Molly walking 2

Here are Molly's crazy walking skills again. :)

Yesterday was my first day…

…in FOUR months without using crutches at all!!!  I walked into a small store, put Molly in the shopping cart and almost cried it was so easy to shop like that.  I am so incredibly excited and thankful.  The best thing is being able to walk around the house holding Molly.  (The ironic thing is that she started walking everywhere a few days ago so now she suddenly wants to be held less!)

I’ve already gotten the question twice yesterday: when am I going to start running again?  DON’T THESE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND???  My goals right now have nothing to do with running.  Running is not anywhere on my radar screen.  My goals are to be able to carry loads of laundry, to climb the stairs confidently, to walk wherever I want without strategizing how to complete a task with the fewest steps, to be able to shop at a store like Target without using the electric buggy, to be able to sit in a chair without pain, to get cleared to be able to stretch and do yoga, to chase my kids outside, to be able to run to pick up Molly when she is in danger or falls, to garden, to take the dog and kids on walks, to go on hikes as a family. 

I haven’t been officially cleared by the doctor to be off crutches (that comes Monday), and I do have the sense I might have done a little bit too much yesterday… but still, yesterday was a very sweet day and hopefully there will be more to come.

Hanitizer

Hand + Sanitizer = Hanitizer

Tucker is losing his cute little words, but this one is hanging around, and I’m certainly not correcting him anytime soon!

Bay-Bee

Molly’s favorite word is “baby.” She pronounces it with a husky kind of voice, drawing out the syllables. Three months ago “baby” meant a doll or her favorite bunny lovey but now her use of the term has broadened to include anything that she wants. If she is sitting in her highchair asking for “baby” and pointing to the counter, who knows what she wants, but chances are it is some exciting food item and not her lovey.

I’ve been trying to get a video of her asking for baby because it is the quintessential Molly moment, but it is surprisingly hard to catch even though she says it all the time. Partially this is because if I don’t drop everything to go look for what she wants when she says “baby” she enters into hysterics. Have I mentioned that mealtimes are sometimes tenuous?

Here is a video of Molly toddling around. She is using walking as a mode of locomotion more and more, switching primarily to walking in the past few days. The video was from a few days ago and doesn’t do total justice to her efforts because her sleeper made her keep slipping.

The Best Post I’ve Read in a Really Long Time

My sister-in-law just sent me the link to this post, and it is the best thing I’ve read about motherhood in a long time, about the nostalgic old ladies who come up to us young mothers in every store, telling us that they enjoyed EVERY moment of parenting.  I literally laughed till I cried when I thought about one day being a nostalgic old lady myself and instead coming up to that young mother with the cherubic hellions in her shopping cart and choosing my words a little differently: “It’s helluva hard, isn’t it? You’re a good mom, I can tell. And I like your kids, especially that one peeing in the corner. She’s my favorite. Carry on, warrior. Six hours till bedtime.”

http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/04/2011-lesson-2-dont-carpe-diem/

Thanks for the link, Liz!!!

Ikea Trip

We went to Ikea to pick up a bookshelf/room divider for our dining room.  This excursion has been on our radar screen since October so it was no surprise.  We went into the store at 10 am, I told Austin it’d take about an hour.  We left the store at 11:05 am with the bookshelf we wanted and a few other great deals on things I’d been looking for off and on.  The kids had a great time playing in the kids area, and enjoyed hot dogs on the way out.  Successful trip, right?

Austin’s narrative:

How could our trip have possibly been any harder?  It is a good store but Jackie just needs to go there healthy, by herself, for a whole day.  We were going there for ONE thing until Jackie started looking around, leaving me with the kids without a cell phone so it was unclear if we would be able to find each other. We got the wrong cart and had to switch.  Then I pushed a fully loaded flat bed cart with stuff that didn’t fit and had to be precariously balanced, with a baby on my shoulders.  I had to leave the store in the middle of the trip with the kids to deal with an urgent bathroom situation.  Molly ate a price tag and then ate my hot dog. And Ikea doesn’t even give you bags!  To top it all off the bookshelf didn’t fit in the car and necessitated an hour of rearranging at 7 am before we could drive home.

So, who do you believe???

Disregard that last post…

If any of you use a reader that automatically emails you when I post, you may have noticed an odd post from me last night.  I have the bad habit of using the draft feature of my blog as a note pad to cut and paste interesting blurbs from things I read around the web, and one of the blogs I follow had posted some resolutions I thought were interesting—much better than the general “I want to lose 10 lbs and exercise more”—so I cut and pasted them into that draft feature, to remember them for later… and accidentally published it.  Oops!  So, in case you were wondering, I did think those were interesting resolutions, but they were not actually my resolutions or my words (actually they were a compilation of some highlights from various blogs).

This raises the question: do you all ever take notes online (or when you’re on your computer in general)?  I sometimes use email drafts for the same thing… but again, it has the same problem as not really being for that purpose.  What program(s) do you use?

Happy New Year!

P.S. Anyone have any interesting resolutions to share? 

Tucker’s Photo Essay of Everything Else

 

Tucker’s Self-Portrait Photo Essay

  

 

  

Merry Christmas

We had a nice Christmas celebrating with all of the grandparents. The highlights included Molly walking more than 3 or 4 steps for the first time, Austin and I getting to go to church alone on Christmas day, and a delicious and relaxing Christmas dinner (thanks, Helen!).  Molly’s favorite Christmas presents were some plastic bracelets and Elmo silverware (that apparently really hit the spot to chew on), and she actually didn’t tear into wrapping paper like we thought she would.  She actually didn’t like the opening process at all… if it was something she was interested in, she wanted it NOW.  And if it wasn’t something she was interested in, she wouldn’t look.  Tucker’s favorite presents were a real kiddie digital camera/video camera and a puppet theater and puppets.  I’m going to need to post videos of his shows and some of his own movies and pictures.  I think he’s up to about 300 pictures in the past three days.  I’m not sure any of them will ever be able to get deleted because he never gets rid of anything, ever.

  

Tucker got a green monster hat for Christmas so Molly went to the kitchen and got her green frog hat to wear.

Celebrating with Henny and Papa

 

 

I might’ve woken up first, thinking I heard Tucker… and ended up waking Molly and Austin while Tucker slumbered on till past 7. 

Daddy’s girl dresses her daddy.

Santa knows the way to Molly’s heart: a banana! 

 

Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

Tucker’s friend Henry had TWO Christmas trees, so Tucker begged to get a table tree.  Austin and Tucker went into the woods and found a little evergreen to cut down to fill the need, and Tucker decorated it just perfectly.  I didn’t have a stand so I taped a mason jar to a square of cardboard, and tried to wedge it into the mason jar so it wouldn’t tip over.  I need to work on my wedging skills next year (actually, next year I’d pack it into the mason jar with gravel). 

Quote of the Day

Scene: 3 am, Tucker is outside our door
Austin: What’s wrong? [Follows Tucker to his room]
Tucker: I don’t have any sheets on my bed!
Austin: Where are they?
Tucker: I don’t know, but don’t check the closet!
Austin: They’re not wet?  You don’t need to get changed?
Tucker: It’s a trick!  They’re in the closet!

Molly helps Austin workout

Molly is definitely Daddy's girl, at least lately. On Monday she was so much more content sitting in a stroller watching Austin workout than having my undivided attention inside. Austin took her interest in stride and let her help him pull the sled with weights on it.

Quote of the Day

Austin: Tucker, please stop making that noise.
Tucker: It’s not me, Daddy, it’s a wolf!

Ben’s Christmas Indiscretion

Yes, Virginia, Ben ate the gingerbread house.  No, Virginia, the gingerbread house did not agree with his tummy. 

Last year we put the gingerbread house on a waist-high bookshelf in our sunroom, this year it was in the dining room window.  But we put up our tree the other day, and had to move end tables and lamps, and something ended up right in front of the window, blocking the house. 

What did I do?  I moved the house to an end table that was now in the dining room.   This end table is kitchen table height, every inch as high as the shelf we used for the gingerbread house last year.  But when I was moving it, Ben happened to be in the room, and a piece of candy happened to get knocked off while I was transitioning it.  Ben helpfully cleaned it up.

My lab may be dumb, but he knows what food is.  And he figured out that that gingerbread house was food.  Thankfully it didn’t have very much chocolate on it.

Fast forward several hours: throw-up on floor greeted us as we returned from our morning excursion.  Honestly, this didn’t even raise a suspicion because Ben eats so many socks and other things so that he is always throwing up (I had just cleaned up a regurgitated sock that morning).  But he kept drinking water so I did look around to make sure all our playdoh was accounted for (it was).  Playdoh also does bad things to dogs’ tummies.

I figured it out after I put Tucker down for his rest time.  I was going down the front stairs and saw the destruction.  Actually, there was one very unique thing about this indiscretion of Ben’s: he wasn’t able to finish the whole house.  In fact, he only got about halfway through--he ate two sides and a roof more or less—this is the first time he’s ever not successfully finished an item of food (that I know of). 

Oh, and one more thing: Tucker still hasn’t figured it out so shhhhhh!!!

O Christmas Tree

We made our annual pilgrimage to the best Christmas tree farm ever. The only problem with it is that it takes much too little time to pick out a tree if you're trying to make it a family outing. We tried to be REALLY picky this year, but still was out of there in 25 minutes, including loading/unloading kids and tree. The highlight this year was when the tree almost fell over on Tucker, which the video actually captured!

Tucker's Christmas Concert

Tucker's preschool had a Christmas concert on Thursday night that was highly entertaining. Tucker was in the second row behind a little girl in pink so it's hard to see him (he's wearing a green and red stiped polo shirt). I wasn't sure if he'd sing or not, and was surprised by how excited he was and how into it he was. By the end of the concert I think he was the only boy left in his class still actually singing!

He looked forward to the concert all day, and took a bath and picked out Christmas clothes all by himself with no prompting besides asking him to at the dinner table. Wow! He did have a moment of stage fright when we were walking to the concert hall (the local middle school auditorium) when Austin told him this was where the big boys went to school. It took a lot of reassurance to convince him that it was, in fact, just his preschool friends that were going to be there that night.

Besides seeing my little man sing, the other highlight was the youngest class--the two and three year-olds--that had two boys who stole the show. Someone had taught one boy how to bow low, and he spent the first half of the concert continually bowing low. Another little boy in that class had the only solo of the night when he started "This Little Light of Mine" about 10 seconds before everything else--yelling. I think throughout the concert he was as loud as almost all the other kids put together.

Quote of the Day

“Is that tent bigger than God?” -Tucker

Thought of the Day

“Take time to be holy.  The word holy does not mean goody-goody; it means set apart for sacred use.” – Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Quote of the Day

“Heavenly hosts sing wa-wa-woo-wa!” –Tucker, telling me the words to Silent Night

At church this week, Tucker really got into the Advent singing.  He sang with real pleasure and definite gusto—Austin and I had to restrain our giggles and smiles because Tucker can get quite self conscious these days. 

I wasn’t sure how many other people could hear him, but it turns out his voice carried from the altar to the back row because we had people from both places commenting on his singing.  In fact, Fr. Glenn said that he heard Tucker and his first impulse was to laugh and then his next impulse was to cry it was so beautiful.  “That is how it’s supposed to be done!” he told us after the service.