Grass, why must you be so difficult to grow?

My husband & I built our forever home back in May of 2012. Six very short months later, we moved in and were accompanied by all the feels being a first-time homeowner elicits. Everything was so fresh & exciting. I remember that I kept the rooms spotless. I swept the floors every day & cleaned the toilets every week. (I feel it’s important to note that we moved in while I was entering the “nesting” stage of pregnancy number two.) (Also to note, the “keeping things super clean” bit didn’t even last through the month.) 

Among the things that were fresh & beautiful was our lawn. However, it took zero amount of time for this lawn to die. Now, I need you to understand that we live in the middle of a pasture. It’s beautiful but it’s a pasture with red dirt as its base. Plus, neither Gavin nor myself have green thumbs. I have very interestingly weird thumbs, but green they are not. (I’m serious, they’re weird. I Googled them once and apparently they’re referred to as “hammer thumbs” or ” toe thumbs”. Fabulous.) 

I was quite impressed with how quickly our massive backyard was overturned by stickers; annoying, make you curse stickers, and weeds. So. Many. Weeds. It’s all super overwhelming to take care of & maintain. I’m trying to keep three very young children alive & well, how in the world am I supposed to keep grass alive & well?? Our yard looks green because the weeds we have are green. If you’re flying overhead in an airplane our yard looks nicely maintained; but, if you get any closer you’ll see otherwise. 

Every time spring rolls around (twice) I always say, “This is it! This is the year we spend our monies & invest in our lawn! Our kids deserve to be able to frolick barefoot through plush, green grass without being scared of getting their feet attacked by stickers!” And then, every year I simply cannot justify spending the money. I think things like food & electricity are more important. 

I’m stuck in this perpetual cycle of to spend, or not to spend? 

That’s my question. 

Darius was on to something…

When I was in Jr. High, under the influence of my father, I was a fan of the band Hootie and the Blowfish. Some of you out there may be judging me at the moment and I must beg you not to turn away from my blog due to my taste in music, just hang on. The others of you are saying, “Right on! We love Hootie!” and now have the song “Only Wanna Be With You” stuck in your head. You’re welcome.

Fast forward many years and my bff Hootie, aka Darius Rucker, releases an album all on his own. On this album is a beautifully written song entitled “It Won’t be Like This for Long”. This song solidifies the reasons why I’m such a fan of Hootie.

If you’ve not heard this song, stop reading and look it up on YouTube. No wait, finish reading this and then go back. I know how easy it is to get sucked into the continual video watching magic of YouTube. Sure, your intentions are to watch one video and get out but before you know it, you’ve watched the original plus seven covers of the song and now, somehow, against your better judgment you find you’re watching a cat video. For the thirteenth time.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, “It Won’t be Like This for Long”. It wasn’t long after the birth of my first child, O, that I had a meltdown because I hadn’t slept a full night through in what felt like an eternity. I was looking back at little girl Kenda and scorning her for not napping and sleeping at night like she should have, when my brave, humble husband quoted this song to me.

I had heard this song before but it never registered to my heart until that night. I cried, okay fine, I bawled my eyes out. I vowed right then to cherish every stage of my baby’s life and to not complain when being his mom got tough. Yea, part of that vow only lasted approximately 47 seconds. The part that did last was the cherishing. Add two more kids into the mix and that’s a lot to take in.

It’s one of my favorite things to do; to watch and study my kids. The size of their hands, the way their eyes squint when they grin really huge, their mannerisms, the way their eyebrows look when they’re processing something, and so on. I don’t want to forget any of it or rush any of it to change, but it’s about to.

O starts Pre-K in August. August, y’all. I am not ready. For the last four years he has been with me every day. What am I going to do? I can’t think about that now. But what I can think about is just how right Darius was.

traveling is not for the faint

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to travel. When I was a little girl it was soccer games, tournaments & vacations. When I was in college, road trips with my besties were the best! I loved packing, getting in the car with snacks (Trolli  gummy worms and Chex Mix) blaring the music and having epic dance parties, getting lost and having deep conversations about life. My absolute favorite. All of it.

And then I had babies. Road trips these days consist of Disney movies, crying babies and constant fetching of all the things.

I’m fairly certain packing three children, aged 3 and younger, should be an Olympic sport. Best time wins. I’d like to think I would be a good contender for gold because I got my ENTIRE house cleaned, I showered and had my family packed and in the car in four hours. Four Hours. Of course, in true Kenda fashion, I waited until the day of to pack everyone. I’m awesome like that. I also have these super cool OCD tendencies. One of which, is that I simply CANNOT pack until every bit of laundry is cleaned, folded and put away. I’m like a painter needing a fresh, new canvas to start.

As I’m picking up the house and making sure it’s clean, I asked myself WHY AM I DOING THIS? For the burglars. Duh.

Anyway we get everyone in the car and are ready to pull out of our drive and, hand to the heavens, the car will. not. start. The shower I took earlier is pointless because I am now dripping sweat from breaking an all new time record for getting my family ready and we can’t even leave. We are owning this trip. Luckily, my father-in-law is our neighbor and happened to be taking this trip with us and he came down to give us a jump. After about 15 minutes, Brutus was ready to go! (Who the heck is Brutus? My car, please keep up.)

TWELVE BLOODY HOURS in the car later and we’ve reached our destination. One of my finest moments of the trip was when my brain betrayed me and I gave both the 2 and 3 year old their own bag of Skittles. It was only day one of driving. We still had three hours left. Who am I?

Once we arrived, piled out of the car & took a breath of fresh air excited for freedom, we realized we now have to keep these three babies contained to a small hotel room. This should be as successful as putting three orangutans in a chihuahua’s kennel.  Praise Jesus for their swimming pools. This should be fun. 

prayers for my hair.

My husband and I have been praying bedtime prayers with Owen since he was about 3 months old. Obviously, as a baby he didn’t participate, the prayers consisted of us praying over him. As he has gotten older, bedtime prayers have changed, he can now say prayers on his own. Since he has one of the sweetest hearts ever and he’s 3, you never really know what is going to come out of his mouth.

Our routine for whoever is doing bedtime is to pray over/for him first and then he says his prayers. (Also, that word routine, yeah, it’s going to come up a lot around here. Oh my gosh, I cannot function without routine.)

Y’all. A few nights ago after I prayed with him, he grabs my cheeks, tilts my head down and says, “Wait, Momma. We need to pray for your hair.” *Insert my ‘John Krasinski face’ from the office. I laughed and let him pray for my hair, but I thought, “Man, I wore a hat all day, give me a break, kid.”

I knew only washing my hair a couple times a week would come back to bite me, and it did. I guess from now on if I wear a hat all day I need to commit to wearing it for bedtime prayers so as not to get harassed by my 3-year old.

If prayers like these come from my sweet, tender-hearted one, I can only imagine what my feisty, spirited one will come up with.

Gotta Start Somewhere

Well hello, there, blogging world. Wowzers. This is a lot. A lot of people out here with a lot of words. I’ve contemplated this whole blogging thing for quite sometime now. It all just seemed so overwhelming and scary. I honestly thought once I started this blog all those scary, overwhelming feelings would disappear. Wrong. They’ve been magnified by about 10,000%. I’ve never really thought my voice or thoughts matter too terribly much, and they probably don’t but writing is therapeutic for me. So, I’ve concluded that even if this is never read, I will feel better getting the voices in my head out and in word form. So there. I’ve started a blog.

Hi. I’m Kenda. I am a wife to my ever so studly husband, Gavin. I used to think we were some what intelligent humans but something malfunctioned in our brains and we had THREE children in FOUR years. Oh. My. Gosh. Owen, sweet, sweet Owen is 3, almost 4. Lillyan, our spirited child, just turned 2. Samuel was born in August last year, you can do the math on his age, I have lost the will ability to keep up with trivial things like his age. Life is crazy, to say the absolute least. It’s fun though, so fun.

Momma’s Fried Eggs. Where did that come from? I am not a cook, oh lord, no. Momma’s Fried Eggs has a triple meaning. 1.) My momma makes the best fried eggs. 2.) I have three small children aged three and younger so my eggs are done. So, so, so done. Fried, if you will. 3.) There is a picture circulating around that shows a spot on depiction of what your brain looks like without kids and then with three kids. The image of your brain without kids is a whole egg perfectly in tact. The image of your brain with three kids is a smashed up egg. So there ya have it.

If you’re reading this, I hope you stick around. I’ve got lots to say, most of it is funny stuff about my kids though, I’ll be honest.