at long last...

i don't usually do new year's resolutions...but this year i think i am going to: blog more. talking with some mom friends the other day, a friend mentioned that at times moms (or parents) forget as our kids get older that we still need that community we may have created while the kids were babies or toddlers.

& i am so guilty of letting this go...whether blogging community or our playgroup. that community was such a support during some stressful moments. i mean, i received not just words of encouragement, but the knowledge that i wasn't alone when my girlies were beyond frustrating. & i even had other bloggers send me gifts of encouragement (or to my mom! hello, friends). part of the reason i've pulled back from blogging this year is because some of the things most affecting me right now, well, i can't write about them on a blog, they're just too personal for me or someone else. ugh.

so all that to say: i want to be more present in this blogosphere.  not meaning i'll blow the cover on what are the more personal things, but i'll be here more to read what others are going through & offering some of my own stories & such.

there is my resolution! hold me to it!

***

now for the fun part: pictures!

 millie-bean's preschool christmas performance

 while the class sang "up on the housetop" amelia & her co-reindeer (summer, our neighbor!) got to jump out of the line onto the platform. then when santa is mentioned, that kid dressed as santa also jumped out. i didn't think amelia would do that, but she did. so cute, so proud.

the train

 addy's addy doll clothes gifts from grandma sue & paw paw bruce.

wes wearing one of amelia's gifts: belle's tiara. 

post-gift play time

amelia is one of the speediest gift openers ever. she was through her gifts in no time, then began playing immediately, usually with a huge smile & lots of jumping on wes & i squealing: i love you! thank you for my gifts! *smile*

 

 the gift i searched the most for...

a large, stuffed pinkie pie. *sigh* AND crumbs sugar cookie lalaloopsy (not pictured here) of which i somehow bought THREE. 2 were ebay mistakes, 1 i found very cheap at a thrift store!  anyway, this smile & addy's love of them this month has made it all worth it...

 after opening gifts the girls immediately went & packed for gramum & pop pop's house. & then they laid by the door, begging wes & i to "be ready" or "what's taking you so long?!" "can't we just eat breakfast in the car?" etc etc. wes even had to take them out of the car once...

by far, adeline's fav gift of the christmas: a guitar. she now walks around the house doing performances, & is actually pretty musical. (must fine piano & guitar lessons for her)

what its all about: cousins!

shock & awe: a mini doll castle!

tea party the day after christmas. my mom even provided fancy hats!

more of the tea party...

loveliest of all: my deariest friend, holli & newborn, Aoife (ee-ffa). both are so sweet & doing well.

i think i need to visit these two again...very, very soon.

& another friend, stephanie & brice had a wee adorable baby, crimson. who is totally adorable & all & whom i also want to visit with soon...gee, what a lucky friend i am to have all these babies around! 

***

what a month, eh? i'm hoping january goes by  just as fast as december, mostly because of my annoying cleanse. folks have asked if i'm doing this for weight loss. big answer: no!!! it's been suggested by my doctor & a new dietician. the purpose is to detoxify my body/cells. so my cells are apparently very elderly, according to a test done by the dietician. so hopefully by the end of the 28 days, my cells will be more hydrated & larger, meaning that toxins are taking less out of my cells. i hope this is making some sense, *smile*. so today starts the intense part of the cleanse: 7 days of specific fruits & veggies only, in addition to this DISGUSTING medical food that i mix with fresh apple juice, 3 times a day (plus some detox pills). kinda unique for a home baker to not be able to eat sugar or carbs (or caffeine!). supposedly this week i should begin to feel better, maybe even amazing...but so far i am gassy & bloated & grumpy &  my fibro still is loud & proud. argh!

***

enough of that...i think i could complain about it for a very long time. ah well. so now i must get amelia her lunch, then pick up addy, then take amelia to the neighbor's house (carpool is awesome, eh?), then get addy her lunch, then do some housework crap, then pick up the preschoolers, then...sudoku? somewhere in there is a lot of laughing & chasing down little girls from their hiding places & forcing socks & coats on & reading books to them & having them read books to me & playing legos... good stuff mixed with the BLAH.

things to know!

first, this week is 'nude recreation week' apparently. so, folks, go outside & play in the nude! i know at my house, adeline has already embraced this celebration, lol.

second, amelia is 11 months old today! yes, this is truly unbelievable. it's as if yesterday i was holding my 2nd baby girl, so tiny i hardly believed she came from me. here's some pictures (of course, would you not expect pictures?)

if you look closely, (hhm, click on the picture?), this is when her left eye started to swell shut on friday. lovely, eh?

ballerina toes

i couldn't decide which i liked better, so...i'm just putting them both up.

she has 4 teeth (& we know a few more are working the way out), 1 dimple, is crawling & cruising, & knows how to seriously annoy her sister, lol. she is quite the spunky little one & is easily distracted by nearly everything...which is adorable to mess around with her.

third, wow, my surgery is tuesday. wow. wow. wow. so wes is going to possibly be doing some updates while the surgery is going on through the blog. i don't know, i think it's just something to keep him occupied. after my afternoon on friday turned sour, the evening perked up. saturday morning we went to soaking prayer at the vineyard & is was amazing. it's as if our anxiety bubble was popped & we could relax. to sum it up: god was there & lavished some lovin' on us.

fourth, i went out with a group of my friends saturday night. lol. what a time, what a time. i was having such a hard time on friday trying to even *think* of what to do, so two of my friends just planned it for me (thank you, thank you carol & erin!). so we wined & dined at an italian restaurant in bexley, then per my friend christine's suggestion, we went to this small bar near her place in the victorian village. she ordered a pitcher, i think we were hit on by some ladies?, the music was loud, etc etc. the manager bought us another pitcher of beer...did i mention there was a dance floor w/ a disco ball? & i was like oh noooo, i'm not dancing, i suck at dancing, blah blah blah. christine decided it was high time to order harold a goodbye irish car bomb.

so...the last time i chugged an irish car bomb, well, it didn't end so well (puking at the base of a dumpster outside of barley's is pretty low...but i chugged two of them that time b/c my friend holli refused to drink hers, so, uh it was paid for & couldn't be wasted, right?!).
anyway, i somehow agreed to do this irish car bomb (which is a terrible name for a drink, eh?) with christine (a-hem, the mama of two beat the no-kids, college lady, ahem) & oh say 10 minutes later there were christine & i dancing under the stupid disco ball. yup, funny. i am sooo glad no one has a video. so glad.

carol, erin, christine, holli, kara, & judy (who drove me, thank heavens & boy does she have some interesting stories about me talking about planets on our ride home, lol)...thanks for a wonderful night out, even if it meant i had to take a few ibuprofen this morning.

fifth, wes & i went on a mini date tonight & out freakin car died! we so give it all up. i was ready to walk home, so serious. thankfully wes is knowledgeable with cars (growing up with your dad as a car dealer could do that to a person) & he figured out the problem (hhmm, the thing that holds the battery in place keeps loosening? so there was wes under the hood, yelling for me to 'turn the key' & i did & well, he was only shocked a few times. poor guy. it's nothing a call to AAA won't fix, thankfully (he would fix it himself, but i assured him we have enough stuff going on right now, just call AAA, why else do we pay them?!).

six, i keep telling myself: don't think of the surgery, don't do it, don't do it. we'll see; that works sometimes. i don't think i'm as anxious as i was last week. but my stomach is in a permanent knot & not a whole lot of food gets down there before it starts rumbling. there you have it: to lose some weight, get a brain tumor! anyway, my last day with harold...i just can't believe the surgery is upon me already.

the strawberry thief

if you look closely you will see our strawberry thief. she will strike at any time of day. she will eat the berries whether fully ripe or not (ewww!). she has two legs, blond hair. you get the picture!

although a bit bothered by her continuous eating of non-ripened berries, this IS what the strawberry patch is for: family eating! & eat she does. i think when a large amount of the berries ripen, she will be drunk on the s'berries.

there is a part of me that is very proud that adeline is digging around in a patch of home grown fruit & then biting it after doing a little spit-shine to get the dirt off (amazingly, i believe she thought of this herself! she loves to spit, really).******

change of scenery: inside.
time of day: late morning, post millie 1st nap.
occurance: amelia's first climb up the slide.
success rate: .5
status: knocked over by older sibling

this would be called the sister-train:

"see amelia, this is how you do it"

"oh, i get it!"

******

random pictures

the millie sleeping in the outdoor swing. poor kiddo. when will that tooth come through?

addy swinging with her favorite outfit on in 85 degree weather (with 89% humidity). even hot weather can't keep her out of her cat-halloween shirt!

addy watching kangaroos at the zoo.

she kept trying to climb into their area...we went thursday to the zoo with my sister in law, her mom, & my twin nieces, who are 2 years old & addy's best friends. i haven't seen addy so excited in quite awhile as when she laid eyes on the twins yesterday. she talked to them, held hands (not for long, but...), they tickled each other even a bit, addy shared their double wide stroller with one at a time. we were there for 5 1/2 hours, the longest we have ever stayed at the zoo & it was by far the easiest zoo trip we've had yet. not sure if it was b/c addy was so entertained by her cousins or if it was b/c we had a grandma there! or both? BUT, the question of the day: how did i only get a few pictures, mostly of animals? these twins had on the cutest dresses & the girls were being oogly-eyed in love with each other & i didn't manage to get a good picture of all of them together! DOI!

amelia also really enjoyed the twins, but for other reasons such as snatching their french fries. she has become quite the quick swiper of any thing, but food in particular. but the twins didn't seem to mind, at least they didn't respond like addy does ('mine!') maybe b/c they've had stuff swiped from each other before?

what else? well, today was a very frustrating day with huge ups & downs. i think we are reaching the pinnacle of addy's language barrier. by now she should have, what...200 words? maybe, i can't remember exactly. today i wrote down all the words she said & added a few others she didn't use that i know she can say & there is 21. to be proud, "cool!" is one of the words, *smile*... but i can tell that she is getting even more frustrated with herself & not being able to express herself through language. she has started this frustrated, high-pitched gibberish & then tears start to well up in her eyes & she throws her arms up in defeat. there have been many, many, many tantrums this week. not the big ones that last upwards of an hour, but the constant mini ones. she even peed herself 5 times today! she is beyond frustrated, i am beyond frustrated & i think we are at this hopeless point b/c no one will freakin call me back about getting speech therapy lined up (help me grow isn't so wonderful, after all! humph!) or about her hearing test results. i am ready to pack up the medical train & move to this type of 'homeopathic/wholistic md' version of a doctor that i have read about in some magazine in the past 2 years. someone who will take the freakin time to call us back, to be concerned with her whole situation, not just their little part in the equation. *SIGH*

in better news, i think i can say with confidence that life has gotten a bit easier lately (yes! even with amelia teething her top front teeth for the past 5 weeks. grrrrrrrrrrr.) i have accepted that addy doesn't nap anymore & if she happens to fall asleep on the couch or in her room (i still put her in her bedroom for 'quiet time') it's a plus & our night just got a bit easier. amelia is doing the two naps a day & is just a hoot to watch crawl around & explore. she has such interest in everything. it makes me smile to see her find a strewn lego & how excited this discovery makes her. & she's giving hugs, i swear it! this starts the age that i really enjoy...the exploring! i don't mind babyproofing & finding toppled everything (b/c really, if i've left it out, it's more my fault, eh?). her enthusiasm about everyday items is very contagious. just today she studied the intricacies of a toy-fairy wand for hours. it went with her wherever she went via mouth or her hand (or addy). only once did she poke herself in the eye with the end! so yea, i am loving that she's crawling & i can't wait for her to walk, even more fun in my opinion.

i've decided that the only other thing, besides being pregnant, that makes me never want to have a baby again: the age of 2. i can only go through this one more time. if we do adopt a kid in a few years, he has to be over the age of 3! that's my only stipulation, lol. maybe age 2 would be easier if adeline could express herself better. for sure we have had a rough go of it b/c of this language stuff, but i know all 2 year olds are a bit prickly around the edges. don't get me wrong, adeline amazes me daily with her kindness & soft heart & how she can crack jokes without even talking is beyond me, but she is a tiny comedian. when i wake up & hear her in the morning, i love it, even as she's throwing my glasses in my face, smudging them. or when she rolls around in our bed so much that she loses her place & rolls right off (which is quite the distance now with the new bed frame). or when she tells us-seriously-1 million times "addy a-boo-boo" in that poor me voice (i told her today that even the pope himself in rome knows she has this boo-boo & it will be okay now & she just looked at me with a very quizzical look & walked away. it worked!)

i don't know what i'm trying to say here. i do know i'm still tired half of the day, these girls wear me out! but i'm realizing how dirty my house is & doing better at finding little snippets of time to clean little by little every day. that is a huge development! i'm also making more meals from scratch, which is also a sign of the times (life is getting a bit easier again).

the amelia photo shoot

these were taken last monday by photographer extraordinare, judy crawford...yep, when amelia had her intense double ear infection. & yet she still smiled!