7 Months

Age: 7 months

Current Skills & Accomplishments:  Crawling (6.5 months), Sitting, Eating O's, Babbling, First Tooth

Loves: Swimming, chasing my sister, playing with paper

Skills in progress: Standing/Cruising,

Goals: Eating meat and finger food, walking

Random 3-year-oldness

"I've got blisterds on my rankles"

A Tale of Two Elmo's

When Mini Me was a baby (I have no recallection of exactly when) she got one of these. I have no idea from who. While her interest in Sesame Street waxes and wanes, just like all her other interests, her devotion to this Elmo has not. She has slept with it every.single.night for at least 2 years, probably more. It is her lovey. The object that she needs to fall asleep, to hold when she is scared or sad, and that goes everywhere with us.

Needless to say after 2+ years, he is pretty beat up and filthy:

I have washed him several times, and he comes out looking just as dirty as when he went in. His arm is starting to come off and he now has a crack in his bum. Why? Because it's where the tag used to be. And, for some reason, she adopted rubbing the tag (his 'tail') as a comfort measure when she is tired, scared, or sad. So, it's gotten worn away to nothing.

So, worried that we were nearing the end of this Elmo's last snuggle (or possibly some life saving surgery with a needle & thread), the call went out and a new Elmo arrived on the scene.



But.....

The tag is in a different place. Apparently, that makes all the difference in the world. And, at 3 years old, she clearly can tell the difference between the old Elmo and the new Elmo. No fooling that kid at all. She will play with the new Elmo, but it is no replacement in any way, shape or form to her old Elmo.

If ever old Elmo bites the dust, you will all know by the sobs that you will undoubtedly hear, no matter where in the world you are.

Me Monday

My first step of Me Monday's is joining a gym. I am so excited about this because it will serve several purposes:

• Getting in shape (duh!)
• Having a break from the girls during the day (mental health MUST!)
• Playgroup, swimming (complete with waterslide), classes for the girls
• Awesome outdoor splashpad & pool this summer

I am so excited to start working out again. It's been way to long, and I swear that I am going to rock a bikini this year...despite having 2 kids and being a few months shy of the big 3-0!

::nom nom::

What a week it's been!

Sweet Pea has learned to crawl. She has gone from wobbly and unsure of herself to confident, determined and fast this week. She has also made huge strides in her sitting ability.

To top off the week, her first tooth started to poke through! Her bottom pearly whites are on their way in. One has broken through and the other is almost there!

Inspiration and Perspiration

One of my (not-so-secret-anymore) ambitions is to be a famous blogger. Not necessarily a mommy blogger, but perhaps politics or something along those lines (that college degree in Poli Sci might not be useless after all!)


Mommy blogging is fun. I am certainly proud of my little ones and enjoy being able to share little bits of our daily life with family and friends scattered around North America. I am TOTALLY GREEN WITH ENVY when I read this blog. Her blog is awesome and is my inspiration.


So, I'm going to pick up on a couple of features that she has: "Thankful on Thursday" and "McFatty Mondays".


Over the past few weeks, I've been reading her Thankful on Thursdays and love the idea of taking the time to just pause and reflect on the little things in life. (In all fairness, she got it from this blog, which admittedly, I've never read). Most of my days seem like nothing more than crisis management. And, I could certainly benefit from taking a few minutes to really think about all the little moments that I may have missed among the chaos.


I'm going to change up McFatty Monday into My Mondays because it better reflects my goals. I'm not really in it to drop pounds. I'm committing to doing something for myself on Mondays. Whether it's going to the gym, blogging, going out for drinks, my knitting group. Something. Anything. That does.not.involve.the.kids.

So, watch for these new theme days and some additional work on the blog design.

CRAWLING!

It's not smooth or refined, but she does it!

Week In Review

Monday:  Momma up at 4am to finish last minute packing & prep.  Movers arrive at 7:20am.  All stuff loaded by 9:15am.  The girls and I head to Pixie Hollow, met the movers there.  Movers are unloaded and out the door by 1:30pm.  Woo Hoo!  (Oh, and the movers were FREAKING AWESOME!  It was so fast and easy.  And, one of the guys lives 4 doors down from our new house!)

Wednesday:  Mini Me had her last swimming lesson, so we drove back to the old place....it took 2 hours and 20 minutes for a 1 hour 30 minute trip.  Thank you rush hour traffic.

Thursday:  Checked out the new library.  Mini Me was very worried that they wouldn't have a train table like our old library.  Not only do they have a brand new train table, but they also have a fish tank and gerbils, a craft table and of course, books.

Friday:  Cable guy comes.  Window was 8-11am.  He was here at 8:15.  So far, so good.  Then..he was here for TWO HOURS.  Seriously.  And, we still don't have cable in our bedroom because the converter box we brought with us (after I specifically asked when I set up the service) will not work here in Pixie Hollow.  And, if he gave me one, we would have gotten charged for it.  If I just call, they'll give it to us free of charge.  (I'm still trying to figure out how that makes any sense....)

Saturday:  Dinner with hubby's friend from work and his wife.  They are expecting their first child in a few months.  Thankfully, both our children behaved perfectly, so they weren't terrified or anything.  Phew!

Sunday:  Mini Me's first (of many, I'm sure) tumbles down the stairs.

(And, we have a crawler!!!!!)

Burnt Bagels and Barely Brewed Coffee

In the move to the new house, I decided to ditch our old toaster and coffee maker and get new ones.  Granted, I was not really upgrading to nicer ones, just newer ones.  For the life of me, I cannot make a bagel without burning it or make coffee that doesn't taste almost undrinkable.  I'm working on it though, as it seems to be a bit of trial & error.

Here are some pics of our new place, which is still a disaster, but you'll get the idea.  I'll post a formal house tour once we're all set up.

The Playroom

There needs to be a sign on this door to use caution when opening lest you be engulfed by an avalanche of miscellaneous toys.

Our Bedroom

The Kitchen

The Living Room

The Dining Room

Mini Me's Room

You'll have to trust me for now that Sweet Pea has a room, she was sleeping and I wasn't about to go wake her up to get a picture. 

Hope everyone enjoyed the tour of our disaster zone house!

Better late than never

Our Easter Egg coloring experiment this year was OK.

Besides some blue fingers,

An overly eager child,

And a Mommy who completely flaked on the glitter (duh, you need to sprinkle it on while the eggs are still well, or else it won't stick....), I think they turned out just fine.

Despite the fact that she's not smiling, she really was happy about getting to eat a chocolate bunny for breakfast.

To burn off that sugar, we took her to the zoo. It was a beautiful day, and some good quality family time. Happy Easter!

 

On the Move (A.K.A-Tax Free Liquor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

It's time.  In a mere 10 hours, the movers will be here and our lives will be packed into a truck and relocated.  With all of that, comes lots of work to be done (just so you know-there are 20 windows in my new place...guess what I spent my weekend doing??)

Anyway, we'll be on a blog-post hiatus for a few days.  We'll be back next week!

Social Butterfly

That's my girl. Social butterfly extraordinaire.

When we were leaving the McDonald's playspace, a little boy she had been playing with came up to her while I was putting her shoes on.

Here's how the conversation went:

Little Boy: Are you leaving?

Mini Me: Yeah, we have to take my sister to the doctor.

Little Boy: Are you coming back?

Mini Me: No. Maybe we'll come back tomorrow. Will you be here?

Little Boy: OK

Mini Me: See you tomorrow!


Um, no. We will not be going to McDonald's again tomorrow, but it's nice that she schedules her own playdates. Maybe I'll have her take over my social calendar as well. LOL

What is wrong with people?

I took Mini Me on our weekly trip to McDonald's today. We were waiting in line to order, and a little old lady comes up to us and is looking at Sweet Pea and was talking to Mini Me. Then she said to Mini Me, "What is your brothers name?" And, Mini Me simply didn't respond. I think she was a little confused. So, I interjected and pointed out that Sweet Pea is a girl. To which the lady responded, "But she has no hair!?"

Um, she's 6 month old. And, for the record, she was wearing a not-so-subtle pink v-neck polka dotted shirt. Not many boys can pull off that look, regardless of how little hair they have.

Similar thing happened when Mini Me was about the same age. She was wearing a bright pink onesie, and was sitting in the shopping cart with a bright pink shopping cart cover and a little old man asked, "Has he had his first haircut yet?" Um, no, she hadn't. (In fact, Mini Me didn't have her first haircut until she was almost 2 years old.)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

This is from a couple of weeks ago, but here's what happens when Mommy tries to put Sweet Pea on a schedule and cuts out her 5pm cat nap by making 5pm snack & table playtime while Mommy makes dinner....

"I'm not happy with this, mommy"

"I don't think this is going to work, mommy"

"zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Home

We have lived in our current town for 5 years. I have lived in our current state for 8 years.

It has never felt like home.

For the past several years, I have assumed that the only place that would ever feel like "home" was in fact, "home". My home state. And, for years, I have been trying to persuade my better half to move there. Not to my home town, mind you, but the state itself.

We were actually starting the process just before the whole economy came crashing down.

But, I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and that even the most horrible situations will somehow lead you to where you are meant to be and to the people that you are meant to know.

I have found that to be resoundingly true in my life and today it was reaffirmed yet again.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I can get lost on a straight road. Seriously, my lack of navigational skills is astounding. It took me weeks months years to finally stop getting lost after we moved here. And, still, if I don't really pay close attention, I can still easily veer off in the wrong direction. (I still have to think clearly about getting on XYZ South when I need to head north...baffles my mind).

Back to my point: I have only been to our new town a couple of times, and have never driven myself. Over the past 2 days, I have been out & about in our town, and haven't gotten lost once. I know it's ridiculous, but for me it's huge-I feel comfortable in our town. We have made friends already (and we don't even have a single piece of furniture in our house yet!).

While the place we will live for the next year is not our "forever" house, I feel like we belong there.

And, that folks, is the best feeling ever. We're finally going home!

Destination: Tinker's Nook, Pixie Hollow

As I may have mentioned, we are in the middle of relocating from our current town to Tinker's Nook, Pixie Hollow.

Daddy has been in there since Monday and Mini Me was missing him desperately. So, we had planned to take a trip up on Thursday to have lunch with him and drop some stuff off at our new house. We only had one set of keys, so at lunch, Daddy gave me the key, and the plan was that before we headed back, we would swing by his office and leave the new house key in his car.

Mini Me loves her new house and didn't want to leave. Once I finally got the kids packed up and in the car, Mini Me realized she had forgotten Elmo, so I had to go back and look for him. Sweet Pea was beyond exhausted and needed a nap. So, I was a bit flustered trying to get everyone settled down.

You see where this is going, no?

Away we drove and by the time we got to the highway, both kids were, thankfully, asleep. Awesome-two hours of time to listen to whatever I wanted to on the radio. It was a good trip, and we got home a little before 5pm and started unpacking. That's when I saw Daddy's extra set of car keys in my bag.

Yup, I forgot to swing by his office to leave him the house key. CRAP!

I called him and he was headed out with a buddy from work for a couple beers, so he wasn't headed right to the house anyway. So, I quickly got everyone changed (oh yeah, while I was on the phone telling him I was in another state with the house key, Mini Me managed to pee her pants), pack up some overnight stuff and away we went...back to Pixie Hollow. Not exactly what I had planned for the night.

When we were about 20 minutes away, and *just* after we split off the main highway, Mini Me informed me that she needed to pee. But, she said she could wait. There wasn't really anywhere to stop, and because it was getting dark, the side of the road was not really safe either. So...I drove as fast as I reasonably could (Note to any friends driving up to visit: The Pixie Hollow state police are no joke! They are always out and always doing their job-so watch out!)

I thought we were doing great. We pulled off the exit onto our street. We were two blocks away from home when I hear, "It was just an accident, mommy. It's ok, we'll try again next time."

D'OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup...I now need to clean my car and her carseat.

So, we (unintentionally) spent the night in Pixie Hollow. No way was I turning around and driving home again. This morning, we headed home and arrived without incident this time. Yes, I remembered to leave him the key!

We are all eagerly anticipating his return for the weekend. One week down, one to go before the real move.