Happy Easter

4 years

Since I'm celebrating anniversaries, may as well note that I recently marked four years of being pregnant and/or nursing.  We hit this milestone around the same time Joshua and I passed the eight-years-of-being-together anniversary. 

We are in the midst of deciding if we should keep this pregnant/nursing record going.  We are leaning towards sticking with our family of four, but are still not 100% sure of this decision.  I never realized what a tough choice this would be.

15 Months



Updates:
* Blows kisses and loves to wave goodbye (hands very high over his head and just moves his wrists). With these additional skills, he is starting to enjoy wishing Joshua and Alma well as they leave for school and work instead of bursting into tears as they head for the door. He also bows his head for kisses on the top of his head from Alma (one regular and one silent kiss, as she insists).

* He loves the show-me quilt which Alma's godfather gifted to her for her baptism. He points at all of the images and talks and talk about them. His vocabulary consists of the following ... signs: please, more, all done/all gone/not an option, bath, apple, light, water, cheese, bird, doggie, book, thank you, bear, sheep; words: daddy, ball, balloon, Simon, Shanti, sis, horse (clicking noise).  Daddy, ball and doggie are his clearest words.  Pretzel is his favorite word  that he cannot say ... he will do anything for one.  Sometimes when I call "pretzel" to him it makes me think of my childhood when we would yell "cheese" to my family's golden retriever as if it was his name.

* Finally he has mastered the stairs. I say finally because he was sooo hesitant to even try them. While he is super stable on his feet and can nearly run, he was completely unwilling to try going down the stairs backwards until very recently. But once he tried it, he was hooked and now insists on going down everything on his own. As a point of reference, Alma was going down the stairs in our South Philly house, which we moved from when she was 8 months old.

* He drinks whole organic milk and seems to really like it.  Wish we could say the same for Alma, who still will not drink it. He is generally a good eater although he is very adamant about throwing any uneaten/undesired food behind him on the floor. I keep telling him that we are happy to clean up for him directly from the table.

* He loves the mirror that is in front of him in the car (so that I can see his face) and spends our drives to pick up Alma at preschool making funny faces at himself.

* Easter morning he had his first taste of candies .... then proceeded to dance like a silly crazy man. It was awesome.

* We are in the midst of cutting back on nursing.  For Lent, like a good Catholic, he didn't "snack" between meals.  He was frustrated with me at first but now seems to understand that we will only nurse at certain times.  We are down to just three times a day, instead of our recent ten times a day. 

* When Alma offers him a Cinderella costume to play dress up, he will follow me around with it until I put it on him. Once it is on, he spins around slowly with a big smile. He is simply mirroring Alma's behavior, but it is super cute.

* He still takes a two hour morning nap (9-11am) and an hour nap in the afternoon (2:30-3:30pm). During the first nap, I work. During the second nap, which overlaps Alma's nap by 45 minutes, I usually prep dinner.

* The other night before dinner, as we held hands as a family and bowed our heads for a silent prayer, James joined the circle for the first time and smiled a sly, knowing smile during the pray. It was a very tender moment.

725th Post

We just past our sixth anniversary of this BlogSpot blog.  Wild.  This makes 725 posts starting with this one and following along our path of acquisition (ice cream maker, cat, house, dog, baby, another house, bread maker, another baby).  Top month: June 2010 .

Look how young we were went we started:

Post Swim Class Nap

After our morning swim class, James takes his morning nap in the car in the parking lot outside of Alma's preschool.  Love watching him snooze.

The Rabbit at Moravian

"The Slides" (as we call it), an art installation at Moravian College where we hang out regularly.

Random story: Yesterday, while James, Alma and I were playing on the campus, Alma yelled, "Look Mommy, a rabbit!" Alma had her back to me and I kept looking in the distance to see if I could see it.  I kept asking her to point to it and she kept saying "Right here!"  Eventually, I realized that she did mean right here ... as in right at her feet.  The rabbit was clearly dead and Alma was petting it gently.  I was so weirded out by the whole thing that I could barely stop laughing to tell her to stop petting the dead animal.  She immediately stood up and looked at it for a bit before moving on to another game.  (I also had her take off her mittens, since they were covered with dead rabbit germs.)  During the walk home, she asked to pray for it before bed.

Library Time

Anxious for Spring

Out for a walk in the wet snow this morning...

And at the park last week on a very windy and chilly day...

Your Moment of Zen for the Day

James needed a set of flying in the sky photos like we did for Alma.

Little Rugger

This weekend, we had beautiful weather and we spent as much time as we could in the back yard. 

Newest Joy

 

Trying to build a tower taller than himself

Breakfast with Jame-mers

Recent Projects

Crazy how once my children hit a year old and the holidays are past us, I become the master of getting things done. 

Some of the projects accomplished in February:
* Foxy Loxy school bag for Alma

* chair cushion for Alma's dining room seat

* crib activity holder (x 3 as presents for other babies)

* crinkle toys for babies (presents)
* refinishing James's dresser (lined the drawers, painted the fronts, hardware and made a stencil)

* making nautical flags banner that reads "James Anchor"
* purging six Tupperware containers of clothing from the kids bedrooms along with setting up an additional five containers by size that they are going to grow into
* cleaning up the workshop in the basement
* replacing or installing most of the telephone jacks in the house

I'm feeling proud of this list but also feel guilty that I still have one important Christmas present to finish up.  Yup, you heard that right, Christmas.  We did a homemade Christmas this year and I still have one present to wrap up.  I'm excited to make it and give it.

My goal is to complete one project (house or craft) every day and incorporate homemade gifts throughout this year.  With all this no-babies-in-the-house energy, think it will be more than doable!