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?