Fangirl

So, if you know me, you know I don't really get into TV shows, at least prolonged series. I love a good documentary on NOVA, National Geographic, or Discovery. TLC's What Not To Wear, A Baby Story, and Say Yes to the Dress are all awesome, but I only watch them occasionally. I've seen episodes of House, Psych, Dr. Who, The Office, Bones, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. but nothing grasps my attention enough to make me really anxious to keep watching to see what happens in the next episode, until this past year, that is.

1. I discovered BBC Masterpiece's Sherlock. It's incredible. LOVE the actors. LOVE the modern adaptation. LOVE that it's British. All of it. It's great. And I am so SO excited for season 3, which apparently doesn't premiere until next fall. Boo.

2. This year, I also fully admit to having jumped on the Downton Abbey bandwagon. Once again, BBC is great. The casting with this series is phenomenal. I relate so easily to each of the characters. They are so flawed and so real and so intriguing. Maggie Smith is incredible. And the story line is fantastic. The first season starts the day after the Titanic sinks, and the second season ends with the New Year of 1920, so it covers basically one of my favorite time periods, including WWI. It follows the members of a British aristocratic family and their servants as they are coming to terms with the societal changes brought about by the war. I maybe have already seen the first episode of Season 3, which doesn't premiere in the US until January.

3. But my biggest obsession over the past year has been Once Upon A Time. I. Am. Hooked. I saw the previews last fall and have watched it since the pilot episode. The first season was 22 episodes long, so it lasted quite awhile, and I've rewatched it in its entirety on Netflix twice since then. The best part of this show has got to be the plot line. Every fairy tale you can think of, all intertwined in these complex story lines, twisted in such clever, unexpected ways. The Evil Queen and Rumplestiltskin are such delicious villains with SUCH complicated back-stories. Snow White is totally different from the Disney version, and Ginnifer Goodwin is now one of my very favorite people. Red Riding-hood is one of the coolest characters ever. Jiminy Cricket...I could just go on and on about all of them. But I won't. I just figured I'd do you a favor and let you know you have until Sunday night at 8 to get caught up and watch Season 1 before Season 2 premiers on ABC. I'm way more excited than I let on. As in, I'm-gonna-be-Evil-Queen-Regina-for-Halloween-and-I'm-already-making-my-costume type of excited. I maybe stay up late at night thinking of ideas for it. That's all. :)

Crazy fan right here. No shame.

                                                           

Sister-Susie-Sassy-Frass-José

This girl...
                              .....Turns four today.

When I was younger, I wanted a little sister more than anything in the whole world. I wanted someone to play dress-up and Barbies and dolls with. I watched my friends with little sisters, and I wanted what they had. Sometimes, they argued, and they told me that little sisters weren't all that great, but I never believed them. As I got older, that wish didn't change, but I began to lose hope as our family expanded with the addition of 4 brothers. I remember talking to my dad on the phone after the birth of one of my brothers and holding my breath waiting for him to tell me whether or not I got my sister. I was always disappointed. Clarification: I love each of my brothers, and our family would not be complete without them.

Fast-forward to December 13, 2006. Layton and I piled in Granny's car after a choir concert to go meet Mom and Dad and our newest sibling at the hospital. We walked into the room where the nurses were just getting ready to give Baby it's first bath. Dad wouldn't tell me over the phone whether I got a sister this time, so I was nervous with anticipation as I walked over to where the nurses were bathing Baby. Sister? Nope. Definitely brother. Again. I admit, I was honestly disappointed. Hurt, even. I'd been waiting for 14 years for a sister, and as I got older, I knew the chances of me getting one were decreasing. We were already years past the stage of ever being able to share clothes or shoes or lie in bed at night giggling about boys. Brothers are just.......brothers, ya know? ;) Not to give too much of Troy's story away, but as soon as I picked up that new, clean baby brother, all my disappointment vanished, and all I felt was warmth and love for that little mortal angel.

Fast forward again to March 16, 2008. Troy was 18 months old. I had long given up any hope of ever having a little sister, and I was completely content with that. I was getting ready for my hardest year of high school, and college was on the brain. We were sitting around after family prayer one evening, and Dad was trying to keep all our attention and give us lists of things that needed to be done. I remember it going something like this, "Be careful, choose good friends, we all need to help out around the house more, and we're having a baby." *Silence.* Wait, WHAT?!?!?!?! The boys all started freaking out, but all I could do was sit there. I remember waiting for the "Early April Fools!" but it never came. I kinda went into shock. I wasn't sure if I could believe it, and I didn't dare even think about the possibility of getting a sister. Of course, a little voice in the back of my head reminded me, but I always pushed it away and planned on a fifth brother.

5.9.2008

May 7, 2008: Mom was already 20 weeks along, the time when you can find out the baby's gender. All of us kids up until that point had been surprises until birth. My mom always liked not knowing. But she felt differently with this one. This one, she wanted to know. At dinner that night, I found out the baby was missing a few, key parts, namely a Y chromosome. I was getting a sister.

7.16.2008

I got to go to the next ultrasound appointment- since my mom was now considered "advanced maternal age," she got to get more of those. The nurse was nice and used the new 3-D monitor, and we watched my little sister kept pulling her arm across her face, hiding from us.

September 18, 2008: Baby girl was born at 11:30 PM. 8 lbs, 1 oz. 21 inches long. Lots of black hair, just like the rest of us (except Layton, who was bald). She stayed nameless for a few days because we couldn't decide. I really wanted to name her Annie, but the birth certificate was finally filled with Tressie Joely West. Tressie is an old name from the '20s and happens to be a family name. Our great-grandma, Goldie Mae West (my papa's step-mom) would always tell us stories from her childhood and about "[her] little sister, who [she] loved." After she died, we were reading through her life story book and found out that "[her] little sister, who [she] loved," was named Tressie. And Joely means beautiful.

And boy, was she a beautiful baby. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful baby than Tressie was. Creamy, pale skin. Dark, curly hair. Bright, blue eyes. She was a little Snow White baby, and everyone fell in love with her.

Tressie LOVED her bottles. She drank bottles long after she should have stopped, causing her to develop quite the adorable rolls around her legs, arms, and neck.

Look at those cheeks!!! And the baby miniature horse... :)

Some other things about Tressie:

She loves dancing, particularly ballet. Last year, she started a ballet class as one of the youngest and had a hard time concentrating. This year, she is doing it again, and while she's still young, she's also one of the leaders. She helps the other girls be quiet, and she stays so focused the whole time on Miss Erica. She's already got her dances down.

Two tutus because one is obviously not good enough

She loves sleeping on the cold, hard floor. Often times, she'll fall asleep with her bare stomach on the tile. She never sleeps in her bed unless you move her there after she's fallen asleep on the hard carpet next to it. Weird girl... :)

She's smart. Because she and Troy are so close in age, Tressie has sort of kept up with him on the child-development scale. She plays with older kids. She tries to read. She can already write lots of her letters and has the coordination to trace over my tiny cursive. It's quite impressive. She just started preschool a couple weeks ago and already wishes she could go every single day. She loves school so much. Hopefully, that enthusiasm never leaves.

She loves make-up. Shocker, right? Every time I go home, she will unfailingly find my make-up and come out of the bathroom all done up. And the best part is, she's quite good at it now and doesn't so much make messes anymore.

obviously, this is before she figured it out... She was very proud of herself.

While she's as girly as they come and loves to wear dresses every day, she can also make herself burp and thinks it's hilarious every time she toots. Guess she's got 4 older brothers. :) Perhaps the best illustration of this is the coloring page of Daisy Duck on my fridge. Daisy is colored so meticulously in purple and pink. No scribbles, just careful coloring in the lines. And right under her tail is a free-handed pile of black poop added by Tressie herself. Disgusting? Too bad. I think it's absolutely hilarious. :)

Lightsaber, pizza, and nudity. How much better can life get?

Sometimes, we call her Tress-O or Tressie Jo, or Sister Susie, or Sassy-Frass. She gets particularly, hilariously mad when Jace calls her José, as in "No way, José!" And lately, she likes us to call her "Mary."

This little girl is a ball of big personality. In a lot of ways, we're complete opposites: complexion, all the pink, frilly stuff, the fact that she has my dad wrapped around her finger... ;) But I'm starting to realize more and more that we really are related. She loves music and Nutella. What more do you need in common? :)

Nutella and smoothies for lunch after ballet. She did her own make-up in this. :)

Nutella on cheese-crisps.

Bath-time with the clothes

caught tip-toeing into the kitchen naked to steal my chips

But really, I love this girl. Sure, our relationship will always be a bit different from my friends and their sisters. I mean, most little sisters don't identify the older sister as "Mama" first, right? I woke up at night and fed her bottles when Mom slept through it. I've changed a good portion of her diapers. We'll never share clothes. We won't swap boy stories (contemporary ones, anyway). We won't share a bedroom. But I guess this means that we also will probably never have any cause to fight. Homecoming was a 2 weeks after she was born, and my aunt pointed out to me that by the time Tressie would be the one dressing up, I'd be 32, with my own kids. Weird. But also kinda cool.

Luckily though, she's still little. But she's getting bigger and smarter, and her personality is starting to shine even brighter. I can't wait to see how her talents develop and what sort of things she will pursue. Sometimes I still think it's a bit surreal to actually have a little sister, but I think I always knew there was a place for her in our family. Life would be a bit less bright without her kisses and hugs and tickles and snuggles.

Love you, Sister! Remember the difference between "fancy" and "beautiful." You are always beautiful.
Happy birthday, Princess!

Double-duty

Happy Post #100!!!!!! If I wasn't a poor, starving college student, maybe I'd be cool and do some sort of give-away, but as it is, I am a poor, starving college student. Oh darn. You'll just have to all pretend you won something cool. Maybe I'll make up for it in a few years. :)

Life is great. Super busy, but rather enjoyable. And I did blog all about our Singers retreat this past weekend, but as part of the publicity committee, I'm also now running a blog for Singers as a more personal way to connect with our audiences. We, of course, have our formal site, but we want this blog to be run by us as members and show how much we really love each other and love what we do. Feel free to check it out at byusingers.blogspot.com and follow us to keep updated. It's still a work-in-progress, so be forgiving. :)

Handwriting: A fascination bordering on the brink of obsession

This post has been percolating for awhile now....I've just been trying to figure out how to word this...hopefully this all makes sense. It sort of all tied together as I was watching the news one night.

You see, after the Olympics, when they do the brief nightly news report, one of the local issues they covered was whether or not elementary schools should continue to spend time improving kids' handwriting and teaching cursive. The argument is that in this technology-driven world, schools should spend more time teaching math and science and computer/keyboarding skills and drop the handwriting requirement in the curriculum. There's no need for cursive these days- no one uses it anyway, so why learn to read and write it?

This makes me sad.

Now, I could go on about the things they mentioned on the news, about how learning cursive is important because without it, we could not read ancient documents, legal papers from the time before type-writers, ancestors' journals, etc, and all of that IS important. But for me, I just like handwriting. :)

I've mentioned on here my obsession with different kinds of pens. Well, you see, the basis for this lies in a much deeper fascination with handwriting. I LOVE it. In fact, I should add hand-writing analyst to my list of dream-jobs. There's just something magical and transcendent about reading pages of Jane Eyre in Charlotte Bronte's own, delicate penmanship or realizing that you make your capital Ws the same way Walt Whitman did. In AP Government, I'd zone out and study Thomas Jefferson's signature while the teacher prattled on, trying to follow the swift, fluid strokes of his quill and mimic them on the paper in front of me.

last page of Jane Eyre

I hope you don't misunderstand. While I LOVE cursive, I don't expect everyone to use it. In fact, as much as I love beautiful, calligraphic handwriting, I'm just as enthralled by messy, hurried scrawling. I like that everyone writes so differently. It's almost as distinct as a fingerprint. Personal. Unique. No one writes exactly the way you do. It's kinda cool to think about, no?

I like that I, personally, can change the way I write. I have a messy scrawl just like anybody else. I usually use that for hurried note-taking. But if I have time, my notes are printed nice and neat. In high school, a couple times, I didn't finish typing a paper, so I printed what was typed, found the right pen for the job, and finished the paper, writing it to look just like the typed portion. I saw it as a challenge, and I could get away with it. And then I have my "normal" handwriting, which is neither messy nor perfectly straight. It's just "me." And then, of course, there's the cursive. Now, I have different kinds of cursive, too. I can copy my mother's smooth, looping handwriting pretty well. My dad's narrow, slanting cursive is a little harder. But my very favourite thing to do is write with my genuine, antique fountain pen and incorporate some of the traits of old writers into my own way of writing.

Pen from Norwich, probably early 1900s to 1920s
Brass desk stand from late 1800s, missing the top decoration

Yes, this is really what my weekly letters look like. I could just write with a regular pen on regular paper, but at least this way, I have fun doing it. Fountain pen and parchment paper.

Now, I realize this might border on the slightly-crazy side, but this is how I memorized my songs last semester. Took a piece of chalk, and wrote that hilariously French poem on the board in a way that made me just want to sit and read it over and over.

While words are full of meaning, handwriting adds something to the way we read something. It opens the reader to the mind of the author. I said it before, but it's so different reading something when you realize the pen that wrote something was in the hand of the original author and not just mass-produced on a printing-press for the general public. There's a connection there that you can't get by staring at computer-printed words.

So back to the original quandary of whether schools should even bother teaching it, I think you know where I stand. You can bet my children will know cursive, regardless of whether the schools teach it to them. Do I expect my kids to have perfect handwriting and use cursive all the time? Absolutely not. Some people just have messy handwriting, and I'm just fine with that. But I do think that handwriting is much too important to simply lose for the sake of technology.

I'll step off my soap-box now.