had since the babies were born. Very nice. It was like being a kid again, myself. I haven't gotten to sleep in the backseat of a car in a long time.

Is it REALLY almost Thanksgiving? Sheesh. What a year! I hope all of you who pop in have a great one.

p.s. and of course you know which one is which, right? Who is Thing 1 and who is Thing 2? Guesses? And why did I pick that order? No one who was there that night can give it away. :)

Everything Going Wells

Hah! I meant to post "well" but then the s was added and it's sort of funny (that's my last name, if you didn't know). So we are doing "Wells."

I can't believe Thanksgiving is coming up. I can't believe the end of the year, when I had hoped to be back working on my dissertation, is almost here. And the trip to Florida to see family, and etc. This year has really flown by.

I have to say that even though I haven't been blogging, and I'm quite certain that all but the most avid of my readers are probably no longer checking in with me, I am not really feeling so guilty about it anymore. I miss the community of bloggers & commenters the most, but I do feel good about not having the feeling of needing to post every day no matter what. Posting things just for the sake of posting. It's great to know that I don't "HAVE" to post. I don't really have very many interesting to others things to post right now anyway. It's still all "are the babies sleeping through the night" (sometimes) and "how am I doing as a stay at home mom" (pretty well) and "how's the minivan" (great.) Mostly mommy things. And I know that there are billions of mommy blogs out there that do it much better than I do. When I start doing things other than mommying, and have some time during the day, I will blog more. Maybe. It could be that two years was my limit, though.

If you are jonesing for info about me & mine, you can always drop me an email if I haven't posted in very long. I'm willing to chat a bit now and then, but mostly I hate to feel the blog as an obligation. It's here, it's not going anywhere, but for now, don't count on a post from me very often.

Inappropriate Much?

Yesterday, a friend's friend asked me if I would "ghost write" an essay for her, for a class in her community college English course. What she meant is for me to cheat-- to do her research paper for her.

I'm going to have a little talk with the friend who referred this "friend" to me as someone who might help her with her little task. I was really really nice. I actually know the person who runs the English department at the school this girl goes to; I went to grad school with him. It's entirely possible I even know this girl's teacher.

My English teaching, while I may not be doing it right now, is not just a job for me; it's a calling. I believe wholeheartedly in the process of college. I don't think it's just a piece of paper; it's a really important thing to get a real education.

I warned this girl that she could get into real trouble with something like this. I told her to try to write the paper herself, gave her some advice on how to get some help that is legal. But now it'll be incredibly awkward to see her.

I'm a wee bit annoyed. It's sort of like asking a cop to buy you a dime bag of pot. Are you really serious? You really and truly want me to literally write your paper for you? It doesn't matter that I probably could write it in about an hour. (This paper is for a community college freshman comp class. I could probably do it in thirty minutes.) :) It's RIDICULOUS!!! I'm insulted, and she's lucky I don't contact the folks I went to school with and warn them they have a paper shopper out there.

Anyway. Sorry for the lack of posts. I have had a little bit of free time lately but also important obligations in addition to the babies. We were even in Shreveport this weekend when the escaped con got busted there. Funny! Now to get work done.