6 Months

Jack,

Holy speeding bullet Batman! (K. I am a dork.) But seriously, the six months that you have been a part of our family have just flown by. Time has been moving fast ever since Maggie was born, but I feel like it accelerated on the day that you were born. I adored you from the moment I held you in my arms, and 6 months later I only love you more. You are such a happy, smiley baby and are seriously a joy to have in our family. I wish I could slow things down so that I could enjoy you for a bit longer.

Here are some of your quirks--the things that make you so uniquely you and just a few of the reasons that I love you. You are a good communicator. You tell me what you need using your voice and body language. Because of this, you seldom cry. When I walk back into the room after being gone even just a couple of seconds, your whole body reacts with excitement. You flap your arms kinda bird-like and wiggle your hips. Even though you don't cry very often, when you are not getting your way, you cry loud and hard and persistently. When I walk around the room, especially if your Daddy is holding you, your eyes follow me everywhere. You love getting your clothes off and your diaper changed. The closer you are to naked, the wigglier you get. You have a little dance that you do when I change your diaper; you wiggle your hips, flap your arms up and down, then grab your feet, followed by other little parts. I am always trying to keep your hands out of the way little stinker. You are a hair puller BIG TIME. I can't even wear my hair in a pony tail when I am holding you because you grab the hairs at the bottom of my neck and pull them out. If Maggie's hair is within your reach? Watch out! Luckily she is pretty patient with this, but I am sensing that her patience is starting to fail so we will see what happens.

You are very curious and want to see everything that is going on in your world. This makes feeding you a little difficult as you are often whipping your head around and craning your neck to observe what is going on in your world. When I bathe you, you kick your legs and splash! For awhile we called you Thumper because of the way you aggressively kick the ground with your heels. You LOVE Maggie. You love watching her, and you especially love it when she plays with you. I think your favorite activity is when she pushes you in your baby swing (often so aggressively that she slides the swing across the floor and bangs it into the opposite wall). Her favorite is when I help you jump on the bed with her. Both activities get lots of laughs. Really though, all Maggie has to do is get in your face and you talk and squeal and laugh. You have a fuzzy little head that is pretty much irresistible to rubbing and cheeks that are definitely irresistible to kissing.

You can roll very well from back to front and vice versa. You also pivot in circles and try to inch your way here and there. You like spending time on the floor playing, but when you decide you are done, you won't be happy until you are snuggly in my arms. You actually don't like being rocked to sleep. I sometimes try to rock you in the rocking chair or just in my arms, but you don't care much for it. You are too busy wiggling and squirming, trying to get a better look at your world. When I lay you in your crib, you usually go to sleep without a single complaint. But, if you decide you aren't ready, you cry and scream for sometimes a very long time, until I usually give up (which I am sure is at least part of the problem), but because you usually don't cry at all, it breaks my heart when you do. Yup, you have me wrapped around your finger. Plus, you make the most adorable sad face. I have been in love with it since day 1.

We still swaddle you for sleep, and you are just starting to regularly break out when you wake up. You still wake up a couple times at night, but I have had a hard time working with on this with you because I am afraid your cries will wake up Maggie and bring knocks on our door in the middle of the night (happened just once so far). You take 2-3 naps a day. If we are out doing something interesting, you will sometimes skip right through your morning nap. Other days, you refuse to take an evening snooze, even when I know you are super tired.

You can almost sit up, but not quite. I think you would be able to sit up if you weren't so busy trying to reach for everything that you see. For a few days you did a head bob that was totally freaking me out, but luckily it seems to have passed. I think you were just exploring a new way of moving your body. You eat solid foods one time before bed. Surprisingly, you had the hardest time with sweet potatoes so far. They made you gag with the first few spoonfuls, but your best "this is gross face" showed up when I fed you peas for the first time. I don't have your growth stats on me right now, but you were around 50% for weight and height. Just perfect.

And I think that about sums it up. As far as I am concerned, you are pretty much perfect. I am so grateful that I get to be your mama.

Here is a little video that I think at least your Grandmas might enjoy, of you making your favorite noise! It is kinda long, but it made made your daddy laugh, so here is the uncut version.

Yep, you are a cutie. xoxo

Niagara

The realization that the new year is upon us didn't really hit me until I was downloading pictures and after placing them in my over-crowded 2012 folder I realized that I needed to create a new folder. 2013 baby!

Joe and I planned to go to bed around 10:30 on New Year's Eve and really start the New Year off right with a decent night's sleep (boring, I know!) but Jack had other ideas. He made sure that we all stayed awake so that I could at least get a New Year's kiss from one cute husband. My, how my children have changed me. There was a time, not long ago, when I would have mercilessly ridiculed anyone who didn't think it was worth staying up to welcome the New Year. Secretly I was happy that Jack sabotaged our non-plans. I didn't really want to go to sleep before the new year began.

We decided to make up for our less than stellar New Year's Eve and start the year right with a family vacay to Niagara Falls followed by a little visit to the National Museum of Play.

Sometime ago I saw a picture of Niagara Falls shrouded in snow and ice and I have wanted to see if for myself ever since. IT WAS AMAZINGly cold. Seriously, the coldest place I have ever been in my life. The whole time I was gazing at the falls for the 30 seconds that I could stand it I was wondering where my flock of emperor penguins was (do penguins flock?).

The night of our arrival, I walked out to see if we should take the kids out to see the falls illuminated (definitely no!). EVERYTHING was covered with ice. The sidewalks, the railings, the trees, even the snow on the ground, had a serious layer of ice. The mist from the falls was like freezing rain and the roar of the falls was so deafening that without a person to be seen in any direction, I felt like I was on another planet. Maybe Superman's planet.

The next day we did bring the kids out and they hated it! The mist from the falls was turning into snow. The wind was biting. BITING! My hands were stinging in literally seconds. Jack screamed and Maggie cried. We didn't last long. But, it was B-E-A-UTIFUL! I have never seen anything like it, that is for sure. We are definitely going to make a trip back when it is a bit warmer and we can appreciate the falls in a different way.

Jack is in there somewhere. He is facing me in his carrier. I didn't actually hang a jacket over his face, although he probably would have preferred it.

Did you notice the stairs on the lower left corner? Not very open to tourists this time of year.

Also, I love staying at hotels! Such a rare treat. I don't think there is anything quite as restful (at least when two kids are involved) as staying at a hotel. Jack sort of enjoyed his first ever dip in a swimming pool. I loved it.

 

Ho Ho Ho

As a team they're unbeatable

Just watch.

Okay an explanation. This is a video application that Joe's team created for a marketing competition at Wake Forest. The grand prize (for winning the entire competition, not just getting accepted) is $75,000, so I guess I kinda hope they win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjijriEw1tU&t=120s

Ready, Go!

Here is a conversation that has been had on many days in our home.

Me--"Maggie, can you tell Daddy what we did today?"

Maggie--(after looking at me for a minute), "Beach!"

Joe--"You went to the beach today?!" (I shake my head).

Maggie --"water! cold!" . . . "Bye beach."

I am sad to say that we don't actually go to the beach on most days. Instead, after the above conversation, I proceed to help Maggie tell Joe about what we actually did that day, (usually much less fun than going to the beach).

At least Maggie has the right idea about what we should be doing every day, and she certainly makes the most of our time there.

The other day, though, I had the bright idea to have a beach picnic. We were on our way home, and only had a few free minutes but I had packed sandwiches, so I thought, "why not eat them while watching doggies and runners (another of Maggie's well loved activities) down on the beach path." Well, I am sad to say that our picnic ended with me dragging a screaming, flailing toddler away from the water. In my defense, I usually do let her play in the water (or maybe that's the problem), but now I have learned my lesson. We only head to the beach when the ocean (and not just the sand) is an okay.

In case you missed it, Maggie is yelling "Ready, gooooooooooo." It is her own derivative of "ready, set, go" which I think she used in the beginning to get her courage to run into the freezing cold water. Now, I think she just likes to yell.

Hat whacking Joe

Some things are priceless. Well, maybe not priceless, but at least silly and awesome like this picture:

I am easy to spot in the picture. I am the one with the squished up face and sour mouth. You might, however, find it more difficult to spot Joe. That is because he too busy getting whacked in the face with the brim of a Dodgers baseball hat to have bothered to smile for the picture.

Do you know who did smile for the picture? The guy who's hat flew off and hit Joe in the face. Yes, that's him. The one two rows up with the big head and HUGE cheesy smile.

Luckily, the guy one row behind him was busy clinging to the guy next to him, so he dodged the chapeau that then hit Joe.

Is this funny to anyone? I still laugh every time I see this picture (which is why it may be priceless). Perhaps it is because I can still see Joe's baffled face as he wiped a baseball hat out of his eyes and handed it back to it's rightful owner. Or, perhaps it is because we laughed and laughed for as long as I can remember for a really long time. Or, perhaps it is because we were just so happy to be acting like kids, riding roller coasters and hanging out together for the first time in what seems like ages.

In any case, we had a great time enjoying our annual passes and decided that we will have to make a repeat visit soon. We also stopped for a picture with this rather large monkey just to awe and delight our daughter.

And delight her we did. When we showed Maggie this picture, after making enthusiastic monkey noises, she ran to get her stuffed "George" monkey that she got for Christmas from her Aunt Sam and Uncle Jeff. Then, she made sure that the person monkey in the picture was smothered with stuffed monkey kisses, complete with kissing noises and more monkey sounds.

Also, this afternoon date was all possible thanks to a great friend, Emily, who watched Maggie while Joe and I acted like teenagers. And, when we eventually got home, this is what we found:

So, all in all, I would say it was a great day.

San Simeon

Los Angeles is great. I love living here. Don't get me wrong; I love the beach, the weather, the traffic. Ahem, I mean . . . did I mention the traffic?

So, back in November when we had the rare chance to escape, we headed up the coast to San Simeon where we met my sister Jenni and her family.

Camping + toddlers + cold + family + bubbles + elephant seals (hundreds, literally) + the beach = vacation (hopefully deserved), fun, and not quite enough sleep. Luckily Maggie is a cuddle bug, so sleeping in a tent is not too much of a problem.

We visited Hearst Castle, an incredibly fascinating place, built by eccentric billionaire William Randolph Hearst in the 1920-1930's. Hearst imported art from Rome, Italy, France, etc; some dating back as far as 230 A.D. In the creation of his castle, he was inspired by his childhood tours of Europe, and if you were to erase the palm trees in the picture below, you would probably be more likely to think that the picture was taken, well certainly not in California. One of the pools, styled after a Roman bath house, is mosaic'd with tiles including some made of clear glass fused with gold.

Maggie kind of adored her cousin Lydia. Once, she managed to catch Lydia in a hug. Meanwhile, Lydia called out for help, "Momma, stuck! Stuck!"

A rare family photo. We slipped tube socks on Maggie arms to keep her little hands warm while we were hiking.

I like these two.

The little girls started their lunch (the part that the seagulls did not fly away with) while sitting on rocks that would never have reasonably seemed seat sized. They have such tiny bums. So cute.

Watching a toddler eat a sandwich at the beach is painful.

Maggie is past putting handfuls of sand in her mouth just for the heck of it (at least mostly; she has been going through an dirt eating phase that I have not entirely figured out).

Still, I just turned my head when she used her sandwich to dig in the sand at a beach birthday picnic. I am not sure that she did any sandwich-sand digging on this day, but she has definitely brought a new definition to sand-wich. Ha Ha Ha.

I just want to kiss those wind-burned cheeks.

Me and Wink

I love being a mom (probably obvious as you look at my blog and it is just picture after picture of one cute little girl), but I actually have been amazed at how much joy (and sometimes stress, laundry, and laughter) a little baby can bring to your life. I love having my little buddy tag along with me all the time. She makes the most mundane tasks seem like fun whether she is waving to people at the grocery store or pulling everything out of my cupboards as I make dinner. 

These Boots . . .

Just a taste. . .

Someday I will get around to really posting (maybe tonight?). In the meantime . . .