Good McLean Fun

I am feeling much more composed and in charge of my emotions than I was a few hours ago, so I'll share with you today's trivial tribulation, expressed in an email written to a friend this morning. It sounds trivial, I know. But it felt monumentally devastating at the time. "I have to vent for a second, I'm glad you wrote. In a nutshell I had an emotional breakdown this morning, tears streaming and everything. I am so hesitant to do stuff with the twins because there are 2 of them, I can't control as much if it were just one 2 year old, so I never take them places alone without another adult who has free hands. This morning I decided to just suck it up, stop sheltering them, be brave, let them experience something new, and with my other two I always brought them to a local library preschool story hour, I figure just clapping, dancing, read a book or two, maybe some coloring.. I thought we could do it. I packed them up and we drove to the library. I got there and...

Behind the scenes in the McLean house, January 2014: Jackson/Lincoln have been saying "help" and "ducks", respectively. Jackson still loves to color and will say "more" in sign language, Lincoln still loves to build and play with dirt, and gets mad at me when I ask him to sign "more".  We've attended 3 short speech therapy sessions thus far. They are not fans, and I'm not sold it's making much of any difference right now. If any extra money presents itself we would consider putting them in a 2 year old class twice a week, just to see if a new environment would get them talking more. Facebook allows me a glimpse into other two year old development, as friends post videos of their 2 year olds and even one year olds speaking and communicating more than my boys do. Facebook also shows me pics of beautiful homes being purchased and built, splendid vacations and cocktails, updates on everyone's exercise successes, and lots of puppies ...

I must apologize to my faithful two followers of this blog, I haven't kept up with my monthly posts, and I am sorry. But lucky for the masses that are just dying to hear from me, I had it on my mind to ignore the laundry and dishes tonight (not so different from every other night) and instead light some Marshmallow Fireside candles from Bath & Body, hit up Michael Buble's Holiday station on Pandora, and post. Rolling into the fall has been lovely. I have already experienced some beautiful weather here in Vero, been able to cut the ac off and let the breezes blow through the house, simply dreamy. We are in a good routine now, Luke and Juliette just finished up their soccer season, Juliette takes a dance class once a week around the corner, and Luke is ready to plug into a scouting group now that soccer is done. They also get to go to a cool church class on Wednesday nights which they seem to really look forward to, and I have started going to chur...

It comes to my attention that I don't really have the drive to write on the blog as much these days. It may be a seasonal slump, or perhaps I was using the blog as a sort of hobby for myself--journaling my emotions and thoughts as they came, writing when bored. But I'm so distracted with establishing our new lives here in Vero that I have forgotten to document some of those very exciting and conflicting emotions. I am, of course, missing the familiarity of things in Key West. Building new relationships takes time and effort, and it was just an easy part of our lives before... But overall, it's just peace, excitement, even unbelief that we're actually on our own, in our own space. I am so blessed, I am careful to give God credit for His blessings, and yet, like most humans, I can find myself feeling insecure about who I am, and exactly what I'm giving back. The following post is a little glimpse into my mind and heart concerning my role and my "career", ...

It's happening. After five years of living in Abuela's house, up to 10 people, after adding three children to our family, God's giving us our next adventure. I am moved to tears as I retell how it came to be. We've been on and off again looking for a new job opportunity for Ryan all these five years. There were more than a few times when we found a job opening that I thought, "This is it, the timing is right, this is where God wants us."-- but it never worked, and quickly we'd get distracted by our everyday lives to keep the search going. As the tension of so many adults and children under one roof mounted this past year, we knew we needed to be aggressive about the job hunt this summer, and we were more desperate than ever to have our own space.  Ryan applied to about 7 engineering firms, and we were thrilled to hear back from two of them within a week. Interviews were set up. In one day he interviewed in Orlando and West Palm Beach, and both intervi...

My heart yearns for a place of our own. I see homeowner announcements and get so excited with the idea, that could be us someday! But for now, I live with my 4 children, husband, mother, father, sister, abuela, a cat, and a dog. I have my BS in Shared Space, with a masters in Lost Privacy and Sanity.  I find peace in the car though. I am also not bombarded with everyone else's success in the car. But yesterday I found it quite funny on God's part that He would have me arrive late to drop off Juliette at school, to find her teacher wandering the hall looking for an adult to witness her purchase of a new house--across the country. Her and her husband. Just the two of them. She was so happy I walked in right then, to come in and witness for her.  I was in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, I signed my name, smiled sweetly and said congratulations! The irony was wonderful. I had to lol and then sniffle back a tear as ...

Lincoln and Jackson are sleeping through the night, for the most part.  They are 19 months and in a size 4 diaper, weighing in at 28lbs. They were at one point recently waking up because they'd pee through their diaper, and that was no fun, changing clothes in the dark trying not to wake up the other guy. Lately we've been doing double diapers, which works like a charm. Also bonus in the morning, I just have to slip the wet one off and the other is already in place. So they wake up at 6:30ish, usually happy, but thirsty. I change diapers, get them some milk, put them on the carpet, push play on a baby Einstein dvd, and crawl back into bed with the hopes that the world will dissolve and I can go back to sleep for 2 more hours. This usually works for about 15 minutes. Ryan is usually gone by 5:30am four days a week, delivering newspapers to local hotels for an extra $50 a day.  In our minds that is our way of demonstrating gazelle intensity, a phrase...