Memories

Right next to my parent's house, where I grew up, is a large park. During the summers especially, I spent a lot of time playing in the park, on each and every piece of play equipment that was there. One of the best things in the park is a giant metal slide.

My mom emailed my brother, sister, and I early last month to let us know that they had started to take out the old, metal, apparently dangerous (although we all survived childhood just fine), equipment, and the slide wasn't long for the world. Right before we got there on Easter weekend, they had taken out the swings! Seriously, right before Easter, on a spring break weekend, they took all of the swings out of a park.

We decided that Gabbie had to try out the slide just once before it was gone. It's pretty tall and intimidating, and she had never even gone near it before (there's some newer, plastic play equipment that she uses). I tagged along, with the camera to capture a few images for posterity.



She had a great time! Sophie even tried it once or twice from a third of the way up.

A quick slide story:

When we were little, and feeling pretty daring, we three kids would each take a piece of wax paper with us to the park. We then would proceed to go down the slide, sitting on the wax paper. And when I say, "go down the slide," I really mean, "fly down the slide with increasing speed each time." Waxing up the slide was so much fun! For us, at least. Now I kind of feel sorry for the next, unsuspecting kids who would likely fly off the end of the slide when they thought they'd just slip down at it's usual, leisurely pace (it was typically covered with sap from the tree right above, so it sometimes took a little effort to get down).

And so, it's April

The other day Gabbie and I were doing a kid's yoga routine, and we were doing child's pose. Sophie had been playing on the other side of the room, but chose that moment to come over and sit on my head. I couldn't stop laughing for about ten minutes after that.

Then, this past weekend, I was explaining something to Gabbie, and when I was done, she responded, "Okay. Gotcha." It was just so grown up, and it caught me off guard, and I was off to chuckling once again.

The story continues on as it has, work is crazy, and I'm now convinced that the slow period following the craziness that I used to get has disappeared forever. I took on this role, not quite realizing the scope and the national recognition and that I now had to be much more careful, serious, and political. I don't mind it so much, but I'm also not quite sure how I got here. I went into my Masters program because it was kinda sorta related to what I liked in undergrad, and then I got an internship at my company, and now, nearly 9 years later, I have a career. Not a job, but an honest-to-God career. It feels pretty amazing to be here, but I wouldn't mind slowing down sometime.

Most days, though, I leave the work at the office, and shed that skin through a chat with my mom (hands free, of course) on the drive from work to school, and arrive, refreshed and simultaneously exhausted, with a smile on my face to greet my girls. The last three hours at work are spent missing them like crazy, and I can't hide the glee when they run up and hug my legs. They are, of course, the reason that I put up with the work craziness, so I can give them the best life possible.

Yesterday Sophie had to stay home for some gross, illness related issues, of which I'll spare you the details. I gave Gabbie the choice of whether or not to go to school, and she chose to stay home with us. We ate breakfast, played, ran errands, ate lunch, played, napped, planted some wheat grass for Easter decorating, ran another errand, and played some more. It was the kind of day where I could pretend that I was nobody other than a mom to these sweet girls, and it was rejuvinating and fantastic, and something that I desperately want to do more often.

Bits and Pieces

This is what happens when I ask each of my girls to smile for the camera:

I think goofy is the default setting for 3.5 year olds.

***

You know how you go along in life thinking this one thing, and then find out you're actually wrong, and it's all kinds of embarrassing? Yeah. That. So.

Some examples:

The Secretary of Defense has a name, and it's not Lee Onpanetta. It's Leon Panetta. Where you put the break in those two words does, in fact, make a big difference, and will also probably cause your partner to laugh at you when you say something about what you heard Onpanetta say on NPR, and he's all confused, and then you clarify.

Also: my mom had a hearty laugh at my expense one day when I was much younger (I believe I was in high school at the time), and I said something about Nat King Cole's daughter, Carole King. (His daughter is actually Natalie Cole - at least I knew his daughter was also a famous singer, right?)

My favorite one of these is not mine, but my sister's. One day when she was being an annoying little kid, my brother and I told her that if you ring the doorbell too many times the basement would flood. See, she was ringing the doorbell repeatedly, and my parents had just had a very stressful time dealing with a flooded basement, so this made an impression. So much so that she still believed this to be true until one day, when she was about 15, she panicked when her friend started ringing the doorbell repeatedly. She started to tell her why she shouldn't do it, when halfway through her sentence, it clicked that we were full of crap, and had tricked her.

Ahhh, good times.

***

Gabbie had a tough day yesterday, starting with excitement due to preschool happenings (it was green day, our snack day, show and tell day, and I was coming in to read a book to her class), and then went into a nose dive when she realized I was going to leave her at school when I left after reading the book. She starting hysterically sobbing, and was crying on and off for the next three hours, upsetting her friends and disturbing some other kids' nap time. I feel horrible about it all - about having to go back to work and leaving her there, about the teachers having to deal with the crying, about how sensitive she is (and that's all my fault, I was the same way). When she gets like this I can feel it in my heart, because I have so been there.

I explained that I have to work so that we can have a house, and clothes, and toys, and food, and I know she gets it, but she still wants me, and that doesn't change. So, Friday, because she's feeling attention-starved and because she got an awesome report card last night, I'm taking the day off and we're having a day to ourselves. We're thinking about going to the zoo, meeting up with Aaron for lunch, and perhaps some shopping. It should be fabulous.

And now I should go back to working so that I can get everything done and can actually take the day off.

The Things We're Doing These Days

I was sick last week with some sort of weird bug that had me down for the count with a headache, light-headedness, a little bit of congestion, and a whole lot of exhaustion. I am feeling better for the most part, save for still having a headache and now with the added fun of constant heartburn. So what I'm saying is, I kind of feel like crap still and planning to have tomato soup for dinner tonight was not my smartest idea ever. What proves to be even a less smart idea is that I'm still totally going to eat that tomato soup because it sounds really damn delicious.

Not feeling well, of course, put me in an excellent mood over the weekend. Aaron caught the bug, too, coming down with it on Friday (which actually made me a little better, because the symptoms are so weird I thought maybe it was just me, but no! Confirmation!). So we shared that excellent mood. The girls fed off of our bad moods, so it was really fun to be in our house this weekend, I'm sure.

Despite our household-wide surliness, we did have some fun this weekend. Gabbie got to go to the neighborhood park and play with the neighborhood kids. Reportedly they played some sort of tag (Aaron went along and also played tag, while Sophie and I napped), which sounds like a lot of fun. There aren't many kids Gabbie's age in the neighborhood, but there are a lot of girls, who have adopted Gabbie as one of their own, and if she's around they include her in their games. It's pretty fantastic.

Sophie is working really hard at walking. She can actually walk, but lacks the confidence to do so. She'll walk halfway across the room, stop when she realizes what she's doing, and then she'll drop and crawl. Alternately, she'll wait until we're all watching, take a few steps, then stand there and clap for herself. She's pretty darn adorable, overall.

I'm really excited for Aaron, who started with a running group last night through a local shoe store. I think this will be really good for him and it sounds like a great group. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little jealous, because I totally am. This will definitely be an adjustment, as he'll be out of the house for runs two nights a week and on Saturday mornings until his 10K in May. However, I'm all about it given his family history and my desire to keep him around for a long time. One of his grandpas died in his forties from a sudden and massive heart attack, and I'd like to avoid that happening to him if at all possible. So, support for excersize it is! I can't wait to go cheer him on in his sure-to-be many races in the future!

As for me, well, I'm working on things. I need to get out of the house more too. I feel kind of bad that my hermit-tendencies make Aaron feel bad for wanting to go out and do things with other people. I need to make more friends and find time for the friends I already have. I'm sure once Sophie is a little less dependent on me due to nursing, I'll be more likely to feel like I can go out. I meant to sign up for a cake decorating class at Joann's this month, but forgot to do it on Saturday, which ended up being the first day of the month-long class. Hopefully they'll offer it again soon! We're also talking about finding a church we can all agree on, with families with young kids, and then possibly we can make some friends there. I'm still in that being-a-mom-is-lonely phase of babyhood and I'm starting to get itchy to get out of it.

Gabbie's Horrible, Awful, No Good Week

Poor Gabbie has had a rough week, for many reasons, including:

• Croup - She was fine on Saturday evening when she went to bed at eight. Three hours later she had a barking cough and a fever. She spent Sunday through Tuesday resting and recouperating, even though she was not happy about it. On Tuesday she was suffering more from Cabin Fever than the Croup (but she still had to stay  home from school because the last time she was running a fever was less than 24 hours before), so we went out for lunch - Chinese food, her choice. She got vegetable fried rice, and I had the most amazing Pho Ga. (Also, Gabbie ate all my cilantro. Plain. It is so weird to me, a cilantro-tolerater-because-my-family-likes-it kind of person, when she does that.)



• Then she had a temper tantrum at the grocery store because she wanted to hold the yogurt covered pretzels, and I had the nerve to put them in the cart without thinking that possibly she would rather hold them.
• Then, I had the nerve to make her take a nap (she finally submitted when I offered to rock her to sleep).
• Yesterday she threw a fit when, after she asked me what kind of animal we are, I told her that we're humans. She doesn't want to be a human!
• She has been testing out the whole lying thing lately, and I am amazed at how stupid she obviously thinks I am. I will catch her doing something, (SEE IT WITH MY OWN EYES!) and then she'll deny it. ARGH!
• The toughest part for me was today, after her preschool Holiday Party, when she had to stay instead of going home with me, and she lost her shit in a spectacular fashion. She had to be peeled off of me by a teacher. It didn't help that I forgot something in the room and couldn't get another teacher's attention so she could hand it to me, so I had to slip in real quick to get it and she saw me again.

There's only one more day left this week, and I'm hoping I can make it a good one for her. Then this weekend, she gets a mommy date, and we're going to bake cookies with the rest of the women in Aaron's family. Gabbie's no good week needs turned around, and I think those two things may just be the way to do it.

Thanksgiving Weekend Highs and Lows with Gabbie

There was a conversation on Twitter yesterday about three-year-olds, and how the highs are so incredibly high, and the lows are head-explodingly low, and I could not agree more with that sentiment. In my line of work, I couldn't present such a statement without some sort of follow-up evidence, so I present to you: The High Point and Low Point of Our Long Thanksgiving Weekend!

High Point:

Gabbie helped me make pieson Thanksgiving eve/morning. She made a cookie crumb crust almost entirely by herself, by crushing the cookies with her miniature rolling pin, pouring the crumbs in a bowl, mixing in the sugar and melted butter I added, pouring it into the pie pan, and pushing it down on the bottom and sides. All I had to do was the baking part. I can't believe how big and capable she (mostly) is these days!

Then the next morning, she sat at the counter with me and helped peel and slice apples (using an apple peeler/slicer/corer thing - she turned the crank while I did the rest), and kept me company while I did the rest of the pie making. I also taught her how to make pie treats (sprinkle leftover pie crust with cinnamon and sugar and bake), which we shared while the pies were baking. She also was assigned duties as chief spoon/whisk/bowl licker with the spoon/whisk/bowl that resulted from making banana cream pie. (SO GOOD!)

It was lovely and picturesque. She was doing the things I remember doing when I was a kid, and I loved sharing these moments with her. It's moments like that when I just want to scoop her up and put her someplace for safe-keeping, so she never, ever changes how she is right now.

Low Point:

Most of yesterday was not quite so awesome. She was obviously exhausted, but is dropping her nap (I am NOT READY for this), and so was insisting that she wasn't tired and didn't need to nap. There were instances of talking back ("Gabbie, stop it." "No, Mom, you stop it."), being generally unkind to her sister (like holding out one of Sophie's toys just out of reach, saying, "Sophie, you can't play with this," and then snatching it away), and then came the cherry on top of the crap Sunday (haha - I love a good pun!). She was playing with Sophie's walk and ride toy, and I asked her not to ride it onto the wood floor, because she's a little heavy for it and so I was afraid the wheels would leave scrapes on the floor. Not two minutes later, I look over and see her watching me as she slowly and deliberately rode the toy onto the wood floor. (!!!)

At this point, I got a headache due to lack of ability to make my head actually explode, and she was placed in time out for five minutes, because I had absolutely had it. Up to HERE even!

Of course, at the end of her time out, she came over and gave me a big hug and some cuddles and was all sorts of cute and wonderful again.

Three. Man, oh, man is it a ride.

Catching Up Tidbits

Sophie is at that awesome stage where she learns a new trick almost every day. Here is a list of things she has started doing in the last three weeks: crawling, pulling up to stand, walking while holding on to our fingers, clapping, signing "more", raising her hands above her head whenever we say, "Sophie's so big!" or, "Touchdown!", giving high fives, putting her hands on her head when we say, "Oh, no!" (or, conversely, putting her hands on her head and waiting for us to notice and say, "Oh, no!")....  The list goes on, but I think I've captured most of them.

She's still not too interested in food, and would rather nurse, unless she's at daycare, then she doesn't want her bottles and would rather eat food. All in all she's a happy, healthy girl, and if every baby were guaranteed to be so awesome, I'd have a dozen more. (I'm not going to have a dozen more.) She turned 10 months old yesterday, which I'm not sure is even possible. How in the heck is this year passing so quickly?

Gabbie is So. Very. Three. It's maddening and yet makes me love her all the much more at the same time. She and Sophie have started playing together, and will get each other squealing with laughter, and it sets my heart aflame with pride and love. These girls are so awesome I can't even stand it.

Gabbie is also thriving in preschool, although I still can't get anything out of her regarding what they did at preschool other than what they have for snack and, sometimes, what was brought in for show and tell that day. A couple of weeks ago she had her first field trip to a local apple orchard and pumpkin patch. I went along, and it was a blast. Of course, most of the kids liked the hay ride and donuts and cider the best, so the rest of the tour of where they make cider was a little difficult to get them through. It was nice getting to know some of the other kids and their parents, and I'm so glad I went.

We also have a halloween party this week in preschool, and she is so excited that it's going to be a long wait until Thursday for her! She's doubly excited because we signed up to make brownies. She's convinced she's never had brownies before (she has), and she can't wait to try them. (We have to designate all foods these days into two categories: she's eaten it before, or she's never eaten it before. She's very often wrong about the assigned category, which cracks me up. I love seeing her little quirks emerge as she gets older.)

Gabbie's first parent-teacher conference is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait to hear how things are going with her and preschool from the teacher's perspective, and perhaps even find out what they do every day!

Gabbie's favorite thing in the world to do these days is to go to the zoo. Any zoo will do, although she is partial to our local zoo, just because she knows it best (although she does wish that they'd have an elephant or a giraffe). A few weeks back on a beautiful Saturday, we headed over to the Detroit Zoo and had a blast. Then, just yesterday, we went to Boo at the Zoo here in town. It was a gorgeous fall day, and all the little kids were completely adorable in their costumes. And, because we go so often (and we got to skip the line to sign up), we bought an annual membership to the zoo.

I have pictures of everything above, but haven't had time to download them from my new camera, with which I am in deep love. I plan on doing that this week before it gets some major use this coming weekend. Hopefully.

Alligator Juice

A couple of weeks ago, my sister was in the state and Gabbie and I went to pick her up from a bachelorette party she had attended. The girls were all just waking up when we got there, so we got a chance to sit around and chat for a little while. Most of the girls have known Gabbie since she was a baby, so they were excited to see her and spoiled her rotten, sending her home with a bagel, a pink feather boa, and a bottle of yellow Gatorade all for herself.

Gabbie slowly drank that bottle of Gatorade, making it last for the entire day. She thought it was the coolest thing ever (the child can be entertained for hours by a bottled water, so you can imagine the excitement that comes when you add color, sugar, and a little flavor to that water). Between cooking dinner, talking with my parents and sister, and being a ball of nervous energy about my upcoming work trip, I wasn't paying too much attention to what Gabbie and my mom were discussing, but my mom filled me in the next day.

Gabbie told my mom all about how we saw the girls and they gave her a "Fancy Nancy" (the pink feather boa) and some alligator juice. My mom was a little confused, but went along with it. Then Gabbie asked my mom to get it for her from the refrigerator. My mom opened the fridge, and it didn't immediately dawn on her what Gabbie meant, so she lifted her up so she could get it herself. She grabbed the Gatorade, and my mom had a good chuckle.

Thinking about it, Gatorade/alligator juice makes total sense. I really don't know where she comes up with these things, but I hope she continues on with it for a long time. She's just so adorable in so many ways that I can hardly stand it!

Five Things

1. The current mosquito situation in Michigan is HORRIBLE. They are everywhere. They follow you in from the outside and bite you while you're sitting on the couch. We keep waking up with new bites, including the nickel-sized bite on the bottom of my foot I woke up with yesterday. This may be the worst location for a bug bite, ever! They have been so bad they've kept us inside, away from the gorgeous weather we've been having lately, and I am sick of it. There was enough of a breeze last night that we could actually spend some time outside without getting about 15 bites apiece in 10 minutes, and it was lovely. I hope those little suckers die off soon!

Poor Gabbie got a bite on her face in the car the other day while we were driving downtown (they follow us everywhere!), and now it looks like her eye is a little swollen. Poor baby! See that pink spot on her cheek? That's all a bite. There's one on her nose, too.

(Also, she really liked that pizza!)

2. I went to Minneapolis for work last week, and, surprisingly, the world did not end. I was completely stressed out and worried about the actual travel (I'm not a huge fan of flying, to say the very least), and about leaving Sophie, who was (and still is) in the midst of teething. (Last time I travelled she was in the middle of a growth spurt. I am not looking forward to whatever she has planned for when I travel in October.) I have to give mad props, though, to my wonderful husband. All I had to do (and really I didn't have to do this, but it was nice of me to do), was stock up the fridge with essentials, and he was good to go. My mom was telling me about how she used to have to cook, leave a schedule, do all the laundry, and get basically everything prepared for every day she was gone in order to leave to go anywhere. And my dad was pretty with it as far as dads go. Aaron, hands down, is the best dad I know. He helps me with all the girls' stuff every day, and so it wasn't too far of a stretch to remove me from the situation for a couple days.

So what if the girls didn't get baths at all while I was gone. They may have been a little stinky, but that didn't make me any less excited to see them when I got home.

3. Sophie is getting huge. Seriously. When Gabbie was a baby she didn't wear a size until she was whatever age was on the label, and sometimes even those things were a little big (although, length-wise, my poor girl is forever in flood pants just so her pants fit around her waist (she still can fit comfortably into size 24 months shorts)). Sophie, however, is already comfortably in nine month size clothing and she doesn't turn 8 months until tomorrow. She even has two teeth now, and sits up all by herself! We went out for dinner the other night (me being gone kind of ruined the whole "no eating out in August" thing a little, because we were all still so worn out from the busy week), and she sat in a high chair all by herself:

She thought she was big stuff, for sure! The blur (because she never, ever stops moving. Seriously never.) was a coaster that she nabbed as soon as I sat her down (she's fast and has amazing aim), so I inserted the pacifier to keep the coaster out of her mouth. She dropped it a couple of times and screamed at the top of her lungs until I crawled under the table to retrieve it and handed it back to her. She is not quite the well-behaved-angel-in-public that her big sister has always been. I just can't believe how big she's getting these days and how fast it's happening. I swear she was just a newborn.

4. One cool/scary thing I saw in Minneapolis was a sink hole. It opened up sometime in the hour between when we got to an event and when we left the event. It was right in the middle of a (thankfully quiet) intersection, and was probably about 8 feet across. There were a few guys right up next to it taking pictures, but I was not quite that brave. (Aaron gave me crap, because he would have loved to see pictures.) I mean, seriously. There was a large hole in the earth that wasn't there minutes prior. Does it make any sense at all to go stand at the edge? Ever since I saw pictures of this massive sinkhole in Guatamala that looks like crazy CGI, but isn't, I've been wary of sinkholes. Nice, normal fear, right?

5. Last night at dinner we were coming up with topics to discuss with Gabbie to keep her from singing (no singing at the table, especially when we're in public, is a new dinnertime rule). Aaron asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. After a few, thoughtful seconds of reflection, she announced, "A mom. With noobs." (Apparently that's Gabbie's shorthand for "nursing b00bs.") I about choked I was laughing so hard. Hilarious, and adorable. And I'm glad she thinks so much of me that her life goal is to be just like me.

Our Girls' First Camping Trip

This weekend we continued our string of great-camping-trips-cancelled-prematurely-due-to-the-sky-opening-up-and-flooding-us-out. Meaning, we were having a good time and then it rained about an inch and a half in fifteen minutes. So we packed up a night early and headed to my parents' house (halfway between the campsite and home) arriving at 11:00 at night. (As an aside, I haven't been in bed before 11:00 pm in over a week, and oh my goodness am I EXHAUSTED).

But, before the deluge we had a fabulous time. On Saturday morning at 5:30 the girls got to experience one "fun" facet of sleeping outside: birds. It started with crows that I swear were sitting on top of our tent, and then proceeded to all sorts of different birds calling out and singing and generally celebrating day-break. It was loud and sudden, and even though the noise died down after only about ten minutes, we were up for good. Gabbie's eyes got great big, and I could just see her brain going behind them. I know that she might not remember this camping trip when she's older, but it was so much fun to get to watch her experience all these things for the first time. (Including s'mores - she thought they were okay, but in true Gabbie fashion, eschewed the s'more as a package deal, and was perfectly happy dining on marshmallows and chocolate bars. Also, a sugar detox is happening for the child this week, because we totally sugared her up all weekend.)

We were in the absolute minority at the campground in that we camped in a tent and cooked all of our food over the campfire. Aaron and I are both of the mindset that staying in a camper or RV that is equipped with a full kitchen or at least a grill, a tv, a bed, and air conditioning is not "camping." It is simply moving your comfortable living situation to a more nature-filled place. So, we went with our tent, a few sleeping mats and sleeping bags (and a pack and play for Sophie so she had a safe place to sleep), and a grill grate to put atop the campfire pit. It was awesome fun. We didn't do pretty much anything we had planned to do (another trend in our vacations), but we still had a great time. We took a couple of walks, watched the sun set over the bay, sat in chairs around the campsite and read books while holding napping babies, and ate our fair share of junk food (candy, chips, s'mores, etc. - also a camping tradition).

Unfortunately, we have the girls completely off schedule, and they both seem to think that 10:00 pm is a perfectly acceptable bedtime, so this week will be spent getting them back to sleeping at a more reasonable hour. However, the camping trip was so much fun I kind of want to head out again this weekend. We won't, but it will be happening again sometime soon.

Here are a couple pictures of the girls in the (orange, so that's the cause of the pictures' tint) tent.

Early morning portrait of a girl who just spent her first night in a tent and loved it.  

Ditto.

This is why I have a category called "Random Randomness"

I'm pretty sure I just burned my butt when I got into my car, simply by sitting down on the seat. It has been (as with pretty  much everywhere else) ridiculously hot lately, and I am looking forward to the cool-down promised for tomorrow. Highs in the mid-70s? Yes, please! That sounds like perfection.

I have been sick for about a week now, and my biggest issue right now is that it feels like my ears need to pop and I can't get them to do it. Thankfully I feel approximately 95% better than I did just a few days ago. Stupid allergies plus a sinus infection. Summer colds are the worst!

I hesitate posting this next part, because I'm not completely, 100% sold on the idea that it's purposeful, but Sophie has been saying "mama" for a while now, and on Sunday, when the girls and I got home from visiting my parents over the weekend, she looked at Aaron and said "dada." Several times, in fact, and she has been saying both regularly ever since, and sometimes it really seems like she's using it correctly. If she is, in fact, using the sounds as words, she has Gabbie beat on a first word by about six months. Craziness.

Sophie has never been quite as good at keeping herself entertained as Gabbie was, so we have had to be creative in ways to keep her occupied so we can get something (anything) done around the house. One surefire thing that buys us a good ten minutes? Ice cubes. We put them in either the mesh feeder or a sippy cup. One day last week I needed about twenty minutes to get dinner together, so I gave her two ice cubes, one in the mesh feeder (which she will then eat) and one in the sippy cup (which she can't quite figure out, so she shakes it to make noise and then pours out the water as it melts, and then splashes in the water (I taught her how to splash and so now if she sees liquid, it's splash city!)), and you would have thought I gave her a diamond-encrusted puppy for how excited she was. So, of course, I had to take a picture (see the cuteness above).

Over the long weekend two weekens ago now, we decided to go out to dinner one night. While waiting for our food to arrive, we were looking for ways to keep Sophie entertained (this is what takes up the majority of my time and energy when I'm not at work lately; I'm totally blaming her for the fact that it has been nearly a month since my last blog post. I'm brain-dead because of my adorable (time consuming) baby!), and Aaron thought he would try to see what she could do with a straw. So he put his water near her, and she grasped the straw, put it in her mouth, and started drinking his water. She's a straw savant!

While she will drink pretty much anything, this girl will not eat food (hey! There's a thing she has in common with her sister (grumble, grumble)). We've tried rice cereal (she will eat it for the daycare ladies, but not me), sweet potatoes (gag city) and pears (four bites then gag city), and she's not much of a fan of any of them. I'm going to keep on keeping on, though. Tonight? Bananas! (I'm guessing it will be Banana Gag City!) She remains a huge fan of nursing and would nurse 24-7 if I let her (I don't let her (don't worry, I'm not starving her, but I'm also not letting her use me as a human pacifier)).

Despite the fact that neither of my daughters will give me the satisfaction of eating one damn bite of real food (okay, Gabbie will take "a couple more bites", but that's it), both have been doing some major growing lately. One weekend a few weeks ago, Gabbie's shoes fit on Friday, but not on Monday. Needless to say, Gabbie has new shoes. We went for her 3-year appointment the following week and she had grown an inch and a pound in a little less than a month. Craziness. She's been complaining of growing pains lately, and I swear she wakes up noticibly taller than she goes to sleep some days. Sophie's 6 months size clothes are starting to get tight - Gabbie never got into a size until she was at least that age, and Sophie is growing out of things at approximately the age listed on the label. Despite all of Gabbie's growing, it has, as usual, gone to getting taller, not wider, and she can still comfortably wear size 24 month shorts (and does - I'm not spending money if I don't need to). I'm not looking forward to winter, when I have to make sure her pants are long enough, and will probably be shoping for tiny, pink belts.

Speaking of my girls getting bigger, we are almost completely done getting Sophie's room together. We just have to remove the blue tape from the trim and arrange the furniture, and she'll be sleeping in her own room. We painted the walls a pale green ("Celery"), and painted the trim a cream color (creatively titled, "Creamy" (Aaron says he hopes I like the trim in the rest of the house, because never again! (I say I hope he forgets soon because he is SO painting the trim in the family room))). I'm hoping to get some Beatrix Potter wall stickers or posters for decorations and then her room will be complete (and I'll post pictures!).

He also painted the family room over the past weekend. We chose "Afternoon," which is gorgeous in person, but looks really bright in pictures. I will try to take some good pictures soon, when we have everything more assembled. Aaron had been complaining that because we still had the same furniture and hadn't really done any decorating, he still felt like we were living in an apartment. Decorate away, I told him, and he is. We've actually let Gabbie pick out every paint color we've used so far, except the color we used in our bedroom, and she has done a great job! (We have not, and need to repaint the bedroom, because it's not great.)

Lessons from my Weekend

We had one heck of a busy and wonderful weekend; I'm still kind of recovering from all the (good) craziness. I also learned several things this weekend that I thought I should share:

1. Jamie Oliver's basic pizza recipe is fan-damn-tastic. Especially if you bake it on a pizza stone. It's the best pizza I've ever made at home and much better than any of the delivery places we have in town. Now I just have to find an equally delicious deep-dish recipe and I'll be all set.

2. It is not wise to take two kids, one of whom is (mostly) non-mobile, by yourself to go strawberry picking. For several reasons, the least of which is that you may still be sore in the thighs and rear three days later because of the child juggling and bending down and the awkwardness of it all.

3. Telling Gabbie something is dirty is the quickest way to get her to leave it alone. All the other children at the strawberry patch came out very berry-stained around the mouth and hands. Gabbie however? Only ate one berry because I told her it was okay. She's a good kid, that one.


4. Also related to strawberry picking - don't pick more than you can process the same day. I was very sad to have to throw out more than a pound of what we had picked.

5. If you set my youngest child on the floor these days, it is not unlike you have placed a child on a hill - she rolls and rolls and picks up speed. Then she gets stuck under the couch or the entertainment center and yells. It's adorable but also makes me even more busy than I was before!


6. If, in one single weekend, you: make pizza, pick strawberries, go to a jazz fest, run a million little errands, go to the zoo, cook three meals a day, parent your children, make and can strawberry jam, make a strawberry lemonade icebox pie, and read an entire book? You may end up crying from exhaustion at around 7 pm on a Sunday night.

There were some other lessons I had in mind, but then I got busy and forgot them. Also? I'm still exhausted.

All Kinds of Updates

Life marches on, busy as always. I feel, and I know Aaron agrees, that we barely have time to remember to breathe these days. It's crazy, but crazy good too.

Sophie will be 6 months old next week! Don't ask me how that happened, because I don't have any idea either. She is a rolling fool these days, and basically doesn't stop moving, ever. Since she started rolling over we stopped swaddling her at night. I was scared of this day (mostly because it was not an easy process when we did it with her big sister), but it didn't phase her one bit. She just rolled on to her side and fell asleep. Maybe it's because she's older than Gabbie was when we attempted it, but maybe more because she's just (and I realize I'm blessed and possibly jinxing myself here) an easy baby. A happy, easy baby that is so cute I could just die.

We tried rice cereal with Sophie this past weekend, and, well, it wasn't a hit (yet another way in which she's different from her big sister). We expected her to love it because she watches everyone else eat so intently, but instead she gagged a little and pushed it back out of her mouth. She's just not ready yet, and that's fine with me. It's easier to just nurse anyway. We'll try again in a week or two.

Also, and I may be crazy here, but I swear she has started to say "mama." It doesn't happen all the time, but when I don't pick her up as fast as she'd like, she says, "ma ma ma ma ma MA MA MA." Gabbie didn't make consonant sounds until she was much older (I remember being very worried about this; now she never, ever, ever shuts up, so I didn't need to be so worried), but Sophie is all about them. That and blowing raspberries. It's so super adorable.

Gabbie wants nothing more in life than to be big. (She is so like me it is not even funny.) Not too long ago we were playing around after bath, but before bed, and I asked her if she wanted me to make her hair curly for school tomorrow. She jumped right on that idea, and so we braided her hair. The next day at school she preened every time anyone mentioned her hair (which was often). It was adorable and also made me very aware of how aware she is of her looks already. Raising girls is hard, yo!

The other day we were driving home just as the church in our neighborhood was letting out from their Saturday evening service. Some guy looked like he wasn't going to stop at the stop sign (and therefore looked like he was going to hit us), and Aaron called him a douche bag. From the back seat we hear, "douche bag?" Lesson learned yet again - we need to watch our mouths around this one. She doesn't miss a beat.

Gabbie is very, very three, and I agree with everyone that three is so much harder to take than two. However, she's still very smart and funny, and just a really great kid. However, again, she's having issues pop up, especially at school, that are a little trying. Her morning teacher seems to relish telling me about how Gabbie misbehaved the day before, and I think that this needs to stop. We don't need to talk about Gabbie being bad right in front of her. She needs to hear how great she is, too. I need to figure out how to make her teacher knock it off; it hurts even me to hear the "misbehaving report" every day, when I know that it's just a small part of her day.

On Sunday, Aaron totally made Gabbie's day by taking her fishing, then to the big kids park, and then out for "coffee" (steamed milk with flavored syrup for Gabbs). She even caught a fish! It's so nice seeing the two of them have their own relationship. I absolutely love it, and seeing Aaron be such a good dad makes me fall even more in love with him every time.

When I was growing up I knew I wanted to be a mom. Before I became a mom, I know I'd love it. I just didn't know how happy getting exactly what I wanted would make me. I'm happier than I ever thought possible; this family of mine is pretty awesome.

Now She is Three

Three years ago today there was suddenly a pointy-headed screaming pink newborn in my life. I mean, I knew she was in there all along, but there's a disconnect between the squirming creature in your belly and this perfect (to you at least) baby in your arms. The whole process of her joining us out here was completely shocking to me; even so, it was one of the best things I've ever done, creating this perfect beautiful human.

Sure, those early days were not the easiest, but three years later my memories are mostly of the fond, rosy variety.

A year later she was a mobile, smiley, adorable not-so-much-baby. It really is amazing and not quite fair how quick they go from squirming pink blobs to little people.

Fast forward yet another year, and there was a talking, running toddler in my house.

Today. Today there is a three year old in my house. Three is so vastly different from two, which was vastly different from one, and so on, yet, she's still my same girl, one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in real life, the person who daily makes me glad I decided to become her mom.

Happy Third Birthday to my sweet little Bitty (even if you aren't so little any more)!