Still here! I’m still here. I came back.

July 27, 2014/Karissa

Have you seen this video? Hilarious. I stole the title of this blog from these children.

Um, right. Blogging. Yes. Got it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve entered some kind of baby time warp. What has happened is that it appears as though 3 months have gone by since the last time I blogged, but what has actually happened is that it’s been about 5 minutes, and we’ve simply been catapulted into the future via babydom.

Yes. That’s exactly what happened. Because it feels like there is no way this much time can have gone by! Is this what having kids does to you? It makes the earth spin faster? These little ones have a lot of influence.

Anyway. In addition to wondering how in the world entire months have flown by without me noticing, another phenomenon is occurring. It’s called, “What did I used to do ALL DAY?” Because I’m pretty sure I used to fill up my days doing stuff before this tiny one came along, and yet I simply can’t imagine what my free time used to consist of. Mostly because free time at this point is simply ‘time to clean the house’, or ‘time to take that nap I desperately need’, or, more likely, free time is actually just keeping Evelyn from hurting herself.

She’s crawling, guys. Crawling, and pulling herself up to standing on virtually anything around her. We’re pretty much screwed. 🙂 But she is so proud of herself! And is ridiculously cute, obviously. She desperately wants to walk, but when you hold her hands to help her, it’s the most hilarious thing… she leads with her adorable baby belly. She sticks it out and lets its weight pull her forward… which is the most hilarious thing to watch. Anyway. Baby stories, friends! It’s my life.

But, lest you think that my life has utterly changed, at the moment I am drinking white wine and playing Cities and Knights of Catan. Whilst simultaneously blogging. Because that is, in fact, how I roll. Babies and all.

Um, what else? I recently read the latest novel by the author of Bridget Jones, which is about Bridget Jones in her fifties, and it makes me want to write all my blog posts in her tone of voice. Which means removing all pronouns, and referring to Jason as a toy boy. Seriously, this may be cliche to admit, but those books are freaking hilarious. If you’ve watched the movies, read the books. They’re WAY better.

Work is going really well– I recently taught a workshop to 15 coaches from Colombia in Spanish, which was both terrifying and totally awesome. I’m pretty sure I sounded like a middle schooler trying to guide their thinking, but when they spoke to me, they talked at a regular pace, so that’s a good vote of confidence. I hope that I can continue to teach workshops in Spanish, but we’ll see.

We just finished our summer camps in the Action Center Friday. They were fun and exhausting. Three weeks ago we had 28 middle schoolers for an entire week. I love teaching them, but I think it must be part of the teacher psyche to go home and make fun of them. Sometimes it was just impossible not to. This last week, it was high schoolers. Highlights: one student asking about giving cash after natural disasters. Her question was, “Doesn’t that cause inflammation?” HA. Also, we play a game called Pterodactyl. Basically, the idea is that you wrap your lips around your teeth, and have to say the word Pterodactyl a lot. If you show your teeth at all, while laughing or whatever, you’re out. Now, this will only be funny if you actually try it. Do it. Say Pterodactyl with you lips wrapped over your teeth. It doesn’t sound like Pterodactyl. In fact, it sounds like something very different, which would be completely inappropriate to say to high schoolers. But that’s what makes this game so amazing for facilitators– to me, it was basically just a bunch of students turning to one another and saying, “You’re an a*******.” HA! Hilarious.

I know you did in fact just try that. Don’t try to pretend you didn’t.

Sorry guys, that was teacher humor. Anyway, what else? Things! They happen! Cooking, cleaning, bike riding, barbeques… we’ve been camping a couple times. We’ve visited my Grandma, Evelyn’s great-grandma and namesake. She actually came down to Portland for my birthday, which was really awesome. Our friends Bentley and Jessica from Tennessee came to visit, and I didn’t take a single picture, because apparently I am a total slacker. Bentley and Jess, got any photos you can send over?

We visited Jason’s family in Kansas for his dad’s 60th birthday, which was awesome. All the grandkids got together for his birthday. It was a blast. Friends are having babies, I’ve thrown a baby shower, we’re still rock climbing (kind of), and Evelyn still isn’t sleeping all night. Nope. Not yet. At this point I’ve forgotten what it feels like to sleep more than 4 hours at a time (and that’s being generous, because it’s usually a lot more like 3 hour stretches). But, I’ll get there. Evelyn will get there. It’s hard to be frustrated when she’s so cute. Which is not to say that I don’t get frustrated, because that would be a total lie. It’s just that about 5 minutes later, when she’s back asleep, I think, “Maybe I could just wake her back up to play with her a little? She’s just so cute!” It’s like baby-induced personality disorder or something.

Speaking of personalities, Evelyn’s personality is shining through basically everything she does these days. She’s getting to be more and more fun! I’m going to put some videos up so you can see what I mean.

Anyway, enough talking. Here are a ton of baby photos! So they loaded in reverse order– they loaded from most recent to oldest, so as you scroll down it’ll be like going back in time! So exciting.