Sneak Peek

Here they are, in all their Halloween glory! More coming soon. . .

Two Kids, One Boppy, A Bumbo, A Million Attempts, Approximately Three Decent Pictures

Will sometimes thinks that Laura is his pet. That is, when he chooses to acknowledge her very existence.



"Hey guys! I'm almost sitting up! Try to refrain from kissing your computer screens, although I'm sure you'll be tempted."

Sorry for the spotlight effect, but this was taken this morning after breakfast and the light over our table isn't good for pictures. Out of about 20 pictures, this is the only one they're both smiling in.

Happy weekend! It's going to be a happy weekend around here because Daddy's coming home this afternoon. . . finally.

Shhh! Can you hear that?

No? It's the particularly blissful silence that is the result of two children taking virtually unheard-of simultaneous naps. Don't get me wrong, I love the various noises and loudness of both of my babies but a break from it every once in a great while is nice.

It's been a while since I've written anything so I'm having trouble remembering where I should start. I'm also single momming it this week so if I seem more frazzled, that may be part of the reason. Another part of the reason that I could possibly come off as disjointed and/or nonsensical is that I become significantly dumber with each child that I gestate and birth. I'm afraid that if I had another, someone would find me wandering aimlessly in the street, unable to navigate my way back home since my directional and logical thinking skills have been seriously depleted in the last three-odd years. Seriously. Why does this happen?

Anyway, this may not really have a clear focus or good organization, so just bear with me here.

Mom spent the past two nights with us and thus relieved me of the minor hassle of carting poor Laura to Will's school every morning (right at her nap time, conveniently), getting her out of her carseat, taking Will to his classroom, putting her back in her carseat, going home, getting her back out, and getting her in bed for her nap. And then doing the whole series again for pickup time and swimming lessons. I feel really bad for her, since I'm always waking her up early from a nap to go get Will or trying to keep her awake for a belated nap due to some other activity. She's not nearly the sleeper Will was at her age, but I think that these constant disturbances are really taking a toll on her napping. She remains, despite all of this, the very sweetest girl on the planet. Her latest sweet maneuver involves making her little flirt face at whomever happens to be looking at her (while I'm holding her) and burying her face in my neck or shoulder. She's so incredibly different than her big brother, which I still find surprisingly surprising.

Will got a Max and Ruby (Wooby) DVDV (not to be confused with a simple DVD) from Grammie and to say that he's obsessed is putting it mildly. Perhaps our restriction of tv has backfired? Whatever the case, he loves those freaking bunnies. I'm surprised that he hasn't requested to change his Halloween costume from the Cat in the Hat to Max. (Speaking of Halloween, Will isn't quite sold on the hat part of his costume, so he may just end up being the Cat Who Was Supposed To Wear a Hat.) He was supposed to wear a costume to school today but opted out in favor of "regular clothes." I thought he might be sad about it when he saw other kids dressed up, but he wasn't at all. He's definitely a funny little creature. Once his mind is made up, there's not really any convincing him to do anything other than what he's already decided he'll do. (I'm with him on the costume aversion, though.)

Another of Will's new potential vocations: music critic. He has decided that he has a (strong) opinion on every single song we hear on the radio to and from school and swimming. Today approval was given to Rick Springfield and Annie Lennox, with an outright veto of "Paradise City". He also likes rap and country music, which is fitting since he's a dweller in extremes. I'll keep you posted on future likes and dislikes.

While I have other various odds and ends floating around in my brain, I'll stop here and pick up where I left off sometime later. There's probably not much silence left for me to revel in, so I need to enjoy it while I can.

The Pumpkin Patch Isn't Just a Store in Ceredo

This picture pretty much sums up the personality of each of my kids. Will is cheesing it up and Laura is just not happy. I realized when I was looking back at these pictures of them together that I don't have all that many pictures of both of them. I guess for a while it was more of a safety issue, since Will isn't exactly gentle, but now I don't really have an excuse. Except maybe for the fact that Laura is only happy for half-minute intervals at a time.  (I'm kidding. She's still grumpy but also still sweet as ever. I tell myself she's just a girl who knows what she wants and doesn't like it when the rest of the world hasn't been clued in. I just wonder how much of my personality she'll inherit.)

We went on Will's first-ever field trip to a farm/pumpkin patch on Monday and Will was, as usual, the most excited, exuberant child there. I'm fairly certain that he didn't cease moving the entire time we were there, save the time we were on the hayride. The animals seemed to be a big hit with him and he keeps talking about being bitten by a goose, but I never saw anything like that happen.



He liked the chickens okay, too. Here he's saying "Hi chicken!" He really is one of the friendliest souls I've ever been around.

While the animals held his interest for a while, he quickly made his way over to this beast when he spied it. He examined every angle of it, asking what each part did, where the engine was, what the ladder was to, what it was for, who drove it, on and on and on. He does this with every kind of moving vehicle or object with working parts. It's a compulsion for him, to understand what something's parts are and what they do. I foresee lots and lots of taken-apart electronics and appliances in our future, which I don't really mind. If he has Dad's mechanical aptitude and is still interested in such matters, I'll keep him supplied with an endless stream of household repairs.

Changing gears, it's Will's third week of swimming and he's now able to swim to the side from about the middle of the pool, a huge accomplishment considering he's only had ten lessons so far. He loves being in the water and I can tell a huge difference in his confidence and comfort level in the water. His teacher is pleased with his progress and says that once the hey-I-like-this-swimming-thing lightbulb clicks on, like it seemingly did overnight for Will, it's all just a matter of how quickly he'll begin to put everything together. I know some people think this kind of lesson is cruel for kids, but I have to say that these have been by far the best swimming lessons Will has taken.

Laura has decided to become a regular old poopy-pants and thus our new diaper sprayer and I have become bff. I'm still glad we made the switch to cloth, even with the added bonuses of post-eating-solids poopy diapers. While we're on the subject of solids, we've now added green beans, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and plums into our puree rotation and she seems to like most of these options. She's really becoming a pretty good eater, which I never thought would happen, based on her earliest encounters with regular food. She appears to not be anywhere close to giving up the breastfeeding and I'm happy to keep nourishing my little wiggle worm, gladly contributing to her tiny little thigh rolls.

I'm trying to edit a really long video of Will's swimming lesson yesterday, so hopefully it'll be here for you to watch soon. . .

Hard to Believe

Just looking at these pictures, it would be hard to believe that this sweet little thing is actually a grumpy pants about 80% of the time. I forgive her, though, in large part because she probably got this from me.

I also forgive her because she's really freaking cute. (And I'm not even going to add the usual "of course I think so because I'm her mother" or "I may be biased or partial" bit because a fact is a fact. Her cuteness is undeniable.)

It would also be hard to believe that anyone could have a bad start to their day or week by looking at this face first thing in the morning. That is unless, of course, you also happen to be the mother of her big brother, who tends to consistently negate such thinking.

Fall Festivus for the Rest of Us

Last weekend was spent in WV with cousins, cousins, and more cousins, and some grandparents-and great-grandparents-thrown in there, too. (And a Desitin-caked chair, but more on that later.)

Here are some of these cousins enjoying a day at the Wayne Fall Festival/Festivus (I added the Festivus part myself):

Please notice that Will has been cursed by my lack of height. He will always be the shortest amongst this crowd, except for his sister who will likely end up about my size. Also please notice that there is candy being eaten, a cheese face being made (with bonus head-tilt) and a screaming baby being held up by her daddy (it's kind of like Where's Waldo?). With seven little ones age four and under, getting a good picture of everyone takes the planets aligning, a waning or waxing crescent moon, the appearance of Haley's comet (see, my online astronomy class taught me something after all!) and an Act of Congress. But we try anyway.

We got there just in time to watch the parade, which Will was surprisingly ambivalent about. He had talked all morning about seeing elephants and clowns at the parade so he may have just been a little underwhelmed about it all when he realized that it was mainly cars, trucks pulling trailers with people on them, a horse, a tractor, and, for the absolutely deafening finale, every fire truck, ambulance, and assorted emergency service vehicle within a 25-mile radius blaring their sirens. Seriously, I had to walk down the street a ways to get Laura's ears out of the din. But here we are at the parade. Nothing says small-town America, at least to me anyway, like a parade.

(Please don't judge my sunglasses. They are not intended to be of the Cool persuasion. They are prescription and there weren't many options. I realized that all my squinting was probably aging me rapidly, so I broke down and got some sunglasses. They have changed my life. I will never be sunglassless again. Also, a tip:  for the illusion of a flatish postpartum stomach, wear your baby in a front carrier. Never take her off. It's better than Spanx, except that Spanx tend not to have explosive bowel movements or the ever-present spit-up stench.)

While it appears not to be so, Will actually enjoyed the rides.

More rides, more cousins, more fun.

Since Laura hasn't been fairly represented by these pictures, here she is. I dare you to look at that and not smile.

(PS. For anyone who doesn't know the origin of Festivus, it's from a Seinfeld episode. I'll let Mr. Costanza further explain:

Frank Costanza: "Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way."
Cosmo Kramer: "What happened to the doll?"
Frank Costanza: "It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!"
Kramer: "That must have been some kind of doll."

"As I rained blows upon him" could be one of my favorite phrases ever . . .)

Author Authority

Will is newly interested in the authors of his books. It started with his Dr. Seuss obsession, in which we would always read the title, followed by the "by Dr. Seuss" that's on all of his books in rather distinctive writing. For a time he thought all books were authored by Mr. Geisel but it appears that he's finally come around to the idea of multiple authors in the world.

We're pretty big fans of the Gerald and Piggie series. They're written by one Mo Willems (who, in case you don't already know, also happens to be another great children's author/illustrator). The last time we read a Gerald and Piggie book, I pointed to the author's name on the cover of the book and asked who the author was. Will answered with some degree of exasperation and/or pity: "Sherwin Williams."

Can you tell that we paint fairly frequently around here?

Worth the Eight

Whenever I want to feel really old, I just remember how long I've been married.

Eight years today. Eight whole years. One-fourth of my life.

And while most people say things like "eight years ago today, we stood in front of our family and friends, looked soulfully into one another's eyes and promised. . . yada, yada, yada," I am not most people and sap makes me squirm. So instead, I give you eight highlights from these eight crazy years.

1) The big plaid couch. This couch was a hand-me-down from my parents. It weighed about four tons. It was gargantuan. The couch was with us for our first two apartments in Denver but we got rid of it before move #2 there. The getting rid of it involved shoving it down the hallway (it barely fit) and into the stairwell outside. Then we dropped it from the second story, almost hitting an errant passerby in the process. This would have resulted in a seriously injured passerby. Not to mention that it probably wouldn't have been all that fun to spend our first anniversary incarcerated. (Nothing says "happy anniversary" like an involuntary manslaughter conviction.) We left it by the curb down the street for what we thought was large item pickup day but it stayed there for a week or so before it disappeared. We snickered every time we passed and saw that it was still there. Oh, the joys of apartment living . . .

2) The world's loudest fire alarm. In apartment #3, a truck hit the sprinkler system in the parking garage in the middle of the night and set off our fire alarm, which could only be described as deafening. My manly husband sat up in bed, screamed like a girl (and I don't use that phrase often, as I think it's kind of obnoxious) and pawed at me for a good ten seconds, until we realized what was going on. Then we laughed hysterically for about half an hour until we went back to sleep, the ensuing silence punctuated by our intermittent laughter as we relived it again and again. I still picture what we must've looked like and crack up.

3) Cantaloupe in the shower. We bought a cantaloupe at the store that didn't make it in with the rest of the groceries. It stayed there for a few days and became a little bit of a joke. Then someone (?) kept putting it in odd places where I'd find it unexpectedly, like our bed or the shower. It kind of sounds silly, writing about it, but I swear it was funny.

4) Eight years, three major moves, five smaller (within the same city) moves, five states, buying three houses and selling two. I'm tired just thinking about it, all the packing, unpacking and chaos. I'd be perfectly happy if we never moved again.

5) Moving here. We love our neighborhood. We never want to leave. It's the perfect place to raise a family and it's about as idyllic as it gets neighborhood-wise.

6) The secret language of our marriage: "Tollbooth!," "Do you know who you're talking to?," and a million other things that no one else would get. Or find even remotely amusing.

7) April 2nd, 2007, 3:24 pm.

8) March 28, 2010, 10:57 pm. These last two are my favorites, even if #7 has driven me to the brink of insanity here lately. They are the product of eight years full of talking, fighting, compromising, ignoring, embracing, celebrating, laughing, shouting, pouting, loving, hating, rearranging, ribbing, needling, pinching, poking, prodding, discussing, remembering, forgetting, scheming, planning, dreaming, seeing, believing, and above all, staying right where we are. To my husband of 80% of a decade: thank you for staying, for being the one person who has always just gotten me, in every sense of that word. Happy anniversary.

Swim, Swam, Swum

(Swum, I think, has to be one of the oddest words in the English language. I don't know that I've ever actually used it despite the fact that I know it's correct.)

Will has been going to swimming lessons since Monday and he's so far learned the basics of floating on his back, which is a pretty big skill when it comes to swimming, especially for a three-year-old. He's not crazy about it yet, and still kind of flails about some reaching for his teacher but it's really kind of crazy how far he's come in three days. In a few short weeks, he'll be able to swim/float/swim until he can reach the side and climb out of the pool. And in another few short weeks, he'll have to do it fully clothed, since kids most often fall into water while wearing clothes and the point of these lessons is for him to be able to get out of the water in case of an emergency. These are pretty intense swimming lessons but Will has done pretty well, providing plenty of laughs along the way.

Another laugh, albeit unrelated to swimming: Will was drinking his smoothie at breakfast yesterday and said, in all seriousness, "Well, hello smoothie. I can't wait to drink you." Jamison said he hoped he doesn't start saying that about meat and the like since that may be a little bit creepy. Agreed.

And, finally, in news that probably three or four people really care about, Laura has expanded her mealtime repertoire to oatmeal, apples and squash. Carrots are going to be added tomorrow. I think she's more interested in eating her fingers but she's done okay so far. Nothing like Will's voracious appetite at this age, but I'll still take it.

We're headed to WV tomorrow for a trip that involves the Fall Festival and other such fun. It may even involve a night out for Mommy and Daddy, which hasn't happened since I don't know when. (And I mean "I don't know when" literally. I can't remember the last time we did anything. Enough with the bellyaching, right?) I'll maybe try to write something while we're there. . .

It's Probably Time

It's probably time to move to a big kid bed when you're able to help take your crib apart.

It's probably time to for me to admit that she looks like her father. The same father who just proposed building a "super antenna" that takes up our entire furnace room in order to avoid ever getting cable. Let's just hope that she gets my practicality. And sparkling wit, obviously.

Just how weird are we?

Pretty weird. That's the short answer. Allow me to explain.

Did you hear mangirl squeals of delight yesterday evening, wherever it is you reside? If you did, that would be my husband, who was inordinately excited about this delivery we received on our porch late yesterday afternoon. (While the bins themselves don't seem particularly squeal-worthy, what they hold is enough to bring Jamison home from work before 10 pm.) Can you take the suspense any longer?

Well, suspense no more. They were full of fresh, mainly organic fruits and vegetables, some of which are local. (I know, "eating local" is so ubiquitous and cliched now but in our defense, we've been farmers' market people since our Denver days.) It's a delivery service that we've signed up for and, truth be told, it is admittedly pretty nifty. It's basically like the farmers' market delivered to your door every Thursday. We signed up for a small bin that we'll get weekly and have added milk, eggs and yogurt as weekly staples. You can also add various other grocery items (granola, grass fed meat, canned goods, even onesies and bumper stickers, etc) to your delivery, which we did this week as I'm having a baby-food-making frenzy this weekend. (It really is endless excitement around here, isn't it? Feel free to come visit our House of Fun anytime.) It saves us quite a few trips to the store, though, and that's especially handy when those trips involve two little ones who aren't exactly thrilled to be grocery shopping.

So that's Reason Number One Why We're Weird. Reason Number Two:

Yes, those are cloth diapers, wipes, covers and our diaper pail liner. Yes, I took a picture of them after I washed them. Why? Because I get a strange sense of enjoyment from cloth diapering. It's way more fun than disposables, despite the added effort of washing, drying, folding and putting them away. I also am just the tiniest bit self-righteous about it. It's not for everyone, I know, but I'm really, really glad we just went ahead and did it.

We'd considered using cloth with Will but it was one of those things we didn't get around to for one reason or another but I knew this time around I needed to take the plunge. It turns out that it's really easy and the diaper covers come in such happy colors and prints that I can't imagine going back to boring old disposables full-time. (Although we do use them at night as I have yet to figure out a way to make cloth work for that long a period of time. In the near future, though, I hope to be using 100% cloth 100% of the time.) And as an added bonus, I got to pick out some cute flannel to make reusable wipes! (I'm by no means a master seamstress but the wipes are so easy to make that I can't imagine there would be anyone who couldn't whip these up themselves. And they also come in handy as burp cloths and tissues if nothing else is available.) And you don't want to get me started on my homemade cleaning products and our soapnuts, in addition to the various nuances of cloth wipes and diapers. I could go on for days. I'll spare you, though.

Moving on, here is something that isn't weird at all:

Laura is feeling much better now and we can breathe a sigh of relief. She's back to being our little smiley face, for which I'm infinitely grateful. I think I've given her eight million kisses and lots and lots of squeezes to show her how relieved we are.

And, finally, this one is just a little bit weird. (Please excuse the chewed-up granola in his maw.)

Further proof that he is a strange bird:

If you look really closely, you will notice something under the door. It's Will, asleep on the wood floor, right next to his door. I could hear him breathing and I thought he was moving something back and forth on the floor or some other sort of activity he uses to amuse himself during his "rest" time. But then I realized what it was. He couldn't possibly be comfortable but it appears not to bother him, since he's sleeping away as I type.

Hopefully your weekend will be a bit more comfortable, though. I'll be back soon!