Hannah. 15 months.

Hannah:
- wears size 4 diapers
- wears size 5 shoes
- wears size 18 month clothes
- can have pigtails
- loves to be outside
- sleeps from about 7:30pm-6:30am (sometimes still wakes up once)
- loves to "go upstairs"
- can go up and down stairs without causing me too much of a heart attack
- can say: uh oh, Addi, mama, tada, dog, ball, and thank you
- shakes her head for yes and no
- can sign: more, milk, eat, and please
- likes to push Addi's buttons
- at the playground can go up the stairs and down the slide by herself
- thinks going down the slide is the greatest
- loves swinging
- sleeps with a stuffed puppy, a pink bunny (that plays a song) and a cup of water
- still uses the carseat she used when she was born
- likes to "help" with laundry, dishwasher, picking up toys
- likes to eat chapstick
- loves to take baths
- giggles when she gets wet from the squirtbottle when I'm doing her hair
- loves blueberries, raisins, blackberries, raspberries (Addi never liked any of those)
- wants to eat whatever you're eating... until she tries it and spits it back out
- loves to play "tea party" with her sister
- can climb up on the kitchen chairs
- is not interested in TV
- is not super interested in books
- rather role-play then do anything else
- has spent one day in nursery all by herself... and was... sad-faced
- loves singing/dancing/playing my guitar
- wants to do/play with whatever Addi's doing/playing with

I remember what it was like

I was going back through old blog posts, that I never shared... I thought I'd share this one that I wrote January 23, 2012. It's a little more down-in-the-dumps than I currently feel, but I do remember feeling this way, and I'm sure there will days where I these feelings will come back up:

I remember what it was like looking at those young children, sitting with their mom, knowing that those children didn't have a clue that their lives were not "normal".

I remember pitying those poor children who were innocent in the entire thing, yet their entire futures were turned upside down by selfish adults.

I remember thinking, "this will affect those children forever, and they will never be who they could've been."

I remember thinking that those adults should have tried harder, they should have prayed more, read scripture more, spoke more kindly, yelled less.

I remember looking at those poor children and feeling SO incredibly sad on their behalf.

But now I am that mom, alone with my children, and I don't feel that way at all about myself, or about my own kids....

But it's very likely, that the isolation and loneliness that I sometimes feel (usually when I'm PMSing) is due to others thinking those exact same things about myself and my children.

Being judged is the worst.

Being judge and pitied is beyond the worst.

I mostly just zone it out. Because I don't feel that way about myself or my girls.

But sometimes, I let myself process the external, and it makes me realize WHY. Why I am sometimes so alone, and feel so isolated. And I'm not even angry at the people who do it. Because I used to do it.

I understand. It's just the way it is.

I'm not depressed or sad about this. But I just have to remember what I would've thought of the divorced 20-something-year-old with 2 kids. But since I'm her now, I get it. And I totally understand if others don't.