A lot can change in a year...

First day of school, Fall 2010


Last day of school, 10 months later...

Hi, Remember Me?

Yes, I'm aware that I haven't posted yet this month, and the month is half over. Things are just busy around here, as usual. Jeff has started taking the train to work, which often means he leaves here at 5AM and returns at 620PM, so he's only here for an hour or so of kid time, and he's generally too tired to do much besides eat dinner and go to bed.

Amelia's participating in the nutcracker with her ballet school, and the rehearsals are nuts. Three hours on Saturday, class plus an hour or two extra on her regular day, extra classes on Wednesdays, dress rehearsal on Thursday, shows on Friday and Saturday. I also need to sew fake fur and a tail on her costume. I have finally perfected the proper bun,it requires lots of gel and a hairnet, still working on the correct makeup. (The kid is 4! Who knew ballet was so serious.)

She had her Christmas show for preschool on Saturday, it was too cute. We also had three parties to attend last weekend. I did a lot of baking for two of the parties, which although it was time consuming, I enjoyed it. I still have a few loaves of pumpkin bread I need to make and Jeff needs a coffee cake made for work for Wednedsday.

I'm still doing the playgroup stuff out here, although it's slowed down for now, I'm only doing 1 or 2 activities a week until after Christmas, we're just too busy right now.

Ant is doing well. The number of words he's speaking has great improved. Finally! Some of the things he says are pretty funny though. He won't say Amelia's name, once in a while he calls her Ma ma. And for himself he usually says "me". Lately though he calls both Amelia and himself "baby". So when he was going to bed tonight, to me and Amelia he said "Goodnight Mama. Goodnight Baby." So cute.

So yeah, that's what's going on around here. We've had lots of rain the last week which I love. Still drama going on with my family, but I'm trying not to worry about it. I can't do anything about it, except try and support the people who are around trying to take care of the kiddos. Anyway. If I don't get back here anytime soon, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And if you celebrate some other holidays, I hope those are great too.

Wordless Wednesday: Daddy's girl

(Not so) Wordless Wednesday!

When I ask Jeff what he wants for his birthday every year, he always asks for pictures of me and the kids. Because I'm a total procrastinator, I don't have time to get pictures of all of us done before his bday arrives, so I've been trying to get a decent shot of me and the kids. Of course I can't ask him to help because it's for his birthday, so they all involve me holding the camera out like a crazy person and then trying to get the kids to look at the lens, not the viewfinder out to the side. ( Don't even bring up using the timer. We tried that. I did not go well.) After lots of trying the past couple of days, this is what we've ended up with. I don't know that I love any of them, but one of them will have to do. Thank goodness for Shutterfly and their one hour photo processing that you can pick up at Target. I love Ant's face in the last one. He was done by that point. :-)

Wordless Wednesday- My two daughters?

Edited: My husband just called and told me to take this post down. LOL Apparently he doesn't think it's fair to our son to post such pictures on the net. Sorry honey, it's not coming down today. Maybe tomorrow.

Mia loves to play dress up with her little brother. Poor boy is going to hate us when he's a teenager and bring out these pictures to show his first girlfriend. :-D

Mama guilt

We had some excitement at our house over the weekend. And it wasn't really a good kind of excitement either. Remember how I'm packing up my kitchen? Well Ant pulled the food processor onto the floor, it popped open and the blade fell out. Mia promptly stepped on the blade. Eight stitches and a whole lot of pain and screaming later and she's good as new, but I feel horrible. I was standing right next to them when it happened, and it was over pretty quickly so I'm not sure what I could have done differently, but I still feel badly.

The odd thing is after the initial gush of blood, it really didn't bleed much here at home. We weren't sure at first if it would need stitches. We did end up in urgent care later that morning just to be safe. I stayed in the waiting room with Ant, and Jeff took Mia back to see the doctor. He texted me from the exam room that the nurse said it didn't look bad at all and the doctor just had to look at it and they'd be done. Then apparently the doctor arrived and disagreed with the nurse. He pulled the cut apart which made Mia scream, and the wound gush way more blood than it had at home. I could hear her screaming in the waiting room. :-( I'm glad I sent Jeff back with her, because he and the nurse had to hold her down while the doctor stitched it up.

So yeah, that's how our weekend went. Mia is really sad that she's out of ballet for two weeks, but she's having fun getting to watch lots of TV and we've been doing huge amounts of crafts and reading lots of stories. We had to go to Ikea this weekend and she got to ride in the stroller while Ant walked, and she thought that was pretty cool.