Sounds absurd, no? I agree. Nonetheless, I have just that sitting in a 78 page stack on my desk. I have finally come to accept the fact that I am a complete failure at keeping a diary. I’ve tried for years—ever since I was 10 years old or so. The first several years were sporadic to say the least (just like all of the years since then) and were either thrown away or burned when I was about 15 years old. At that extremely mature age (ha) I was mortified to go back and read the things (and guys) I had been interested in while still a mere child. (Again, HA!) I still have diaries from my teen years, but there are gaps of months—even years, in some cases—where there are no entries whatsoever. I realize that the loss of my personal history is no great blow to the rest of the world, but it always seems sad to me that I can’t remember so many of the things that have happened throughout the years, and my thoughts and feelings about them.

My failure to record the events in my own life has now transferred over to my children’s lives. That is, I am a total failure at the baby book thing. I did pretty well with Katie’s book that first year, but was already beginning to fall apart by her first birthday. Joe has no book at all and Sam only has a calendar that Auntie Em made for him—that still doesn’t have any pictures in it. I just can’t seem to make myself sit down do those things like I should!

I have, however, found something that I am successful at: blogging! Before you start throwing things, let me admit that I’m not completely successful at it. But when compared to my ability to keep a diary, I’m a gold medal winner in the universe of blog. The difference: a keyboard vs. pen and paper. I type soooooo much faster than I write. And as is being proven in this very post (!), I find myself recording every last detail, even the unnecessary ones, and it’s overwhelming to think of writing it all out by hand. SO…

In glancing back over some of my previous blogs a few days ago I began to realize that this is my diary. This is, in a sense, the story of my life this past year. And what a year it has been! True, due to the public nature of a blog I’m not at liberty to share quite as freely the details of certain things or my deepest feelings about them, but still—it’s better than nothing at all! The most important things that I want to remember are all of the crazy things my kids do from day to day. Those things never make it into my “real” diary because I just can’t write that much! But some day, I’ll look back at the stories of the weird and outlandish things the kids did “way back in 2006” and will laugh heartily. And cry, I’m sure.

Thus, Becki’s Book of Blog, 2006! James just stared at me, slightly grinning, when I told him. Just wait ‘til he gets home and sees I’ve printed out 78 pages of it. I could tell he thought I was nuts, but I insisted, “One day you’ll be glad I did this!” I hope!!!

Can’t leave without at least one kid story for the day, right? How ‘bout the latest from Joe. We’ve been having some issues with him lately and I’m certainly open to suggestions! There’s a definite power struggle going on and he’s displaying that guy thing—the will to dominate something. It will NOT be his mother, but he’s still testing the waters. A few days ago he was being too rowdy and I told him to go sit down for a few minutes. He obeyed, but there was a notebook and pen by the chair and in a minute or two he was looking at me snidely and saying, “Heh, heh, heh,” like he always does when he’s got the upper hand. I asked what he was doing and he whipped his notebook out and showed me what he had been drawing: a picture of me in jail. What is the proper way of handling this?!?!? I don’t want to overreact to stupid little things, but I can’t let the kid get away with “winning” when I’m trying to discipline or train him, you know?! I didn’t feel it was worthy of a spanking, but didn’t feel like I could just let him sit there and draw pictures of what he would really love to actually do to his mother at the moment! So I told him he’d have to stay in the chair until he could draw a nice picture of Mom. It took three or four more pictures of me in jail before he finally broke. In a defeated voice he finally called to me and said he’d drawn another picture. This one was a picture of him opening the jail door and letting me out. *sigh* That kid wears me out!

Just a few minutes ago I told the kids to clean the house in a certain amount of time. Joe fiddled around for a couple of minutes, then asked if I was going to spank them if they didn’t get it done on time. “Certainly,” I said. So he hollers to Katie, “Mom’s spanking us if we don’t get it clean, Katie.” Then, under his breath he muttered, “Mean old Mom.” !!! He only thinks I’m mean now!

Okay, I know, I know. WAY, WAY, WAY to long—just to tell you all that I have booked my blog! My apologies. Here, I’ll add a link to one of those dumb quiz things that everybody else is doing. I made this up several days ago and can’t remember a single thing on it. Anyway, here ‘tis:

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/quizpage.php?quizname=070110153203-877055

Talk to you later!!!

~Becki~