Mi Familia

Each month a family is featured in Ree's preschool newsletter. I was asked to write something about our clan for the October edition. This is what I came up with.  Oh, and PCP is the name of the preschool, not some illicit drug reference. :)

 

Back in the summer of 1999, a friend from college asked me to go to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game with him and some of his friends from high school while we were all home for the summer.  I tried to get out of going since I had work to be at work early the next morning, but he insisted.  Little did I know, I would meet Jeff that night and some day we would find ourselves living in North Carolina, twelve years, four kids, and two dogs later.

The beginning of our relationship was a little crazy since, among other things, I lived in Ohio and Jeff lived in Montana.  But by 2002 we were together and living in the small college town of Athens, Ohio.  We ended up staying in Athens for over five years and while there we managed to get married and acquire Prudence and Maxwell, our two rescue dogs named after Beatles’ songs and better known as Pru and Max.  We also got the silly idea to start having children.

Ree was born in Athens, and is the oldest of our crazy clan.  She likes princesses and, as she describes it, all things girlie.  Ree is very inquisitive and absorbs everything she sees and hears (occasionally to our dismay!).  She loves creating incredibly complicated pretend worlds that seem to involve placing every toy she owns on her bedroom floor at once.  She also loves art projects and often has a marker or a pair of scissors in hand.  Despite my best efforts, she has my sweet tooth, and most weekends include a “baking project” where we concoct some sort of treat in the kitchen.  

We moved to Wilmington in late November 2007, and by the following Thanksgiving we had managed to add two more children to the family.  Leon is the oldest of our twin boys by five hours, and he loves cooking.  He is nearly always stirring things together whether he is playing at home, outside, in the bathtub, or at the beach.  He also loves cleaning and fixing things and is always puttering around the house.  Here’s hoping he loves the same things in ten years!

Michael has the personality of a teenage boy trapped in a toddler’s body.  Michael likes laying on the couch, eating junk food, and watching sports on TV.  Michael also likes flirting with girls, and you can often find him sitting in a wagon on the PCP playground, waiting for some older girls to pull him around.  Amazingly, they often do, and it helps that Michael is also very funny, sweet, and loveable.

Natalia is our newest addition.  The girl has been short and wide since the day she was born, and she loves eating, which keeps her cheeks delightfully chubby.  She has also recently learned to crawl, and now that she is mobile, she is trying to take on the world, or at least keep up with her siblings.  Natalia has been hanging out at PCP since she was four days old, and I’m sure she thinks she can run the school from inside the baby sling.

Jeff and I often joke about what people without children do since we are hard-pressed to remember a time when we did things other than wash dishes, fold laundry, and watch episodes of old TV shows in 10-minute increments in our “free” time.  We love the beach, and our family spends tons of time there when we can.  We also both enjoy reading, and we are happy to have passed this love on to our children.  I like writing, and I blog about my family and for Where’s MyMidwife?.  I also enjoy cooking and baking and thankfully also love working out.  Jeff loves music and is a huge sports fan devoted to the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals and Liverpool FC.  And when we can, Jeff and I still like to watch Reds games together, you know, for old times’ sake.