We’re having a big time with Grandma and Grandpa.
I’m so glad my parents were able to come up a bit early and wait with us here.
Waiting Can Be Fun
Family
Happy St. Patty’s Day
We have had amazing weather this week. We’ve been busy soaking it up.
Swinging and running and climbing. It’s been wonderful. Lass wakes up in the morning and one of the first things she says is “‘side? ‘side?” asking to go out and play. My girls definitely love to be outside.
I don’t think I really even need to describe how much fun we’ve had in our yard the past few days. The photos say it better than I could anyway. But I will say that one of the great things about being outside is that I can often sit in the grass and watch as they get exercise and have a blast running around. Sitting is my friend right now. I’m at 39 weeks and large.
We have taken some walks too, as I’m trying to get the ball rolling here, but sitting and blowing bubbles or just watching my girls chase each other, or show off how fast they can run, or play with sticks or whatever. . . Well, it’s nice. I want to be very lazy right now. Don’t judge.
We got decked out in green for St. Patty’s day and played outside a lot more today. It ended up being 80 degrees here. In mid-March. Beautiful.
We played with shamrock stickers and ate a special shamrock treat after dinner and took a walk by the lake.
I had purchased a really cute Good Luck Bear Care Bears T shirt for Miss to wear today. It says, “Hug Me, I’m Irish” and has shamrocks and of course a Care Bear with a shamrock belly badge. I thought she would love it. She flat out refused to wear it today and instead picked out her own green outfit.
Miss wanted to share a shamrock sticker with her Daddy.
Oh well. At least the shirt was only $5 from Walmart. Maybe next year. And the outfit she picked out almost matched.
We had a fun day. Nice and lazy and loaded with good family time. Whether you’re Irish or not (I’m not, but my kids are), I hope you had a great St. Patty’s Day too.
A Getaway
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.
My Own Cute Daddy
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
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.
A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y’all.
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.
Wednesdays
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.
Oh Christmas Tree
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
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.
I Love a Treasure Hunt
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 🙂