Motherhood and Miscellany

Weekend Fun

2012-02-12T22:58:00.000-06:00

This weekend has been quiet. It's very cold here, and my husband had to work this weekend, so the girls and I mostly just stayed home and did lots of fun stay-home stuff. We had more tea parties, this time with little sister joining in.

We played with baby dolls and did some gymnastics in the basement. We made a little gift to give the other kids at Miss's school for Valentine's Day. Miss and I even completed her first homework assignment from school this afternoon when she didn't take a nap. She was given a poster board heart at school and instructed to decorate it with the things she loves for Valentine's Day. So today we talked about what she loves. We taped photos of Lass, Daddy, Mom (I'm now "Mom," not Mama or Mommy), an ultrasound picture of Sis, and our dog Jonah to the heart. Then she added photos of herself reading, doing gymnastics, eating ice cream at the pool, and picking a worm out of a carton while fishing with her Daddy. She added a ballerina sticker, a picture of watermelon, which she said is her favorite food, and interestingly, a picture of her Papa's tractor. She was quite decisive about what she wanted and didn't want, though I had to prompt her a bit by showing pictures and asking her if she wanted certain things. I loved hearing the things she wanted to add, and was surprised by some things she didn't care to include, like a picture of her Oopsie Bear Care Bear. It makes me smile when she surprises me with things like that.

Also this weekend we did some work getting things ready for baby Sis. I did some crafting during nap time, which I'll post about when I have some finished projects to show. Miss helped me fold clothes for Sis, which we transferred from the back of Miss's closet into Sis's.

She was so excited to help, and kept singing a little made-up song about the clothes and how her baby sister was going to love them. She said, "Baby Sissy will be so happy that I helped fold her laundry. She will love me so much and will give me a big hug." I can't wait to see how wonderful these girls are going to be when their new sister arrives. Miss was great with Lass, but she's so much older now, it will be fun to watch how much more she can understand and help with her newest sister. And I'm happy for Lass to have to chance to make the transition from Baby Sister to Big Sister.

And seriously, there is just something about the relationship these girls have that makes me smile every time I see them playing together and anticipate so happily the addition of another sister. I love to watch them. I'll turn around and randomly see them snuggling together or playing a sweet little private game.

Lass's language is really exploding, so they can talk to each other much more now, and I love to hear their little conversations. Miss has a sweet little special voice that she uses for Lass when Lass is upset and Miss is trying to console her.

Usually, though certainly not always, they share pretty well too. I bought a two-sided easel (which hasn't been put together yet) so they could both use it at the same time more easily than the easel on their Learning Tower.

But when I witness moments like this one, I wonder why.

This weekend the sisters, as always, played lots of dress up.

Miss wanted to try to take a picture of her sister with my camera, and she did a pretty good job!

Miss also got her fingernails and toenails polished. She has been very excited about this, and wanted to paint her Daddy's fingernails when he got home from work today. He was going to let her do it, until I told him that the only polish remover we have is the super non-toxic stuff that doesn't really work very well. He decided to go for a pedicure instead. Both girls got a chance to paint his toenails.

Miss tried to finish up after Lass polished almost every part of his toes but his nails.

The finished product on the foot that Miss did by herself.

I'm sure this is the first of many nail polishings for this Daddy. I love that he's such a good sport about it.

This weekend wasn't terribly productive. I only crossed one thing off my extensive to-do list. The stuff above about getting Sis's clothes folded and moved into her room is misleading. I started the project, but since I don't have her dresser in her room yet or enough hangers for her clothes, I actually got very little done. I hung some jammies, folded a few swaddle blankets, and moved two boxes, one with newborn cloth diapers and the other with newborn and size 3-month clothes, into Sis's room. I got a little bit done on some growth charts I'm making for Lass's and Sis's rooms, like the one I made for Miss a while ago. And that's about it. Really though, I don't care that I didn't get much done. When my husband is working the weekend and we are pretty much house-bound, I just do my best to have as much fun as possible and avoid meltdowns, either from my girls or myself. This weekend, we did a pretty good job.

"Do You Have a Baby in Your Butt?"

2012-02-10T14:17:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I volunteered to help at Miss's school because one of her teachers had to be out for a funeral. It was a really fun experience. I loved getting to watch her in her space and get to know some of the kids she goes to school with. I was quite a novelty to many of the kids, who got a kick out of my big belly and kept asking about the baby, poking my belly, etc. One little girl was especially sweet. She sat next to me every time the class sat down to listen to a story, sing songs, or do other learning activities all together (weather, calendar, etc.). She hugged me. She said she loved me. She was that super sweet and lovey little girl that every preschool class probably has at least one of. Then it happened. After looking at and asking me several questions about my belly, she asked a different question. "Do you have a baby in your butt?" Um. No. But thanks so much Sweet Little Girl. Thanks a million times for asking me that. Man. Kids say the darnedest things.

I really wanted to take some photos of Miss at school, but I was afraid my big camera would be disruptive and wasn't really even sure about sneaking some with my phone. I was supposed to be helping after all. So, these photos aren't from school, but I still love them. It amazes me how quickly my big girl's (and my little girl's, for that matter) skills are increasing. Miss is getting very good at coloring in the lines and can draw a wicked smiley face now.

It was wonderful to have a special day with her at her school yesterday.

Some Random Thoughts and a Tea Party

2012-02-08T21:39:00.000-06:00

Sleep has been somewhat elusive the past few nights. I think I'm starting to get a little bit freaked out about how close the arrival of little Sis is. Example - Two nights ago, I woke up at 12:53 to go to the bathroom. Then I realized I was hungry, so I came downstairs to get a snack. I decided to check my email and look around online a bit while I ate my snack. I wasn't down here for more than 10 minutes, but when I went back to bed I was wide awake and sleep was nowhere to be found. I tossed and turned, but I just could not quiet my mind. My thoughts bounced back and forth between worrying about the fact that Sis is still breech, just like her big sister Lass was at this point in my pregnancy with her, and stressing out about all the things I have to do before Sis arrives.

I am already trying everything I can to get Sis to flip. Most of it is the same as what I tried with Lass, I'm just starting earlier. My idea was that maybe Lass didn't flip until the last minute because she was so big, so I started earlier while Sis is hopefully small enough that something - contortions, music, moxibustion, chiropractor, whatever - will work before I get to the point of needing to try to have my doctor turn her, like she did Lass. My crazy, middle-of-the-night thoughts consisted of lots and lots of worrying that it would be pretty hard to be so lucky as to have a version work twice. There's no real scientific basis for this fear, I guess, but there it is. And it was magnified almost to the point of insanity at 2am. Everyone seems so amazed that the version worked so well with Lass, since it's not really a high percentage procedure (so maybe there is some basis for my fear...), that I can't help but worry that I won't have the same luck a second time, if it comes to that point. Obviously it doesn't help to worry about it, but I do anyway.

And then there's the fact that I have a nursery for Sis that is emptied of guest room furniture and freshly painted, and that's it. So after ruminating about my fears of having another c-section for a while, I started thinking, "Crap, I have so much to do to get Sis's furniture out of Miss's room and put Miss's new stuff in her room and get all the new decor done in all three girls' rooms. And oh geez, I still need to sew Sis's crib sheets, but I can't get to my sewing machine because the old guest room mattress is leaning against it, since we couldn't fit the box spring down the stairs, and what the heck are we going to do with a queen sized mattress and box spring that won't fit into our guest room, which now has to be in the basement because we have nowhere else to have it?" And so on and so on, for a half hour or so, then back to the breech-c-section issue, repeat. The last time I looked at my clock (after getting up again for a second snack at around 3:00) it was about 3:30. I suspect I finally fell back to sleep at around 4.

Anyway... I know there's not much I can do about Sis being breech (other than what I'm already doing obsessively), so I am trying not to worry about that for now. I'm not very successful in these attempts to not worry, but I'm trying nonetheless. And to address my other source of stress, well I just need to get off my rear and start getting some things done. I have started working on some craft projects I have for all the girls' rooms (I'll do some posts soon to show what I'm doing). I've made a good list for myself of things to get done and a Honey-do list for my hubby. He actually requested this after learning that I'm am losing sleep because of stressing out about this stuff. He's awesome. And he has a week off coming up, during which we will not be traveling. So, we'll get it done. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway.

And never fear. In between all the worrying, the contorting, and the crafting, we're having lots of fun. We went to a birthday party this past weekend at Monkey Joe's. Miss was scared of the big bouncy things, but she had fun running around and playing with Lass in this small one.

It was so great to have my hubby along to help. On the way home I thanked him for coming to the party with us, and he said, "What, you mean that was optional?"

After a bit Miss got a bit braver and was willing to try some of the slightly bigger slides.

And Lass is just fearless.

They loved these glasses they got in their goody bags.

It was a fun party, but I have to say I'm not a fan of Monkey Joe's. Not because there's anything wrong with that place in particular, I just don't enjoy trying to keep track of my girls at their current ages in a place where line of sight is so limited. I much prefer taking them to someplace like the YMCA or open gym at the Gymnastics Center where they both take classes to let them run around and burn some energy. Speaking of gymnastics, I love that I can now take Lass with me when Miss goes to her gymnastics class and don't have to get a sitter for her anymore. She loves watching her "Sissy" too.

And finally, I came down from putting Lass to bed last night to find Miss having a tea party with her Daddy. She was so excited to have her tea set out and to serve us tea, including adding cream and sugar according to our requests. It was so cute.

Time with my girls is the best possible cure for my stress about the above issues. But I still really want Sis to flip ASAP.

A Getaway

2012-02-05T21:49:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we spent last week at my parents' house. The girls were amazing during the 10-hour drive, both on the way down and on the way home. I do love the portable DVD player for a long road trip!

We had a great time visiting with my parents. As usual, the girls were mesmerized by my mom. She's the Baby/Toddler/Preschooler whisperer, I swear. Lass didn't even need any warm-up time this visit, which made it even more fun. We made a few trips to the library where my mom works. The first trip was so I could get on the internet for a bit to check out some restaurants and hotels in nearby Nashville (more on this below).

How cute is this little one typing??

The second trip to the library was for story time. The theme for the week was the letter "P," so my mom read "The Princess and the Dragon," we did puzzles, ate popsicles and pretzels,

and played with puppets. There was even a Puppet Parade, which really made an impression on Lass, as she continued to grab my mom's puppets and say, "Mach, mach, mach," repeating the parade over and over at my parents' house for the rest of our visit.

The girls had a blast with these ancient laundry baskets. The things Grandma comes up with...

And I captured a few photos of their attempts at making pouty faces.

The weather was beautiful and warm, so we got to play outside. The girls loved picking up rocks, examining moss on the ground and playing in the leaves and dirt. Lass may have even eaten a little bit of dirt. But just a little.

She was very interested in the birds. She kept saying, "Buhdie! Buhdie, ah doo? (Birdie, where are you?)" and looking in vain for some birds to fly by.

Miss found this rock and named it her "Little Cutie." She insisted we bring it into the house and then that we bring it home.

It has been carried around with other important friends like Oopsie Bear, Toodie, and Twinkers.

Very special indeed.

One of the best things about our trip was that my husband and I actually left the girls overnight with my parents one night and went to Nashville for an overnight date (hence the internet search mentioned above). We got a nice hotel room in Downtown Nashville, went out to dinner, sort of slept in (only until 7:15, but my mom said Lass was up at 6 that morning), lounged around and got an awesome room service breakfast, and then went to visit my brother and his family for a bit, including my brand new nephew who is just 4 weeks old. It was such a relaxing little getaway. I have never left the girls overnight before, except Miss when I was in the hospital having Lass. It was kind of weird, but also kind of awesome. My husband and I both agreed that the next time we are ready to do it again (in another 18 months or so!), we should go for two nights. I agreed, though by the time we were getting ready to go back to my mom and dad's, I was really anxious to see the girls. I missed them a lot. So we'll see about two nights. But the one night we got was fantastic (thanks again mom and dad!). And apparently, my girls barely even noticed we were gone. What a great practice run for when I am gone to the hospital to have Sis.

It was, again, as always, a wonderful time with my mom and dad.

Quickie

2012-02-03T21:44:00.001-06:00

Just returned tonight from another week in the blogging black hole (my parents' house). We had a great visit, and I'll post about that soon. But tonight I'm tired from a long day in the car and little sleep last night, so here's a quickie with a few photos from last week.

Miss has gotten into wearing dresses to school. This is because she likes to wear tights, not because she really cares about dresses. I don't have a ton of dresses for her, since she's never really been into them before, and I tend to think they're a bit impractical for an active girl. I didn't want to spend a ton on new dresses for her, but I found this amazing online consignment store, where I got her three dresses for under $25. Cute, name brand dresses in great condition. I love a great deal (have I mentioned that before?).

And somebody got her very own ballet shoes to be like big sister.

Now they dance together.

No words needed for these next three photos. I'll just say I love them.

And in closing, Miss's new thing (besides dresses) is to inspect her feet for toe jam. It makes me chuckle just to type that. She almost never finds any. I do wash regularly between her toes. But she likes to look for it. Whatever floats her boat, right?

There. A quickie. Night.

Simple

2012-01-26T22:04:00.001-06:00

I have a drawer in my kitchen that contains lids for various plastic containers (many of which are no longer anywhere to be found), some swirly straws, and some popsicle molds. This drawer is located right next to the girls' Learning Tower, and the other day they discovered it. Since then it has provided endless entertainment both for them, and for me. Oh how my girls crack me up.

Miss calls the things in this drawer the stuff for her party. She alternates between having the items in the drawer be for a dance party and for a tea party. But it's always a party.

She turns some of the lids into pretend cakes and sings Happy Birthday to each member of the family in sequence. She pretends to feed various items to Lass, who returns the favor happily.

Sometimes they just marvel at "Mama, everything's blue!" (or green, or purple, depending on the lid) and then they crack up.

I love the simplicity and innocence of what they find entertaining. Hilarious even. They feed off each other and it's so fun to watch. You just can't beat these moments of motherhood.

All By Herself

2012-01-23T22:00:00.002-06:00

Miss graduated to the next level of preschool gymnastics class. She is now in the class where she goes in by herself, without me. I was a little bit nervous how she would do with this, considering how hard it was for her to adjust to going to school by herself. But she just waltzed right into the gym with her teacher like she owned the place.

She rocked it, and I was so proud.

She looks so big and grown up. I just loved watching her do her thing.

And I must admit, I was quite relieved to not have to do the class with her anymore. Running and jumping are not my favorite activities at this point, and I was getting pretty nervous I'd end up peeing my pants in one of her classes.

After her class she came out and was so excited. She went on and on about how much fun she had. She seemed pretty proud of herself too. That was my favorite part. Though watching her holding the beanbag on her head while she walked the beam was pretty fun too.

I Guess I'll Just Teach Myself

2012-01-22T22:23:00.000-06:00

I have been wanting to take a photography class ever since I got my DSLR camera, about 2 years ago. It's a wonderful camera, and my photos improved dramatically just by switching to it from my point and shoot. But I have pretty much been using it on the Auto setting for two years. I've learned a few tips here and there, and purchased some lens upgrades, but I really have wanted to take the next step to using the many settings my camera has to offer.

I grabbed a course book for the local community college a few weeks ago, determined to find a class to take before the baby arrives. I found one that looked really interesting, but the meeting times weren't very good. I found another with a doable meeting time, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. So, I have decided to try harder to teach myself. I have a camera manual, a good book my husband bought me for my birthday (almost two years ago), and lots of helpful online resources. No excuse not to gain some new knowledge and skills.

One thing I've been wanting to do is learn how to use the settings of the camera so I can get more light into my photos without using my pop-up flash, which I have tended to use a lot even though it gives a weird look to the photos. Unfortunately, around here this time of year it isn't uncommon to have a serious lack of good natural light. Luckily, this morning I did have lots of light to get some good photos of the girls without using the flash.

But tonight I wanted to experiment a little bit in the relative dark of our family room. The overhead lights were turned off, so the only light in the room came from one floor lamp next to my chair and the light from surrounding rooms. My wonderful hubby was tolerant as I snapped his photo over and over. I had read a tip that, to let more light into a photo, I should set the aperture to the lowest (or highest? biggest? smallest? I don't get the lingo yet, but whatever) setting. I put my camera on the aperture setting and turned it down (the number got smaller) and got this.

Then I went to the lowest number I could with the lens I was using (1.8) and got this.

I couldn't believe how bright the photos were!

Of course, to get this much light in the photos, the shutter speed was slowed down quite a bit. To give a little bit of perspective, I then switched to the fully manual setting, kept the aperture on 1.8, and then sped the shutter speed way up. I got this.

A little slower shutter speed and I got this.

A little slower.

Then I slowed it waaayy down, and couldn't get it in focus. Just the slight shake of my hand while the shutter was open for so long made it blurry.

A little faster.

Perfect.

Isn't he handsome??

I think I'll do more practicing with the camera on the aperture mode. I think this will be the easiest way to experiment and still get some good photos of my girls. That's really why I take photos anyway.

Paleo Progress

2012-01-20T22:14:00.000-06:00

We have been doing pretty well with our attempts to shift our eating habits to the Paleo diet. Dinner has been easy. We've eaten a Paleo friendly dinner every night for the past few weeks. As I predicted, breakfast and lunch have been a bit more of a challenge. In an attempt to get my girls to eat more Paleo friendly breakfasts and not spend a ton of time cooking in the mornings, I made these cheesy egg muffins using a recipe I found on a website my brother sent me. Here's the link to the recipe.

I actually messed up the recipe because I doubled it, but forgot to double the amounts of any of the ingredients other than the eggs. Duh. They were still pretty good, but a bit dry for my taste. I also used the same recipe (again, doubling only the eggs) to make another dozen egg muffins, but this time I used blueberries (I smashed them up a little bit when stirring them in) instead of cheese. I thought my girls would be more likely to enjoy these, and I was right. They were pretty good, though again, a touch dry for me. I think next time I'll skip the coconut flour, yogurt, and baking powder and make these more like mini frittata muffins, with just eggs, a little coconut milk, and whatever other ingredients I decide to add.

The girls did eat up the muffins, and they also enjoyed to smoothies I made to go with them.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

2 bananas
2 handfuls of blueberries
8-9 frozen peach slices
Approximately a cup of unsweetened coconut milk (I like So Delicious brand, it comes in a carton like milk, rather than in a can)
Blend.
Drink.
I half this recipe for a 3-year-old-sized smoothie.

So, we've had some success with breakfasts. I also made these pancakes last weekend. The girls loved them. There were enough leftover for a quick breakfast on a school morning, but I think next time I'll at least double the recipe and then have some to refrigerate and freeze.

Unfortunately, though I had plans for sausage, hard-boiled eggs and fruit, and a few other good breakfasts, Miss has been asking every morning since the pancakes have been gone for oatmeal. I guess I just have to let the oatmeal run out and then get back into the good stuff.

Lunch has been similar. We've had good days (chicken and corn today, ham and fruit the other day, etc) and not so good (PB&J, mac and cheese for a play date). Surprisingly, I have learned that Miss really likes to eat "sandwiches" wrapped in lettuce.

This from the girl who really won't eat a sandwich otherwise, unless the bread is stuck together by it's contents (PB&J, grilled cheese). If it's not, she just takes it apart and eats each component separately, so we don't do ham or turkey sandwiches here. Unless they are wrapped in lettuce now. I guess her lack of interest in bread sandwiches has turned out to be a good thing, since I don't have to try to get her out of the habit of eating bread so much.

We've done well with snacks, mostly eating different types of fresh and dried fruit, and Miss has discovered a love for cashews. We have only resorted to bunny crackers once or twice when at the store during snack time.

I even developed my own yummy recipe for Paleo friendly hash, which we had for dinner last night.

I had some huge daikon radishes that I thought would substitute nicely for the potatoes in a hash, so I chopped one of them up into pretty small cubes (about a quarter inch to half inch square), browned it up with some onion and combined it with some browned ground venison.

And it worked! The hash was very yummy. My husband even said it reminded him of the yummy greasy corned beef hash breakfast he used to get at the hospital where he used to work and has craved since. I'll take that as a compliment, since the result of my efforts was actually not greasy at all.

Here's the "recipe," though I'll warn you in advance it's not terribly precise with measurements.

Paleo Daikon Radish Hash

One huge daikon radish, chopped into 1/4 to 1/2-inch cubes (it probably ended up being about 3-4 cups once chopped, if you're using several smaller radishes. I included the photos above, so you could kind of see how much).

One pound ground venison or beef

One medium yellow onion, chopped

Low sodium chicken broth (about 1 cup)

2 Tbsp butter

S&P to taste

Brown your meat. Remove it to a bowl but leave the fat behind. The venison had very little fat, so if you are using beef you might need to drain some of this off. I probably had about 2 Tbsp of fat left in the pan. Add the radish and onion, along with about 1/2 tsp kosher salt. Stir to coat with fat, add the butter, then cover and let soften. After a bit I thought it started to look a bit dry, so I added about 1/2 cup of low-sodium chicken broth. When the veggies start to soften, take the cover off and stir frequently until they begin to brown (you should have the pan on medium high or hotter). It took about 20-30 minutes for things to get softened up enough and begin to brown (this might go faster if the lid of your pan has a good seal to keep in the steam, mine doesn't). Add the meat back into the pan along with another 1/2 cup or so of chicken broth. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the radish and onion are soft and nicely browned. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

It was a great warm comfort-food dinner on a super cold night.

And speaking of super cold, I have not really been all that interested in taking the girls out for the past few days because it has just been so cold here. Today it snowed as well, so we had a stay-in-the-house-and-in-our-jammies day. It was nice, though I did start to feel a little bit cooped up after two days of not going anywhere. I felt the need to spice things up a bit, so I brought out the play-dough.

I'll be honest and just say that I really hate play-dough. It's just messy and I find it annoying. What can I say? It's not the most frequent activity in our house. Okay, it's a very, very infrequent activity in our house. But, that makes my girls love it all the more!!

This was her very special creation - A fish! She said she made it for Grandma.

And I'll be honest, now that we have this little plastic picnic table that I can easily bring into the kitchen for them to play on, the play-dough really wasn't that bad. In fact, I could see us doing it a bit more often. Maybe. The girls loved it, so that made it worth it.

The girls also got creative with their dry erase crayons. These things are awesome, BTW. A friend of mine found these for her kids and got some for us too when she learned of my lack of enthusiasm for dry erase markers with a 17-month-old. These are so easy to wipe off most surfaces and they don't rub off nearly as easily as markers, so if you brush against the board you don't wind up with crayon all over yourself. But, they do clean up relatively easily with a wet cloth.

Miss kept asking me what I wanted her to draw with her blue (her favorite color).

This is the look she gave me when I asked her to draw a square. She said, "I already drawed a square Mama."

Well then.

It's supposed to warm up a bit this weekend so we'll be venturing out some. Stay warm!

$1

2012-01-17T22:19:00.002-06:00

$1 can buy some great stuff. A friend of mine told me about these little drums that hang around kids' necks in the $1 section at Target. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the $1 section at Target? Well, I love it. A lot. Today I had to pick up a few things at this wonderful store, so I checked the $1 section for drums on strings. My friend said her kids loved them. Lo and behold.

These simple little drums led to hours of fun today. They prompted a pre-nap jam session/dance party, where both of my girls played their drums, Miss sang (her version of the Snow White song, "I'm wishing, I'm wishing, today, today.") and we all danced.

I also bought $1 star-shaped tambourines and $1 maracas for each of the girls, but the drums were by far the favorite.

After dinner the girls showed off their drumming talents to their Daddy. Miss in particular was really enjoying keeping the beat. She got very excited that we could all play music together, and repeatedly asked, "Should we all play music together?" Daddy played his guitar, I played a tambourine, Miss played her drum. Lass lost interest in her drum after a little while and instead just danced along, wearing a tutu and sunglasses of course. We played fast. We played slow. Miss practiced keeping the beat. We sang. We laughed. These little $1 drums brought so much joy today. And I'm not even talking about my girls' enjoyment of them, which was substantial (before bed Miss asked if she could play with her drum again when she wakes up). I'm talking about me. I had so many moments of, "Wow, look at how awesome these girls are" and "I'm having such a blast" and "I will never forget this" as a result of buying these $1 drums. Who knew? Talk about a cure for cabin fever. These $1 drums, and the fun they brought to our house today, are priceless.

For the Love of Books

2012-01-16T22:14:00.000-06:00

I am an avid reader. This is not news to anyone who has read this blog regularly. I love to read. I read to my girls a lot. And I really love this:

Ever since we watched the movie Snow White at my parents' house last month, Miss has really been into reading her Snow White Little Golden Book. I have read it to her so many times she knows it by heart. Literally. She knows every word of the story. She says words like "envious" and "penalty" and uses adorable inflection to make the voices of Grumpy and the wicked queen. She reads the book to her Oopsy Bear. She reads it to her sister. Okay, she tries to read it to her sister. Little sister usually doesn't listen all the way through. She likes to do her own thing. Miss isn't the only one who likes to read.

Lass has her own favorite books that she looks through or requests to have (insists on having) read to her over and over and over. When the book it done she'll flip it back to the beginning and say "bee-ee," which is her way of saying "please."

Both girls ask to have various books read to them frequently throughout the day. I spend a lot of time reading to them, and it makes me incredibly happy that they love books so much. I think they get sick of hearing my voice reading the books though. If I'm reading a book to her when her Daddy gets home, as was the case tonight, Lass promptly grabs the book and takes it to him to read to her. I could say this hurts my feelings, but after reading the same book five times in a row, it really doesn't.

Last week we went to a play date. Miss spent most of the time "reading" the books of our little hostess. She grabbed one of the girl's stuffed animals, sat it on her lap, and proceeded to tell the stories in the books she found as she saw them based on the pictures.

She has typically had a little village of stuffed "friends" in her bed when she goes to sleep. However, recently it has been more important to her to have her books in bed with her. Yesterday I asked her if we could clear out some of the many stuffed toys in her bed. She said, "sure." The only things she insisted on keeping were her Care Bears and her books. She has at least 10 books in her bed right now. As I've been typing this post, I've been listening to her "read" these books to her bears. It makes me smile. She does this every night and at nap time (if she's not reading she's singing loudly). When she's ready to sleep, she will lay down the book she's reading, saving her place by keeping it open but face down, and do just that.

I don't know how much of my girls' love of books is hereditary and how much of it is just the result of my frequent reading to them. I guess I don't really care. It just warms my heart to see how they enjoy hearing stories or learning from books. When we read we use funny voices or make funny faces. We do lots of question and answer with the picture books and other more educational ones. We comment on, ask questions about or laugh about what characters are doing or thinking or feeling. It is amazing to me to watch their little minds grow and imaginations stretch through reading books. I have so many wonderful books I'm eager to share with them when they get a little older. The Little House on the Prairie series. The Anne of Green Gables series. Little Women. And so on. I hope my girls never lose their love of books and passion for learning.

Cozy

2012-01-14T22:17:00.001-06:00

We're being home bodies this weekend.

I love the weekends when we are all home together. We did get snow the other day, so we're feeling extra warm and cozy, mostly just staying in and having fun.

Daddy is making fire and sharing milk-froth-topped tea, dancing and tickling, playing monster and reading books.

Speaking of reading books, I have two book clubs this week and just started reading the first (600+ page) book on Wednesday. I managed to finish it tonight, and have one more book to get through by Thursday. So I'm making this a quickie tonight. Happy weekend!

Winter Finally?

2012-01-11T20:59:00.000-06:00

We have had the most wonderful weather so far this winter. So far the temps have been mild. In the past week most days have been at least in the 40s. Today was around 50 degrees! So far we have had very little snow. Not even enough to cover the grass yet.

Naturally with such beautiful weather, we pushed nap time back today and played outside after lunch.

Who would miss out on this for nap time?

We can sleep plenty tomorrow. Notice I stressed above that the weather has been great so far? Well, it's supposed to get cold tonight and start to snow. I think we're predicted to get 3-5 inches tomorrow. Honestly, around here in January, that's not really that much. But we probably won't be doing this for a little while:

I'm sure the girls will also enjoy finally getting to play in some snow. But they'll be so bundled, the crazy carefree running and playing of today might be slightly less unencumbered.

This will probably especially be the case for Lass, whose little body will be back in "I-can't-move-my-arms!"status with her snow pants and heavier coat. The girls are quite interested in the snow though, so I'm sure they'll enjoy it when it comes. Somehow we still have a few small patches of the white stuff that have survived the warm weather. Of course the girls went right to them.

"It's cold!"

We'll still try to get out and have lots of fun in the snow when it comes. I'm kind of looking forward to snow angels and snow men and Daddy pulling the girls around on their little sled. Kind of. I'm stocked up on hot chocolate and soup, and The Daddy has been building some fabulous fires in our fireplace on the weekends. So bring on the snow. It can be winter finally. We're ready.

Going Primal

2012-01-08T22:42:00.000-06:00

I have set a goal for myself and my family for the next few months. In that time, I plan to transition our food consumption nearly entirely to a paleo style of eating. All that means is that we will be eating the types of things that could have been available to our long-ago hunter-gatherer ancestors. Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts and things made form these (i.e. coconut oil, almond flour, etc.). No processed stuff. We had gotten pretty good at eating only "real food" a few years ago after I read Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food." But over time, some old habits have returned and the desire for convenience has led me to rely on some easy foods that don't quite fit into the "real food" ideal, and certainly not into the paleo plan. In general, we do eat pretty well and stick mostly to relatively unprocessed foods. But I have gotten back into eating pasta and bread and cereal, when once I had stopped buying and using these foods. It has been easier to make quick cereal or oatmeal for my hungry girls in the morning, rather than cooking eggs and/or bacon or something similar. My girls do love their breakfast "O's."

And for a long time I was pretty good about making lunches of various types of meat, cheese, and fruit or veggie. But my kids started to get sick of lunch meat and chicken, and rather than spend the time getting more creative, I have begun to rely on PB&J or mac and cheese a few times a week. These girls will chow some mac and cheese.

Snacks are usually fruit or yogurt, though when we run out or if I'm out somewhere with the girls, I usually rely on the always-loved bunny crackers.

Though it takes some planning and a few changes to some of the ways we have been eating lately, doing dinner in the primal way is pretty easy. Meat and vegetables. Done. Cut out bread, legumes, cheese. I can do that (cheese is hard, but manageable). The hardest part, and what I really need to put some effort into will be breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Bottom line is, I need to get more ideas and start using them. I can make scrambled eggs in the morning, and Lass ate them up this morning along with some fruit, but Miss isn't a huge egg eater and I know they will get sick of scrambled eggs and hard-boiled eggs. I have come across some recipes for paleo-friendly pancakes (Oh how I love thee Pinterest), using almond flour or butternut squash. So I'll definitely try those too. I have some plans for lunches and snacks as well.

Today I grocery shopped and almost everything I bought was a vegetable or fruit. I got some meat (though not a lot as we have a freezer full of venison), some nuts and a few spices, etc. I did buy some non-paleo friendly items, like a couple of boxes of mac and cheese and some peanut butter and jelly (in case of a melting-down-at-lunch-time emergency!). I feel good about trying to feed my family in a more healthy way. That has always been my goal, and even now I think I do a pretty good job of it. I just want to challenge myself to do better. The past week we have eaten only paleo-friendly dinners, at least, so I'm making progress.

Eating a paleo diet seems to have lots of benefits. I've read about it, but have also seen it at work in my brother. If you want more information about what a "paleo" diet really consists of or why it is a good thing, you can check out the website of Robb Wolf, who seems to be the paleo guru, or that of Sara Fragoso, who has lots of recipes on her blog and whose cookbook "Everyday Paleo" is great. I've also found lots of good recipes by searching "paleo food" or "paleo recipes" on Pinterest (which is my newly-found crazy addiction, by the way!!). This way of eating just makes sense to me, so we're going for it. Though I'm not giving up milk. That's just asking too much.

Membership Has its Privileges

2012-01-06T15:46:00.001-06:00

For months now, I have been saying that I want to rejoin the YMCA. My husband and I were members when we first moved here, because we lived in a rental house and didn't have a good place to exercise at home. When we bought our current house, we set up a nice garage gym area and let our Y membership lapse. Miss was too tiny to do any activities there and we could exercise at home, so we let it go. BUT, now Miss is bigger. She's old enough to start getting into some of the little classes they have at the Y and I really need to keep up with swimming lessons for both of the girls. There are so many good activities for families at the Y. Plus, there isn't a whole lot else to do indoors in our town during the winter. So, this week I finally got myself in gear and went to the Y to renew our family membership. We started taking advantage of it yesterday by going to "Wiggles and Giggles." Our Y has an indoor soccer field, and they open it up twice a week in the mornings for little ones to come and play. They pull out ride-on toys, balls, big mats, and various other things for the kids to enjoy. Not to mention there's lots of room to run. The girls had a blast.

(Quick snack break)

I'm so glad we joined. The girls ran and danced and got to blow off some steam. And we met some other moms and kids there, so I got to visit with some grown ups.

And speaking of visiting with grown ups, my husband and I had a great date night last night. We went to a new sushi place, and it was pretty good. Of course the best part was just being able to hang out and chat with my hubby. Before dinner we went to Miss's school and met with her teachers for our little parent-teacher conference.

It was great to hear all about what she has been doing in school and to see how thorough they are in their assessments of her. And it was pretty cool to hear someone else describe her spot-on and know how much time and attention she must get there for them to be able to really "get" her so well. I loved when they told me how much she likes to sing at the top of her lungs and to shake it when they dance.

No one needs to tell me how much my girls love to dance and that they've got some moves.

Miss got new ballet shoes yesterday. The ones I got her for her Halloween costume had cut into her little heels and one shoe had totally split on the side from being worn so much, so I told her she couldn't wear those anymore. She was so upset and asked repeatedly for them for several days. When I pulled out the new shoes yesterday, I was relieved to find that she loves these just as much even though they're a different style. She immediately asked, "Momma, can you play some music so I can ballet dance?"

So I did. What better for ballet than The Cure??

I got a question in a comment about organizing photos, related to my last post about taking at least one photo a day. Unfortunately, I'm not really great about organizing my photos. Mostly I just dump them into iPhoto. I do "flag" my favorites when I'm going through and editing them, which is how I select the pics I'm going to upload to a blog post or use for something else. Just in the past few days with the start of this new project I have begun putting photos into folders by month, so I will have a little bit better organization of them that way. I also have set a goal to start deleting photos a little bit more so I won't have such an overwhelming mass of pictures. And few years ago I set a goal to make photo books for each of my girls for each year of their lives. Unfortunately, I've only completed Miss's first year book. So making the rest of the books needs to become a priority, and I'm hoping to get my photos more organized that way too. I will make folders for each girl, each year in my iPhoto in addition to making the books. That's it. I don't have a great system yet. Anyone else have a good way of organizing digital photos?

The 365-Photo Project

2012-01-03T20:55:00.002-06:00

I like to read a blog called I Heart Faces. It's a photography blog, and often they have very cool tips or ideas. One thing I read about on Sunday was the 365-Photo Project. The (fairly obvious from the title) "project" is to set a goal to take at least one photo every day for a year. I love this idea, and decided I am going to do it this year, and every year from now on. What a great way to document all the moments, big and small, of my girls' lives.

So far, I've gotten some very fun photos. Sunday morning, Lass woke up really early. We got to spend a little time playing, just the two of us. And I got to kick off my new project with these super cute photos of her in her sister's new play apron, "cooking."

As a side note, Lass has recently started wanting to take her jammies or clothes off all the time. So, there may be a lot of pics in the near future of her in just a onesie. Or more likely, a onesie with some sort of dress up apparel over it.

Yesterday, I got this photo of the girls as they were playing and waiting for some friends to come over for a play date.

And today, my big girl was happy to ham it up for me when I asked her to show off her "Go Blue" shirt after school (big bowl game tonight, after all).

I love this face.

She really wanted a photo in this pose.

And of course, my other beautiful one, crazy hair and all (she pulled out her spout pony this morning).

Here's to a year of great photos of my girls.

Like It's 1999

2011-12-31T21:10:00.003-06:00

Yes, we do love to party around here. The girls have been really rocking the dress up and dancing lately.

So today, we got dressed up (even Daddy!) and had our special New Year's Eve party.

The girls got a few minutes to practice with our noise makers.

Then we did our countdown, yelled "Happy New Year!!" and went to town with the noise makers.

Who cares that it was only 7 pm?

They sure didn't.

We even finished off the party having a "toast" with our special "party drink" in fancy glasses.

The drink was sparkling cranberry juice. The girls weren't really sure if they liked it. Miss kept taking little sips and smiling, but then saying, "It's too spicy!" I think they mostly liked the fancy glasses and having something different.

They thought it was all a pretty big deal. Happy New Year! I'm looking forward to all that 2012 has in store for us.

On Being Pregnant

2011-12-30T22:42:00.000-06:00

Being pregnant is really an awesome experience. There's no real way to explain how cool it is when you feel a little baby kicking in your belly and then get to see pictures of her like this:

Awesome is really the best word to describe it.

Little Sis seems to be growing well so far. She's breech for now, just like her big sister Lass was, but I'm hoping she'll get herself facing the right way more quickly and easily than Lass did. We've entered the third trimester and all is going well. I'm fairly enormous, but that's okay.

I'm used to being enormous. That's just how I carry a pregnancy I guess. All way out in front. It's not uncommon for me to look more pregnant at 6 months than many other people do when they deliver. It's no biggie. It's just the way I work. It is funny though, as wonderful as pregnancy is, it also is an odd experience in terms of how it changes the way people treat you. Of course there are always the ubiquitous "How have you been feeling?" "How far along are you?" and "Everything is going well, I hope?" questions and comments from friends and strangers alike. People tend to be concerned with and interested in pregnant women, and this interest is very well-meaning, kind, and harmless.

However, there are times when I swear I must be wearing a sign on my forehead that says, "Hi, I'm Amy. I'm pregnant. Feel free to ask me very personal questions about my personal choices and bodily functions, tell me your worst labor and delivery horror stories, comment on how huge or small you think my belly is according to your idea of what size I should be, and/or give me unsolicited advice. And sure, go ahead and rub my belly while you're at it." Seriously. Anyone with me here? Here is just a small sample of some of the things that have been said to me or to others I know:

"Geez! Did you mean to have them that close together???" - Said to me in a somewhat snide tone by a nurse practitioner after she asked me about my children's ages during an office visit.

"Oh my gosh! You gained 10 pounds in a month?!?! Wow, that's a lot." - Said to me by a medical assistant after taking my weight during a routine doctor's appointment when I was pregnant with Miss (I then heard her whispering to my doctor outside the door about how terrible my weight gain was. To her credit, my doc never said a word to me about it).

"Wow, my daughter-in-law is at the hospital today delivering twins, and you're as big as she is!!!" - Said to a friend of mine when she was about 6-7 months pregnant.

"You still have three months to go?? Wow, you look like you're ready to pop now!" - Said to me this past weekend.

"Are you sure you don't have gestational diabetes? I had that, and you look like you do." - Said to a friend of mine.

"You'd better be planning to breastfeed that baby." - Said to me by a total stranger in the grocery store when I was pregnant with Miss.

And my personal favorite:
"One on board and another in the oven??? Um, you do know how that happens, right?" - Said to me by a total stranger when I was pregnant with Lass and carrying Miss in a sling above my belly. I have to say though, this wasn't as bad as my friend who heard, "You do know how that happens, right?" from an OB/GYN resident doctor while she was in labor with her third child.

And then there's the belly rubbing. I hardly ever get belly rubs from people I am close to, but those belly rubs don't bother me anyway. It's the people who are strangers or acquaintances who don't just rub or pat the belly but kind of, well stroke it, for lack of a better description. I mean, that's weird, right? Fortunately this has only happened to me twice. Once by a friend of a friend, who started rubbing my belly right after she was introduced to me. And then another time by an acquaintance who noticed I was pregnant very early on with Sis and started rubbing my relatively small belly as she commented about how exciting it was that I'm pregnant again. This is not only weird, but risky too, don't you think? We hadn't really announced that we were expecting, and I wasn't that big yet. What if I was just gaining weight? Very risky. And weird.

Now, I know that for the most part the people who make odd and sometimes inappropriate comments to pregnant women are probably not trying to be offensive. And usually I'm not even really offended by the comments (except the weight one, that one had me in tears). I just think they're kind of funny and like a little puzzling social phenomenon - The "say anything" and "touch freely" policies that often seem to surround a pregnant woman. I'm not the only person who has experienced this, and I've had many laughs with friends about the crazy things people will say to a pregnant woman. I think people mostly are just interested in pregnancy and want to or feel like they should say something to a pregnant lady to show their interest. Maybe. It truly doesn't matter much anyway, as it's such a tiny part of the nine-month wonder of pregnancy. But it does make me chuckle a little. I love being pregnant.

My Own Cute Daddy

2011-12-28T20:58:00.001-06:00

A few months ago we got family photos taken. I love how they turned out.

The girls' personalities just shine through in these.

Props to our photographer Tara. You can check her out here.

Don't they look like little porcelain dolls?

Several of these photos were used on our holiday card this year. The one below was on it. When we were at my parent's house I gave my Mom her copy of the card, and Miss was really interested in checking it out. She was so cute about it. She pointed to my face and said, "Who's this pretty girl?" (pronounced "pwetty guhl"). Then she pointed at my husband's picture and said, "And who's this cute guy?" I of course played along and said, "That's Daddy!" and she said, "Yep, it's my own cute Daddy." I could have melted it was so sweet.

These girls just make me smile.

Santa Came to Town

2011-12-27T15:34:00.003-06:00

We were at the Farm over the weekend for Christmas with my husband's family. The girls got to have tons of fun playing with their cousins.

The grown ups got to have lots of fun visiting. This is a photo of me with my also-pregnant sister-in-law. She is due about two weeks after me. The woman brought O'Doul's. Gotta love a fake beer on Christmas Eve.

And then of course, the Christmas festivities began. We opened gifts with the family, which is kind of crazy since my husband has five siblings. There were 14 adults and 13 kids opening and slinging wrapping paper all over.

It was fabulous.

One of the biggest gift "hits" was this "Rody" for Miss from my husband's parents.

Daddy blew it up and away she went.

It caused a bit of friction once Little Sister noticed it.

She was pretty upset at not being able to ride it right away.

But Big Sister is such a sweet girl, she let her sis have a turn,

hovering nearby the entire time, of course.

And, time's up!

It's a really cool toy.

Finally, Miss got distracted and Lass got to have a bit of time on it. Oh, the holiday drama!

After family gifts, the kids all went downstairs to wait for Santa. In my husband's family, Santa arrives on Christmas Eve before the kids go to bed. They have to wait patiently downstairs for him (while the moms put out stockings and all the Santa gifts upstairs).

When he arrives, he makes lots of noise stomping around and "Ho-Ho-Ho-ing." The kids scream and run up the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before he gets into his sleigh and rides off.

We all got to see him as he ran out of the house and back to his sleigh waiting in the grass. Unfortunately one of the older cousins may have seen him a little too much. He said to his mom something like, "I wish we got to have the real Santa, not the one with dark hair and eyebrows." I guess the wig wasn't quite straight on my brother-in-law!

When we went back inside, of course the girls had a blast with all their presents.

Miss got the two Care Bears she asked Santa for, and they haven't left her side since. Here she is reading one of her new books to Grumpy Bear.

In my last post I wrote about how Miss has been insistent about wearing her "ballerina costume" of leotard, tights, and ballet shoes. The trip to the Farm was no different. I told her she had to wear some nice clothes for Christmas dinner and family gifts, and we compromised by putting her nice clothes on over the ballerina costume (if you look at some of the pictures above you can see her little ballet shoes). After getting her Santa gifts, the "real" clothes were off and she was back in ballerina mode.

I finally got her out of the ballerina costume when we went on a treasure hunt on Christmas day. I told her she needed to wear warm clothes and that her ballerina costume really needed to be washed while we were out.

The weather was chilly but beautiful, and as always the treasure hunt was memorable.

Lass was a bit like the little brother in "A Christmas Story." she was so bundled up she could barely move.

Miss found some shells and some acorns for her "treasures."

She got to check out lots of interesting things, like this deer rub.

She got to examine some mushrooms growing on these trees

And look at these little berries.

Lass fell asleep during our walk in the woods.

Overall, the trip to the farm was a great time for all. And when we came home, the girls found that Santa had been to our house too while we were gone. He left some gymnastics mats, a balance beam, and a baby doll high chair (which so far has only been used to feed pizza to Care Bears).

Oh yeah, Santa left bubble wrap too.

I am still trying to get things back in order here after so much holiday traveling. Yesterday I folded six loads of laundry and I still have more to do! The toys aren't all put away, but they've at least all made it into the house now. The spare room in the basement still has wrapping paper strewn all over the floor. But the traveling was absolutely worth it, and we had a magical Christmas. I hope you did too.

Christmas-ing

2011-12-22T23:04:00.000-06:00

Oh, we are a-Christmas-ing at our house this week. Lots of carols and shopping and wrapping. We even did a bit of crafting, making ornaments out of bread. We started by using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the bread.

Lass mostly just wanted to eat it.

After we got them cut out I used a straw to make holes in them for hanging and we left them to dry out/get stale over night.

Then we painted and glittered them (I mixed some glue into the paint). Yes, I hate glitter. But it is a necessary part of holiday crafting with little girls, in my opinion. So, we braved the glitter. Lass hasn't done painting with a brush yet (unless you count her painting/eating endeavor with the pumpkins at Halloween), so I was just going to let her go to town with crayons and a piece of poster board.

But she saw Big Sister with the paint and was not about to settle for boring old crayons.

She did a great job. She did immediately try to put the brush in her mouth, but refrained when I told her no. Perhaps that's why it wasn't long before she got tired of painting and wanted to get down.

This girl, on the other hand, was all about focus. She painted and glittered ornaments for her babysitters, her two teachers, and her Daddy, carefully choosing the shape, paint color, glitter color, and hanging ribbon color for each recipient.

There are only a few left that haven't yet been given out or put on our tree. I think they turned out pretty cute, though I'm not sure how well they'll hold up. The one Miss gave to her Daddy is already in the trash after Lass tried to eat it and broke off the top of the ornament where the string hole was cut. They are made from bread, after all...

Today was Miss's holiday party at her school. She got to play a game where she tossed a big jingle bell into a bucket to win a present. This is her shy smile after achieving her objective.

She decorated cookies to set out for Santa.

And she filled a bag with reindeer food (which looked like a mixture of oatmeal, glitter, and maybe some flour, with a few jingle bells and cinnamon sticks thrown in). We will be taking this to the Farm tomorrow night.

The girls had lots of fun playing with the Christmas tree tonight. You might have noticed that Lass has a new hairdo by the way.

The barrette just wasn't always working that well, even when she did keep it in her hair.

So we're all about the spouting pony look these days. It works much better and is so stinking cute. You wouldn't believe the number of comments this thing gets when we go out in public.

I did a little experimenting with my fun new-ish camera lens to try to achieve a new photography effect I have recently learned about. It's called "bokeh" and is basically "the aesthetic quality of the blur," or something like that. Look at how the Christmas lights are twinkly and out of focus behind the girls. That's what I was going for.

I love Holiday bokeh!

And I love this.

Check out the leotard/tights/ballet shoes combo on Miss. Notice she's wearing the same leotard in the top photos as well. She has been in one or the other of her two tights/leotard combinations since we got back from Kentucky for almost every moment of the day. It is like pulling teeth to get her to put clothes on to go to the store or to school. She had on that adorable Matilda Jane top at her school party today, and asked to change back into this as soon as we arrived home. She got back on the ballerina kick when my Auntie got her a magnetic wooden "paper doll" ballerina for Christmas. The first night we got home from Kentucky she asked to put on her ballerina costume. I let her put on the shoes and tutu, since it was almost time for bed (thinking these would be easier to get into and out of when it was time for jammies). She ended up sleeping in those anyway, and has slept in some sort of ballerina get up every night since. And she dances the part too. It's awesome.

Tomorrow will bring lots more Christmas-ing, with tons of shopping, wrapping, caroling and then packing and traveling to the Farm, where the Christmas-ing will continue through the weekend. So I'd better get some sleep!

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y'all.

2011-12-21T16:13:00.001-06:00

Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents. I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn't post while we were gone. Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip. I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven't had the time to post. However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for. So. Sorry, I haven't made time for this. But if it makes up for it, I'm posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower...

Anyway. Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day. Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass's very brief encounter with it? I typed too soon. Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for "new jammies," meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing. So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn't make it to Kentucky until Sunday. But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock. They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together. I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week. And they eat it up. Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up. Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents. I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.

Here's a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:

We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children's librarian. I was so proud of my girls. Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

Then Santa showed up...

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn't even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great. We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents' house.

The day of the story time was also my husband's birthday. This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him. A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday. She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level. It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home. In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts? A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite? Floral foam.

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it. It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy's presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon. We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.

And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit. Every year my mom and I watch the movie "Heidi" with Shirley Temple. Some people watch, "Miracle on 34th Street," maybe even "A Christmas Story" or some other traditional holiday movie. Our movie is "Heidi." We know the dialog by heart. This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading. They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes. But I didn't expect much more for the first viewing. This movie takes time to appreciate. My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don't quite appreciate it yet. The girls will get there. Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of "Snow White." I hadn't seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don't quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I'm glad to be home, though I miss my family. I can't believe Christmas is already almost here. Tomorrow is Miss's school party. I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do. This weekend we'll go to the Farm to "do Christmas" with my husband's family. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

Did I Say I Thought Pink Eye Was Yucky?

2011-12-09T14:07:00.001-06:00

Yes, I did. When Miss first started school I typed this post, which I stupidly titled, "Bring on the Ickies" (why would I ever type such a statement?). At the time I was grossed out because I thought she had pink eye, which she actually didn't have, by the way. I was writing about how I knew she would bring home lots of germs now that she had started school and blah, blah, blah. Yesterday I got a much better sense of the truly icky. Picture it. I wake up at 4 AM to Lass's crying. It was a "something's wrong" kind of cry, so I went in to get her thinking maybe she'd had a bad dream or something, and I'd just rock her for a bit. Instead I found that Lass had puked all over herself, her bed, her floor, and then me as soon as I picked her up. Okay. I got it all cleaned up, put both of us in clean jammies, and began rocking her to try to get her back to sleep. Naturally, she puked all over both of us again before I managed to run her to the bathroom and get her over the sink. Again, I get it cleaned up and go back to rocking her. And that's not even the really icky part...

Rewind about 8 hours to Wednesday night. I had received a text message from a babysitter telling me that her roommate had just found out she has scabies. Oh yes. I thought pink eye was gross? No. No, scabies is gross. Gross as in make-my-skin-crawl-give-me-the-crazy-heebie-jeebies kind of gross. Unfortunately this babysitter had been to my house three times in three days, including Wednesday afternoon for a little while while I took Miss to gymnastics. At first I wasn't too worried about it, since this babysitter didn't even know if she actually had it, and I hadn't seen any signs that my girls did, but still. I did vacuum every room where this babysitter would have been, rugs and furniture. And then as I was sitting there at 4-something AM, rocking Lass again after changing both of our clothes for the second time, I couldn't help but imagine a little bit what yesterday might have had in store for me. I pictured two puking girls, perhaps being sick myself, and needing to scour and sanitize my house and medicate my girls to get rid of little tiny mites that had burrowed under their skin and gotten into all of our clothing, bedding, furniture, carpets... Perhaps this was a bit melodramatic, but I was sleepy and my mind was wandering on it's own. And really it wasn't really too far fetched to imagine that could have been my day.

Amazingly, Lass went back to sleep (though I never did - see thoughts running through my head, above) for a little while and when she woke up she had no additional symptoms of a stomach bug. She kept down everything I gave her to drink and eat and was her cheerful happy self all day long. Miss never got sick, nor did I. Score 1 for Mama!

Unfortunately, I did get a text later in the morning that my babysitter does in fact have scabies. Even more unfortunately, I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until 4:30 in the afternoon to find out if my girls or I had it. So, though I tried not to worry about it, I was kind of freaking out that we were infested. There were no real signs that any of us had it, but I started imagining that every little red spot on my girls or any itch I felt myself was a little mite trying to find a home. I started stripping sheets and doing laundry. And then I did the most appropriate and merciful thing yesterday afternoon. I let my girls watch a rare bit of afternoon TV and I called my mom to whine.

TV Glaze

It was quite therapeutic. My mom did what all good moms do. She listened. She sympathized. She made me laugh. What more could a girl ask for (other than having said mom living nearby so she could have come over to help with the laundry, which my mom would have happily done, of course...).

And to make a very long story short, the girls napped, we went to the doctor, and we found out that we do not have scabies. And I learned a lot about scabies that made me feel better all around, like that scabies can't live long at all in clothing, furniture, etc. That washing every article of clothing and bedding in our house wasn't really necessary, though I did it anyway. That scabies show up fast and move fast and itch like crazy. In other words, if you have scabies, you know it. Since we didn't have it and our poor babysitter had not been around for a while, the likelihood that we would get it was nil. Score 2 for Mama!

And, since we did not have scabies, our other babysitter, whom we had scheduled to come over so my hubby and I could get out for dinner, was still happy to come. So we had a nice dinner out and relaxed away the craziness of the day. Score 3!! I am still a little bit shocked when I think about how crummy yesterday could have been and then about how relatively not-so-bad it really was. I feel like I dodged a major bullet!

And to top it all off, since we don't have scabies and my testimony for this morning got postponed (thankfully, because I wouldn't have had a babysitter!), we got to go to a much-looked-forward-to play date with some great friends. My friend had a Christmas cookie decorating play date at her house this morning, and it was a blast. Lass mostly just ate a cookie and played in the frosting.

Miss had lots of fun decorating the cookies and eating them. She had a little bit of a hard time though with the idea that she could only eat one of the cookies she decorated and the rest we had to just decorate and save to take home.

Miss made a special cookie for her Daddy.

A good time was had by all. Hooray for no scabies!

Tomorrow we go to my parent's house for a week. I am so thrilled to spend the week with my Mom and Dad. But, that likely means there will be very little blogging from this girl until we get back, as my parents live in an internet black hole. I'll be back in about a week!

Wednesdays

2011-12-07T21:16:00.001-06:00

I love Wednesdays. I get to spend a little bit of special time with each of my girls on Wednesdays. Miss goes to school and Lass and I run errands or just hang out and play in the morning. Then I take Miss to gymnastics in the afternoon. She loves gymnastics.

Note: All of these gymnastics pictures were taken at least six months ago, probably more like nine months. Unfortunately, I don't have any recent photos of her at gymnastics.

Miss has gotten so much braver and stronger since these photos were taken. She used to be somewhat fearful about doing certain things by herself, like going down the slide, or jumping from a height she perceived to be too high.

In spite of encouragements to try it herself, she used to insist on holding my hand.

Now she jumps from much greater heights by herself. Occasionally she still comes up to a jump that makes her nervous, but with encouragement she'll usually even go for those by herself.

She used to need lots of help doing this "strong arms" move down the beams. Now she not only does it totally by herself, she's fast!

Today she even insisted on trying to do a headstand by herself.

One thing that still makes her a bit nervous is walking the balance bean if it is raised up off the floor at all. But she's even getting better at that. Today I was so proud of her, because although she was clearly nervous, she did walk the whole length of the beam herself. She did it shuffling her feet in tiny, tiny steps, but she did it. And at the end she jumped off and yelled, "I did it!" It was awesome.

Gymnastics class with Miss is a blast and I am always so entertained and awed by watching her learn new things so quickly.

In addition to enjoying spending time with her in class, I like to savor the car rides to and fro. Now that it's dark out when we go, she often comments on the Christmas lights she sees. Tonight we sang to Christmas music. Her favorite is "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Deer" followed closely by the Chipmunks Christmas song. She half-sings, half hums along with that one until the line "Me, I want a hooooola hoooop," which she nails every time.

And since gymnastics class runs right up to dinner time, often we treat ourselves to some take out dinner. Lately we've been getting an extra special treat of Culver's on Wednesday nights, complete with frozen custard sundaes for dessert (mine is still waiting for me in the freezer...) Of course, Culver's has very little post-dinner clean up, which leaves plenty of time for my favorite part of the day, between dinner and bedtime when we listen to music and play. Christmas music and wrestling/chasing/tickling with Daddy were on the agenda tonight.

I love Wednesdays. Frozen custard is calling me.

A Letter to Santa and a Little Elf

2011-12-04T15:58:00.001-06:00

A few years ago, my mom and dad gave us an ornament for our Christmas tree. It's a hollow tube with one end that comes off. It says, "Letters to Santa" on the side. This was the first year Miss was old enough to have an understanding of the idea of writing a letter to Santa to tell him what she'd like for Christmas. So yesterday we wrote a letter. Really, I wrote a letter and prodded her for the things she'd like to ask Santa for. She initially said, "A teddy bear." When I asked what kind of teddy bear, she said, "A pink one." This was news to me. Every other time I've asked her what she would like from Santa, she has said, "Care Bears," even going so far as to specify a few specific Care Bears. I have since purchased said Care Bears. These will be gifts from Santa. So, I must admit I kind of prompted her to include Care Bears and a few other things that "Santa" has already gotten her in her list to him. We also added a section to ask for things for Lass.

Then we rolled up the letter, put it in the tube, and hung it back on the tree. I told Miss Santa would come to get it while she slept.

This morning we got up and went to see if Santa had taken the letter.

He did, of course. Miss thought this was quite fun. I also used this exercise in sending a letter to Santa to introduce the "Elf on the Shelf" concept to our house. I had gone back and forth with myself about whether we were going to have an Elf this year. Once I learned about it, it seemed like a cute concept. Folks seem to have lots of fun with their elves. Miss's school has an elf they have named "Jingle." By the time I finally decided to go ahead and get an elf, I missed the "late November" time period when these elves are supposed to arrive. Oh well. Miss doesn't yet understand what "late November" means anyway. So, I decided to coordinate the arrival of the Elf with the disappearance of the letter to Santa. As in "Santa came last night and took your letter and, wow look!, he left an elf for us." Cool, eh? The book and box for the elf (we got "Christopher Pop-In-Kins" instead of the other Elf on the Shelf that lots of other folks get) were left under the Christmas tree where the ornament was hanging. We read the book together this morning. Then I pointed out to Miss that the box was empty, so the elf must be hiding! She found him pretty quickly (see the little elf below on the mantle in front of the white-framed photo of the girls). She was a little excited to find the elf and tell him "Hello," though I'm not entirely sure she understands the whole thing. It's okay. If nothing else it will be fun to hide the Elf each night and let her find him each morning.

And speaking of Elves... This little elf's sweet personality has just been blossoming! She is such a funny and feisty and loving little girl! Her big thing lately is giving kisses. A LOT of kisses. She'll just walk up and kiss me wherever she can reach me. On my knee if I'm standing. On my big belly if I'm sitting. On my arm if I'm changing her diaper.

She gives kisses just as much to her daddy and sister. She gives kisses to the dog. It makes me melt to see the girls giving each other hugs and kisses. Big sister seems to enjoy the lovins and there is a lot of hugging and kissing between those two these days.

Talk about holiday spirit!

Toy Storage Makeover

2011-12-03T14:25:00.001-06:00

Last week I went to a play date at a friend's house. I hadn't been to her house before. She had the most amazing basement playroom/toy storage system. Huge closets and a wall of shelves with bins and baskets all holding toys sorted by type. It was awe-inspiring. It at least inspired me to finally finish the toy storage redo I've been gradually working on at our house. A few months ago, our toy storage consisted of this:

When Miss was tiny, I started out using a cube-shaped ottoman-type thing that had a lid on it to store her toys (you can see it in the above photo in front of the window). Once her she had her first Christmas under her belt, that was no longer sufficient. So after a while I got the baskets you see under the table below our TV. Then I moved a bunch of toys into a Rubbermade container in the basement. They just kept expanding and expanding. And they were totally disorganized. My family room had been taken over. So, a few months ago I made the decision to buy a few new toy storage items and move everything either down to the basement or into the sunroom. My husband and Miss took care of the assembly.

And the result is so much better.

Family room before:

After:

Far wall of the sunroom before:

After:

Two of the pieces we added were the book cart and the low table (which has been shown in a few other posts as the girls love coloring on it) with the rolling toy bins underneath. We also redistributed our plants to several other spots in the house, and they look much nicer now.

This is the wall along the front of the house before:

After:

And the wall along the back of the house after:

The bookshelf with toy bin at the bottom is our other new piece. I also purchased the fabric baskets to store the girls' play food and dishes. They just happened to fit perfectly in the boxes of one of my old wooden-crates-turned-shelves (just to the left of the doors). We never use these doors to go in and out to the backyard, so having the table and some toys in front of it works just fine.

I am quite happy with the end result. It's nothing compared to my friend's super amazing basement space. But it works. I think the girls like it too. It is more organized so they seem to enjoy their toys more. And they still play in the family room, which is a bigger space and better for running around with baby dolls in strollers and/or shopping carts.

Note the boots in this picture. Remember I posted about getting a great deal on winter boots? Miss loves them!

Without the toys strewn all over the floor in the family room, there's more room to run, and for them to chase each other.

I'm happy to have this great space for my girls to play and color and have friends over. We also moved lots of their bigger toys to the basement, like Miss's tricycle and Lass's cozy coupe car. So they have another space for running and playing and I get to keep those toys out of sight and out of the way. I couldn't bring myself to make the basement into our main playroom because it isn't nicely finished (picture drop ceilings, ugly chair-rail-height paneling, and carpet without padding underneath) and it has no windows. We get little enough daylight here in the winter. I can't bring myself to spend more than a little bit of time in our windowless basement per day. So, this is the perfect solution for me.

The Holiday Spirit

2011-11-28T21:22:00.001-06:00

I'm really getting into the holiday spirit now. That means I'm listening to Christmas music, enjoying the lights and decor, and starting to get a lot of my shopping done, which means looking for good bargains. Of course, if you think about bargains this time of year, everyone thinks about Black Friday. Now, I love finding a bargain. I mean, I really love finding a bargain. But I do not love going shopping when the stores are crowded, let alone when they are jam packed with crazy people fighting over the last "Tickle Me Elmo" or whatever the latest must-have item is for Christmas. Yes, I know "Tickle Me Elmo" was the big thing in about 1996. No, I do not have the slightest idea what hot toys are selling out in stores this year. I don't watch much TV and I don't shop on Black Friday, so I'm clueless about this stuff. And you did read that right. As much as I love a good deal, I do not go shopping on Black Friday. Ever. I especially don't go shopping at midnight on Thanksgiving. What?! The idea of the crowds and insanity makes me feel a little ill. I don't even like going grocery shopping on a weekend or after 4 pm. Grocery shopping at 9 am on a Tuesday when the stores are nearly deserted is one of the secret perks of being a stay-at-home mom. But I digress. Back to the bargain shopping...

I am happy to report that I managed to get three fabulous deals in the past week in spite of my Black Friday boycott. Deal #1 was before Thanksgiving at Kohl's. You may remember that I wrote about my distress over being unable to find a decent maternity blazer to wear to testify in court (you can read about it here if you're so inclined). I essentially was not able to find one and settled for a black cardigan. I have worn that cardigan to court twice, and felt like a frump both times. Then I got subpoenaed again. I finally decided that I need to just buy a non-maternity black blazer in my regular size that I can wear unbuttoned for now and then continue to wear when I'm not pregnant anymore. That way I don't feel bad about spending money on a maternity item I'll rarely wear, and I'll add a staple to my wardrobe that I should really already have. I mean, how can I not have a black blazer? I checked Kohl's last week when Lass and I were running errands after dropping Miss off at school. I found a blazer there. And even though it was before Thanksgiving, it was on sale. I got a great blazer for about $35!! Okay, so this wasn't a holiday gift find, but saving money still gets me in the spirit.

Deal #2 was for this beautiful necklace. This was a Black Friday online sale in this awesome Etsy shop. I am kind of addicted to these necklaces, and I got a super deal on this one. Plus, I don't have to pay shipping because the mama who makes them lives nearby and her son goes to preschool with Miss. Score! Oh yeah, I guess this wasn't a holiday gift find either, but really the sale was too good to pass up.

Deal #3 and the best one yet was a find for Miss. I got her a pair of Land's End snow boots that were regularly priced at about $50. They are on sale for $25 right now. Plus I got a special "Cyber Monday" additional discount code and free shipping. I paid about $18 for them!! Woohoo!

Another thing that has really gotten me into the spirit of the season is buying gifts for some local children for Christmas. Last year we packed shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan's Purse. That is a great cause, but this year I wanted to give to a more local cause. I looked online for some local charities and found out our police station has a program where they match you up with a child, give you the age, gender, sizes, needs, and wishes of him or her. I requested two children and we got a three-year-old and a seven-year-old, both girls. It was so fun to shop for them with my girls! I think Miss is starting to understand the concept of giving to someone less fortunate than us, and she had fun picking out the toys, books, clothes, and other miscellaneous items for these little girls. She kept asking what the little girls' names were that we were shopping for (which of course I didn't know). We got school outfits, jammies, underwear, snow pants and boots, books, a baby doll and stroller, a shopping cart and toy food, and a case of art supplies, along with a few other things. Today we packed them up and took them to the police station to drop them off. Miss even carried one of the big bags full of gifts all by herself. She was so proud and kept declining my offers to help her. She even got a "Junior Officer" badge sticker from the officer at the station. It was such a fun experience.

And finally, to wrap up this post, here are a few photos of my girls getting into the spirit watching football with their Daddy. This photo was taken on Saturday at the beginning of the Michigan vs. Ohio State game. And yes, my hubby was rooting for Michigan on that day.

I love this time of year!

Oh Christmas Tree

2011-11-26T21:58:00.001-06:00

It's tradition in our family to put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving if at all possible. Yesterday, we got it done. The girls took great naps, which allowed me to get the tree up and put all my breakable ornaments on the top half. I left the bottom bare so the girls could help me with the non-breakable ornaments after waking from their naps. They were really excited when they saw the tree!

They dug in to the box of ornaments and random other decorations like it was a treasure chest. Notice that old box. It's probably at least as old as I am. It's what we kept many of these same ornaments in when I was a kid. I just kept them in the same box when I inherited them from my mom.

Miss found and loved these little elves. There are two of them that sit back to back in a boot. Again, these guys are almost as old (if not as old) as I am. They were one of my favorites when I was little too. One of them has a problems with his head falling off from time to time, but I love them and could never part with them.

These ornaments were made by my mom back in the 70s I think. Styrofoam balls (and a few other shapes) with beads and sequins pinned into them. Miss loved this bell, which she called a "Christmas tree." It makes me happy that my girls are putting some of my childhood memories on our tree each year.

Lass mostly just dug through the box and checked everything out.

But Miss was very into helping me by handing me all the ornaments, telling me where to put them, and even putting a few on herself.

It was so fun to decorate our tree with my girls. I love holiday traditions like these. We listened to Johnny Mathis Christmas music. The girls shook their booties to "Jingle Bell Rock" and bobbed and swayed beautifully to the less bop-worthy songs, like "Give Me Your Love For Christmas" and "White Christmas." Our tree is full of the perfect balance of old and new. The garland and many of the ornaments, as noted above, are the same ones that we put on our tree when I was a little girl. We have some ornaments made by my great-grandmother. Plenty of the ornaments are ones I have collected over the years, both vintage and new. And of course, each of the girls has her own little collection of her own ornaments that will grow each year.

I love our tree. Some might think it too cluttered. Some might prefer a more coordinated look. I think this tree is perfect. It speaks of family and history and love and, of course, tradition. To me, that seems the whole purpose of a Christmas tree. Most of all, I love the process of putting it together as a family.

Giving Thanks

2011-11-24T21:37:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving seems to kind of get a raw deal these days. Right after Halloween, the Christmas craziness kicks in to full gear in stores, in ads, and so on. Thanksgiving seems to have been relegated to the position of being nothing more than a signal that it's time for Black Friday sales to begin.

Well, I protest. Thanksgiving may not be as magical and glitzy as Christmas, but it's a pretty darn cool holiday. It's about history, tradition, family, and of course, being thankful for what we have. And I am oh so thankful.

How in the world could I be anything but thankful every day? I have a wonderful husband who is an awesome father to our girls. I have two beautiful and healthy daughters. I am more than halfway through a third healthy pregnancy. I am so fortunate to have been able to conceive and carry two healthy children and to have a third baby girl on the way. Even though this is my third pregnancy, I still marvel at the wonders of growing a little person in my belly. Every time she kicks or wiggles, I can't help but put my hand on my stomach and smile. It never gets old. Never. And I am so thankful.

I'm thankful that my girls have each other and love each other so much.

I'm thankful that my husband works hard every day, and has worked hard for a very long time, so that we are in a position where I am able to stay home with our girls. It's the best job in the world and I am so lucky to do it full time.

I'm thankful for so much more. But today, after spending the day with my husband and our girls, eating food that someone else cooked, watching football, and just enjoying each other, I am so full of gratitude for this. For my family. For our home. For my soul mate. For these beautiful little souls and their baby sister.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Daddy Plays With Dolls

2011-11-23T14:50:00.001-06:00

Have I mentioned how awesome my husband is? I love watching him play with our girls.

He is good at playing baby dolls.

He's better at it than I am. He gets into character, Big Baby, Little Baby, Ariel, or whichever baby or babies he is "assigned," and gets Miss laughing like crazy.

One of the first things she says to him when he gets home from work is, "Daddy, do you want one of my baby dolls?" To which he always replies, "Sure!"

They play and play. Funny little baby doll games that only the two of them "get."

What an amazing Daddy.

Self Portrait

2011-11-20T22:45:00.001-06:00

My girls love to draw and color. I am so happy with this new table I have for them. It has a paper roll and is just the right height for both of them.

Miss always asks me to draw "smiley faces" and pictures of each of the members of our family. I am not an artist. And it's kind of funny to try to draw myself, but she likes it, so I do it. Over and over. Here's my latest "self portrait." Lass decided to color me yellow.

Then Miss thought it needed a little something. She said she needed to add "something to the cheeks."

Then she felt the picture I drew of her Daddy needed to same treatment.

That, and a hair bow.

We've had lots of fun in the past few days with crayons, stamps, and dot markers.

Lass is really getting into coloring more and more.

The trick is in keeping the crayons out of her mouth.

My works of art.

Quickie

2011-11-18T21:30:00.001-06:00

Just a few photos from our lazy day at home.

It's my bedtime. Goodnight.

I Love a Treasure Hunt

2011-11-14T21:25:00.001-06:00

My husband hunts deer. He is a bowhunter, which means he spends a lot of time sitting up in a tree watching deer. He loves observing deer and the other animals he sees while sitting in a tree for hours and hours (this year he saw a bobcat twice). Eventually, he does kill a deer. This year he killed two. Our freezer is fully stocked with venison to last for the next year. This is great, because venison is much healthier to eat than beef. It's leaner and you never have to worry about hormones or antibiotics or anything else weird and gross like that. Some people prefer to get their meat at the grocery store, where they never have to think about how it got there. I prefer venison. I know where it came from, have a good general idea of what it ate, and know how and by whom (my husband and brother in law) it was butchered and processed and packaged.

All this is leading up to the point that we got home last night after spending a week and a half at the Farm while my husband hunted. And also to give the warning that there are photos near the end of this post of some dead deer. The photos also have my handsome husband and adorable older daughter in them, but if you don't like photos of dead deer, you may not want to read this entire post. I'll give a warning right before those photos come up, so you can feel safe reading through the first part of this lovely post if you like.

Since we were at the Farm, Miss and Lass got to see their cousins and spend time doing fun things like going on treasure hunts. We went on an especially fun one yesterday. Because the water is so low, we went to the beach, where there was lots of room to walk around and find treasures.

Miss got to see the work of some beavers.

And my husband found the coolest and biggest caterpillar I have ever seen.

The kids also found a partial skeleton of what was probably a raccoon.

It's so fun to just go outside and turn a walk around the beach or the woods into an adventure. Anything Miss picked up, from a hickory nut, to a shell, to a pine cone could be called "treasure" and she was all into it. Treasure hunts are one of my favorite things about being at the Farm.

The girls had lots of other fun times playing with their cousins over the past weekend too. Dress up was a favorite.

Prior to this weekend when all the aunts and uncles and cousins came down, we were just all hanging out together with my mother and father in law. As I mentioned, my husband spend a lot of time in a tree, but we had lots of fun with him when he came in. We indulged in some special treats, like ice cream, since we were on vacation.

My girls like ice cream.

And we spent a lot of time just playing. Miss had fun with this guitar one afternoon. She has really been into singing lately, often making up her own songs. The other day she started strumming the guitar and singing a song that went something like, "Mommy and Lass and Daddy and Miiiiissss. You're so cuuuute and so adoooorable."

I would tell her what a beautiful song it was and how wonderful her singing is, and then she would stand up and strike a proud pose next to the guitar, come over to me and tell me, "I love you Mommy," and then do it all again. I don't know how many times she repeated this, but it was a lot and I loved it. It was cuuute. And adoooorable.

Okay, here's your WARNING: Dead deer photos follow.

My husband shot a buck and a doe. Miss was quite fascinated with them and asked lots of questions. She was very interested in the fact that "Daddy deer" are called bucks and have antlers and "Mommy deer" are called does and "have ears."

Lass lost interest much more quickly, but of course had fun being outside anyway.

I'm proud of my husband. He's an ethical hunter and doesn't kill more than what we will eat. He practices shooting his bow a great deal beforehand so he will make a clean shot when the time comes. He spends hours and hours observing the deer and learning about them, and passes this information on to his family members, including his nephews who also enjoy hunting. He spent a morning hunting with one nephew and helping him shoot a deer himself. And even though it's a little rough to be away from home with my girls for almost two weeks, I feel fortunate that we are able to go with him when he hunts. And it is completely worth it to know that he had such a great week outside doing something he really enjoys. He is an amazing father and husband, and he deserves that.

Of course, it's fabulous to be home. And you'd better believe I'm going to milk my "sacrifices" of the past week and a half to get myself a nice massage :)

Can't We Just Play?

2011-11-08T14:39:00.000-06:00

I think sometimes the best opportunities for play and learning come from the simplest things.

Like a bowl of gourds. A couple of hedge apples. An acorn found.

Recently I had a conversation with some people about their experiences and thoughts on their childrens' educations. The children of these other folks are older than mine and most of them are already in school. It was kind of shocking to me that these other parents were talking about the importance of sending their children to the right private preschools and grammar schools so that they would be able to get into an Ivy League school when the time comes for college. These are kids in kindergarten, maybe second grade. I had never really heard of such an idea before. I was surprised to hear that some people think that going to *gasp* public school is practically a death sentence in terms of one's later educational and occupational opportunities. My husband and I both attended public schools growing up, public universities and public graduate schools, and I think we're both doing just fine. We both have successful, fulfilling careers (though my professional career is mostly on hold for now, of course). I don't think anything would have been significantly different for either of us if we had attended fancy private schools and/or obtained degrees from Ivy League universities in terms of where we find ourselves professionally and intellectually. We would probably just have a lot more debt.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against private schools. Lots of people send their children to private schools for lots of different reasons. Some for religious reasons. Some are not fortunate enough to live in a place where the public school system is good. We happen to be lucky that where we live, the public schools are great, and I fully intend to send our girls to them. I'm not trying to pass judgement on public versus private schools. I think as parents, we just try to make the best of what we have. I know I want to give my kids every opportunity to succeed and excel. But I personally believe that much of their success and happiness is going to come much more from what my husband and I teach them about life and working hard for what you want than about any particular school we could send them to, or thing we could buy for them, or whether they know their multiplication tables by age six.

After I started thinking about this whole idea, I saw an article that my cousin posted on Facebook. It's from Scientific American and is called "Preschool Tests Take Time Away From Play -- And Learning." It's a great article reminding us that the best way for young children to learn is to play and cautioning against too much stressful testing and direct instruction for preschoolers. Again, this type of super-focused preschool is not something I had ever really thought of before. One of the things I love about Miss's school is that they have time for open play and exploration every day. And they color, they paint, they manipulate water and sand and flour, they glue stuff, they grow plants and have a worm composter, they do yoga. They learn mostly through experience rather than sitting and listening to someone teach them about the geography of Asia or the different periods of Picasso's art. They do preschool at her preschool. She's allowed to go only twice a week and it's fun for her.

I love to watch my girls play. They are so amazing at it. And another thing I love? What I think is the best "school" for little minds? This:

No worries, this nest did not have any wasps in it!

Taking my girls outside and to other places to experience things hands on is the best thing ever. This week Miss has found walnuts and acorns, some whole and some eaten by squirrels. She has gotten to hold some cool fossils that have been found here (in case you're wondering, we're at the Farm for deer hunting). She has seen lots of deer running, some bucks chasing does. She has seen an almost completely eaten squirrel (she said, "Yuck"). She has held deer antlers. Lass has filled and dumped the bowl of gourds over and over. She has picked up rocks and sticks, and both girls have sat and jumped in leaves. With each of these experiences, we have talked to the girls about what they are seeing. Miss asks questions. Their time here and in other places where they can see and touch and play with the things around them provide such rich learning experiences.

My girls don't have to go to Harvard. They can if they want to, but it's not necessary. We will stress the importance of a good education, sure. But they will also learn that the best education comes from embracing life and the world around them and learning from every experience. And for now, we'll play.

A Few Thoughts On Raising Daughters

2011-11-01T22:46:00.000-05:00

I often think about how to teach my daughters to be assertive. In our culture, girls and women are often given the message that they should always be agreeable and nice rather than speaking their mind. I want to raise daughters who will be strong, independent, and confident, as well as being nice people. Daughters who will not afraid to voice an opinion, go against the grain, and stick up for themselves when necessary.

After school today she insisted on getting back into her Halloween costume so she could be "a beautiful ballerina." I love it.

So far this little one seems to have no trouble expressing her feelings about things.

Yesterday at her school Halloween party, I saw a boy push Miss a few times. She came over to me after it happened the first time and seemed quite intimidated. I admit, my immediate instinct when I first saw it was to go and tell the boy to please not push. Instead, I talked to her about how she could tell the boy to please not push her.

This morning, after a week of no tears and great school experiences, she was a bit upset about going to school again. I thought it might have something to do with that boy, so I reminded her of what we had talked about yesterday and how to handle it if another kid pushed or hit her. She then mentioned that the boy had pulled her hair yesterday as well. When I dropped her off at school I informed her teacher of my concerns about what had happened. She was very responsive and reassured me about the issue.

When I picked Miss up, I experienced a major proud mommy moment. Miss's teacher told me that Miss had turned to the boy who had pushed her and pulled her hair yesterday and said, completely on her own, "I didn't like it when you pulled my hair." Simple and direct. The boy apologized. I am so incredibly proud of her!

As a mother of daughters, it is so important to me that they learn to stick up for themselves. To not be afraid to voice disagreement with something they think is wrong or to tell someone to stop it if they are being treated badly. Right now it's pushing and hair pulling. Later on they might have to be assertive if faced with bullying, "mean girl" behaviors, or overly zealous attentions from hormone-crazed boys. When they are older, I will teach them some good ways to knock down the hormone-crazed boys (literally and figuratively) if necessary. Their dad can teach them some good wrestling moves.

But for today, I'm pretty darn proud of "I didn't like it when you pulled my hair." That's my girl.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T21:14:00.001-05:00

The ballerina costume was a hit! Miss loved the embellished leotard and tights. So much so that I almost couldn't get her to put on her tutu because she didn't want to cover up her tights.

But once we got to her party at school she did put on the whole get up. She looked beautiful and was loving being a ballerina. she even seemed to forget about her desire to be a bear. It might have helped that I didn't dress Lass in her bear costume for the party.

I was afraid she'd get too hot, the costume wouldn't fit well in her car seat, and I also wanted to give Miss a chance to bask in her ballerina-ness at her school party before getting them both dressed up for Trick or Treating tonight. Lass didn't seem to care.

They both had lots of fun at the party. There was so much for them to do, but Miss just wanted to play with these orange balloons.

It was fun to see her in her school environment and to see some of the kids she is becoming friends with. The costumes were great too.

When it was time to Trick or Treat we started getting warm layers of clothing on. It was pretty chilly tonight. I knew Miss would have to wear a jacket, because there was only so much we could put on under her leotard and tutu. I barely got her to let me put these pants on but convinced her that they wouldn't show under her tutu, and they didn't.

I got a couple of layers on Lass, knowing that she would be nice and snug in her fuzzy bear costume.

Fuzzy bear costume...

After Miss decided she wanted to be a ballerina for Halloween, I thought for a long time about what costume to get for Lass. I kind of wanted something that would go with a ballerina, but couldn't come up with anything. When I saw this bear costume, I figured it out. A bear. In a tutu. A dancing bear. What could be a better costume for my tutu-loving girl??

I was happy with the way the embellishments turned out that I added to Miss's leotard and tutu. The felt flowers were cheap and easy, and I just pinned them on so they can easily be removed and the leotard can be worn for gymnastics class and possibly future dance classes. Plus they helped tie the unmatched pinks of the leotard and tutu together a little bit. I didn't realize how different the colors would be when I ordered them, but hrough the magic of felt rosettes, they work just fine.

All ready to go!

Gotta love a wagon.

I think Lass looks a lot like me in this photo. Sometimes I see it and sometimes I don't. I see it here. Am I crazy?

Trick or Treat!!

The girls did a fantastic job going up to the doors of our neighbors and following the drill. Miss said, "Trick or Treat!" and "Happy Halloween!" and "Thank you!" very appropriately. I was proud of her and couldn't help remember last Halloween how we could not get her to say, "Tick-a-Teek!" for anything when she went up to the houses.

The girls enjoyed the fruits of their efforts this evening.

Happy Halloween!

During the Commercials...

2011-10-30T21:18:00.002-05:00

It's been a great weekend.

Quality time was plentiful.

Daddy's girls.

To top it off, tonight is the premier of "The Next Iron Chef." I'm typing this during the commercials. It's an awesome show. You should watch it.

I managed to finish working on Miss's ballerina costume just before the show started. I had to make the best ballerina costume ever to convince her that she wants to wear it instead of her sister's bear costume. Hopefully she'll love it. A little sneak peek.

A while ago a drew my Chopped ingredients of canned tuna, panko breadcrumbs, and tomato paste. I made dinner with them tonight. Panko-crusted tuna cakes with roasted red pepper and corn relish (the tomato paste was in the cakes and in the relish). It was yummy. I only have a few minutes during the commercials, so I'll post the recipe later. Here's the dish.

Halloween tomorrow. Miss's school party and trick or treating with both girls. Can't wait!

A Week??

2011-10-29T13:00:00.001-05:00

I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post. I have had a lot of work come my way and a 2.5-year-old who hasn't napped all week, so I guess blogging has escaped me for a few days. I always miss it when I don't post for a while. I love sorting through and choosing the photos for a post and then writing about my favorite thing in the whole world, my family. So, what have we been doing this week?

Going to preschool with absolutely no tears whatsoever.

A little bit of baking and cookie decorating.

A fabulous play date with wonderful friends, where the cookies were gobbled up.

Trying on Halloween costumes. Miss has been planning to be a ballerina for weeks. Last night we tried Lass's bear costume on her, and now Miss wants to be a bear. I should have known that would happen. But she is still excited about being a ballerina when I tell her about how we're going to do her hair and what she will get to wear. She loves wearing a leotard and has a special fondness for tights. Plus I told her she can play with Lass's costume after Halloween if she wants, so she seems happy with the current situation. For now at least.

We've been enjoying fall.

The weather has been crisp, but we are trying to still get outside a bit before it gets really cold. The girls love to play with our pumpkins.

And while showing off her muscles power lifting pumpkins, Miss saw this:

Then she just had to show off her hunting/stalking skills.

Lass got in on the fun for a minute, but seemed to not really notice or not care about the bunny, because she ended up walking on by.

Miss got pretty close to the little guy before he did this funny little stretch and hopped into the middle of this big evergreen tree.

The girls just moved right on to the next fun thing. Most of the leaves are gone from our yard, and I've pretty much closed up the sand box for the year. I guess mulch is the next best thing to play in.

We've just being doing our thing here. Watching "Go Blue" today. Happy weekend.

Vacation at Home

2011-10-23T22:02:00.000-05:00

For the past week, my husband has been on vacation. Usually when he has time off work, we go somewhere. We live far away from our families, and think it's important to see them as much as possible, so we are often traveling to visit someone. This week, for the first time in a long time, we vacationed at home. It was wonderful.

We got to spend lots of great quality time with the Daddy. He was able to come to Miss's gymnastics class and to the girls' music class.

I think he really enjoyed observing both classes. Miss has really blossomed in her gymnastics class and both girls really get into their music class. Miss loves to sing and play the instruments and Lass is a total ham.

Today we went to brunch, where we got to carve pumpkins for Halloween. Miss and Daddy did all the work on our pumpkin. Last year the Daddy did it all by himself, but this time Miss was able to really participate.

She helped scoop out the guts

and decide what type of face to draw for the Jack-o-lantern.

Lass enjoyed wandering around and looking at some of the other pumpkins.

Miss was even able to help cut out the pumpkin face.

She was pretty happy with the finished product.

We also spent lots of fun time with Daddy at home. Tonight Miss got to try out her new dot markers by drawing with Daddy.

They drew snakes and faces and lots of grapes and blueberries.

It has been a great week.

It's a Girl!!!

2011-10-22T12:51:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, we had our ultrasound and got to see Baby. We were thrilled to see a healthy little one, growing and developing right on track so far. We were also able to be able to find out Baby's gender. Though I was pretty convinced that this baby was a boy, we were very excited to see that we are having another girl. Miss and Lass will be having a Sis! I'm so happy to imagine how wonderful it will be for all my girls to grow up with sisters so close in age. Though I don't have a sister, I've heard they're pretty great. I love that my girls will have each other. I'm picturing some pretty fabulous tea parties, slumber parties for which we don't even need to invite any guests, and lots of great girls' days out. They can do each other's hair and share clothes and be each other's best friends. I love having girls.

And just in case you're feeling badly for my husband, swimming in a sea of estrogen and nail polish... Don't. He is thrilled to have another girl, if maybe slightly terrified. One of the first things he said after our ultrasound appointment was something about needing to build a 20-foot wall around our house. But he loves having girls too. He's gotten very good at playing Care Bears and dress up. And our ladies are total Daddy's girls, especially Lass right now.

We may or may not someday have a little boy. Of course we'd love to have a boy, though we would be perfectly happy with all girls too. And even if we never have a son, I'm quite certain my husband will never feel like he's missing out on anything.

Our girls love to watch football with him on Saturday mornings,

though he is not terribly happy with their choice of teams. So far Miss has expressed her preference for "Go Blue."

For the record, when I bought these shirts for the girls, I wasn't in search of Michigan wear. I was shopping online for a few things for Miss for school and I happened to see these on Old Navy's website. I actually did look for Iowa shirts on there too (I'm not entirely sure I would have bought them, but I did look). No Iowa shirts at Old Navy.

And in case anyone was wondering, when Michigan and Iowa play each other in a few weeks, the girls will be wearing neutral clothing. Maybe I'll just dress them in Maize-colored shirts, since both teams share that color.

We try to keep our rivalry all in good fun around here. But I have to admit I was very excited that Miss burst out singing the Michigan fight song, completely unprovoked, in Target a few weeks ago.

Whichever team our girls choose to root for (it'll probably end up to be the Badgers anyway...), we still all love to watch football together. And they love to be outside with their Daddy.

They don't mind getting dirty or playing a little rough. Miss loves to try to climb trees.

Yesterday we were taking a look at a house on the water. Miss went out on the dock with her Daddy, and when he told her it was time to leave she said, "No, I want to fish. I don't want to go!" My hubby will teach them to fish and even to hunt if they are interested. Miss had her first archery lesson yesterday.

I was really bothered the other day when Miss was looking out the window, watching my hubby shoot his bow. She said something like, "If I was a boy, I could shoot like Daddy."

I was quite upset by this statement, and puzzled, because I have never said anything like this to her, nor have I heard anyone else make such a statement to her or in her presence. So I don't know where she came up with the idea that she would have to be a boy in order to shoot a bow, or do anything else.

Right away I told Miss that she didn't have to be a boy to shoot a bow or do anything else, that she could certainly shoot with her Daddy, she just needed to get a little bit bigger. My husband was so upset when I told him what she'd said, he took her out the next day to shoot with him. I guess she didn't need to be bigger, at least to watch and get the sense that she was doing it.

We will always teach all of our girls that they can do or be whatever they want, if they work hard.

And they will learn to do all sorts of fun things with their Dad.

So definitely don't feel badly for my husband. A few people have made comments like, "Oh how exciting that you're having another girl! But your poor husband!" Of course, they mean this with all good intentions and kindness. But, hell no he's not poor! To quote a song by Greg Brown: my husband is "a man who's rich in daughters." Yes, we are very rich indeed.

Little Sister's Day Out

2011-10-18T21:11:00.000-05:00

After dropping Miss off at school today (with no tears, by the way, hooray!!), Lass and I had a special morning out. We started out visiting a local cafe where they have a big play area. At first we were the only ones there and she almost didn't know what to do with all these toys to herself.

Almost.

It is so fun to spend some special time just with Lass. She has the funniest little personality and it feels good to be able to shower all my attention on her. She seems to just eat this up and really shines during our mornings together.

After playing for a while and having a snack, we went to our favorite local library story time.

The children's area of this library is wonderful. Lass loves the huge stuffed animals they have (yes, that is a stuffed dog) and the cozy sitting area with bins of board books just her size.

During the story time the kids and moms sit in a circle on the floor, do lots of songs, and of course hear a story. Lass likes to stand in the middle of the circle and dance during the songs. She is such a little ham! Then the librarian brings out lots of books, balls, blocks, etc. for the kids to play with for a while. It's a great time for her to play with kids near her own size and for me to get to chat with some other moms.

My littlest (for now) and I had a wonderful morning together.

A Long-Lost Friend is Found

2011-10-15T14:25:00.000-05:00

Have you ever found a long-lost friend? I mean, truly lost touch with someone dear to you and then found them again after many years? This happened to me. Eight years ago, I lost contact with a dear friend, "C," due to phone problems and cross-country moves. I tried to find her several times. Back then, I don't think she really did much with email. Not sure if she even had an email address, so I couldn't just send her a quick message with my new number and address. I tried good old-fashioned snail mail, and that didn't work either. When Facebook came out, I searched for her with no luck. I even searched the friend lists of people I thought she would surely be friends with if she were on FB. Nothing.

Yesterday was another friend, "S's" birthday. I popped over to S's FB "wall" to wish her a happy day, and whose name did I see there also sending her birthday wishes? Yes, my long-lost friend, C. I just about fell out of my chair in my haste to send her a friend request. Then I waited nervously to see whether she would accept my request and "friend" me. See, I'm not a huge FB user. I don't choose to be "FB Friends" with everyone I ever knew. I don't necessarily want to be found easily on FB, so I don't put my maiden name in my profile, nor do I use a photo of myself as my profile pic. And due to one of the many and seemingly arbitrary changes that FB has made recently, you can no longer send a little message when you request to be someone's friend. So, I was nervous that C wouldn't know who I was and wouldn't friend me.

I needn't have feared. The next time I checked my FB page I saw a happy and heartfelt message from C that just about made me cry tears of joy. Evidently, she has missed me too.

The last time I spoke to C, I was finishing my internship at the end of my doctoral training program. I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. She was already married and had four little ones. Now her kids are so big. One just graduated from high school! So much has changed for both of us. I can't wait to hear more from her and get caught up on everything that has happened in the last eight years. My heart is so happy because I have found my dear friend again.

Although I don't use it a ton, right now I am thanking Facebook with all my might.

Rainy Day Ride and a Recipe

2011-10-13T22:15:00.001-05:00

Today was rainy. The girls were a little stir crazy after dinner tonight, so the Daddy brought in their wagon for a little ride.

They thought this was just about the coolest thing. Then it broke, and they had fits. But we colored and read books and did puzzles the rest of the night, and all was well.

On a totally unrelated note, several weeks ago I posted about my last "Chopped" ingredients. If you recall, these were Duck breast, Avocado, and Gouda cheese. I used the ingredients to make dinner a couple of weeks ago and have forgotten to post about it. I made Duck and Gouda Hoagies with Avocado Spread. I didn't write down the recipe, thinking I would post about it while it was still fresh in my memory. I have a pretty good memory, but this one might be a little fuzzy.

My ingredients:
4 duck breasts, skin removed
1 avocado
Gouda cheese, sliced
Salt and Pepper
Flour
Vegetable oil
1 Shallot, finely chopped
Maybe one or two cloves of garlic?
About a half cup of dry white wine
Mayonnaise
Hoagie Buns
One apple (optional)

I started by slicing the duck breasts crossways into about 1/2 inch-thick pieces. Then I dried these, sprinkled them with salt and pepper on both sides, and coated them with flour. I heated my pan over medium high heat, added about a tablespoon of oil, and put in the first batch of duck pieces.

I browned the duck pieces on both sides, then removed to a plate and continued with the other pieces in batches (adding a bit of oil with each batch).

After I got all the duck pieces cooked and set aside, I put the shallot in the pan to soften. I can't remember if I added a couple of pressed cloves of garlic after the shallot was soft. I think I did. If so, I would have waited until the shallot was soft, then added the pressed garlic and stirred it around until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Then I added the wine and scraped all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. I let this reduce a few minutes. Then I put this mixture into the blender with the avocado, some mayo and some salt and pepper and tried to puree it to a really smooth texture. I should have used my Magic Bullet, because the blender didn't do a very good job of pureeing the small pieces of shallot. So, the final outcome of this avocado-mayo spread was a little lumpy. While I was working on this spread, I preheated the broiler, put some duck meat into a each of two hoagie buns, topped it with slices of gouda, and put it in the oven. Once the cheese was melted, I pulled them out, put the avocado spread on the top of the bun, and it was done. I should have used a lower heat to melt the cheese, because my buns ended up getting burned, but the result was still good. I also should have toasted the buns beforehand, because the bottom bun was a bit soft relative to the super crispy top bun. Oh well. I was in a hurry...

On my hoagie I put slices of apple, which I thought added a crunch and sweetness that was very yummy. My husband is not a fan of apples on sandwiches, so I left them off his.

This was a successful meal, if not the most dazzling thing I've created. The best part was the way I cooked the duck. I relied on a strategy learned partly from my dad and partly from my cooking class in coating the duck with flour. This really helped to hold in some of the moisture and the result was very flavorful, tender, and moist duck meat. Score. The least successful part of the dish was the avocado spread. It ended up a little bland, and the chunks of shallot didn't do anything for it. If I made this again I would probably skip the shallots and pan deglazing all together and just use the avocado, some mayo, and some fresh herbs, maybe a little lemon or lime juice to brighten the flavor of the spread and keep it smooth. My apologies for the haphazard "recipe." This is the best I can recall, several weeks later.

My husband has been working nights for the past two weeks, so we have been neglecting to select the ingredients for my next challenge. Tonight is his last night to work (hooray!!), and we finally remembered to choose the goodies. What did I end up with? Tuna (canned), Panko bread crumbs, and Tomato paste. I already have a good idea what I'm going to do. If it works, I'll try to bring you that recipe with a bit more precision.

The Well-Dressed Belly

2011-10-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

This is what Miss wore to school yesterday.

Adorable, yes?

Why is it that I can find such wonderful clothes for my children, and yet it is so difficult to find simply practical, comfortable, and attractive maternity clothing for myself? Set aside the fact that I spend much more time and am much more interested in finding fabulous things for my kids. That's a given. But, I should still be able to find decent stuff to help me look nice through the 6-ish months of my pregnancy when I can't fit into my regular clothes anymore. Right?

Now I will concede that I have found some nice casual and everyday work clothes for this pregnancy. I refused to spend much money on maternity clothes when I was pregnant with Miss, which resulted in me buying mostly junk that is no longer wearable this time around, and the clothes I have from my pregnancy with Lass are mostly not appropriate because of different seasons. So, I had to buy some new maternity clothes recently. Plus, with this being my third pregnancy in three years, I really was just sick of looking dumpy. This time I invested in a few nice new items, and some great jewelry (check out this Etsy shop), so that I will be a little more comfortable and stylish for the next 5-6 months.

Unfortunately, I have never needed, and have not wanted to invest in a maternity business suit, so when I got the call two days ago that I needed to appear in court to provide expert witness testimony today, I had nothing to wear! I went to every maternity store nearby and several department stores with pitifully small maternity sections. I couldn't find a suit, though I'm not sure I really expected to. I would have settled for a nice blazer that I could wear with the black maternity pants I already have. But no. I found one jacket that was horridly ugly and much to short to wear over any other maternity shirt without it hanging out the bottom (and one can't exactly tuck a shirt in to maternity pants). I didn't have time to find and order anything online. I was frantically searching the stores for other nice business attire and was shocked to find how casual most of the "business" maternity clothing out there is. Now, I suppose for many work situations, the things I saw would be fine. But surely there are pregnant women out there who have to wear a business suit or at least a jacket to work on a regular basis. Right? Where are these elusive suits? Why is a maternity blazer so horrid-looking? These are the questions I was asking myself as I walked into court this morning wearing my black pants, a button up shirt I purchased when pregnant with Miss (couldn't even find a nice one of these in the past two days!), and a black cardigan sweater that sort of, very loosely, approximated a business-jacket-type look. I felt woefully underdressed.

Fortunately, my testimony went well. I'm sure no one else was nearly as concerned about my lack of a suit as I was. And most importantly, my girls looked adorable today.

Happy Fall

2011-10-08T22:22:00.002-05:00

Fall is my favorite season. I love the crispness of the air, the colors of the leaves and their lazy floating to the ground. I love pumpkins and apples and squash and chilly morning trips to the farmer's market where all the season's bounty can be found. I love open windows through which cool breezes bring the scent of burning leaves. Fall makes me feel cozy and productive. Like I want to snuggle up with my Loveys, but also to get out and go do stuff.

Last year around this time, we went to a local farm where they have pumpkins, apples, animals and a big rustic playground. We had a lot of fun, though I ended up a bit overwhelmed at the end of the day, struggling back to the truck with a newborn wrapped to me, a toddler and a big bag of apples in one arm, and pulling a wagon completely loaded with pumpkins with my free hand. Thank goodness for the kindness of a stranger who came to our rescue. Here we are in a photo from last year.

We went back to the same farm yesterday. My how things have changed. We've upgraded our equipment,

and the girls have grown so much. They were both charged with the task of picking out our pumpkins.

Lass took a relaxed approach to the job.

Miss, on the other hand, was all business.

She searched through all the pumpkins and even hauled the ones she chose toward the wagon.

We met up with some good friends, and had a wonderful day.

Back at home in the afternoon, we took full advantage of the glorious weather and the mass of leaves fallen from our beautiful oak tree.

The girls had a blast jumping and rolling in the leaves. Daddy got down in the leaves with the girls too, and even got buried.

And yes, I got buried too. I don't know the last time I played in a big pile of leaves. I was a little shocked by how wonderful the leaves smelled and how the scent transported me instantly back to my childhood. I had completely forgotten that smell. It's a fantastic smell!

Happy fall to you!